Dragon's Dogma is a single player, narrative driven action-RPG that challenges players to choose their own experience – from the appearance of their Arisen, their vocation, their party, how to approach different situations and more. On your journey, you’ll be joined by Pawns, mysterious otherworldly beings, in an adventure so unique you will feel as if accompanied by other players while on your own adventure. All of these elements are elevated further by the latest in graphics, artificial intelligence (AI) and physics technology to create a truly immersive fantasy world in Dragon's Dogma 2.
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Dragon's Dogma 2 constantly switches between being the greatest adventure of all time and the jankiest game you can find. It offers a unique experience while struggles with some bad design choices.
The open world
The world design is the best part of the game. The player is constantly presented with options, caves to explore, enemies to fight or quests to solve. There are also only a few fixed spawn points, which means you an always be suprised by one or two giant enemies, which will lead to a lot of action and fun while exploring!
The vocations
The vocations are the job system here. There is one for everyone: Heavy hitting fighters, fast rogues, mages and sorcerers, spear wielders and tricksters. The gameplay of each one feels unique and fun and you get passive abilities that you can transfer to your character when changing the vocation which allows some build variety for every character.
The Pawn system
At the very start of the journey you get to creat one pawn, an NPC that journeys with you all the time and fights with you. Furthermore you can hire 2 more pawns, which are created by other players. Here you can mix and match your group so that it reflects your play and fighting style. The Pawn AI ranges from great assists to "i jump down this cliff and die!" - but in combat they are generally super useful. The biggest issue is that the Pawns repeat the same 5 voice lines over and over again, which can be daunting in a 50+ hour journey.
The Fast Travel
One of the biggest discussion points in the game! There is no fast travel as we know it from almost all other open world titles. Bigger cities are connected with Ox Carts that you can use to travel around, but there are no points to fast travel to otherwise. You do need a Portcrystal and a Ferrystone. Portcrystals are extremely rare and hard to find, but when you aquire one you can place it anywhere you are and travel to that location - as long as you use and have a Ferrystone (which are also rather rare but you can also buy them from some merchants). I personally did enjoy the system as it encourages exploration but it can get tedious aswell.
Auto Save
The save system however is a big design flaw. There are no manual saves. There is an auto save system that saves regularly, or you sleep at an inn to save. However what can happen: You will get stuck on the map > your auto save is at the stuck place > you have to load the Inn save instead > you lose hours of gameplay (maybe). Happened to me and the only solution is to have a ferrystone with you all the time to port away then. No manual saves however are just a bad design choice if you can get stuck rather easily on some areas.
Story and characters
For me, the weakest part. The story feels like the most basic and generic medieval plot and while there is moer to it, the mains tory never grabbed me.
Same goes for the characters. Basically no memorable characters and all of them are rather bland. No real stand outs unfortunately.
If you are looking for an amazing adventure and fun exploration, which is presented in a unique way, DD2 is definitely a game for you!
The open world
The world design is the best part of the game. The player is constantly presented with options, caves to explore, enemies to fight or quests to solve. There are also only a few fixed spawn points, which means you an always be suprised by one or two giant enemies, which will lead to a lot of action and fun while exploring!
The vocations
The vocations are the job system here. There is one for everyone: Heavy hitting fighters, fast rogues, mages and sorcerers, spear wielders and tricksters. The gameplay of each one feels unique and fun and you get passive abilities that you can transfer to your character when changing the vocation which allows some build variety for every character.
The Pawn system
At the very start of the journey you get to creat one pawn, an NPC that journeys with you all the time and fights with you. Furthermore you can hire 2 more pawns, which are created by other players. Here you can mix and match your group so that it reflects your play and fighting style. The Pawn AI ranges from great assists to "i jump down this cliff and die!" - but in combat they are generally super useful. The biggest issue is that the Pawns repeat the same 5 voice lines over and over again, which can be daunting in a 50+ hour journey.
