Dragon's Dogma 2 receives scathing Steam reviews due to microtransactions and performance issues

Dragon's Dogma 2, the long-awaited sequel to Dragon's Dogma (2012), launched on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X yesterday. Its performance leaves a lot to be desired due to its astronomically high CPU usage on PC. Capcom says it is working on a fix, but the Dragon's Dogma 2 launch has opened yet another can of worms.

Currently, the game's Steam review score ranges between "mostly negative" and "Mixed", primarily due to the seemingly egregious in-game microtransactions. Among other things, Capcom charges players to edit their character's appearance, which many found infuriating because Dragon's Dogma 2 is a single-player game. The aforementioned CPU issues also contribute to its poor rating. Windows Central's Jez Corden says that Capcom is supposedly, "selling you "easy difficulty" for payments".

On the other hand, YouTuber FightinCowboy, who has played Dragon's Dogma 2 for over 100 hours, notes that it is easy to acquire the items sold via microtransactions for free by just playing the game. Given the game has been out for a day, it'll be a while before players rack up enough hours to farm the said items. Then again, anyone familiar with Capcom's strategy will know that its single-player games often come with a hearty side of microtransactions.