History YMMV / DragonsDogmaII

** Being required to find the first Seeker's Token you found in the game among the over ''200'' of them scattered about the world while only giving your seven in game days to find it. Hope you remember or had enough foresight to take a picture of the location you got your first.

** While Ulrika is the one responsible for nursing the Arisen back to health twice, directly causing most of the events of the game to happen, and has a fairly in-depth questline that leads to her being one of the first characters you can romance, her impact on the overall plot afterwards is fairly minimal.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Worried that no one will hire your pawn? Fear not! Capcom, themselves, have [[https://kotaku.com/dragons-dogma-2-main-pawn-hired-fake-player-capcom-1851385324 created false player accounts for the purpose of hiring out pawns]], ensuring that even players who have set their pawns to not be recruited will receive a steady stream of Rift Crystals.

** Bringing the Sphinx her parent, which requires the player to hunt down an official Capcom pawn called SphinxFather, SphinxMother or SphinxParent. If you've never interacted with the Riftstone of Fellowship, this is easier said than done.
** Bringing an incredibly fragile vase to a specific NPC in Bakbatthal. You can bring the NPC to the vase, but this requires the use of two Portcrystals at the Shrine and Bakbatthal to get done quickly. Similarly, the riddle that involves you bringing one of two NPCs to the Sphinx that look alike at first glance. If you didn't take a screenshot of the one that Sphinx wants you to bring, its easy to bring the wrong one by mistake.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: The threat of the Dragon pretty much ceases to loom after the Arisen's recollection of themselves at Melve, which is within an hour's playtime. While Grigori was an OrcusOnHisThrone as well, his presence was felt through a doomsday cult galvanized by his appearance; ''2's'' denizens seem FantasticallyIndifferent to both the Dragon's existence and what its appearance portends.

* ContestedSequel: The game is either this or EvenBetterSequel depending on who you ask. Most of the complaints stem from the fact that many believe the sequel [[ItsTheSameNowItSucks retreads too many of the pitfalls from the first game]], while introducing several new issues such as Dragonsplague or a low enemy variety.
* CriticalDissonance: The game has a 85-89 score on Metacritic depending on the version, which is a substantial increase from the original's 75-80 average. Fans, however, were less kind at launch with the game reaching as low as a '''4/10''' on Steam due to the aforementioned microtransaction controversy and the game's performance issues.

* ParanoiaFuel: Once the risk of the Dragonsplague became known, people started throwing their pawns into the brine for the smallest indications they might be infected with it, Straightforward pawns are often the first to be thrown into the brine due to their [[DeadpanSnarker Sarcastic]] personality, with people confusing their snark for a [[TookaLevelInJerkass sign of infection with the plague]], and pawns with red eyes not getting hired at all.

* ItsTheSameNowItSucks: One of the criticisms leveraged at the game is how similar it is to the first game and not evolving the formula enough aside from having a bigger map. The game still features mostly the same enemy roster with few additions, using the same attack patterns and mechanics they had in the first game; There aren't many new vocations and the previous one didn't have big changes; The beloved system still being the same, including the awkward gift system and players accidentally romancing [=NPCs=] (including children) they didn't mean to. The game still features the same biomes from the first game (with the canyon area being greatly expanded); And the story itself retreads many of the same plot points from the first game, to the point the game itself calls it ''Dragon's Dogma" in the menu, with the [[EvolvingTitleScreen 2 only being added in the endgame]].

* MemeticMutation: "Look, Master! A Ladder!", "A ladder, Arisen!" [[labelnote:Explanation]]Pawn chatter once again tends to [[LampshadeHanging lampshade things]] or repeatedly mention points-of-interest. Ladders immediately became the one memetic subject associated with pawns, and veteran ''Dragon's Dogma'' fans also joke it will be on par with the first game's "Wolves hunt in packs!" meme.[[/labelnote]]

** The first time you gain a Pawn infected with Dragonsplague, it notably warns you about the fact that they are stronger but also a disobedient {{Jerkass}} that may invite calamity. If you don't heed the warning thinking it's just a plot point later on, [[spoiler:the next time you rest at an inn or house in a town, the Dragonsplague Pawn will ''KillEmAll'', leaving only children and other Pawns alive. This includes not only vendors and the Vocation changers, but plot-and-quest-important characters, too, effectively destroying any quest progression you may have been doing and killing your game for anyone not interested in just speeding to the end.]] The only way to know this will happen is by having heard of it from other players, and with no "New Game" option, this is essentially a permanent consequence unless you go outside the game to delete your save by other means, have enough Wakestones to spend on important characters, or manage to get the [[spoiler:Eternal Wakestone that is permanent and reusable to undo all the damages manually.]]