The Fast Travel
One of the biggest discussion points in the game! There is no fast travel as we know it from almost all other open world titles. Bigger cities are connected with Ox Carts that you can use to travel around, but there are no points to fast travel to otherwise. You do need a Portcrystal and a Ferrystone. Portcrystals are extremely rare and hard to find, but when you aquire one you can place it anywhere you are and travel to that location - as long as you use and have a Ferrystone (which are also rather rare but you can also buy them from some merchants). I personally did enjoy the system as it encourages exploration but it can get tedious aswell.
Auto Save
The save system however is a big design flaw. There are no manual saves. There is an auto save system that saves regularly, or you sleep at an inn to save. However what can happen: You will get stuck on the map > your auto save is at the stuck place > you have to load the Inn save instead > you lose hours of gameplay (maybe). Happened to me and the only solution is to have a ferrystone with you all the time to port away then. No manual saves however are just a bad design choice if you can get stuck rather easily on some areas.
Story and characters
For me, the weakest part. The story feels like the most basic and generic medieval plot and while there is moer to it, the mains tory never grabbed me.
Same goes for the characters. Basically no memorable characters and all of them are rather bland. No real stand outs unfortunately.
If you are looking for an amazing adventure and fun exploration, which is presented in a unique way, DD2 is definitely a game for you!
a $5 experience but you now have the privilege of paying $70.
Insano
What did I even want out of Dragons Dogma 2? I began this game with a severe sense of disappointment, frustrated that it wasnt something “more”. But Im glad the game has a much greater sense of itself than I did, unwaveringly retaining its unorthodox core with a much more grand presentation. When I get over myself, I see theres just as much here to love as the first game - I would be ungrateful to not appreciate the rare and weird contributions it makes.
It's rare that I love the first 15-20 hours of a game and then come to actively dislike it by the end, but unfortunately that’s what happened when I finished my 60 hour playthrough of Dragon's Dogma 2. What starts as a seemingly rich open world of interesting exploration and engaging friction turns into a repetitive chore of lifeless quests, copy and paste encounters, shallow combat, endless time wasting, and a terribly boring main story.
There is so much happening in this game and it's really hard to gather my thoughts into one cohesive review (that isn't 30 paragraphs long) so I'm gonna try my best to keep it as brief as possible.
In short, I loved that initial feeling of exploration, where the game prompts you to go out and hunt for secrets and new encounters. Looking at a precarious spot and saying "Hmm, I bet there's a token there" was fun, and led me to always attempt dangerous jumps or risky climbs. Seeking out all the nooks and crannies in the environment was initially a blast too, as the vast landscape is visually engaging, and has lots of layers (both figuratively and literally.) Watching your idiot pawns dive off cliffs unprompted, is both frustrating and funny, but usually worth it for the entertainment. And since fast travel is scarce, choosing your route wisely and having to find spots to make campfires felt like a nice way to extend your journeys, at the cost of using a camping resource of course. Only… that's not what happens. Because you have infinite camps, which means that camping is actively just more effective than returning to a town most of the time, since it's free and allows you to buff your character. Then you start to realize that while it's fun to collect those tokens, the rewards aren't great, and your final reward for collecting 220 (TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY) is total useless dog ass. Then while exploring you realize you're only ever gonna fight the same 3-5 enemy types over and over, with the occasional mini-boss (of which there are only about 3-5 types as well). And your rewards are mostly just crafting materials, with the rare item find usually being a worthless ring, or something I already had. And if you're like me, by this point you might say "Hmm this exploration is losing its luster, I should go check out more quests.” And when you do, you'll be treated to some extremely lame game design where you; walk to a character, talk to them, walk across the map to other characters, talk to them, walk back across the map to the first character, talk to them again, the end. Repeat endlessly for probably 2/3rds of all quests. And because there is so little gameplay interaction, it never feels like I'm actually involved either, I just feel like an errand boy. It also doesn’t help that many of these quests are not very interesting narratively, especially because you have extremely little input/decision making. And even when the quests are interesting, the game has no idea how to raise tension or bring something to a climax, usually stopping before any actual gameplay occurs, going into a short cutscene, and then the quest is over. There is a moment where the Captain gives you a speech about how “You need to wear a special getup to do this quest, but beware, this is a point of no return, so prepare yourself! We make for the ceremony!”, only for the game to enter a 30 second cutscene, have a small issue occur with your pawn, and then the Captain says “Guess we can’t attend now, sorry”, and then you get spat back out to run more errands.
