If you're going to make fast travel some niche thing in a game, you better be sure to build a world that has exciting things to do. So far, Dragons Dogma isn't fulfilling that requirement. Traveling feels like an ARPG. You walk 15 feet, Goblins, you walk another 15 feet Harpies, you walk another 15 feet wolves. Rinse & Repeat. Sure, you can use ferrystones but often times they're a waste since the town you want to go to is relatively down the street.
I'm either at Level 24 or 27 (I don't recall 100%) but I feel like I have a lot of the game down. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of fun to have in the game during your first 10-15 hours. But, after that, it becomes reminiscent of a Ubisoft game. Except with Ubisoft, you can actually find the items they point out on your map. In Dragons Dogma the ! informs you there's something there but they're either so poorly mixed in with the background you can't spot them or your Pawns run in circles when you tell them to go find it. On top of that, chests are rarely worth the extra 10 minutes running in circles trying to find it. It seems like a conscious decision to get you to waste your time.
When you're fighting the same enemies over and over again (don't even get me started on the larger monsters terrible loot) the game becomes a repetitive slog. I know "this is how DD1 was" is a thing, however, there's still no excuse. DD2 has 20 unique enemies, Hogwarts has 69 and Elden Ring has 140. Forcing a player to use an item to fast travel makes this issue so much more evident. Btw, the Slime is one of the laziest enemies in all of gaming.