*** There's still technically just ''one save slot'' that gets repeatedly updated as you play the game. Unfortunately, ''Dragon's Dogma II'' at launch doesn't come with the option to start a new playthrough (or restart all over) after you already have a save file; you'd eventually be left with just the options to "Load from Last Save" or "Load from Last Inn Rest". This is in contrast to how the first game at least has both New Game and Load Game on its main menu.

* CommonKnowledge:
** Because of the series' esoteric mechanics and previous obscurity, there exists some confusion among the gaming public as to what exactly the game's notorious MicroTransactions do, and it isn't uncommon to see videos or comments claiming that core features such as fast travel, pawn customization, or respawning after death are locked behind a paywall.[[note]]Like most Capcom games since ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'', most of the items available to buy with real cash are easily attainable in-game.[[/note]]
** ''Dragon's Dogma II'' launched without an in-game option to restart to a new game or save file from scratch, but there's confusion and misinformation claiming that the feature is already locked behind a paywall, or that the Art of Metamorphosis item allows you to do it (when in fact, the latter simply allows you to edit the appearance of your Arisen or Pawn).

* TaintedByThePreview: ''Dragon's Dogma II'' has been receiving its early criticisms en-masse only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grFiXc6sWcw after the review embargo was lifted]]. Aside from performance and optimization issues (especially on PC), this is mostly due to the inability to restart to a new game after having a save, the general "one save slot" limitation, and a list of questionable DLC {{Microtransactions}} (as an alternative to the exact same in-game purchases that players can get). All of these caught many gamers by surprise and caused them to hold off on purchasing the game just yet. However, older Capcom and ''Dragon's Dogma 1'' fans argue otherwise that the latter two "issues" have always been OlderThanTheyThink.

* GameBreaker: Like the first game, this one has just as many broken mechanics, pieces of equipment and augments if you search hard enough.
** Pausing the game after taking a mortal blow and going into your inventory reveals you can heal yourself before the game registers you died, making you almost unkillable as long as you have any form of health curative on you and capable of walking off even Drake attacks at low levels. The only thing it can't mitigate is instant deaths from fall damage, but everything else is fair game.
** The Thief class seems made for almost any situation to make up for a lack of ranged options (split from the Strider class in the original), but one augment in particularly can trivialize the combat for you: Formless Feint. On paper it sounds simple, being an auto-dodge that activated before you're hit and slowly drains your stamina. In usage however, it's the Mist Raven from Sekiro, only, it will always teleport you horizontally, it is automatically active once you turn it on and ''it will still go off while you are attacking.'' Furthermore the teleport itself doesn't drain your stamina any more than the augment already does. Having it on essentially turns a majority of the combat into a button masher as no attacks can actually hit you, and the only thing you need to do to keep it going is either turn it off and let it recharge once in a while or just consume stamina recovery items. And it's not just the combat either; Because it essentially keeps you from ever having to worry about losing your max health, you can intermittently throw it on while exploring to travel far further in a single sitting than the game expects, allowing you to theoretically encounter and kill threats you normally should be one-shot by.

** As soon as the game launched on late March 2024 and the review embargo has been lifted, it has been criticized for having technically just one save slot and the inability to create separate character playthroughs on their own slots. Some of those who've played the first ''VideoGame/DragonsDogma'' game would then remind the newcomers that the first game technically had a "one save slot" system as well (albeit the main menu there still lets you restart a playthrough, unlike this game at launch). The {{autosave}} feature of ''[=DD1=]'' had its flaws as well, which were somehow retained here. It eventually caused the first game's saving system to be retroactively labeled as a ScrappyMechanic too.