To top it all off, the main story is incredibly uninteresting. It feeds you new details at a snail's pace, constantly repeating the same shit over and over, only for the endings of the game to disregard all of it without so much as a single cutscene to wrap it up. The entire game I was doing countless errands, running everywhere to gather enough “evidence” to weed out the evil plot and basically lead a coup to retake the throne for myself, and yet the game just ignores all of that shit. There is no coup, there is no comeuppance or explanation for the evil queen or the false ruler she had in place, no resolution for her son or anyone else in the palace, nothing. The game just simply shows you taking the throne and completely skips over all of what the game was building towards. It’s a pretty embarrassing attempt at storytelling.
Due to how bland the main story/quests are, it makes it clear that the focus was really on the world and the different systems at your disposal. But if the main focus is on me exploring, then why does every mission just retread lots of the same map space? If you send me on a mission across the map, I'm gonna explore that region until I reach my destination. But then when you send me back across that space MANY times later in the game… the fuck do you want me to do? The area is already explored, I'm not re-exploring it. So now it just feels like a bit of a chore to constantly travel back and forth across the map (even with fast travel). Which also makes me question what the fuck they were doing if they thought that 3-5 enemy types (3 during the day, 2 more at night) was gonna be enough for this bigass 40+ hour game. I'm not re-fighting the same goblins or lizards to get a few hundred XP when I can just run to the mission marker and get 50 times that. The main combat itself is also a bit too simple, as you can kinda just get in a rhythm of spamming the same shit over and over, but I’m not gonna lie and say it’s bad combat, just a bit too simple. Also doesn’t help that several of the classes are just significantly worse than others, meaning you really only have like 2 viable options that don’t suck ass.
Idk now i'm just rambling and this ended up being much longer than I wanted it to be, but this game is just all over the place. It was always gonna be a bit of a mess (even those who love it will agree) but it just sucks that even after all the time it took for them to essentially re-make the first game, this still feels like the first draft of a much better product buried deep inside. It is by no means a bad game, but it is an unbelievably mixed bag of a game that I certainly can't recommend if you care at all about storytelling. If you're more interested in exploration and systemic gameplay, then I can say the first 20 hours are pretty cool! If you don't mind paying $70 for that, then maybe it's worth it. For everyone else, best to wait on it. Also might give them the chance to make it not run like total dogshit (unlikely).
There is so much happening in this game and it's really hard to gather my thoughts into one cohesive review (that isn't 30 paragraphs long) so I'm gonna try my best to keep it as brief as possible.
