The Dragon's Dogma 2 microtransactions are real and bafflingly silly, since nearly all of them can be found in the game without too much trouble
I want to say up-front that I am, by no means, defending the choice to slap a bunch of microtransactions onto Dragon's Dogma 2. I'm also not surprised by the current state of the game's Steam reviews—sitting at «Mixed» at the time of writing, in the same way that I'm not surprised when kicking beehives gets your ankles stung.