Stuck with this slack-jawed pawn with bug eyes. There's literal stink lines trailing off of him and he keeps rubbing blood from his diseased gums on the dungeon walls.
For some reason the game runs at 20fps when he's around, please advise.
For some reason the game runs at 20fps when he's around, please advise.
In one of its previews, Hideaki Itsuno was deliberately evasive when asked about why Dragon’s Dogma II’s title screen initially lacks the II, saying only “nothing in this game is unintentional.” You can draw whatever conclusion you like from that, but I think I’ve a different interpretation from most – it’s less a signal that this is a reimagining or a remake or whatever else in disguise than a display of confidence in how well he and his team understand what makes it tick.
As much as I’ll never wrap my head around how they got the first Dragon’s Dogma running on 7th gen hardware (albeit just about), I would’ve said it was impossible not to feel how much more II has going on under the hood in even the briefest, most hasty of encounters if it weren’t being so undersold in this respect. While my favourite addition is that enemies’ individual body parts can now be dragged or shoved to throw them off balance, tying into both this new world’s more angular design and how they can be stunned by banging their head off of its geometry, yours might be something else entirely with how many other new toys there are to play with. One particularly big one’s that you and your pawns can retain access to your standard movesets while clinging to larger enemies if you manage to mantle onto them from the appropriate angle, but you’ve gotta watch out for the newly implemented ragdoll physics while doing so, since the damage received from getting bucked off now varies wildly depending on your position at the time and the nearby environment as a result of them. Successive strikes create new avenues of offence akin to Nioh’s grapples, pressuring you to get as much damage in as you can before letting one loose and taking your target out of its disadvantage state, while also enabling you to keep them in a loop if you’re able to manipulate their stun values well enough. Layers of interaction just keep unravelling further as you play – controlling the arc you throw enemies or objects in, tackling smaller enemies by grabbing them mid-air, corpses or unconscious bodies of bosses now being tangible things you can stand on top of instead of ethereal loot pinatas… I would’ve taken any one of these in isolation. To have them all, plus more, every one being wholly complementary and faithful to the scrambly, dynamic, improvisational core of Dragon’s Dogma’s combat? It’s i n s a n e to me that someone can undergo even a confused few minutes of exposure to any of this and reduce it to “more of the first” or what have you.
Your means of approaching enemies or general scenarios which return from the first game’re further changed by II’s more specialised vocations. Having spent most of my time with Warrior in both titles, I love what’s been done with it in particular. They’ve taken the concept of timing certain skills and applied it to almost every move, anything from your standard swings to its final unlockable skill becoming faster and faster as you time successive inputs correctly – this is only the slow, basic version of the latter and I still feel bad for whatever I batter with it – with chargeable skills now also doubling as a parry for attacks they collide with, similar to DMC5’s clashing mechanic. It’s emblematic of the devs’ approach to vocations in general; Archer’s relatively lacking melee options and litany of flippy, full-on Legolas nonsense encourages keepaway where its four predecessors were all slightly differing flavours of “does everything”, Thief trades access to assault rifle-like bows and invites stubbiness for being able to navigate this world’s much rockier terrain like it’s a platformer, Fighter no longer has to waste skill slots to hit anything slightly above your head and has more versatile means of defence in exchange for melee combat being more punishing in general, etc. It’s to the extent that choosing between any two vocations feels like I’m switching genres, man. In a landscape where people are demonstrably content with having no means of interacting with big monsters other than smacking their ankles, how is even a pretty simple interaction like this not supposed to feel like a game from the future?
On simple interactions, much of this would be lessened if it weren’t for the loss gauge in tandem with the camping system and how these accentuate the sense of adventure which the first game built. The persistent thoughts of “how do I get there?” are retained, but only being able to fully recuperate your health via downtime with the lads and/or ladesses fills every step of the way toward the answer with that much more trepidation, bolstered further by the aforementioned verticality and on the more presentational side of things by how your pawns actually talk to each other now. It leads to some very memorable, emergent experiences which are personal purely to you – one I’m especially fond of involved resting after killing a drake, having my camp ambushed in the middle of the night by knackers who were too high up for me to exercise my k-word pass and having to trek all the way back to Bakbattahl with barely a third of my maximum health as my party continually chattered about how freaky the dark is. I take back the suggestion I made regarding potential changes to the healing system in my review of the first game, because even superfans (or, maybe, especially superfans) can, and do, think too small.
I realise in retrospect that even I, on some level, was wanting certain aspects of Dragon’s Dogma to be like other games instead of taking it on its own merits, something II’s seemingly suffered from all the more with how much gaming has grown since the original’s release, the average player’s tolerance for anything deviating from the norm and, presumably, frame of reference growing ever smaller. Look no further than broad reactions to dragonsplague and its effects (which I won’t spoil) being only the second or third most embarrassing instance of misinformed kneejerk hostility disguised as principled scepticism which enveloped this game’s release to the point you’d swear Todd Howard was attached to it – we want consequences that matter, but not like that! Even if you aren’t onboard with this being the coolest, ballsiest thing an RPG has bothered and will bother to do since before I was born, how can you not at least get a kick out of starting up your own homegrown Dragonsplague Removal Service? You thought you could escape the great spring cleaning, Thomyris, you silly billy? I’m oblivious like you wouldn’t believe, had her wearing an ornate sallet by the time she’d first contracted it and still noticed her glowing red eyes every time, so I’m at a loss as to how it could blindside anybody. It vaguely reminds me of modern reactions to various aspects of the original Fallout; a game which you can reasonably beat in the span of an afternoon, designed to be played with a single hand, somehow commonly seen as unintuitive because it just is, okay? Abandon all delusions of levelheadedness: if a Fallout game with a timer were to release now, the world’s collective sharting would result in something similar to that universe’s Great War or, indeed, Dragon’s Dogma II’s own post-game.
For as many hours as I’ve poured into the Everfall and Bitterblack across two copies of the original, they’re not what I think of when I think of Dragon’s Dogma (or particularly interesting, in the former’s case), which is adventuring in its open world. In that regard, I can’t be convinced that II’s post-game isn’t far more substantial, comparatively rife with monsters either unique or which you’re very unlikely to encounter prior to it, changes to the world’s layout beyond a hole in the ground of one city, its own mechanics (one actually a bit reminiscent of Fallout’s timer), questlines and even setpieces. It’s got a kaiju fight between a Ray Harryhausen love letter and a demonic worm thing which, as of the time of writing, roughly 2% of players have discovered, and instead of being praised for the sheer restraint it must’ve taken to keep something like that so out of the way, it’s chastised for it?
I’m not sure any other game’s ever made me realise how divorced what I want out of games seems to be from the wider populace. So much of this is 1:1 aligned with my tastes that the only thing that feels potentially missing’s the relative lack of electric guitars, but even then I’d be a liar if I told you that Misshapen Eye, the dullahan’s theme, the griffin’s new track, the post-game’s somber piano keys or the true ending’s credits song among others haven’t gotten stuck in my head at some stage anyway or didn’t perfectly complement the action through dynamically changing. It manages this despite clearly not caring about what you or I or anyone else thinks or wants from it. It’s developed a will and conviction all of its own. It’s Dragon’s Dogma, too.
As much as I’ll never wrap my head around how they got the first Dragon’s Dogma running on 7th gen hardware (albeit just about), I would’ve said it was impossible not to feel how much more II has going on under the hood in even the briefest, most hasty of encounters if it weren’t being so undersold in this respect. While my favourite addition is that enemies’ individual body parts can now be dragged or shoved to throw them off balance, tying into both this new world’s more angular design and how they can be stunned by banging their head off of its geometry, yours might be something else entirely with how many other new toys there are to play with. One particularly big one’s that you and your pawns can retain access to your standard movesets while clinging to larger enemies if you manage to mantle onto them from the appropriate angle, but you’ve gotta watch out for the newly implemented ragdoll physics while doing so, since the damage received from getting bucked off now varies wildly depending on your position at the time and the nearby environment as a result of them. Successive strikes create new avenues of offence akin to Nioh’s grapples, pressuring you to get as much damage in as you can before letting one loose and taking your target out of its disadvantage state, while also enabling you to keep them in a loop if you’re able to manipulate their stun values well enough. Layers of interaction just keep unravelling further as you play – controlling the arc you throw enemies or objects in, tackling smaller enemies by grabbing them mid-air, corpses or unconscious bodies of bosses now being tangible things you can stand on top of instead of ethereal loot pinatas… I would’ve taken any one of these in isolation. To have them all, plus more, every one being wholly complementary and faithful to the scrambly, dynamic, improvisational core of Dragon’s Dogma’s combat? It’s i n s a n e to me that someone can undergo even a confused few minutes of exposure to any of this and reduce it to “more of the first” or what have you.
Your means of approaching enemies or general scenarios which return from the first game’re further changed by II’s more specialised vocations. Having spent most of my time with Warrior in both titles, I love what’s been done with it in particular. They’ve taken the concept of timing certain skills and applied it to almost every move, anything from your standard swings to its final unlockable skill becoming faster and faster as you time successive inputs correctly – this is only the slow, basic version of the latter and I still feel bad for whatever I batter with it – with chargeable skills now also doubling as a parry for attacks they collide with, similar to DMC5’s clashing mechanic. It’s emblematic of the devs’ approach to vocations in general; Archer’s relatively lacking melee options and litany of flippy, full-on Legolas nonsense encourages keepaway where its four predecessors were all slightly differing flavours of “does everything”, Thief trades access to assault rifle-like bows and invites stubbiness for being able to navigate this world’s much rockier terrain like it’s a platformer, Fighter no longer has to waste skill slots to hit anything slightly above your head and has more versatile means of defence in exchange for melee combat being more punishing in general, etc. It’s to the extent that choosing between any two vocations feels like I’m switching genres, man. In a landscape where people are demonstrably content with having no means of interacting with big monsters other than smacking their ankles, how is even a pretty simple interaction like this not supposed to feel like a game from the future?
On simple interactions, much of this would be lessened if it weren’t for the loss gauge in tandem with the camping system and how these accentuate the sense of adventure which the first game built. The persistent thoughts of “how do I get there?” are retained, but only being able to fully recuperate your health via downtime with the lads and/or ladesses fills every step of the way toward the answer with that much more trepidation, bolstered further by the aforementioned verticality and on the more presentational side of things by how your pawns actually talk to each other now. It leads to some very memorable, emergent experiences which are personal purely to you – one I’m especially fond of involved resting after killing a drake, having my camp ambushed in the middle of the night by knackers who were too high up for me to exercise my k-word pass and having to trek all the way back to Bakbattahl with barely a third of my maximum health as my party continually chattered about how freaky the dark is. I take back the suggestion I made regarding potential changes to the healing system in my review of the first game, because even superfans (or, maybe, especially superfans) can, and do, think too small.
I realise in retrospect that even I, on some level, was wanting certain aspects of Dragon’s Dogma to be like other games instead of taking it on its own merits, something II’s seemingly suffered from all the more with how much gaming has grown since the original’s release, the average player’s tolerance for anything deviating from the norm and, presumably, frame of reference growing ever smaller. Look no further than broad reactions to dragonsplague and its effects (which I won’t spoil) being only the second or third most embarrassing instance of misinformed kneejerk hostility disguised as principled scepticism which enveloped this game’s release to the point you’d swear Todd Howard was attached to it – we want consequences that matter, but not like that! Even if you aren’t onboard with this being the coolest, ballsiest thing an RPG has bothered and will bother to do since before I was born, how can you not at least get a kick out of starting up your own homegrown Dragonsplague Removal Service? You thought you could escape the great spring cleaning, Thomyris, you silly billy? I’m oblivious like you wouldn’t believe, had her wearing an ornate sallet by the time she’d first contracted it and still noticed her glowing red eyes every time, so I’m at a loss as to how it could blindside anybody. It vaguely reminds me of modern reactions to various aspects of the original Fallout; a game which you can reasonably beat in the span of an afternoon, designed to be played with a single hand, somehow commonly seen as unintuitive because it just is, okay? Abandon all delusions of levelheadedness: if a Fallout game with a timer were to release now, the world’s collective sharting would result in something similar to that universe’s Great War or, indeed, Dragon’s Dogma II’s own post-game.
For as many hours as I’ve poured into the Everfall and Bitterblack across two copies of the original, they’re not what I think of when I think of Dragon’s Dogma (or particularly interesting, in the former’s case), which is adventuring in its open world. In that regard, I can’t be convinced that II’s post-game isn’t far more substantial, comparatively rife with monsters either unique or which you’re very unlikely to encounter prior to it, changes to the world’s layout beyond a hole in the ground of one city, its own mechanics (one actually a bit reminiscent of Fallout’s timer), questlines and even setpieces. It’s got a kaiju fight between a Ray Harryhausen love letter and a demonic worm thing which, as of the time of writing, roughly 2% of players have discovered, and instead of being praised for the sheer restraint it must’ve taken to keep something like that so out of the way, it’s chastised for it?
I’m not sure any other game’s ever made me realise how divorced what I want out of games seems to be from the wider populace. So much of this is 1:1 aligned with my tastes that the only thing that feels potentially missing’s the relative lack of electric guitars, but even then I’d be a liar if I told you that Misshapen Eye, the dullahan’s theme, the griffin’s new track, the post-game’s somber piano keys or the true ending’s credits song among others haven’t gotten stuck in my head at some stage anyway or didn’t perfectly complement the action through dynamically changing. It manages this despite clearly not caring about what you or I or anyone else thinks or wants from it. It’s developed a will and conviction all of its own. It’s Dragon’s Dogma, too.
Can gamers at least try to be consistent when trashing games for having MTX, it feels like such random games always catch heat for it when there's much bigger offenders even among Capcom's own library (Monster Hunter World & Rise lmao)
I can at least understand people being upset over optimization (even if in my experience I've had little to no issue in the 5 hours I've played so far), but obviously the issue differs from person to person.
Game is fun tho, I'm having a blast, this really is just an improved version of the original Dragon's Dogma and I'm all for it.
I can at least understand people being upset over optimization (even if in my experience I've had little to no issue in the 5 hours I've played so far), but obviously the issue differs from person to person.
Game is fun tho, I'm having a blast, this really is just an improved version of the original Dragon's Dogma and I'm all for it.