In short, I loved that initial feeling of exploration, where the game prompts you to go out and hunt for secrets and new encounters. Looking at a precarious spot and saying "Hmm, I bet there's a token there" was fun, and led me to always attempt dangerous jumps or risky climbs. Seeking out all the nooks and crannies in the environment was initially a blast too, as the vast landscape is visually engaging, and has lots of layers (both figuratively and literally.) Watching your idiot pawns dive off cliffs unprompted, is both frustrating and funny, but usually worth it for the entertainment. And since fast travel is scarce, choosing your route wisely and having to find spots to make campfires felt like a nice way to extend your journeys, at the cost of using a camping resource of course. Only… that's not what happens. Because you have infinite camps, which means that camping is actively just more effective than returning to a town most of the time, since it's free and allows you to buff your character. Then you start to realize that while it's fun to collect those tokens, the rewards aren't great, and your final reward for collecting 220 (TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY) is total useless dog ass. Then while exploring you realize you're only ever gonna fight the same 3-5 enemy types over and over, with the occasional mini-boss (of which there are only about 3-5 types as well). And your rewards are mostly just crafting materials, with the rare item find usually being a worthless ring, or something I already had. And if you're like me, by this point you might say "Hmm this exploration is losing its luster, I should go check out more quests.” And when you do, you'll be treated to some extremely lame game design where you; walk to a character, talk to them, walk across the map to other characters, talk to them, walk back across the map to the first character, talk to them again, the end. Repeat endlessly for probably 2/3rds of all quests. And because there is so little gameplay interaction, it never feels like I'm actually involved either, I just feel like an errand boy. It also doesn’t help that many of these quests are not very interesting narratively, especially because you have extremely little input/decision making. And even when the quests are interesting, the game has no idea how to raise tension or bring something to a climax, usually stopping before any actual gameplay occurs, going into a short cutscene, and then the quest is over. There is a moment where the Captain gives you a speech about how “You need to wear a special getup to do this quest, but beware, this is a point of no return, so prepare yourself! We make for the ceremony!”, only for the game to enter a 30 second cutscene, have a small issue occur with your pawn, and then the Captain says “Guess we can’t attend now, sorry”, and then you get spat back out to run more errands.
To top it all off, the main story is incredibly uninteresting. It feeds you new details at a snail's pace, constantly repeating the same shit over and over, only for the endings of the game to disregard all of it without so much as a single cutscene to wrap it up. The entire game I was doing countless errands, running everywhere to gather enough “evidence” to weed out the evil plot and basically lead a coup to retake the throne for myself, and yet the game just ignores all of that shit. There is no coup, there is no comeuppance or explanation for the evil queen or the false ruler she had in place, no resolution for her son or anyone else in the palace, nothing. The game just simply shows you taking the throne and completely skips over all of what the game was building towards. It’s a pretty embarrassing attempt at storytelling.
Due to how bland the main story/quests are, it makes it clear that the focus was really on the world and the different systems at your disposal. But if the main focus is on me exploring, then why does every mission just retread lots of the same map space? If you send me on a mission across the map, I'm gonna explore that region until I reach my destination. But then when you send me back across that space MANY times later in the game… the fuck do you want me to do? The area is already explored, I'm not re-exploring it. So now it just feels like a bit of a chore to constantly travel back and forth across the map (even with fast travel). Which also makes me question what the fuck they were doing if they thought that 3-5 enemy types (3 during the day, 2 more at night) was gonna be enough for this bigass 40+ hour game. I'm not re-fighting the same goblins or lizards to get a few hundred XP when I can just run to the mission marker and get 50 times that. The main combat itself is also a bit too simple, as you can kinda just get in a rhythm of spamming the same shit over and over, but I’m not gonna lie and say it’s bad combat, just a bit too simple. Also doesn’t help that several of the classes are just significantly worse than others, meaning you really only have like 2 viable options that don’t suck ass.
Idk now i'm just rambling and this ended up being much longer than I wanted it to be, but this game is just all over the place. It was always gonna be a bit of a mess (even those who love it will agree) but it just sucks that even after all the time it took for them to essentially re-make the first game, this still feels like the first draft of a much better product buried deep inside. It is by no means a bad game, but it is an unbelievably mixed bag of a game that I certainly can't recommend if you care at all about storytelling. If you're more interested in exploration and systemic gameplay, then I can say the first 20 hours are pretty cool! If you don't mind paying $70 for that, then maybe it's worth it. For everyone else, best to wait on it. Also might give them the chance to make it not run like total dogshit (unlikely).
