Dragons Dogma 1 has a better world then DD2 in my opinion.

I’m not far enough into DD2 to give an informed opinion yet. But my gut instinct is to agree. Granted I’ve only really explored from the starting town to the capital. Beat for beat it’s basically the same the first game. Except they reverse the order you go between the town and the military camp and you fight… (is the first fight really a spoiler…?) a medusa instead of a hydra. But then it’s right back to the script, traveling to the capital in a military convoy and running odd jobs until you can actually get in. It still feels really organic (the world not the story structure) and I’m still enjoying it and the discovery. But the world feels more sprawling for sprawling’s sake. DD1’s world felt more purposefully large. And was well defined into regions… like for as much as there is to explore in DD2 it feels less open for how much more ground you have to cover. But I’m still early in the game, and I reserve the right to change my mind as I move forward.

Fair enough. Granted I haven't seen everything but there is no denying for me right now how boring the landscape is comparable and having less to parkour around freely. Might as well be a less interesting destination DLC for DD1.

The movement in general feels more cumbersome. The jumping and the jumping while sprinting doesn’t get the same elevation that it did in the first, and that drives me nuts… especially because the height didn’t feel ridiculous or unreasonable in DD1. Though I am a pretty beefy fighter. I need to mess around with vocations and sizes, because I’m wondering if that has an effect. I’m finding plenty to explore, and exercising ledges similarly. But it really bugs me in the towns. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop in the opening city in DD1 was an amazing way to open the mechanic and show you exploration is incentivized. And exploration is incentivized here. I’m not far but I’m being thorough and between the ledges, the paths, the breakable walls just kind of around with no attention drawn to them, everything lends itself to and rewards exploration. I just wish it felt better to move around. And climb monsters. The climbing and jumping mechanic on monsters feels so much more cumbersome. Which was even more wild when I realized pawns actually use their movement skills on you now, like jumping off their shield to fling yourself in the air. That’s a huge improvement, which would be even better if movement wasn’t just that much worse.

Maybe I'm just not experimenting enough with secret pathways and what not but I definitely feel you when it comes to grabbing and climbing onto monsters. And just jumping in general though I have yet to remember what vocation has double jump.

The first walk through for me is usually just sticking to roads and checking major things like ruins in the path. The second trek through an area is where I get into the nitty-gritty and it’s frankly astonishing how much stuff I missed on the first pass. I have mixed feelings about pawns guiding you. On the one hand it’s nice to know where to go. But on the other, exploring for its own sake is what I like most about these games.

That's fair. After I'm done with DD2 I actually feel like going back and re-examining DD1 again. It's weird because before the launch of this game I was soo drowned in the hype for "2", that the the mere thought of playing "1" was impossible and now I really have the urge to play "1" again... For the like 4th time lol. I know that one time round a mates I was playing a fresh save file on his account and decided to go up the hill wehre the bandits were, run past them and everything else, make it to the cave and then make my backwards through it and thus arrive at grand soren before doing the quest following the slow moving ox-cart quest. The game actually soft locks and cannot really do anything until you do the quest... So I had to head out of GS, head to the left area and do some mountain shenanigans to get back because the gate is locked until you start the quest....

My first few playthroughs of that game I found so many different side quests and random things it was like a completely different game each time. For instance on my first run when you’re tasked with killing the griffon, I managed to down him completely before he flew away. I remember being shocked at how comparably short that quest was. Then the second time I got the full quest and remember being so disappointed with myself for missing it the first time around when you get the cinematic fight sequence in the tower. I completely missed so many character arcs in the first run too. Your childhood friend. The witch. I think the only character quest I completed was Mercedes. I’m trying to make an effort to steer clear of breakdowns of everything in 2 because stumbling into these massive stories was the thing I liked the most about 1. I’ll almost certainly being doing another run of the original too at some point in the future. It just scratches the right itches.