"The world once shaped by the great will has come to an end.
It was a foregone conclusion. All is preordained.
If in spite of this you still have the will to fight, now is your chance to prove it."
This is a particularly difficult game for me to write about because I want to greedily compare and contrast every ballhair with the first title’s, just so I can diagnose exactly where my issues with it lie - why a game that is functionally so similar in DNA to one of my all-timers doesn’t hit the mark. Personally speakin, the long & short of it is that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is something of a sidegrade to the original title that distances itself too much from what I found spectacular about it to begin with.
Possibly my favourite element of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one that could be felt from the moment you first gain control of your character. There’s a palpable heft to character locomotion, complimented by the multilayered textuality of the land itself & the threats of wrong turns into the unknown or slipping off a slick cliffside to your untimely demise - it leans wonderfully far into the concept of traversal being a battle unto itself. As was the case with DD1, being tasked to travel from safety to a marker deep into the fog of war is never a simple request. Goblins, ogres, harpies, and whoever else decides to grace you with their presence are waiting in the bushes to act as regular speedbumps to be carefully considered and planned for accordingly.
Where DD2 slips at this for me is in how little it reciprocates for what it demands. This is a sequel that has ballooned itself in scale to a dizzying near 5x the original map’s size, but hasn’t developed the enemy roster nor the environmental design acumen to make use of it. Take for instance that DD2 has fifty caves strewn around its tectonic world map, and I don’t think a single one is as impressive as one that could be found in DD1. Where the caves/dungeons in DD1 were concerned, there would be special objectives relevant to the overall story, a person you were going there on behalf of who represented a town or group, they would unlock shortcuts for faster world traversal and upon repeat visits you’d notice the location’s role in the world change for the denizens. They would be densely designed so that every corner was worth being scanned to the best of your ability for pickups, shortcuts, levers, climbing points - lending to the almost DnD-esque adventure core followed passionately by the game’s design. Hell, the locales would generally sound and look different too, built to purpose so as to become plausible enough to justify their utility in the world and lend credence to exploring them.
Compared to that, DD2 has shockingly little of this. Its myriad nondescript caves wallhugging the world could scarcely be five prefab rooms tied into a loop to house a few potions, or some equipment you could find at a store. No unique gimmicks or trials, only populated by a handful of gobbos and maybe a midboss as a treat. I feel that Dragonsbreath Tower was supposed to act as something of a callback to Bluemoon Tower from DD1 - it being a perilous journey across a handful of biomes towards a crumbling hanging dungeon that houses a flying peril, but it’s so bereft of pomp and confidence. A truly memetic core routine that made me think less of adventures and more of waypoints and upgrade materials. I want to use a Neuralyzer to remove BotW shrines from the face of the earth. And god why is none of the new music good.
DD2 implies at a big story, but to me it felt like nothing came together. I had no idea who anyone was supposed to be beyond Brant, Sven and Wilhelmina. DD1’s progression from Wyrmhunt -> Investigate the Cult -> Kill Grigori -> Deal with the Everfall -> Confront the Seneschal was great, and throughout all of that you kept up with characters like the King and got to see his downfall. The writing and delivery of the cult leader and Grigori himself far surpasses anything in DD2, despite having very similar subjects. Outpaced by DD1 in setpieces and pop-offs and thematics. There's barely any antagonistic people in the game and once you get to Battahl it feels as though the game trails off like it’s got dementia.
It's a completely different kind of design that, sure, encourages player freedom - but communicates it in this really loose way that I just don't care about. I spent much of my playthrough having no idea what I was doing besides wiping off the blank smudges of world map. What expounds this problem is that quest discoverability is astonishingly low here, oftentimes made worse by restricting itself to AI astrology, time of day, relationship levels (??). The duke could stand to commission a farcking quest board imo!!! I won’t kid myself and say that the quests in DD1 were even a bronze standard, but they worked and communicated exactly what they needed to do while also leaving open ends available for interpretation. But in DD2, they’re just awful, I absolutely hated the experience of trying to clear up Vermund’s quests before pushing Main Story progression and at this point I wish I cared as little as the game does. What need is there for almost all of them to have a “return to me in a few days” component in a game with such limited fast travel, do you want me to throw you into the brine? Frankly the game is never as interesting as when you're doing Sphinx riddles.
Combat’s good enough, I do enjoy how the interplay of systems would present the player with all sorts of unique situations, but even these can and do begin to feel samey when a very slim enemy pool on shuffle. What makes these emergent conflicts even less impressive to me is how I can't help but feel as though the ogres, trolls and chimeras in particular have had their difficulties neutered. The hardest time I had with the chimera was during a sidequest where you had to get the poison-lover to be doused in chimeric snake venom. They're barely a threat otherwise, and can either be chain stunlocked with well-placed shots or slashes, or get too lost in their own attack animations to really hit anyone. Comparing these enemies to DD1 where climbing was far more effective at dealing damage encouraged the player to get real up close to them and it felt like their AI knew how to deal with that. Like when I fought the Medusa it felt like they didn't have any idea where the party even was. I think if the hardest encounters the game has to offer is Too Many Goblins we have a problem. (Dullahan is very cool though)
I’m not miffed no matter how miffed I sound. When do people like me ever get sequels to games they love? I’ll tell u dear reader it’s Never. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is full of wonder & delight and I think anyone less fatigued by SCALE and SANDBOX than me has a home in it. I feel a little left behind, having spent 12 years wasting away in the waiting room rotating in my head the concepts DD1 confidently wields, and its further potential as a foundation for a sequel. A game that was absolutely 'for me', course correcting into sick-of-this-already airspace. I’ll be excited to see whatever news, expansions or the like the future holds for DD2. Right now, though? I think DD1 has a stronger jawline.
It was a foregone conclusion. All is preordained.
If in spite of this you still have the will to fight, now is your chance to prove it."
This is a particularly difficult game for me to write about because I want to greedily compare and contrast every ballhair with the first title’s, just so I can diagnose exactly where my issues with it lie - why a game that is functionally so similar in DNA to one of my all-timers doesn’t hit the mark. Personally speakin, the long & short of it is that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is something of a sidegrade to the original title that distances itself too much from what I found spectacular about it to begin with.
Possibly my favourite element of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one that could be felt from the moment you first gain control of your character. There’s a palpable heft to character locomotion, complimented by the multilayered textuality of the land itself & the threats of wrong turns into the unknown or slipping off a slick cliffside to your untimely demise - it leans wonderfully far into the concept of traversal being a battle unto itself. As was the case with DD1, being tasked to travel from safety to a marker deep into the fog of war is never a simple request. Goblins, ogres, harpies, and whoever else decides to grace you with their presence are waiting in the bushes to act as regular speedbumps to be carefully considered and planned for accordingly.
Where DD2 slips at this for me is in how little it reciprocates for what it demands. This is a sequel that has ballooned itself in scale to a dizzying near 5x the original map’s size, but hasn’t developed the enemy roster nor the environmental design acumen to make use of it. Take for instance that DD2 has fifty caves strewn around its tectonic world map, and I don’t think a single one is as impressive as one that could be found in DD1. Where the caves/dungeons in DD1 were concerned, there would be special objectives relevant to the overall story, a person you were going there on behalf of who represented a town or group, they would unlock shortcuts for faster world traversal and upon repeat visits you’d notice the location’s role in the world change for the denizens. They would be densely designed so that every corner was worth being scanned to the best of your ability for pickups, shortcuts, levers, climbing points - lending to the almost DnD-esque adventure core followed passionately by the game’s design. Hell, the locales would generally sound and look different too, built to purpose so as to become plausible enough to justify their utility in the world and lend credence to exploring them.
Compared to that, DD2 has shockingly little of this. Its myriad nondescript caves wallhugging the world could scarcely be five prefab rooms tied into a loop to house a few potions, or some equipment you could find at a store. No unique gimmicks or trials, only populated by a handful of gobbos and maybe a midboss as a treat. I feel that Dragonsbreath Tower was supposed to act as something of a callback to Bluemoon Tower from DD1 - it being a perilous journey across a handful of biomes towards a crumbling hanging dungeon that houses a flying peril, but it’s so bereft of pomp and confidence. A truly memetic core routine that made me think less of adventures and more of waypoints and upgrade materials. I want to use a Neuralyzer to remove BotW shrines from the face of the earth. And god why is none of the new music good.
DD2 implies at a big story, but to me it felt like nothing came together. I had no idea who anyone was supposed to be beyond Brant, Sven and Wilhelmina. DD1’s progression from Wyrmhunt -> Investigate the Cult -> Kill Grigori -> Deal with the Everfall -> Confront the Seneschal was great, and throughout all of that you kept up with characters like the King and got to see his downfall. The writing and delivery of the cult leader and Grigori himself far surpasses anything in DD2, despite having very similar subjects. Outpaced by DD1 in setpieces and pop-offs and thematics. There's barely any antagonistic people in the game and once you get to Battahl it feels as though the game trails off like it’s got dementia.
It's a completely different kind of design that, sure, encourages player freedom - but communicates it in this really loose way that I just don't care about. I spent much of my playthrough having no idea what I was doing besides wiping off the blank smudges of world map. What expounds this problem is that quest discoverability is astonishingly low here, oftentimes made worse by restricting itself to AI astrology, time of day, relationship levels (??). The duke could stand to commission a farcking quest board imo!!! I won’t kid myself and say that the quests in DD1 were even a bronze standard, but they worked and communicated exactly what they needed to do while also leaving open ends available for interpretation. But in DD2, they’re just awful, I absolutely hated the experience of trying to clear up Vermund’s quests before pushing Main Story progression and at this point I wish I cared as little as the game does. What need is there for almost all of them to have a “return to me in a few days” component in a game with such limited fast travel, do you want me to throw you into the brine? Frankly the game is never as interesting as when you're doing Sphinx riddles.
Combat’s good enough, I do enjoy how the interplay of systems would present the player with all sorts of unique situations, but even these can and do begin to feel samey when a very slim enemy pool on shuffle. What makes these emergent conflicts even less impressive to me is how I can't help but feel as though the ogres, trolls and chimeras in particular have had their difficulties neutered. The hardest time I had with the chimera was during a sidequest where you had to get the poison-lover to be doused in chimeric snake venom. They're barely a threat otherwise, and can either be chain stunlocked with well-placed shots or slashes, or get too lost in their own attack animations to really hit anyone. Comparing these enemies to DD1 where climbing was far more effective at dealing damage encouraged the player to get real up close to them and it felt like their AI knew how to deal with that. Like when I fought the Medusa it felt like they didn't have any idea where the party even was. I think if the hardest encounters the game has to offer is Too Many Goblins we have a problem. (Dullahan is very cool though)
I’m not miffed no matter how miffed I sound. When do people like me ever get sequels to games they love? I’ll tell u dear reader it’s Never. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is full of wonder & delight and I think anyone less fatigued by SCALE and SANDBOX than me has a home in it. I feel a little left behind, having spent 12 years wasting away in the waiting room rotating in my head the concepts DD1 confidently wields, and its further potential as a foundation for a sequel. A game that was absolutely 'for me', course correcting into sick-of-this-already airspace. I’ll be excited to see whatever news, expansions or the like the future holds for DD2. Right now, though? I think DD1 has a stronger jawline.
In that primordial placeless origin, through the mist-veil of time, since man first airbrushed Merlin smoking a pipe on the side of a van, there, you can feel it in the noosphere, a moon-lit dream, The Dream, a call in the heart of the human soul. Some have seen some small part of this dream- The Legend of Zelda, The Elder Scrolls, Ultima, Dark Souls, Adventure, Dragon Quest, King's Field, Wizardry, among innumerable others, nameless here forevermore, all have failed to reach The Dream. Perhaps cruel circumstance chained them to Earthly bond, perhaps cowardice stayed their hand, perhaps they lacked the naivety and earnestness necessary to behold a waking dream. Whatever their individual situation, the results have always been, like Lion of Gripsholm Castle, a mutant, an aberration, at best a passing resemblance. Dragon's Dogma is The Dream, forged in the furnace of the heart, it is not visually plain- it is clean, it is not halfbaked- it is too goodly to exist totally in a world half-evil, it achieves the promise of videogames, and proves that creative endeavour above all else is the greatest goal humanity can strive for. it is the twinkle in the eye of Merlin smoking a pipe airbrushed on the side of a van.
Do you like music? Me too, man.
One of my favourite albums of all time is Devin Townsend’s legendary prog metal musical, Ziltoid the Omniscient. It came out on May 21st 2007 and it’s something of a marvel, being an album developed entirely by Devy himself. Instruments, recording, mixing, cuts, you name it, he did it. It’s really special to me, and I go back to it every other month. Clocking in at just under an hour - a rarity for prog albums - it has a peerless blend of chunky riffs, auditory storytelling, comedic timing and pacing. Before I gave up on tattoos (don’t have the skin for it - literally), I really wanted the Ziltoid logo on my upper arm.
7 years later, after much begging from fans and several other albums, Devin Townsend came back with Z², the sequel album. Boasting a fucking massive production posse, a much longer runtime and a whole other album packaged in, it’s… Fine. Despite everything being bigger and grander, it’s only a little better than the first album and lacks a lot of the zest which came from being a solo production. By no means a bad album, it’s upstaged by a solo project from 2007 in a lot of ways and for many people it revealed that the original album’s limitations might have bred a greater final product.
Dragon’s Dogma 1 came out in 2012 after a now-notoriously agonizing development process that resulted in a vast majority of their ideas being cut out to meet the deadline set by the suits and an ever-shrinking budget. Capcom really wanted DD1 to be the start of a big series, capitalising on the then-rising popularity of Western RPGs like Skyrim and The Witcher 2. Naturally, it was a flop and the ‘franchise’ was silently canned despite the game attaining cult classic status.
I have been playing DD1 for about 11~ years now. I own it on every single platform it was ever released on and on each of those platforms I have near-perfect saves with both the postgame and Bitterblack Isle cleared in their entirety. I’ve played that game so often that, if I were so inclined, I could do a full playthrough in my mind because I know the game world and quest flow off by heart. I have, and frequently do, give people directions around the world without any need to consult a map or a video or boot the game.
To potentially state the obvious: I am something of a Dragon’s Dogma megafan.
