I liked this article on Dragon's Dogma 2

Article posted in the spoiler:

Game is pretty good. Maybe not $70-good but it scratches an itch for game design that is somewhat older in mindset. I found that the gameplay loop is enjoyable enough to make removal of quality of life features a positive thing, the journey from place to place is enjoyable because the combat itself is enjoyable. Repeating journeys isn't a chore if you actually want to do the stuff that is on that journey.

Fast travel exists in games because the part that exists between point A and point B has not been designed to be fun but an artificial extension of playtime. Open world games proliferated in the industry because open worlds could hold audiences longer and thus provide more opportunities to sell shit to audiences. They proliferated however with absolutely no regard for making the parts that extend people's time with the game into a feature of entertainment.

My take is that Dragon's Dogma 2 bucks this trend and actually tries to address problems with the genre. There's a developer-auteur feeling I get from the game that I've only ever really had with Kojima in the past. It has flaws, like optimisation and I definitely just want more of it than there is, but there's something here that is interesting.

That and the community reactions like utterly losing their shit over the dragonsplague have been an art in and of themselves.