Dragon’s Dogma 2, despite catastrophically bad optimization and very negative reviews, has already broken 200k concurrent players on Steam.
Horizon Forbidden West, a purportedly flawless port with very positive reviews, has so far topped out at just over 25k concurrent, roughly half the peak achieved by the first Horizon.
Things can certainly change. Also, Horizon is a two year old game at this point, although still one of the best looking games in existence.
But those numbers are anemic, especially in the wake of Sony’s last PC release (Helldivers 2) hitting almost half a million concurrent players.
Is it possible that the Sweet Baby Inc. story penetrated the mainstream far enough to influence consumer behavior? I’m not aware of any formal connection between HFW and SBI, but it does seem like gamers are becoming more conscious of both the woke taint on AAA and their own ability to avoid it.
Who knows. Maybe it’s just a mirage. A man can dream.
Horizon 1 was alright, albeit generic and too girl-boss for my liking. Horizon 2 seems to have gone full sweet baby, with chipmunk alloy to boot.
I haven't played DD2, but I loved the original. It was an interesting take on the ARPG format, with a lot of mechanics not found elsewhere. Relative to its peers at the time of release, it had considerably better combat - unsurprising coming from the designer behind Devil May Cry. DD2, by all accounts, seems to have expanded substantially on all of the successful mechanics of the first, and people seem to be having legitimate fun with it. Despite investment in ESG (black NPCs in a early Mediterranean setting despite being almost entirely absent in the previous game), it seems surprisingly unscathed in other regards - like female characters, which are pretty much what you'd expect from a Japanese game.
To be clear, I haven't purchased it and won't until, at the very least, performance improves. At which point, I'll mod the ESG out myself if I have to. With that said, most of the complaints levelled against it are embellished or outright fabricated. The steam score, despite the misunderstanding and poor performance, has already partly recovered as a result. To clarify:
The DRM does not prevent modding in DD or other Capcom games. Being REengine, fairly advanced modding tools are already available (including model swaps and custom scripting in LUA). A mod manager is already out, and as of one day after launch, 57 mods are already available.
You don't pay for a new game. It's locked to a single playthrough, and given the response, this will likely be patched out. For the time being, there is a save manager.
MTX exist, but all items are easily acquirable in the first city. No extensive farming required. The purchase window for MTX items even explicitly states this. If you have played DD1, released 12 years ago, you'll know that this is exactly the same as in the first. I don't like it, but it is typical Capcom. You're also especially retarded if you actually chose to part with real money, since it represents close to no advantage.