Among people like me, who’re so hungry for new morsels of DD content that we begrudgingly consumed (and loathed) the Netflix series, the hypothetical Original Version of DD1 has attained something of a mythological status. The idea of a ‘complete’ DD1 with Elf villages and beastmen and a whole other continent and the like is just so endlessly intoxicating to a group who’re already enamoured with the best-attempt game we already have.
Dragon’s Dogma 2, judging by the year of comments Hideaki Itsuno has been making about the game, is that mythical Original Version. Complete with Elves, Beastmen, other continents, and more! The prevailing sentiment among older fans was that, given a proper budget and all the technical prowess of the RE Engine and enough time, Itsuno would finally make a True Dragon’s Dogma successor!
Instead he… Kinda just made Dragon’s Dogma 1 again? But bigger, and naturally with the problems that come from increasing the scale and scope.
My first sight upon booting the game was the title screen which rather curiously calls the game “DRAGON’S DOGMA” without any numbers. This, sadly, turned out to be an omen.
I normally like to open with a game’s positives before I get into the issues, which is a problematic methodology to have with a game like this. I’m not going to get into it now, but a lot of what’s good about DD2 is also really really bad when viewed holistically.
On the combat front, it’s better than ever. It’s snappy and responsive and the addition of Vocation Actions (block for Fighters, dodge for Thieves, shoulder charge for Warriors, etc etc) adds a lot to the overall flow of combat. New core skills really help too; Sorcerer gets one to speed up cast timers in exchange for a huge stamina drain which I’m really fond of.
It is DD1’s combat, but better! Especially now that stagger is a mechanic and melee classes can now deal respectable damage without spamming either ‘the damage skill’ or mashing attack.
Vocations, too, have seen a tweak. Realizing just how redundant most of them became in DD1, hybrid vocations were binned and now everyone uses just one weapon - which might seem bad at first but everything is so much more fleshed out and roles more clearly defined. It’s easy to miss Assassin for a bit until you sink your teeth into Thief and realise it’s still there, baby.
Archer and Thief both benefit the most; no longer awkwardly fused to two other vocations they’re now allowed to shine and they’re honestly phenomenal. Warrior meanwhile has had a near-total rework into a more tanky DPS class (rather than the weird and seemingly unfinished mess it was in DD1) which comes with tasty charge attacks, a timing mechanic for faster hits and lots of juicy interactions with the game’s stagger mechanics.
And god, the unlockable vocations are a dream. Thief capitalises on the more gamey world design to allow some utterly amazing stuff with lures and traps, Mystic Spearhand is an intravascular injection of Devil May Cry into the game, Magick Archer is mostly untouched from DD1 and is still a blast, and Warfarer is a joy just for having a high skill ceiling compared to every other vocation - also it lets you wear basically anything which is great for the fashion obsessed.
Likewise, the world design is excellent. It’s very, very gamey; the entire thing is a series of ambush spots, winding paths, sharp turns to hide enemies, precarious ledges and unsubtle platforming spots. It is, somewhat ironically, a better fusion of FromSoft level design philosophy and open world design trends than FromSoft’s own attempts on that front.
Traversing it is a joy both because it’s beautiful and because there’s a decent amount of pacing to the environment that stops excessive amounts of holding forward + sprint. Not to mention the distribution of side stuff. I noticed more than a few places and distractions that were hidden on the way towards something, but clear as day while backtracking. That’s good world design right there.
Pawn AI might be the biggest improvement though; they’re not geniuses, but they’re no longer actively suicidal and grossly negligent. They use curatives, have defined priorities based on their (NOW IMMUTABLE, CONCRETE) inclination, are much less likely to use charge-up skills against an enemy that dances around constantly, and for enemies like Golems they’ll bother to target weak spots. Hurrah!
And, above all else, I need to admire Itsuno’s commitment to his vision for a bit. This is a decidedly old-school RPG, I’d honestly argue it has more in common with Wizardry and Ultima or whatever tickles your fancy. The Eternal Ferrystone is gone, even as a reward. You get oxcarts for diegetic ‘fast travel’, Ferrystones are lootable and Portcrystals are doled out sparingly to give you some fast travel points. Otherwise, you’re walking everywhere. Every bit of damage you take slightly reduces your max healable HP, meaning that even effortlessly stomping trash mobs on the overworld will gradually wear you down, necessitating resting at campfires - using consumable camp kits that’re at risk of being broken.
For the first few hours and much of the first reason, none of these were issues.
Which, in itself, became an issue.
Much of my earliest time in DD2 was defined by me saying just how much they kept from DD1! The encounter placement, the stuff tucked away, the way every NPC speaks in that weird faux-medieval theatrical cadence, the way quests unfold and silent tutorials are dotted around the land…
My later hours in DD2 were defined by me realizing that the game, in most respects, is just DD1 again but bigger.
Just like last time you start in a near-wilderness and go to an encampment where you get one diversionary quest and your main pawn. Soon after you make your way to a big city where 10-15 quests pop up in the first 15 minutes and then no more. After a lot of exploring, some of which involves a shrouded forest and a hidden village and some politicking at capital, you’re shunted off elsewhere because the plot demands it and fuckery is afoot.
The problems start to arise when one considers the scale of this game. I can forgive a lot of the above in DD1 because it’s a very compact experience. Like I said before, the world map was comparatively tiny.
DD2’s is huge, but the content density hasn’t changed at all, which makes the game feel like a ghost town? When you first arrive in Vernworth you get a lot of quests immediately, which might imply the game is a lot denser than its predecessor, but the ones that aren’t “go here, come back” are mere fetch quests that occasionally have a boss enemy at the end. Not a unique one, either, but ones you’ll likely have already found by exploring or even on the way there.
NPCs are… Basically the exact same, too? I wasn’t expecting in-depth CRPG-esque interactions with them, but nothing has changed from DD1. They dispense a quest and, when done, return to being random voices among the crowd of their home turf.
And the world itself… You know, the word ‘friction’ comes up a lot in discussions around this game and rightly so. It’s very obvious from the get-go that even the mere act of exploration is meant to induce friction. Enemies gradually wear you down on the world map, necessitating avoidance of some fights if you can help it due to finite resources, and the world is structured to make detours risky due to deliberately awful lines of sight.
The problem is that there still isn’t any friction because the game is comically easy.
Even before getting into the actual gameplay, camp sites are scattered around the world with reckless abandon which allows for nearly unlimited free healing and buffs so long as you have a camp kit & meat. Much of the hypothetical friction dissolves once this becomes apparent and it completely annihilates any feeling of being ‘lost in the wilderness’ that DD1 sometimes had.
All the changes and buffs to combat up above mean that the player and their pawns are more powerful than ever. There are plenty of panic buttons, fast-casting nukes, evasive options and counters alongside a relatively high amount of free gear.
But what’s really worse is the enhancement system. Each culture has its own smithing style: Vermundian is balanced, Battahli is Strength/Defense focused, and Elven is Magick/Magick Defense oriented. There are two others, or one if you discount dragonforging.
This seems cool on paper, but what it really does is cause a serious amount of stat bloat. Weapons only use one stat for damage, meaning it’s easy to just hop off to the appropriate merchant and get +100~ damage for a pittance of effort and money.
Money, too, is surprisingly commonplace. Simple expeditions into the wild or even A-B-C-A trips would see me coming home with full coffers, which in turn meant mass gear purchases and upgrades.
Together, nothing can pose a challenge. It’s trivial, with even a modest time investment, to reach 500~ or so in your offensive stat by the midgame and hell, compared to the first game it’s actually a smart idea to kit out your hired pawns rather than cycling them - money is just that commonplace.
A lot of these can be considered the developers ‘fixing’ perceived issues with the first game, especially when one considers that vocations now come with their own base stats to prevent accidental softlocks, but in ‘fixing’ these non-issues they’ve made the game a joke.
My first Drake kill wasn’t triumphant or cool. I rolled up to it and killed it in about 5 minutes. End of the Struggle - this franchise’s fantastic ‘YOU’RE ALMOST THERE!’ theme - barely got to peak before it dropped dead. I dread how they’d balance any DLC.
The enemy roster is near-entirely pulled from the first game and its expansion, with many of the ‘new’ enemies being simple reskins of existing enemies, meaning you’ll get tired of Harpy/Bandit/Saurian/Goblin variants that permeate the world. It was harrowing to get to the last region and find out that my ‘new’ threats were Saurians but red and Harpies but black.
As for boss and miniboss enemies… God they could’ve used some sub-variants or something. The Volcanic Island, this game’s final region, still throws Ogres/Minotaurs/Chimeras/Cyclopes at you. The relative lack of variety leads to the game and its exploration rapidly becoming exhausting, because it’s a gigantic swimming pool but the bag of tricks meant to fill it is the size of a teacup.
I praise Bitterblack Isle a lot despite it being a combat gauntlet because there is so much going on there, and so many enemies. Even its reskins add new layers to the fight - like my beloved Gorecyclops. DD2’s brand-new enemies are cool, and your first fight with them will usually be a treat, but after that they become rote. Speedbumps, not triumphs.
Dungeons are basically gone now, too. Nothing like the Everfall, Gran Soren’s Catacombs, the Greatwall, or the Mountain Waycastle. Just caves and mines, caves and mines, caves and mines… caves… mines… the odd ruin… Fuck. There’s so many. It’s like Skyrim but with worse design, somehow.
As I trudged through DD2’s main story, I found myself longing for the postgame. I’m really fond of The Everfall and Bitterblack Isle for being steep hurdles designed for more devoted players to test their builds and equipment on, but… There isn’t one? Postgame has some new boss fights but there’s no final dungeon experience or final exam. The world state change isn’t as intense as DD1’s either.
To speak on plot for a bit, I feel it occupies a really unfortunate place. If you’ve played DD1, you know what’s going on. There’s no real surprises here. If you haven’t played DD1, then you’ll be surprised to find a plot that’s underbaked and somewhat anticlimactic, driven more by excuses than anything of substance.
I think about Pookykun’s Baldur’s Gate 3 review a lot when it comes to RPGs, and doubly so while playing this game.
There are moments in this game that’re outright magical, immersive without peer. All of them are quiet moments with unsheated weapons: Traversing Battahli roads at sundown and seeing the vast temples of Bakbattahl pierce the skyline. Stumbling upon the Ancient Battleground and poking through wrecks from a cataclysmic event long before my time. Seeing the glimmer of a campfire stick out from the trees that dot Vermund’s many forests. Oceanside strolls through the Volcanic Island.
I'm especially fond of the road to the Arbor, which was the first time the game really wowed me and made me excited for the game ahead.
They are phenomenal, a testament to the team’s ability to craft a world, and… I hate them. I really hate them.
Because, without fail, they’re always pierced by another repetitive combat encounter. The 50th Chimera, the 10000th Goblin, the next of a million Harpies. Over and over, I am reminded that I do not exist in this world to explore it, I exist to kill everything in it as though I were American.
My quests are nothing of the sort, for they might as well be called bounty targets.
Other people will likely praise how reactive this game is, and its propensity for ‘randomness’. I would argue that, as all the ‘randomness’ is purely centred on killing, there isn’t actually much the game can do to surprise you - especially considering the enemy roster. It’s neat to see goblins and cyclopes invade a town the first time, but afterwards it’s just more free XP and a slight obstacle in the way of you spending 60k gold on new shoes.
There's an irony to be found in just how badly the world feels claustrophobic. There are always mooks around every corner, and you're never more than a minute away from a fight. Looking out into the distance from a vantage point betrays an endless hamster wheel of caves, mobs, chests and seeker tokens.
All of these complaints might seem quaint, and any DD oldheads in the audience might be wondering why I’m lambasting it for things the first game is guilty of.
The issue is twofold.
First, I try not to have expectations for games. I don’t fuck with trailers or press releases and avoid streams or whatever. It helps keep me grounded, and I think stops me from hating games based purely on them not meeting my hype - Metal Gear Solid V taught me that.
With DD2, I faltered. I was excited, and I lapped up everything about it. Articles, streams, trailers, you name it.
But I don’t really think the issue stems from the game not meeting my hype. Rather, I think it’s because the game was sold on a very specific vision, the one I mentioned up above: This was meant to be “DD but for real this time”, and in reality it’s just the first game but stretched far too thin.
Secondly, I don’t think every sequel has to be a grand, innovative experience. I play musous and Yakuza games after all. But I do expect there to be some iterative improvement, some signs that the developers have grown and improved at their craft. In simpler terms: Sequels should be a step forward, even if it’s a miniscule one.
DD2 is sort of an awkward step to the side. Could’ve came out ten years ago as a mission pack sequel and been lauded for it.
I don’t like to be prescriptive with my critique, I really don’t, but if this game was 1/4th the size and half the length I think I’d be a lot kinder to it. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed about 2/3rds of my time with it, but I can’t really recommend DD2 specifically because a lot of what I enjoyed is just stuff that DD1 not only did 12 years ago but does better.
In the end, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is Z². It’s by no means bad, and for many people this will likely radically alter their preferences for fantasy RPGs. Hell, I still think it’s amazing this game even got made, and a lot of what I think is bad or problematic still runs rings against most of its peers - this is the closest you’ll get to a modern Wizardry game.
But I look back to the past, to Dark Arisen sitting in my library, and I think about all the limits imposed on that game. All the rough edges, the flaws, the executive meddling and the cut content, and all I can think is…
Ziltoid was the better album.
One of my favourite albums of all time is Devin Townsend’s legendary prog metal musical, Ziltoid the Omniscient. It came out on May 21st 2007 and it’s something of a marvel, being an album developed entirely by Devy himself. Instruments, recording, mixing, cuts, you name it, he did it. It’s really special to me, and I go back to it every other month. Clocking in at just under an hour - a rarity for prog albums - it has a peerless blend of chunky riffs, auditory storytelling, comedic timing and pacing. Before I gave up on tattoos (don’t have the skin for it - literally), I really wanted the Ziltoid logo on my upper arm.
7 years later, after much begging from fans and several other albums, Devin Townsend came back with Z², the sequel album. Boasting a fucking massive production posse, a much longer runtime and a whole other album packaged in, it’s… Fine. Despite everything being bigger and grander, it’s only a little better than the first album and lacks a lot of the zest which came from being a solo production. By no means a bad album, it’s upstaged by a solo project from 2007 in a lot of ways and for many people it revealed that the original album’s limitations might have bred a greater final product.
