Dragon's Dogma 2

Vorph said:

Definitely the latter. There's almost no reason to ever use any other vocation once you have warfarer unlocked, aside from ranking them up so that you can actually use the skills and augs.

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I treated this like the first game, basically farming mobs with shit XP when leveling vocations and earning most of my levels as my preferred stat gain class. For my mele based pawn, that meant maxing all the non spell using vocations then spending nearly all of her leveling time as a warrior to get the highest attack strength possible. Sorcerer was for my main to pump magic attack. Its not as pronounced as the first game, but there is definitely an impact to sticking to one of those two classes for character levels. If I started over from scratch, I whink I would just suicide run to Volcano town to unlock Warfarer immediately, since you overall gain more total stat points per level. Doing that as early as you can would mean having great stats across the board, just not peak specialized ones. By the time I got to Warfarer, I was already sporting a really high Magic from all the sorcerer levels, so I just maxed it out to get the five levels in the unused professions and the reduced stamina for weapon art ability.

It was fun running around with spear for Mirror and the leap stab thing, while having a wand for the sticky bomb sorcerer spell. But ultimately its way less tedious dropping a tornado or meteor on shit, while still having the lightning bolt and sticky bomb spells in my back pocket at all times. I might switch back to Warfarer once I hit the post game if the chain stun shit is outrageous and I think thats about the best way to run it. But for now I am rocking over 1k magic attack, dropping drakes in one or two casts (griffons in one), and I am not even through the main story yet (just starting the giant statue part). So yeah specializing does pay off. But I think if you can get Warfarer early enough to be in the same ballpark for magic and physical attack as a pure Sorc and Warrior would be, the extra versatility pays off at that point. Getting it late, you are getting stat points you don't really need.

Sorcerer just rooks everything in the game with a high enough magic stat, unless you intend to fight solo against mass trash. But a well leveled Warfarer would have more options. But truthfully any setup leaning on the magic stat is going to be good unless you are aiming to be relying on Thief/Warrior/Archer moves. High magic lets you be a mele or archery god if you want, purely thanks to Mystic Knight and Magic Archer letting you rely on that stat for most of your damage. At least until you run up against a metal golem, but the Sorc can get around that with the tornado spell (two casts or so will win the fight once you hit 900-1k magic.

Finished it. Overall liked it and if the inevitable DLC is on par with Dark Arisen this is an all time great game.... BUT...

As of now, the most fun part of the game is an endgame on a limited timer. And sadly the timer does not matter, because if you are even moderately prepared you will likely have all of the required parts done in two game days, leaving another 10 to farm materials. And while fighting non stop bosses was fun, having all the best stuff come from vendors was lame. But the worst part of the ending is that you spend all this time farming up your best gear and then the final confrontation is..... a faction check and a quick time event. Then you go to NG+ with zero increase in mob difficulty.

Maybe I overprepared, given I spent a couple weeks speed running Dark Arisen before this game dropped. But at 1200 physical attack, my warrior pawn was actually able to solo griffons and kill them fast enough to prevent them from running. At 1200 magic on my main (maxed the best staff with elven smithing and leveled almost entirely as a Sorc) I was able to drop dragons and headless horseman in about three casts of whichever ultimate I happened to use. If I were actually to change to warfarer and use sticky bomb plus Mystic Spear attacks it would be even faster, but I like the ultimate Sorc spells so I stuck with Sorc. The ending was just bizarre in this game, to say the least.

So much potential to be a GOTY game but it dropped the ball in the end game sequence. I rate this an 8 maybe 8.5 out of ten, but a decent DLC with rebalances and end game extension can easily push this to a 9 or more with me.

Dark Arisen is a long playthrough, because its the base game with the Everfall farm loop and two deep runs to the bottom of Bitterrock Isle. Even if you know exactly what to do, its a pretty long play. This also presumes you don't get turbofucked by a Grim Reaper appearance at the wrong time, also.