Dragon's Dogma 2

I'll start off by saying that I did not expect to like this game. I only got it cuz CDPR messed up the Witcher 3 update, again, and I was in the mood for some RPG. So I looked at some reviews which pointed out the flaws and also praised it and I was still pretty sure I'd dislike it. But I was bored so I got the game. Up to the 2 hour mark I counted the minutes to make sure I had the refund option available.. So that's my starting point with this game. Now a day and half of gaming later I can say it does some things really well. Surprisingly so. While other aspects I think are.. mid. Let's start with the good: I like the way they've created this real sense of adventure with the day being just long enough to be able to get things done but not so long that you can make it back to a city to rest there, thus making you use the camping system. I also very much like that the night is actually dark and dangerous. Least initially. Not being able to see what you're fighting much contrasts amazingly when I as a mage cast some giant holy orb which lights up everything. And it's only a thing a mage can do which gives this class true uniqueness. The magic combat which I was incredibly very suspicious about turned out to be quite well implemented. I haven't tried the others.. But the channeling before casting some big impactful spell, being able to move while casting but it slowing down channeling.. It all works well together. Positioning is important. Your party members are important in keeping enemies off you. It just clicks. Now for the mid: The pawns are very much hit or miss. They repeat the same lines over and over after each encounter and that can get grating on the ears fast. At the same time in combat they are.. Dare I say.. the best implemented companion AI I've seen. Really as a mage who has to rely on them to keep enemeis off me.. They do that job well. They are aggressive, they are helpful.. If they had either more voice lines or spouted them less often I'd say it was a great system. Ah right - the 'follow me' is way too aggressive. It would be better if I could ask them to lead rather than them offering every second. The loot in the world is.. rather underwhelming. You can find some nuggets. But for the most part the gear I wear is what I bought off the shop. Tho' I am only 13 hours in so that might change. I did find some incredibly powerful item in some dungeon so.. Maybe later on I can find more powerful loot? The carry weight is.. incredibly limiting. I usually enjoy it for the realism but.. Jeebus here it's been overtuned. Least allow us to buy a backpack that increases it. Like when you wear normal clothes you don't really count their weight as slowing you down. But here it takes up like 1/3 to half your carry weight just on its own. Even when wearing cloth. I understand they are trying to make it realistic in a sense that you don't carry the whole bank with you and I can get behind that. But coupled with the usual jank of Japanese inventory management.. And not being able to see what you pick up before you pick it up. It's just a mess. Finally the onboarding could be clearer. Some stuff is fairly intuitive but some things .. just aren't. Like for example finding quests to do. I'm pretty sure I'm missing a bunch of them cuz I haven't ran around searching every single alleyway in the city. Or what certain icons mean. There are tutorial things ingame so they have at least tried. Simply some aspects they might've left vague on purpose which is fair enough. The bad: Inventory management.. It's the usual thing of Japanese not knowing how to make a reasonable inventory system. You got a separate screen for buying, selling, equipping, moving to different character.. WHYYYYY? It's almost Monster Hunter World level of bad. Monster variety is lacking. Severely. You got goblins, wolves, angry lizards and harpies as the basic fodder. And that's it.. Then at night you got 2 types of undead. If you're really lucky you run