Dragon’s Dogma 1 came out in 2012 after a now-notoriously agonizing development process that resulted in a vast majority of their ideas being cut out to meet the deadline set by the suits and an ever-shrinking budget. Capcom really wanted DD1 to be the start of a big series, capitalising on the then-rising popularity of Western RPGs like Skyrim and The Witcher 2. Naturally, it was a flop and the ‘franchise’ was silently canned despite the game attaining cult classic status.
I have been playing DD1 for about 11~ years now. I own it on every single platform it was ever released on and on each of those platforms I have near-perfect saves with both the postgame and Bitterblack Isle cleared in their entirety. I’ve played that game so often that, if I were so inclined, I could do a full playthrough in my mind because I know the game world and quest flow off by heart. I have, and frequently do, give people directions around the world without any need to consult a map or a video or boot the game.
To potentially state the obvious: I am something of a Dragon’s Dogma megafan.
Among people like me, who’re so hungry for new morsels of DD content that we begrudgingly consumed (and loathed) the Netflix series, the hypothetical Original Version of DD1 has attained something of a mythological status. The idea of a ‘complete’ DD1 with Elf villages and beastmen and a whole other continent and the like is just so endlessly intoxicating to a group who’re already enamoured with the best-attempt game we already have.
Dragon’s Dogma 2, judging by the year of comments Hideaki Itsuno has been making about the game, is that mythical Original Version. Complete with Elves, Beastmen, other continents, and more! The prevailing sentiment among older fans was that, given a proper budget and all the technical prowess of the RE Engine and enough time, Itsuno would finally make a True Dragon’s Dogma successor!
Instead he… Kinda just made Dragon’s Dogma 1 again? But bigger, and naturally with the problems that come from increasing the scale and scope.
My first sight upon booting the game was the title screen which rather curiously calls the game “DRAGON’S DOGMA” without any numbers. This, sadly, turned out to be an omen.
I normally like to open with a game’s positives before I get into the issues, which is a problematic methodology to have with a game like this. I’m not going to get into it now, but a lot of what’s good about DD2 is also really really bad when viewed holistically.
On the combat front, it’s better than ever. It’s snappy and responsive and the addition of Vocation Actions (block for Fighters, dodge for Thieves, shoulder charge for Warriors, etc etc) adds a lot to the overall flow of combat. New core skills really help too; Sorcerer gets one to speed up cast timers in exchange for a huge stamina drain which I’m really fond of.
It is DD1’s combat, but better! Especially now that stagger is a mechanic and melee classes can now deal respectable damage without spamming either ‘the damage skill’ or mashing attack.
Vocations, too, have seen a tweak. Realizing just how redundant most of them became in DD1, hybrid vocations were binned and now everyone uses just one weapon - which might seem bad at first but everything is so much more fleshed out and roles more clearly defined. It’s easy to miss Assassin for a bit until you sink your teeth into Thief and realise it’s still there, baby.
Archer and Thief both benefit the most; no longer awkwardly fused to two other vocations they’re now allowed to shine and they’re honestly phenomenal. Warrior meanwhile has had a near-total rework into a more tanky DPS class (rather than the weird and seemingly unfinished mess it was in DD1) which comes with tasty charge attacks, a timing mechanic for faster hits and lots of juicy interactions with the game’s stagger mechanics.
And god, the unlockable vocations are a dream. Thief capitalises on the more gamey world design to allow some utterly amazing stuff with lures and traps, Mystic Spearhand is an intravascular injection of Devil May Cry into the game, Magick Archer is mostly untouched from DD1 and is still a blast, and Warfarer is a joy just for having a high skill ceiling compared to every other vocation - also it lets you wear basically anything which is great for the fashion obsessed.
Likewise, the world design is excellent. It’s very, very gamey; the entire thing is a series of ambush spots, winding paths, sharp turns to hide enemies, precarious ledges and unsubtle platforming spots. It is, somewhat ironically, a better fusion of FromSoft level design philosophy and open world design trends than FromSoft’s own attempts on that front.
Traversing it is a joy both because it’s beautiful and because there’s a decent amount of pacing to the environment that stops excessive amounts of holding forward + sprint. Not to mention the distribution of side stuff. I noticed more than a few places and distractions that were hidden on the way towards something, but clear as day while backtracking. That’s good world design right there.
Pawn AI might be the biggest improvement though; they’re not geniuses, but they’re no longer actively suicidal and grossly negligent. They use curatives, have defined priorities based on their (NOW IMMUTABLE, CONCRETE) inclination, are much less likely to use charge-up skills against an enemy that dances around constantly, and for enemies like Golems they’ll bother to target weak spots. Hurrah!
And, above all else, I need to admire Itsuno’s commitment to his vision for a bit. This is a decidedly old-school RPG, I’d honestly argue it has more in common with Wizardry and Ultima or whatever tickles your fancy. The Eternal Ferrystone is gone, even as a reward. You get oxcarts for diegetic ‘fast travel’, Ferrystones are lootable and Portcrystals are doled out sparingly to give you some fast travel points. Otherwise, you’re walking everywhere. Every bit of damage you take slightly reduces your max healable HP, meaning that even effortlessly stomping trash mobs on the overworld will gradually wear you down, necessitating resting at campfires - using consumable camp kits that’re at risk of being broken.
For the first few hours and much of the first reason, none of these were issues.
Which, in itself, became an issue.
Much of my earliest time in DD2 was defined by me saying just how much they kept from DD1! The encounter placement, the stuff tucked away, the way every NPC speaks in that weird faux-medieval theatrical cadence, the way quests unfold and silent tutorials are dotted around the land…
My later hours in DD2 were defined by me realizing that the game, in most respects, is just DD1 again but bigger.
Just like last time you start in a near-wilderness and go to an encampment where you get one diversionary quest and your main pawn. Soon after you make your way to a big city where 10-15 quests pop up in the first 15 minutes and then no more. After a lot of exploring, some of which involves a shrouded forest and a hidden village and some politicking at capital, you’re shunted off elsewhere because the plot demands it and fuckery is afoot.
The problems start to arise when one considers the scale of this game. I can forgive a lot of the above in DD1 because it’s a very compact experience. Like I said before, the world map was comparatively tiny.
DD2’s is huge, but the content density hasn’t changed at all, which makes the game feel like a ghost town? When you first arrive in Vernworth you get a lot of quests immediately, which might imply the game is a lot denser than its predecessor, but the ones that aren’t “go here, come back” are mere fetch quests that occasionally have a boss enemy at the end. Not a unique one, either, but ones you’ll likely have already found by exploring or even on the way there.
NPCs are… Basically the exact same, too? I wasn’t expecting in-depth CRPG-esque interactions with them, but nothing has changed from DD1. They dispense a quest and, when done, return to being random voices among the crowd of their home turf.
And the world itself… You know, the word ‘friction’ comes up a lot in discussions around this game and rightly so. It’s very obvious from the get-go that even the mere act of exploration is meant to induce friction. Enemies gradually wear you down on the world map, necessitating avoidance of some fights if you can help it due to finite resources, and the world is structured to make detours risky due to deliberately awful lines of sight.
The problem is that there still isn’t any friction because the game is comically easy.
Even before getting into the actual gameplay, camp sites are scattered around the world with reckless abandon which allows for nearly unlimited free healing and buffs so long as you have a camp kit & meat. Much of the hypothetical friction dissolves once this becomes apparent and it completely annihilates any feeling of being ‘lost in the wilderness’ that DD1 sometimes had.
All the changes and buffs to combat up above mean that the player and their pawns are more powerful than ever. There are plenty of panic buttons, fast-casting nukes, evasive options and counters alongside a relatively high amount of free gear.
But what’s really worse is the enhancement system. Each culture has its own smithing style: Vermundian is balanced, Battahli is Strength/Defense focused, and Elven is Magick/Magick Defense oriented. There are two others, or one if you discount dragonforging.
This seems cool on paper, but what it really does is cause a serious amount of stat bloat. Weapons only use one stat for damage, meaning it’s easy to just hop off to the appropriate merchant and get +100~ damage for a pittance of effort and money.
Money, too, is surprisingly commonplace. Simple expeditions into the wild or even A-B-C-A trips would see me coming home with full coffers, which in turn meant mass gear purchases and upgrades.
Together, nothing can pose a challenge. It’s trivial, with even a modest time investment, to reach 500~ or so in your offensive stat by the midgame and hell, compared to the first game it’s actually a smart idea to kit out your hired pawns rather than cycling them - money is just that commonplace.
A lot of these can be considered the developers ‘fixing’ perceived issues with the first game, especially when one considers that vocations now come with their own base stats to prevent accidental softlocks, but in ‘fixing’ these non-issues they’ve made the game a joke.
My first Drake kill wasn’t triumphant or cool. I rolled up to it and killed it in about 5 minutes. End of the Struggle - this franchise’s fantastic ‘YOU’RE ALMOST THERE!’ theme - barely got to peak before it dropped dead. I dread how they’d balance any DLC.
The enemy roster is near-entirely pulled from the first game and its expansion, with many of the ‘new’ enemies being simple reskins of existing enemies, meaning you’ll get tired of Harpy/Bandit/Saurian/Goblin variants that permeate the world. It was harrowing to get to the last region and find out that my ‘new’ threats were Saurians but red and Harpies but black.
As for boss and miniboss enemies… God they could’ve used some sub-variants or something. The Volcanic Island, this game’s final region, still throws Ogres/Minotaurs/Chimeras/Cyclopes at you. The relative lack of variety leads to the game and its exploration rapidly becoming exhausting, because it’s a gigantic swimming pool but the bag of tricks meant to fill it is the size of a teacup.
I praise Bitterblack Isle a lot despite it being a combat gauntlet because there is so much going on there, and so many enemies. Even its reskins add new layers to the fight - like my beloved Gorecyclops. DD2’s brand-new enemies are cool, and your first fight with them will usually be a treat, but after that they become rote. Speedbumps, not triumphs.
Dungeons are basically gone now, too. Nothing like the Everfall, Gran Soren’s Catacombs, the Greatwall, or the Mountain Waycastle. Just caves and mines, caves and mines, caves and mines… caves… mines… the odd ruin… Fuck. There’s so many. It’s like Skyrim but with worse design, somehow.
As I trudged through DD2’s main story, I found myself longing for the postgame. I’m really fond of The Everfall and Bitterblack Isle for being steep hurdles designed for more devoted players to test their builds and equipment on, but… There isn’t one? Postgame has some new boss fights but there’s no final dungeon experience or final exam. The world state change isn’t as intense as DD1’s either.
To speak on plot for a bit, I feel it occupies a really unfortunate place. If you’ve played DD1, you know what’s going on. There’s no real surprises here. If you haven’t played DD1, then you’ll be surprised to find a plot that’s underbaked and somewhat anticlimactic, driven more by excuses than anything of substance.
I think about Pookykun’s Baldur’s Gate 3 review a lot when it comes to RPGs, and doubly so while playing this game.
There are moments in this game that’re outright magical, immersive without peer. All of them are quiet moments with unsheated weapons: Traversing Battahli roads at sundown and seeing the vast temples of Bakbattahl pierce the skyline. Stumbling upon the Ancient Battleground and poking through wrecks from a cataclysmic event long before my time. Seeing the glimmer of a campfire stick out from the trees that dot Vermund’s many forests. Oceanside strolls through the Volcanic Island.
I'm especially fond of the road to the Arbor, which was the first time the game really wowed me and made me excited for the game ahead.
They are phenomenal, a testament to the team’s ability to craft a world, and… I hate them. I really hate them.
Because, without fail, they’re always pierced by another repetitive combat encounter. The 50th Chimera, the 10000th Goblin, the next of a million Harpies. Over and over, I am reminded that I do not exist in this world to explore it, I exist to kill everything in it as though I were American.
My quests are nothing of the sort, for they might as well be called bounty targets.
Other people will likely praise how reactive this game is, and its propensity for ‘randomness’. I would argue that, as all the ‘randomness’ is purely centred on killing, there isn’t actually much the game can do to surprise you - especially considering the enemy roster. It’s neat to see goblins and cyclopes invade a town the first time, but afterwards it’s just more free XP and a slight obstacle in the way of you spending 60k gold on new shoes.
There's an irony to be found in just how badly the world feels claustrophobic. There are always mooks around every corner, and you're never more than a minute away from a fight. Looking out into the distance from a vantage point betrays an endless hamster wheel of caves, mobs, chests and seeker tokens.
All of these complaints might seem quaint, and any DD oldheads in the audience might be wondering why I’m lambasting it for things the first game is guilty of.
The issue is twofold.
First, I try not to have expectations for games. I don’t fuck with trailers or press releases and avoid streams or whatever. It helps keep me grounded, and I think stops me from hating games based purely on them not meeting my hype - Metal Gear Solid V taught me that.
With DD2, I faltered. I was excited, and I lapped up everything about it. Articles, streams, trailers, you name it.
But I don’t really think the issue stems from the game not meeting my hype. Rather, I think it’s because the game was sold on a very specific vision, the one I mentioned up above: This was meant to be “DD but for real this time”, and in reality it’s just the first game but stretched far too thin.
Secondly, I don’t think every sequel has to be a grand, innovative experience. I play musous and Yakuza games after all. But I do expect there to be some iterative improvement, some signs that the developers have grown and improved at their craft. In simpler terms: Sequels should be a step forward, even if it’s a miniscule one.
DD2 is sort of an awkward step to the side. Could’ve came out ten years ago as a mission pack sequel and been lauded for it.
I don’t like to be prescriptive with my critique, I really don’t, but if this game was 1/4th the size and half the length I think I’d be a lot kinder to it. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed about 2/3rds of my time with it, but I can’t really recommend DD2 specifically because a lot of what I enjoyed is just stuff that DD1 not only did 12 years ago but does better.
In the end, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is Z². It’s by no means bad, and for many people this will likely radically alter their preferences for fantasy RPGs. Hell, I still think it’s amazing this game even got made, and a lot of what I think is bad or problematic still runs rings against most of its peers - this is the closest you’ll get to a modern Wizardry game.