* ScrappyMechanic: The save systems still have a similar complexity as the [[VideoGame/DragonsDogma first game]], which can be confusing for those who haven't played the latter. It got to the point where there's even a post-launch [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLUmHyx9fis in-depth video]] by IGN explaining how this game's save systems work for the uninitiated. Given the pre-release hype and influx of [[NewbieBoom series newcomers]] to ''Dragon's Dogma II'' though, the comparisons from gamers who prefer the simpler multiple save slots and auto-save of ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' were inevitable.
** There's still technically just ''one save slot'' that gets repeatedly updated as you play the game. Unfortunately, ''Dragon's Dogma II'' at launch doesn't come with the option to start a new playthrough (or restart all over) after you already have a save file; you'd eventually be left with just the options to "Load from Last Save" or "Load from Last Inn Rest". This is in contrast to how the first game at least has both New Game and Load Game on its main menu.
** The {{autosave}} feature can still have the risk of accidentally making you lose progress upon death or putting you in a bind if you haven't been regularly resting at inns. A tutorial prompt in this game outright admits that its autosave system can be unreliable and thus recommends the player to at least regularly rest at inns to ensure the reliability of their saved data.[[note]]Inn saves are more reliable than autosaves in both ''Dragon's Dogma 1'' and ''2'' because aside from placing you on safe zones where your meters are refilled, there's an option to load "checkpoint saves" specifically (which this game calls "Last Inn Rest")[[/note]]
** One mechanic introduced in ''II'' is that your and your pawns' max health will begin to shrink as you take damage. This essentially makes venturing out for longer periods of time increasingly dangerous and encourages you to find safety, whether through inns or camp fires, to continue your adventures. It also makes it so you cannot just load up on healing items then brute force your way through encounters against more dangerous monsters as you could in the first game with enough patience. This in itself isn't the scrappy mechanic. What IS the scrappy mechanic is that your reduced health carries over when you reload a save after dying. So if you save before a fight with 75% maximum health and then end up dying in the fight with your max health reduced to 50%, when you reload, your maximum health will now be 50%. It makes it so it becomes increasingly more difficult to win a fight you are struggling with, particularly if said fight is one you MIGHT be able to win with some proper strategy but is still dangerous.

** Another misinformation or confusion claims that the Art of Metamorphosis item allows you to restart your save file, when what it really does is simply allowing you to edit the appearance of your Arisen or Pawn.

* CommonKnowledge: Because of the series' esoteric mechanics and previous obscurity, there exists some confusion among the gaming public as to what exactly the game's notorious MicroTransactions do, and it isn't uncommon to see videos or comments claiming that core features such as fast travel, pawn customization, or respawning after death are locked behind a paywall.[[note]]Like most Capcom games since ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry4'', most of the items available to buy with real cash are easily attainable in-game.[[/note]]

* ScrappyMechanic: The save systems still have a similar complexity as the [[VideoGame/DragonsDogma first game]], which can be confusing for those who haven't played the latter. It got to the point where there's even a post-launch [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLUmHyx9fis in-depth video]] by IGN explaining how this game's save systems work for the uninitiated. Given the pre-release hype and influx of [[NewbieBoom series newcomers]] to ''Dragon's Dogma II'' though, the comparisons from gamers who prefer the simpler multiple save slots and "bonfire" saving system of ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' were inevitable.

* TaintedByThePreview: ''Dragon's Dogma II'' has been receiving its early criticisms en-masse only [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grFiXc6sWcw after the review embargo was lifted]]. Aside from performance and optimization issues (especially on PC), this is mostly due to the inability to restart to a new game after having a save, the general "one save slot" limitation, and a list of questionable DLC {{Microtransactions}} (as an alternative to the exact same in-game purchases that players can get). All of these caught many gamers by surprise and caused them to hold off on purchasing the game just yet. However, older Capcom and ''Dragon's Dogma 1'' fans argue otherwise that the latter two "issues" have always been OlderThanTheyThink.