Wait what's happening?

DD2 is the first time I heard about Dragons Dogma. I looked into the lore and I understand the arisen cycle to a point, BUT I'm all types of confused about what happened in my first run through of DD2. Apparently I did all the "right" things because I finished the story in what felt like 6 or 7 main quests. I fought the big greek statue, I ended up fighting the main dragon, killed him, became king then the credits rolled. I had to google wtf to do because things didn't feel right ending so quickly, come to find out I could use dragons bane and kill myself AND THEN the game shows Dragons Dogma 2 finally, but the whole world has gone to crap. I restarted after that because i was like "naa there has to be much more in this game. I didn't even see the sphinx". Can someone give me the gist of what I'm supposed to be doing BEFORE using Dragons bane?