But I look back to the past, to Dark Arisen sitting in my library, and I think about all the limits imposed on that game. All the rough edges, the flaws, the executive meddling and the cut content, and all I can think is…
Ziltoid was the better album.
Dragon's Dogma 2 é um jogo complicado, de início acabou sendo uma decepção, muito parecido com o primeiro e com os mesmos problemas dele, mas ao longo da jornada ele foi se pagando e é sem dúvidas um dos melhores jogos do ano apesar dos problemas. Como alguém que jogou o primeiro, reconheço que pra época ele tentou dar um passo maior que a perna e só agora 12 anos depois, ele conseguiu caminhar direito na sequência, ainda que mantenha vários dos problemas do primeiro jogo, acabou virando mais um charme do que um erro propriamente dito.
Já começando pela história, ela é extremamente simples, você se torna o novo Nascen, descobre que um falso Nascen é o rei de Vermund e cabe a você desmanchar a farsa e assumir como verdadeiro Nascen pra liderar o mundo em uma direção melhor, pelo menos é isso que o jogo propõe inicialmente, as primeiras horas são cansativas, as missões não têm muita profundidade, mas com o decorrer do jogo elas vão ficando complexas, novos elementos são introduzidos e vai te dando uma baita vontade de continuar, o final verdadeiro do jogo é fantástico e recheado de conteúdo, recomendo todo mundo fazer, principalmente por ter como farmar uma cacetada de pedras de teleporte. Eu senti que a campanha é um pouco curta pro padrão dos RPGs por aí, mas é justamente o fato de ser curta que acrescenta muito no valor replay do jogo, logo quando você acabar já vai ter vontade de ir pro new game+.
A gameplay do jogo é uma melhoria absurda em comparação ao primeiro, já era boa apesar de ser um pouco esquisita e agora no segundo conseguiram melhorar todas as animações, deixar ela mais natural, fizeram o acréscimo de diversas habilidades e vocações novas, até eu que só joguei de ladrão no 1 acabei trocando, lanceiro místico e chefe de guerra são disparadas as classes novas que eu mais curti, não tem coisa melhor do que simplesmente arremessar um inimigo a quilômetros de distância com a habilidade "ao infinito". Fora o combate impressionante, a escalada ficou numa pegada mais Assassin's Creed, automatizada e fácil, a i.a. dos inimigos e parceiros melhorou consideravelmente, se juntam em bando pra te atacar, flanqueiam e fazem estratégias. Mas o que mais me encantou mesmo foi a tonelada de coisas aleatórias que podem acontecer, principalmente graças a física do jogo, você consegue se segurar em uma harpia e sair voando nela, consegue derrubar um ciclope em um vão e usar ele como ponte, se você cair de uma altura grande o seu pawn pode te segurar pra você não morrer, se um de seus pawns for arremessado de um penhasco você pode usar a corda do ladrão pra puxar ele de volta no ar, enfim, as possibilidades são inúmeras. O que mais fez falta mesmo foi um sistema de lock-on, que não tem igual no primeiro.
Sobre a exploração, ela tem pontos positivos e negativos, de fato, é divertido de se explorar e não usar a viagem rápida, no início é meio cansativo já que seu personagem tá fraco e os inimigos te deixam em frangalhos, mas com o tempo você vai upar e explorar vai ficar extremamente divertido, você realmente tem uma sensação de estar se aventurando, principalmente pelos acampamentos pra descansar, pelas interações entre o seu grupo apesar de terem várias falas repetidas e a caralhada de chefes que você encontra ao longo do caminho, ciclopes, grifos, dragões, medusas, ogros, a lista é gigantesca e a luta com cada um deles é divertidíssima e bem variada. Uma grande melhoria em relação ao primeiro são as paisagens também, a primeira região é a mais fraca, é um cenário de floresta um tanto quanto genérico igual o primeiro jogo, mas de Battahl pra frente muda muito, são vários lugares bem bonitos, sem contar todo o cenário do final verdadeiro que é de tirar o fôlego, com diversas lutas contra chefe fodásticas.
Agora indo pros problemas, o design de quest dele é meio falho assim como o do primeiro, diversas vezes você fica perdido sobre como proceder em uma missão, várias vezes o objetivo é uma área gigantesca e você que se vire falando com a cidade toda pra saber o que tem que fazer, sem contar quando ele te pede algo tão especifíco que é mais fácil ver na internet o que ele quer. Outra coisa que me desagradou foi o sistema de save, o jogo tem um autosave e também tem um save manual, já no início o jogo manda você não confiar no autosave e salvar manualmente sempre que puder??? Vai por mim, é inútil salvar nesse jogo, o autosave sempre vai salvar por cima do seu save e o jogo dá autosave o tempo todo, então se você se prender em uma luta ou coisa do tipo, ou volta pra cidade e perde todo seu progresso desde que você saiu de lá ou senta e chora.
O gráfico é esquisito, em alguns momentos é bonito e em outros é horroroso, no geral, ele é bonito no macro e feio no micro, a primeira região é meio feia mesmo, e falando em feio, as expressões desse jogo se resumem a abrir e fechar a boca, só melhora um pouco nas cutscenes pré-renderizadas, e o gráfico desse jogo com certeza não justifica a falta de otimização dele, e já falando dela, EU, repetindo, EU não tive muitos problemas, durante o mundo aberto eu mantive os 55-60 fps e nas cidades caía pra 40, isso PARTICULARMENTE não me incomoda, fora isso, eu não tive nenhum crash e o único bug foi de iluminação quando eu dei alt+tab várias vezes, isso numa RTX 3060, vi relatos do jogo rodando mal nela, o que não foi o meu caso. A interface do jogo é melhor que a do 1, mas ainda é esquisita de mexer, meio ruim de entender e feia de se ver, o mapa do menu de pausa é melhor do que o mapa do jogo mesmo.
Sobre as microtransações, PARTICULARMENTE não me incomoda, a Capcom faz isso há anos e se a Capcom caga eu como, o ideal era não ter, mas até o fim do jogo eu fiquei lotado de pedra de teleporte, além do fato de ter como comprar a arte da metamorfose e mudar o visual do personagem já no comecinho do jogo.
Sinceramente, eu gostei muito da experiência, tem seus problemas como qualquer jogo, mas não acho que eles apaguem o brilho da aventura, ainda mais que eu não tive muitos problemas de desempenho.
Já começando pela história, ela é extremamente simples, você se torna o novo Nascen, descobre que um falso Nascen é o rei de Vermund e cabe a você desmanchar a farsa e assumir como verdadeiro Nascen pra liderar o mundo em uma direção melhor, pelo menos é isso que o jogo propõe inicialmente, as primeiras horas são cansativas, as missões não têm muita profundidade, mas com o decorrer do jogo elas vão ficando complexas, novos elementos são introduzidos e vai te dando uma baita vontade de continuar, o final verdadeiro do jogo é fantástico e recheado de conteúdo, recomendo todo mundo fazer, principalmente por ter como farmar uma cacetada de pedras de teleporte. Eu senti que a campanha é um pouco curta pro padrão dos RPGs por aí, mas é justamente o fato de ser curta que acrescenta muito no valor replay do jogo, logo quando você acabar já vai ter vontade de ir pro new game+.
A gameplay do jogo é uma melhoria absurda em comparação ao primeiro, já era boa apesar de ser um pouco esquisita e agora no segundo conseguiram melhorar todas as animações, deixar ela mais natural, fizeram o acréscimo de diversas habilidades e vocações novas, até eu que só joguei de ladrão no 1 acabei trocando, lanceiro místico e chefe de guerra são disparadas as classes novas que eu mais curti, não tem coisa melhor do que simplesmente arremessar um inimigo a quilômetros de distância com a habilidade "ao infinito". Fora o combate impressionante, a escalada ficou numa pegada mais Assassin's Creed, automatizada e fácil, a i.a. dos inimigos e parceiros melhorou consideravelmente, se juntam em bando pra te atacar, flanqueiam e fazem estratégias. Mas o que mais me encantou mesmo foi a tonelada de coisas aleatórias que podem acontecer, principalmente graças a física do jogo, você consegue se segurar em uma harpia e sair voando nela, consegue derrubar um ciclope em um vão e usar ele como ponte, se você cair de uma altura grande o seu pawn pode te segurar pra você não morrer, se um de seus pawns for arremessado de um penhasco você pode usar a corda do ladrão pra puxar ele de volta no ar, enfim, as possibilidades são inúmeras. O que mais fez falta mesmo foi um sistema de lock-on, que não tem igual no primeiro.
Sobre a exploração, ela tem pontos positivos e negativos, de fato, é divertido de se explorar e não usar a viagem rápida, no início é meio cansativo já que seu personagem tá fraco e os inimigos te deixam em frangalhos, mas com o tempo você vai upar e explorar vai ficar extremamente divertido, você realmente tem uma sensação de estar se aventurando, principalmente pelos acampamentos pra descansar, pelas interações entre o seu grupo apesar de terem várias falas repetidas e a caralhada de chefes que você encontra ao longo do caminho, ciclopes, grifos, dragões, medusas, ogros, a lista é gigantesca e a luta com cada um deles é divertidíssima e bem variada. Uma grande melhoria em relação ao primeiro são as paisagens também, a primeira região é a mais fraca, é um cenário de floresta um tanto quanto genérico igual o primeiro jogo, mas de Battahl pra frente muda muito, são vários lugares bem bonitos, sem contar todo o cenário do final verdadeiro que é de tirar o fôlego, com diversas lutas contra chefe fodásticas.
Agora indo pros problemas, o design de quest dele é meio falho assim como o do primeiro, diversas vezes você fica perdido sobre como proceder em uma missão, várias vezes o objetivo é uma área gigantesca e você que se vire falando com a cidade toda pra saber o que tem que fazer, sem contar quando ele te pede algo tão especifíco que é mais fácil ver na internet o que ele quer. Outra coisa que me desagradou foi o sistema de save, o jogo tem um autosave e também tem um save manual, já no início o jogo manda você não confiar no autosave e salvar manualmente sempre que puder??? Vai por mim, é inútil salvar nesse jogo, o autosave sempre vai salvar por cima do seu save e o jogo dá autosave o tempo todo, então se você se prender em uma luta ou coisa do tipo, ou volta pra cidade e perde todo seu progresso desde que você saiu de lá ou senta e chora.
O gráfico é esquisito, em alguns momentos é bonito e em outros é horroroso, no geral, ele é bonito no macro e feio no micro, a primeira região é meio feia mesmo, e falando em feio, as expressões desse jogo se resumem a abrir e fechar a boca, só melhora um pouco nas cutscenes pré-renderizadas, e o gráfico desse jogo com certeza não justifica a falta de otimização dele, e já falando dela, EU, repetindo, EU não tive muitos problemas, durante o mundo aberto eu mantive os 55-60 fps e nas cidades caía pra 40, isso PARTICULARMENTE não me incomoda, fora isso, eu não tive nenhum crash e o único bug foi de iluminação quando eu dei alt+tab várias vezes, isso numa RTX 3060, vi relatos do jogo rodando mal nela, o que não foi o meu caso. A interface do jogo é melhor que a do 1, mas ainda é esquisita de mexer, meio ruim de entender e feia de se ver, o mapa do menu de pausa é melhor do que o mapa do jogo mesmo.
Sobre as microtransações, PARTICULARMENTE não me incomoda, a Capcom faz isso há anos e se a Capcom caga eu como, o ideal era não ter, mas até o fim do jogo eu fiquei lotado de pedra de teleporte, além do fato de ter como comprar a arte da metamorfose e mudar o visual do personagem já no comecinho do jogo.
Sinceramente, eu gostei muito da experiência, tem seus problemas como qualquer jogo, mas não acho que eles apaguem o brilho da aventura, ainda mais que eu não tive muitos problemas de desempenho.
for all of the ubiquity of the big-ass fantasy JRPG it hides a secret in its gargantuan underbelly: very few games even attempt to make the physical process of the traditional fantasy adventure fun enough to be the load-bearing part of the experience. you perform the decorum of an adventure, fighting fuckers and exploring (or pillaging?) new lands, but focus is scarcely allowed to rest on anything besides the most sexy and emblematic parts of the adventuring process.
more often the idea of a grand fantasy adventure is invoked for what is essentially narrative framing in a game where you manifest a power fantasy, or you engage in a story, or you exercise mechanical excellence. and these are all well and great but i think that many of us still have an unscratched itch for a game where you crest a hill with your familiar compatriots and gaze out over the landscape and you see a distant port village, rolling fields, and jagged mountains with a dragon’s cave, and you know that every landmark and many more you haven’t seen yet are the breadcrumbs that will lead you to the next visceral, novel adventure.
it’s incredibly easy to root for dragon’s dogma as it wants so desperately hard to be this game that we crave. and at its best, it is.
it’s difficult to think of another title that captures the full process of a self-guided adventure with such a level of literalization. the rate at which your party’s performance decays without rest and the stinginess of good vendors and services outside of cities is strong enough to pull even the most committed cartographer out of patrolling the map algorithmically and come back in to smell the hearthfire. there’s a humility to the landmarks in the way they attract intrigue and wonder without being ostentatious elden ring megastructures.
not just the world is constructed so that you get to experience the organically emergent qualities of an adventure, the same is true in the moment-to-moment gameplay as well. DD2 isn’t exactly a strand-type game, but the roughness of the world is so tangible it is not just seen, but felt. no shockers here, itsuno combat feels good, but more importantly, it further augments the broader vision of the game. with combat as physical and grounded as this, even my jaded ass had my action RPG goggles knocked off. instead of looking at these monsters through the lens of i-frames and super armor, you navigate combat through your physical intuition.
i’ve seen a lot of (justified) pushback to the screeching about mtx and performance that has accompanied DD2’s release, but some part of me believes that a large amount of dissent was always inevitable on release and people had to tangle with just how frictional dragon’s dogma could be. maybe in something more arcadey like monster hunter there’s more of a case for streamlining but nahhhh yall just bitchmode, can’t handle any of the spicier brain chemicals with your dopamine. don’t get me wrong, not only do I personally love the more prickly parts of the experience, but it’s absolutely necessary for the kind of vision at hand. this game would be destroyed if fast travel was readily available, quests would lose all their weight and urgency if they could be done whenever, and dragonsplague would be trivial if its downsides were ignorable. thousands of redditors, screaming in agony. a symphony to my tired ears.