Com 85 horas de aventura, finalizo a campanha principal de Dragon's Dogma 2 tentando aproveitar de todo conteúdo possível que o game tem de oferecer e ainda sim faltou algumas poucas quests e coisas a se fazer no NG+, com tudo, consigo dizer com tranquilidade que esse se trata de um dos grandes jogos de RPG fantasia medieval que deve ser jogado por todos fãs do gênero, ainda mais que esse por sua vez é um tanto quanto "único". Embora seja recheado de grandes acertos, ele ainda contém falhas bem irritantes que me gastaram um pouco durante muitos momentos na minha run
Tudo que envolve fantasia medieval é basicamente um acerto ENORME desse game, mundo aberto, direção de arte, personagens, lore, universo, vocações, gameplay, mecânicas, exploração, recompensas, side quests, contúdo geral e etc, é algo para você mergulhar de cabeça e ficar extremamente imerso dentro do mundo, fiquei vidrado dentro de DD2 e z cada segundo minha jornada só melhorava. Me aventurar dentro de masmorras, cavernas descobrindo segredos e monstros exóticos, ou até aventuras secundárias com uma história envolvente e cativante é algo que não tem preço, me amarrei demais em todos esses sentidos do jogo. A main quest é mega curta porém para mim não foi problema, visto que meu foco total foi o restante do conteúdo, o que prolongou demais minha primeira jogatina e me fez encantar 2X mais pelo mundo da obra, é simplesmente vibrante e fantástico.
Os problemas? Bem existem alguns, mas os 2 principais foram a I.A e a perfomance zoada no PS5. Os peões são a mecânica "principal" do RPG e a intligência artificial deles é muito esquisita e frustrante, o problema nem é as vezes eles não responderem adequeadamente aos comandos, mas sim eles agirem de forma "burra" ou idiota que estraga a gameplay, como por exemplo se jogar em precipícios ou se matar em rios (o que não os traz de volta naquele momento), e isso atrapalhou BASTANTE meu jogo. A perfomance é um ponto triste, não basta o jogo se limitar a 30 FPS nos consoles porque as quedas são deploráveis principalmente em gandes povoados, poxa tem vezes que eu acredito que os frames estão negativos kkkk
No mais, Dragon's Dogma II é um JOGAÇO e merece ter a chance concebida por todos que amam se aventurar numa grande jornada épica de fantasia, recomendo para todos mesmo com esses probleminhas
Tudo que envolve fantasia medieval é basicamente um acerto ENORME desse game, mundo aberto, direção de arte, personagens, lore, universo, vocações, gameplay, mecânicas, exploração, recompensas, side quests, contúdo geral e etc, é algo para você mergulhar de cabeça e ficar extremamente imerso dentro do mundo, fiquei vidrado dentro de DD2 e z cada segundo minha jornada só melhorava. Me aventurar dentro de masmorras, cavernas descobrindo segredos e monstros exóticos, ou até aventuras secundárias com uma história envolvente e cativante é algo que não tem preço, me amarrei demais em todos esses sentidos do jogo. A main quest é mega curta porém para mim não foi problema, visto que meu foco total foi o restante do conteúdo, o que prolongou demais minha primeira jogatina e me fez encantar 2X mais pelo mundo da obra, é simplesmente vibrante e fantástico.
Os problemas? Bem existem alguns, mas os 2 principais foram a I.A e a perfomance zoada no PS5. Os peões são a mecânica "principal" do RPG e a intligência artificial deles é muito esquisita e frustrante, o problema nem é as vezes eles não responderem adequeadamente aos comandos, mas sim eles agirem de forma "burra" ou idiota que estraga a gameplay, como por exemplo se jogar em precipícios ou se matar em rios (o que não os traz de volta naquele momento), e isso atrapalhou BASTANTE meu jogo. A perfomance é um ponto triste, não basta o jogo se limitar a 30 FPS nos consoles porque as quedas são deploráveis principalmente em gandes povoados, poxa tem vezes que eu acredito que os frames estão negativos kkkk
No mais, Dragon's Dogma II é um JOGAÇO e merece ter a chance concebida por todos que amam se aventurar numa grande jornada épica de fantasia, recomendo para todos mesmo com esses probleminhas