A few hours into my time with Dragon’s Dogma 2, I was struck by a critical question that appeared simple, but was unusually difficult to answer. It was this: Does the combat suck?

Capcom’s latest hit is a sprawling, unruly open-world role-playing game that seems to delight in challenging players’ assumptions about genre. Whether you believe fast travel is a universal right or quest NPCs should never die, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is here to pull the rug out from under your feet. Mostly, I’m on board with this: I like games that push back sometimes (which is not the same thing as games that are just difficult). I like games that encourage the player to embrace the possibilities of failure and misadventure and just roll with it.