dragon’s dogma 1 could not fully escape the allegations of being a menu game. dragon’s dogma 2 dodges this, retaining nearly all of the systems from DD1 that were interfaced through these menus but also ensuring far fewer interruptions to the meditative diegesis of its core gameplay loop.
however, the black mark on the original that the sequel cannot escape is that the game is tragically front-loaded. there comes a point, like there is in many of these games with a large exploration focus, where your hands stop fumbling in the dark and finally feel the walls of the room around you, or, as is more often, the cage around you. my guess is it’ll hit most people around an act and a half in as the enemy and encounter variety dries up. the reliance on elemental palette swaps does stretch the small roster a little farther but it also poisons the well a bit, as the fantasy of fighting a new kind of guy is intruded on by the palpable sense that this new creature is as they are for the sake of authorial convenience.
hilariously, i think they could’ve gotten it just about perfect if they toned down the density at which enemies show up in the overworld, which would’ve also made walking around a bit less rote. the game so deftly pushes you into its more structured downtime so it’s shocking how reluctant it is to you give you much at all while you’re out and about. but the way it is now yeah the game definitely becomes a meat grinder. once you reach the point where the enemies you’re fighting feel expendable, regardless of how good the combat feels, it cannot escape the sense of being an empty exercise. dragon’s dogma 2 often feels like the first level of a game extended far past its natural run, mirroring the legend of how its predecessor had to be released when only a quarter of its area was prepared. dragon’s dogma 2 is a much longer game than 1, but i think you could make a really compelling argument that there isn’t really any more meat on its bones in order to compensate.
for better or for worse, dragon’s dogma 2 might go down as the strongest possible indictment of the game that itsuno and so many others have been yearning for for decades. this game had capcom money, a guaranteed audience, and no shortage of talent, and yet it ends up falling this obviously short? but that’s the gamble you play with ambitious games. it’s a gamble worth playing. despite the questionable amount of gas in the tank, for stretches at a time, dragon’s dogma 2 makes that dream in our heads tangible. and, if you can buy into the fantasy, that alone is enough.
more often the idea of a grand fantasy adventure is invoked for what is essentially narrative framing in a game where you manifest a power fantasy, or you engage in a story, or you exercise mechanical excellence. and these are all well and great but i think that many of us still have an unscratched itch for a game where you crest a hill with your familiar compatriots and gaze out over the landscape and you see a distant port village, rolling fields, and jagged mountains with a dragon’s cave, and you know that every landmark and many more you haven’t seen yet are the breadcrumbs that will lead you to the next visceral, novel adventure.
it’s incredibly easy to root for dragon’s dogma as it wants so desperately hard to be this game that we crave. and at its best, it is.
it’s difficult to think of another title that captures the full process of a self-guided adventure with such a level of literalization. the rate at which your party’s performance decays without rest and the stinginess of good vendors and services outside of cities is strong enough to pull even the most committed cartographer out of patrolling the map algorithmically and come back in to smell the hearthfire. there’s a humility to the landmarks in the way they attract intrigue and wonder without being ostentatious elden ring megastructures.
not just the world is constructed so that you get to experience the organically emergent qualities of an adventure, the same is true in the moment-to-moment gameplay as well. DD2 isn’t exactly a strand-type game, but the roughness of the world is so tangible it is not just seen, but felt. no shockers here, itsuno combat feels good, but more importantly, it further augments the broader vision of the game. with combat as physical and grounded as this, even my jaded ass had my action RPG goggles knocked off. instead of looking at these monsters through the lens of i-frames and super armor, you navigate combat through your physical intuition.
i’ve seen a lot of (justified) pushback to the screeching about mtx and performance that has accompanied DD2’s release, but some part of me believes that a large amount of dissent was always inevitable on release and people had to tangle with just how frictional dragon’s dogma could be. maybe in something more arcadey like monster hunter there’s more of a case for streamlining but nahhhh yall just bitchmode, can’t handle any of the spicier brain chemicals with your dopamine. don’t get me wrong, not only do I personally love the more prickly parts of the experience, but it’s absolutely necessary for the kind of vision at hand. this game would be destroyed if fast travel was readily available, quests would lose all their weight and urgency if they could be done whenever, and dragonsplague would be trivial if its downsides were ignorable. thousands of redditors, screaming in agony. a symphony to my tired ears.
dragon’s dogma 1 could not fully escape the allegations of being a menu game. dragon’s dogma 2 dodges this, retaining nearly all of the systems from DD1 that were interfaced through these menus but also ensuring far fewer interruptions to the meditative diegesis of its core gameplay loop.
however, the black mark on the original that the sequel cannot escape is that the game is tragically front-loaded. there comes a point, like there is in many of these games with a large exploration focus, where your hands stop fumbling in the dark and finally feel the walls of the room around you, or, as is more often, the cage around you. my guess is it’ll hit most people around an act and a half in as the enemy and encounter variety dries up. the reliance on elemental palette swaps does stretch the small roster a little farther but it also poisons the well a bit, as the fantasy of fighting a new kind of guy is intruded on by the palpable sense that this new creature is as they are for the sake of authorial convenience.
hilariously, i think they could’ve gotten it just about perfect if they toned down the density at which enemies show up in the overworld, which would’ve also made walking around a bit less rote. the game so deftly pushes you into its more structured downtime so it’s shocking how reluctant it is to you give you much at all while you’re out and about. but the way it is now yeah the game definitely becomes a meat grinder. once you reach the point where the enemies you’re fighting feel expendable, regardless of how good the combat feels, it cannot escape the sense of being an empty exercise. dragon’s dogma 2 often feels like the first level of a game extended far past its natural run, mirroring the legend of how its predecessor had to be released when only a quarter of its area was prepared. dragon’s dogma 2 is a much longer game than 1, but i think you could make a really compelling argument that there isn’t really any more meat on its bones in order to compensate.
for better or for worse, dragon’s dogma 2 might go down as the strongest possible indictment of the game that itsuno and so many others have been yearning for for decades. this game had capcom money, a guaranteed audience, and no shortage of talent, and yet it ends up falling this obviously short? but that’s the gamble you play with ambitious games. it’s a gamble worth playing. despite the questionable amount of gas in the tank, for stretches at a time, dragon’s dogma 2 makes that dream in our heads tangible. and, if you can buy into the fantasy, that alone is enough.
I don't normally write reviews for games I'm not interested in, but briefly watching Cr1TiKaL's stream of the game and witnessing it crash when he had to do a brb says more than enough, this is da future of gaming and you will kneel, give us your money while we shove our hecking wholesome VTubers and content creators in your face
the "friction" in this game is hotly debated but i think a lot of it stems from this fact that this game is pretty fundamentally flawed on a structural level. the insanely stunted fast travel is done entirely on purpose not to instill a sense of adventure in the player, but because walking across dirt roads and fighting the same three enemies is literally the meat of the game. that is the gameplay, and if you don't REALLY fuck with it then you have my pass to give up on it without feeling like you're losing out on your gamer badge of honor. fighting guys does feel really good but its hard not to feel like -- yet again -- im just playing the demo for the actual dragons dogma.
cant say that i or anybody else should be disappointed because a lotta folks are gonna come to find out thats just what dragons dogma is, but if this game is going to continue that tradition then i gotta come to the same conclusion i think a lot of people come to: dragons dogma is really just ok
cant say that i or anybody else should be disappointed because a lotta folks are gonna come to find out thats just what dragons dogma is, but if this game is going to continue that tradition then i gotta come to the same conclusion i think a lot of people come to: dragons dogma is really just ok
I’m really disappointed with Dragon’s Dogma II because it has a lot of really cool concepts and ideas here that I like, but the experience thus far has been rough after about 10 hours of play. I’m not really enjoying myself like I expected I would. I like a lot of things here, but the overall gameplay loop, story, and design leave a lot to be desired, and I don’t think what I’ve seen so far is going to coalesce into something that I feel satisfied with.
as vezes a gente nem percebe que as raízes são fortes... dragon's dogma, em 2012, junto com dark souls deve ter afetado a maneira que meu cérebro funciona ao jogar video game de formas irreparáveis. eu não estava armado nessa época, eu não tinha vocabulário, eu não sabia o que pensar durante o jogo além de "diversão" e as percepções básicas. dark souls me acompanhou a vida toda depois disso - a primeira vez que eu escrevi foi justamente dele! mas dragon's dogma ficou lá no cantinho escondido -não joguei dark arisen!- passei 200 horas nele e sendo sincero nunca pensei a fundo no porquê.
e agora depois de uma jornada de 68 horas e 139 dias (in-game) eu entendo tudo, é óbvio que DD foi feito pra mim, todas as Decisões que eu sou obcecado são feitas com a maior confiança do mundo, eu amo jogo de andar por aí, de se planejar e sair numa caminhada que só deus sabe o que vai acontecer, eu amo gerenciamento de recursos como o poder de teleportar, eu amo limites de tempo e quando achei que não iria criar um vínculo com a história "principal" (não conte para o pessoal da página do jogo que a verdadeira história principal são momentos que acontecem enquanto você está caminhando) ela também é uma história que brinca com meus temas favoritos. agora vou descansar por uns meses, deixar marinar e jogar o dark arisen sabendo que dessa vez estou armado com as palavras certas pra dar o carinho que ele merece.
e agora depois de uma jornada de 68 horas e 139 dias (in-game) eu entendo tudo, é óbvio que DD foi feito pra mim, todas as Decisões que eu sou obcecado são feitas com a maior confiança do mundo, eu amo jogo de andar por aí, de se planejar e sair numa caminhada que só deus sabe o que vai acontecer, eu amo gerenciamento de recursos como o poder de teleportar, eu amo limites de tempo e quando achei que não iria criar um vínculo com a história "principal" (não conte para o pessoal da página do jogo que a verdadeira história principal são momentos que acontecem enquanto você está caminhando) ela também é uma história que brinca com meus temas favoritos. agora vou descansar por uns meses, deixar marinar e jogar o dark arisen sabendo que dessa vez estou armado com as palavras certas pra dar o carinho que ele merece.
Adventure games are an extremely popular genre, but when you really get right down to the specifics of what makes a game feel like a real adventure, I don't think any game comes nearly as close as Dragon's Dogma and its sequel. Every venture out of town is considered and planned, and those plans are subsequently broken in different ways on each excursion. For me, Dragon's Dogma II is a series of hits of the same high that Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom or even Death Stranding provides.
Dragon's Dogma II puts you in control once again of the Arisen, a character of your own making who is selected by the dragon to control Pawns. In addition to a Pawn who is also of your own making, you can have up to two Pawns created by other players to form your party of four. Pawns can be any of 6 vocations while the Arisen has access to a few more specialized ones, and your team composition determines your approach to battles. Combat is largely the same as the first game, where you pick your four weapon skills based on your vocation on top of a couple of other baked-in unique abilities. You can also pick up and throw smaller enemies (or friends), as well as climb all over bigger ones a la Shadow of the Colossus. There's a little something for everyone with each vocation, and I am a big fan of both the new ones (special shoutout to Mystic Spearhand) and the slight reworks to the old ones. While admittedly there isn't a great variety of smaller enemies (mostly the same as the first game with some slight variations on Harpies and Saurians) and the large monsters could be spread out a lot more evenly through the world, but I personally never got tired of fighting cyclopes' or minotaurs whether it was my first time or my tenth time. You definitely feel a good sense of getting stronger as you and your Pawns chunk through those health bars faster and faster.
For fans of the first game, you'll also find the plot structure is pretty similar. A mostly straight-forward fantasy adventure with very light political intrigue that gets a bit weird with it as you go on. Above most other games, I highly recommend playing DD2 without a guide because the plot is counting on both the player's (and their Pawn's) ability to figure out the right direction and even beyond that, make mistakes. I can't count on two hands the number of major quests I royally screwed up, and yet still stumbled my way through the story. Some quest lines will even straight up drop if you don't make your own effort to pick them up and continue them, and many side quests aren't even presented to you unless you happen to talk to the right people. Whether you are in or out of town, curiosity is at the forefront of DD2's design philosophy. While still a bit on the barebones side, the main plot does have a few cool set piece moments, and the last few hours especially were stellar.
As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, the real draw of this game for me was the moment-to-moment. The exploration, the adventure. I took the same route out of Vermund countless times as I explored the Western side of the country, and by the time I eventually reached my intended destination, something different always happened. Maybe I found a new cave I hadn't spotted before with a new Pawn's help. Maybe I was ambushed by a Minotaur and knocked across a river. Maybe a Drake landed and utterly destroyed my party. The term 'friction' has been thrown around a lot to describe this game and its become a bit of a buzzword, but it is absolutely true. Traditional fast travel is (mostly) discouraged so that the player can experience lots of moments like this. It's a constant battle of tradeoffs, is it worth picking a fight with that Cyclops while the party needs a rest? Oh no, a Gryphon just landed on us and it's time to find out if we are prepared to fight it, or lead it back to the city where a good number of people will probably perish (but can be revived if you've got the item to do so). I could go on and on about all the cool moments I encountered, and suffice to say I thoroughly explored the map as best I could in doing so. It's been so refreshing just playing an open-world game like this where I can open my map and point at a spot and think okay, I want to go there because I want to. There's no icon there (yet) so maybe I'll find something cool. It is the antithesis of guided checklist open-worlds.
To be absolutely clear, it is not a game for everyone. I am not trying to gate keep or be pretentious about it, but the focuses and game design philosophies behind Dragon's Dogma II (and Dragon's Dogma for that matter) are very specific. It is more often about the journey than the destination, and the lack of fast travel and direction will probably cause a lot of people to bounce off. But for me, this is exactly the type of game I have been craving and as a follow up to the first game, I am happy to say that Dragon's Dogma II is just more Dragon's Dogma. At least at the time of writing, it's my GOTY of 2024.
Dragon's Dogma II puts you in control once again of the Arisen, a character of your own making who is selected by the dragon to control Pawns. In addition to a Pawn who is also of your own making, you can have up to two Pawns created by other players to form your party of four. Pawns can be any of 6 vocations while the Arisen has access to a few more specialized ones, and your team composition determines your approach to battles. Combat is largely the same as the first game, where you pick your four weapon skills based on your vocation on top of a couple of other baked-in unique abilities. You can also pick up and throw smaller enemies (or friends), as well as climb all over bigger ones a la Shadow of the Colossus. There's a little something for everyone with each vocation, and I am a big fan of both the new ones (special shoutout to Mystic Spearhand) and the slight reworks to the old ones. While admittedly there isn't a great variety of smaller enemies (mostly the same as the first game with some slight variations on Harpies and Saurians) and the large monsters could be spread out a lot more evenly through the world, but I personally never got tired of fighting cyclopes' or minotaurs whether it was my first time or my tenth time. You definitely feel a good sense of getting stronger as you and your Pawns chunk through those health bars faster and faster.
For fans of the first game, you'll also find the plot structure is pretty similar. A mostly straight-forward fantasy adventure with very light political intrigue that gets a bit weird with it as you go on. Above most other games, I highly recommend playing DD2 without a guide because the plot is counting on both the player's (and their Pawn's) ability to figure out the right direction and even beyond that, make mistakes. I can't count on two hands the number of major quests I royally screwed up, and yet still stumbled my way through the story. Some quest lines will even straight up drop if you don't make your own effort to pick them up and continue them, and many side quests aren't even presented to you unless you happen to talk to the right people. Whether you are in or out of town, curiosity is at the forefront of DD2's design philosophy. While still a bit on the barebones side, the main plot does have a few cool set piece moments, and the last few hours especially were stellar.
As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, the real draw of this game for me was the moment-to-moment. The exploration, the adventure. I took the same route out of Vermund countless times as I explored the Western side of the country, and by the time I eventually reached my intended destination, something different always happened. Maybe I found a new cave I hadn't spotted before with a new Pawn's help. Maybe I was ambushed by a Minotaur and knocked across a river. Maybe a Drake landed and utterly destroyed my party. The term 'friction' has been thrown around a lot to describe this game and its become a bit of a buzzword, but it is absolutely true. Traditional fast travel is (mostly) discouraged so that the player can experience lots of moments like this. It's a constant battle of tradeoffs, is it worth picking a fight with that Cyclops while the party needs a rest? Oh no, a Gryphon just landed on us and it's time to find out if we are prepared to fight it, or lead it back to the city where a good number of people will probably perish (but can be revived if you've got the item to do so). I could go on and on about all the cool moments I encountered, and suffice to say I thoroughly explored the map as best I could in doing so. It's been so refreshing just playing an open-world game like this where I can open my map and point at a spot and think okay, I want to go there because I want to. There's no icon there (yet) so maybe I'll find something cool. It is the antithesis of guided checklist open-worlds.
To be absolutely clear, it is not a game for everyone. I am not trying to gate keep or be pretentious about it, but the focuses and game design philosophies behind Dragon's Dogma II (and Dragon's Dogma for that matter) are very specific. It is more often about the journey than the destination, and the lack of fast travel and direction will probably cause a lot of people to bounce off. But for me, this is exactly the type of game I have been craving and as a follow up to the first game, I am happy to say that Dragon's Dogma II is just more Dragon's Dogma. At least at the time of writing, it's my GOTY of 2024.
I'm sure whatever these nameless npcs are doing is totally worth tanking the framerate but right now it runs like cheeks
Drama:
Before I get into the review I’d like to address the obvious elephant(s) in the room.
Firstly, the performance is absolutely terrible. The cities run very poorly and any encounter out in the wilds with a larger NPC count will be less than cinematic. You will not be powering through it with good hardware either; this game struggles even on the top-end. I suggest waiting for a performance patch before even thinking about buying this game.
Secondly I’d like to mention Microtransactions. While yes they aren’t the worst or most egregious MTX to hit the AAA market, bad is bad and bad should be called out. You could come up with any number of excuses but in the end they shouldn't exist in this single-player game end of story. “It’s just horse armor, just don’t buy it lol”... look where we are now.
Anyway, enough of that.
Review:
Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t really much of a sequel but more so a second-attempt from Capcom at creating the world that they had envisioned back in 2012: only with better technology, knowledge, and skills than they’d had prior. In a funny way Dragon’s Dogma 2 is kind of like Capcom’s ‘New Game Plus’ attempt at Dragon’s Dogma.
It then goes without saying that if you liked the first game or their expanded version back in 2013: ‘Dark Arisen’, then I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you will absolutely adore Dragon’s Dogma 2. Dragon’s Dogma 2 carries over almost all the features and ideas that you remember from the first game and either directly improves on them or brings them up to modern standards.
The exploration, combat, pawn system, and general quest design all see their return in Dragon’s Dogma 2, for better or worse. I can say that after about 50 hours of playing through Dragon’s Dogma 2 that while there are many complaints that I might have about the game, it is ultimately a great improvement over the first installment and is a pretty good game in general.
As expected the combat is very good. The enemy variety can get tired quickly, especially with the drawn out near tedious exploration experience. Boss fights though are always a treat and are definitely one of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s greatest selling points.
The feeling of jumping on top of a Griffin and having it fly into the sky while you desperately grasp at it's feathers so you don't plummet to your death, only to run out of stamina and drop 30 feet to your death when suddenly your beautiful pawn catches you in her arms like you're a princess... this simply can't be replicated anywhere else.
On the subject of combat though, vocations are a mixed bag, with most vocations feeling great to play but perhaps lacking in variety in terms of skills/spells available to you. This is further exacerbated by the questionable change from having 2 sets of skill slots in Dragon’s Dogma 1 versus the sad singular set of skill slots in this sequel.
They also feel a little unbalanced, with Trickster and Wayfarer being straight up useless while at the same time Mystic Spearhand (the class I use) gets access to a team-wide invincibility shield that they can essentially spam on repeat. I will also say that while I think Magic was generally better in the first game, Dragon’s Dogma is pretty much unrivaled when it comes to Magic gameplay in open-world RPGs.
I’ve already mentioned it but exploration is unbelievably tedious in this game.. I swear I’ve spent at least 10 hours just running from place to place. This was a problem I had in the first game and it’s a bit annoying to see it persist in the second. Maybe some will point to the game’s ‘Hardcore’ nature but in my opinion boring is boring. While fast travel exists alongside Oxcarts, I would’ve loved something like horses because by the time I reached the capital walking around was starting to do my head in.
Quest design has generally been pretty great and while I haven't found myself enthralled by many of the side quests, I've always found them to be relatively well made. There were a few questlines that I found to be absolute standouts and I’m sure those who’ve done them know what I’m talking about. I also appreciate how some side-quests would weave into one another seamlessly, it made my exploration feel rewarded. The main questline was very good too though I don’t have much to say on it.
The pawn system is as great as it was in the first game and is probably the games main selling point alongside the combat system. Having your pawn learn stuff from other players and come back to you sometimes with gifts always feels cool and adds a bit of community to the otherwise single-player experience. Pawn AI still isn’t great though, with pawns regularly getting themselves killed, using the wrong skills/spells, or just standing in bad places during a fight.
As expected pawn’s themselves don’t have much personality, so while in other RPGs you might have a band of interesting companions to get to know (a la Baldur’s Gate 3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc...) the experience in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a lot more lonely and colorless which speaks to some of the downsides to the pawn system -though ultimately I think in Dragon’s Dogma 2’s case this is a worthwhile sacrifice.
NPCs are also pretty uninteresting with the exception of a few attractive ladies. The whole ‘Inhabitants of the World’ aspect of the marketing definitely feels a little overblown. Any radiant quests I’d gotten from my ‘friend’ NPCs were very boring and felt ultimately meaningless. I suppose they serve the same purpose as radiant quests in other games though so it’s no big deal.
Ultimately Dragon’s Dogma 2 is probably a Dragon's Dogma fan's dream game and I could easily see someone like that giving it a 5/5. For me though as someone who enjoyed Dragon’s Dogma 1 but didn’t love it, I feel much of the same feelings that I did for the first game. There’s some great stuff in this game and there aren’t any real big flaws. All it really comes down to is that a lot of the quests didn’t really grip me which is a big deal for me in open-world RPGs. That alongside the general tedium of a lot of the game stops me from really falling in love with Dragon’s Dogma 2.
All that said though, I still think this is a really great game, especially for the type of player that Capcom are targeting. Just because some of the aspects of this game don’t quite match what I enjoy doesn’t mean they should be changed. Having more variety in the space is a good thing and Dragon’s Dogma 2 doing its own things should be encouraged.
3.5/5
Post Review Addendum:
Just wanted to add that the post-game section is amazing and suffers far less from the issues that I had with the main game. The quests, area, and exploration were all superb. The post-game sequence was also stunning and gave the game the conclusion that it needed.
My opinion on the game still stands as it is but I just wanted to mention how much I enjoyed this section of the game. Really great stuff.
Before I get into the review I’d like to address the obvious elephant(s) in the room.
Firstly, the performance is absolutely terrible. The cities run very poorly and any encounter out in the wilds with a larger NPC count will be less than cinematic. You will not be powering through it with good hardware either; this game struggles even on the top-end. I suggest waiting for a performance patch before even thinking about buying this game.
Secondly I’d like to mention Microtransactions. While yes they aren’t the worst or most egregious MTX to hit the AAA market, bad is bad and bad should be called out. You could come up with any number of excuses but in the end they shouldn't exist in this single-player game end of story. “It’s just horse armor, just don’t buy it lol”... look where we are now.
Anyway, enough of that.
Review:
Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t really much of a sequel but more so a second-attempt from Capcom at creating the world that they had envisioned back in 2012: only with better technology, knowledge, and skills than they’d had prior. In a funny way Dragon’s Dogma 2 is kind of like Capcom’s ‘New Game Plus’ attempt at Dragon’s Dogma.
It then goes without saying that if you liked the first game or their expanded version back in 2013: ‘Dark Arisen’, then I can say without a shadow of a doubt that you will absolutely adore Dragon’s Dogma 2. Dragon’s Dogma 2 carries over almost all the features and ideas that you remember from the first game and either directly improves on them or brings them up to modern standards.
The exploration, combat, pawn system, and general quest design all see their return in Dragon’s Dogma 2, for better or worse. I can say that after about 50 hours of playing through Dragon’s Dogma 2 that while there are many complaints that I might have about the game, it is ultimately a great improvement over the first installment and is a pretty good game in general.
As expected the combat is very good. The enemy variety can get tired quickly, especially with the drawn out near tedious exploration experience. Boss fights though are always a treat and are definitely one of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s greatest selling points.
The feeling of jumping on top of a Griffin and having it fly into the sky while you desperately grasp at it's feathers so you don't plummet to your death, only to run out of stamina and drop 30 feet to your death when suddenly your beautiful pawn catches you in her arms like you're a princess... this simply can't be replicated anywhere else.
On the subject of combat though, vocations are a mixed bag, with most vocations feeling great to play but perhaps lacking in variety in terms of skills/spells available to you. This is further exacerbated by the questionable change from having 2 sets of skill slots in Dragon’s Dogma 1 versus the sad singular set of skill slots in this sequel.
They also feel a little unbalanced, with Trickster and Wayfarer being straight up useless while at the same time Mystic Spearhand (the class I use) gets access to a team-wide invincibility shield that they can essentially spam on repeat. I will also say that while I think Magic was generally better in the first game, Dragon’s Dogma is pretty much unrivaled when it comes to Magic gameplay in open-world RPGs.
I’ve already mentioned it but exploration is unbelievably tedious in this game.. I swear I’ve spent at least 10 hours just running from place to place. This was a problem I had in the first game and it’s a bit annoying to see it persist in the second. Maybe some will point to the game’s ‘Hardcore’ nature but in my opinion boring is boring. While fast travel exists alongside Oxcarts, I would’ve loved something like horses because by the time I reached the capital walking around was starting to do my head in.
Quest design has generally been pretty great and while I haven't found myself enthralled by many of the side quests, I've always found them to be relatively well made. There were a few questlines that I found to be absolute standouts and I’m sure those who’ve done them know what I’m talking about. I also appreciate how some side-quests would weave into one another seamlessly, it made my exploration feel rewarded. The main questline was very good too though I don’t have much to say on it.
The pawn system is as great as it was in the first game and is probably the games main selling point alongside the combat system. Having your pawn learn stuff from other players and come back to you sometimes with gifts always feels cool and adds a bit of community to the otherwise single-player experience. Pawn AI still isn’t great though, with pawns regularly getting themselves killed, using the wrong skills/spells, or just standing in bad places during a fight.
As expected pawn’s themselves don’t have much personality, so while in other RPGs you might have a band of interesting companions to get to know (a la Baldur’s Gate 3, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc...) the experience in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a lot more lonely and colorless which speaks to some of the downsides to the pawn system -though ultimately I think in Dragon’s Dogma 2’s case this is a worthwhile sacrifice.
NPCs are also pretty uninteresting with the exception of a few attractive ladies. The whole ‘Inhabitants of the World’ aspect of the marketing definitely feels a little overblown. Any radiant quests I’d gotten from my ‘friend’ NPCs were very boring and felt ultimately meaningless. I suppose they serve the same purpose as radiant quests in other games though so it’s no big deal.
Ultimately Dragon’s Dogma 2 is probably a Dragon's Dogma fan's dream game and I could easily see someone like that giving it a 5/5. For me though as someone who enjoyed Dragon’s Dogma 1 but didn’t love it, I feel much of the same feelings that I did for the first game. There’s some great stuff in this game and there aren’t any real big flaws. All it really comes down to is that a lot of the quests didn’t really grip me which is a big deal for me in open-world RPGs. That alongside the general tedium of a lot of the game stops me from really falling in love with Dragon’s Dogma 2.
All that said though, I still think this is a really great game, especially for the type of player that Capcom are targeting. Just because some of the aspects of this game don’t quite match what I enjoy doesn’t mean they should be changed. Having more variety in the space is a good thing and Dragon’s Dogma 2 doing its own things should be encouraged.
3.5/5
Post Review Addendum:
Just wanted to add that the post-game section is amazing and suffers far less from the issues that I had with the main game. The quests, area, and exploration were all superb. The post-game sequence was also stunning and gave the game the conclusion that it needed.
My opinion on the game still stands as it is but I just wanted to mention how much I enjoyed this section of the game. Really great stuff.
DRAGON’S DOGMA II TASTES SO GOOD WHEN U AIN’T GOT A BITCH IN YA EAR TELLING YOU ABOUT THE MTX THAT CAN BE EARNED NORMALLY IN GAME
12 years on from the strange, incomplete original, DD2 is more of the same, uneasily sitting between the uncompromising Souls series & more conventional narrative ARPGs. At times evoking a desolate offline MMO, DD2 is at its best when out in the wilds, the sun setting at your back & two or more beasts landing on the path ahead, all Arising out of dynamic systems.
The main questline unfortunately does not play to these strengths, with much of Act I confined to the capital & some really dull writing. Fortunately, writing does not maketh a game, and side-quests that take you out into the unreasonably huge map are much more interesting, and really need to be sought out in the crowds and corners of the world. Keeping track of these with the bizarre quest tracker is uneven and obtuse: you’re either reading the landscape and tracing clues or just beating your head against a wall figuring out what the game requires of you.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is singular, not quite fully realised, a beautifully rendered physics-heavy oddity. The art direction is profoundly generic, but so deceptively understated it at times resembles a Ray Harryhausen film, full of weight, movement and character. DD2 makes you feel like you have friends, albeit stupid friends, who'd throw themselves off a cliff for a view of yonder.
The main questline unfortunately does not play to these strengths, with much of Act I confined to the capital & some really dull writing. Fortunately, writing does not maketh a game, and side-quests that take you out into the unreasonably huge map are much more interesting, and really need to be sought out in the crowds and corners of the world. Keeping track of these with the bizarre quest tracker is uneven and obtuse: you’re either reading the landscape and tracing clues or just beating your head against a wall figuring out what the game requires of you.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is singular, not quite fully realised, a beautifully rendered physics-heavy oddity. The art direction is profoundly generic, but so deceptively understated it at times resembles a Ray Harryhausen film, full of weight, movement and character. DD2 makes you feel like you have friends, albeit stupid friends, who'd throw themselves off a cliff for a view of yonder.
I love the way exploration works here; the refusal to budge on fast travel save for diegetic ox carts, snatching back dark arisen's infinite ferrystone, and stretching the landmass both horizontally and (especially) vertically is wonderful. in many, many ways it's a bigger, slower, denser game, and they did it all while focusing on the most mundane environments devoid of giant theme park attractions bulging from every flat surface
likewise I love the idea of elaborating on the sense of traversal and moving toward a holistic spirit of adventure. deteriorating health ceilings aid attrition and help answer the inherent slime of menu heals, and having campfire rests operate as something of a risk/reward mechanism goes a long way toward giving each journey a greater heft and substance
even something as transparently gamey as designing the map as a network of funnels and chokepoints stippled with smaller threats and crosshatched with bigger ones was very clever; it's all just nouns crashing against nouns as they fire down chutes, but when coupled with the meaty physicality of the game's interactivity it goes a long way toward building up those Big Moments
but the consequence of trash mobs operating as speedbumps means moment-to-moment encounters operate more as filler than anything you could consider independently engaging scenarios. it also means that despite the map being several times larger than gransys it ends up feeling a lot more suffocating due to all the overlapping nouns slamming and interrupting each other without end
I just about luxuriated in the rare opportunities to enjoy brief spells of negative space; I savoured it like one of those FMV steaks. I'd kill for more moments like the arbor or the battleground where I was able to inhabit the world as a pilgrim or wanderer rather than serial wolf slaughterer or battahl sanitation expert, but they're very few and far between
there's no escaping the impenetrable walls of goblins, wolves, harpies, and saurians polluting every inch of the world. the already slender DD bestiary's been ported over nearly 1:1 with about as many additions as subtractions, and between the absurd density and massive landmass the variety ends up looking and feeling significantly worse than it did when it was first pilloried twelve years ago in a notoriously incomplete game
when the Big Moments do happen they're often spectacular, and it's easy to see why the chaotic intersection of AI, systems, and mechanics was prioritized so heavily and centered as the focal point of the entire experience. early on every bridge that breaks behind you, every ogre leaping from city walls, and every gryphon that crushes your ox cart feels huge and spellbinding; the game's at its best when all the moving parts align just right to achieve dynamic simulacrum, leveraging unpredictability to carry encounters well above their station
where that stuff loses me most is in the complete lack of friction. for a game with so many well considered means of drawing tension out of discovery it manages to render most of them meaningless when you're never being properly threatened enough to let them kick in. camping, eating, crafting, consumables, ambushes, and setpieces all take a significant blow from the chronic lack of bite, and it's frustrating to see so much potential go to waste when everything's already set up unbelievably well for success
even if you choose to go it alone, or do as I did and run with a party of two (ida + ozma: wily beastren + weakest creature), it only does so much when every corner of the map has CAPCOM Co., Ltd superpawns and npcs popping out of the ground to aid you unbidden and monsters are all mâché sculptures begging to be stunlocked. where's hard mode? why does it feel like everything DDDA did right got ignored? we just don't know
I'd have been happy if the game yanked a bit of control back with some kinda endgame/post-game dungeon, but there isn't one; there aren't really dungeons in general. in opting for quantity (50+!!) over quality we end up with none of them feeling particularly curated, and none of them having the scope or menace of the everfall, let alone bitterblack. no ur-dragon either, which is just baffling. the entire run from endgame to post-game is a gaping hole where something oughta be but certainly isn't
when I hit credits I felt almost confused, like I'd just been tricked into playing a remake or reboot of the original dragon's dogma that somehow had less material stretched even thinner. I enjoyed what I played for the most part, but the more thought I put into it the more it feels compromised and unfinished in all the exact ways itsuno promised over and over it wouldn't be this time around
there's a lot to love here: stuff like fucked up modular teeth, the sphinx, seeker coin platforming, pawn bullshitting, the dragonsplague, cyclops ragdolls, opaque sidequests, intentional tedium, and routinely bizarre interactions. much of what was good in the past remains good, and even bits that stumble backward generally land someplace close to decent regardless. some of the vocation/gear downgrades aren't to my liking, and there's an odd shallowness that hangs over the experience, but I think I liked it?
I just don't really get it
likewise I love the idea of elaborating on the sense of traversal and moving toward a holistic spirit of adventure. deteriorating health ceilings aid attrition and help answer the inherent slime of menu heals, and having campfire rests operate as something of a risk/reward mechanism goes a long way toward giving each journey a greater heft and substance
even something as transparently gamey as designing the map as a network of funnels and chokepoints stippled with smaller threats and crosshatched with bigger ones was very clever; it's all just nouns crashing against nouns as they fire down chutes, but when coupled with the meaty physicality of the game's interactivity it goes a long way toward building up those Big Moments
but the consequence of trash mobs operating as speedbumps means moment-to-moment encounters operate more as filler than anything you could consider independently engaging scenarios. it also means that despite the map being several times larger than gransys it ends up feeling a lot more suffocating due to all the overlapping nouns slamming and interrupting each other without end
I just about luxuriated in the rare opportunities to enjoy brief spells of negative space; I savoured it like one of those FMV steaks. I'd kill for more moments like the arbor or the battleground where I was able to inhabit the world as a pilgrim or wanderer rather than serial wolf slaughterer or battahl sanitation expert, but they're very few and far between
there's no escaping the impenetrable walls of goblins, wolves, harpies, and saurians polluting every inch of the world. the already slender DD bestiary's been ported over nearly 1:1 with about as many additions as subtractions, and between the absurd density and massive landmass the variety ends up looking and feeling significantly worse than it did when it was first pilloried twelve years ago in a notoriously incomplete game
when the Big Moments do happen they're often spectacular, and it's easy to see why the chaotic intersection of AI, systems, and mechanics was prioritized so heavily and centered as the focal point of the entire experience. early on every bridge that breaks behind you, every ogre leaping from city walls, and every gryphon that crushes your ox cart feels huge and spellbinding; the game's at its best when all the moving parts align just right to achieve dynamic simulacrum, leveraging unpredictability to carry encounters well above their station
where that stuff loses me most is in the complete lack of friction. for a game with so many well considered means of drawing tension out of discovery it manages to render most of them meaningless when you're never being properly threatened enough to let them kick in. camping, eating, crafting, consumables, ambushes, and setpieces all take a significant blow from the chronic lack of bite, and it's frustrating to see so much potential go to waste when everything's already set up unbelievably well for success
even if you choose to go it alone, or do as I did and run with a party of two (ida + ozma: wily beastren + weakest creature), it only does so much when every corner of the map has CAPCOM Co., Ltd superpawns and npcs popping out of the ground to aid you unbidden and monsters are all mâché sculptures begging to be stunlocked. where's hard mode? why does it feel like everything DDDA did right got ignored? we just don't know
I'd have been happy if the game yanked a bit of control back with some kinda endgame/post-game dungeon, but there isn't one; there aren't really dungeons in general. in opting for quantity (50+!!) over quality we end up with none of them feeling particularly curated, and none of them having the scope or menace of the everfall, let alone bitterblack. no ur-dragon either, which is just baffling. the entire run from endgame to post-game is a gaping hole where something oughta be but certainly isn't
when I hit credits I felt almost confused, like I'd just been tricked into playing a remake or reboot of the original dragon's dogma that somehow had less material stretched even thinner. I enjoyed what I played for the most part, but the more thought I put into it the more it feels compromised and unfinished in all the exact ways itsuno promised over and over it wouldn't be this time around
there's a lot to love here: stuff like fucked up modular teeth, the sphinx, seeker coin platforming, pawn bullshitting, the dragonsplague, cyclops ragdolls, opaque sidequests, intentional tedium, and routinely bizarre interactions. much of what was good in the past remains good, and even bits that stumble backward generally land someplace close to decent regardless. some of the vocation/gear downgrades aren't to my liking, and there's an odd shallowness that hangs over the experience, but I think I liked it?
I just don't really get it
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 its weird and rare nature.
However it must be said that I hate these characters and their side quests and Im glad half of them are sitting in the NPC Lost And Found (the morgue). I would have liked a slightly less vast open world full of nothing but caves and aged beast skags, but I had the most fun carrying pots down ancient cliff faces than I did trying to council Hugo on how to live his life after being a bandit patsy (with that council being "Ill throw you off the cliff myself")
However it must be said that I hate these characters and their side quests and Im glad half of them are sitting in the NPC Lost And Found (the morgue). I would have liked a slightly less vast open world full of nothing but caves and aged beast skags, but I had the most fun carrying pots down ancient cliff faces than I did trying to council Hugo on how to live his life after being a bandit patsy (with that council being "Ill throw you off the cliff myself")
when im in a worst dlc competition and Dragon's Dogma 2: Portcrystal - Warp Location Marker walks in
there's something unimaginably beautiful about games that feel just like when i'm really tired with a drawing and i just decide to do whatever and put it out into the world, then i see so many wrong things with it that could have been fixed with time but then again i'm very tired so in no way i'm touching it again. makes me think how human work will forever be valuable, we're able to develop apathy for imperfections due to fatigue and that's honestly beautiful.
excluding the obvious deadline constraints the team had to put up with, this kind of ambitious, large scale, unpredictable, weird, aggravating, difficult, time consuming, tiring, agressive, livable world barely has any space in the sanitized UX focused world but yet here we are, yet after all the misinformation efforts by 20 year-certified dumbass Stephanie Sterling here we are experiencing what is probably one of the most feverish mainstream gaming efforts done by a big studio in the last decade. this is probably the most important game Capcom has released in a lot of years and i'm all here for it, because if you play the game you end up realizing the boxart is extremely funny and there are simply no other games that do this kind of thing anymore. like, my bf missed seeing a major scene with a character around the last part of the game because he never got any of the optional quests involving him how is this not pure art.
also gotta love the genre of games that you could easily swap a "thank you for playing" at the end with "fuck you for playing!!" and it would still make perfect sense. they're dear in my heart and i will protect them always
excluding the obvious deadline constraints the team had to put up with, this kind of ambitious, large scale, unpredictable, weird, aggravating, difficult, time consuming, tiring, agressive, livable world barely has any space in the sanitized UX focused world but yet here we are, yet after all the misinformation efforts by 20 year-certified dumbass Stephanie Sterling here we are experiencing what is probably one of the most feverish mainstream gaming efforts done by a big studio in the last decade. this is probably the most important game Capcom has released in a lot of years and i'm all here for it, because if you play the game you end up realizing the boxart is extremely funny and there are simply no other games that do this kind of thing anymore. like, my bf missed seeing a major scene with a character around the last part of the game because he never got any of the optional quests involving him how is this not pure art.
also gotta love the genre of games that you could easily swap a "thank you for playing" at the end with "fuck you for playing!!" and it would still make perfect sense. they're dear in my heart and i will protect them always
70€ single player game + denuvo + mtx + atrocious perfomance + crashes
I've waited 12 years for this. I'm tired, boss. I'm tired of people defending all this shit.
Also, if you don't see how these mtx and the performance issues are two facets of the same issues, you're hopeless. They are both born of the same greed. They cut corners in optimisation and testing, resulting in the crap performance issues, due to the same greed that makes them milk idiots for mtx.
I've waited 12 years for this. I'm tired, boss. I'm tired of people defending all this shit.
Also, if you don't see how these mtx and the performance issues are two facets of the same issues, you're hopeless. They are both born of the same greed. They cut corners in optimisation and testing, resulting in the crap performance issues, due to the same greed that makes them milk idiots for mtx.
Dragons Dogma 2 feels like the world I used to imagine while reading fantasy books as a kid. The cozy open world freedom combined with fantastic combat & an addictive loot/ upgrade system. Going off the deep end in post-game to divine other worldly levels alongside some superb dungeon crawling encounters. It's got a much nicer after taste than other superb but frontloaded RPGs. There’s something about the atmosphere of Dragons Dogma, the perfect darkness, the physical things, such as having to use a lantern after nightfall or getting hit with shock DMG if soaked in water, the wizards and warriors casting a skill for almost 30 seconds straight... it just feels very real & old school. Going on a quest at sundown, surviving a hard fought night, watching the sun come up as you reach the final destination. DD2 might have best magic system in any rpg , prolly the most visually appealing magic in video games, the melee combat is also great. Basically it's a setting I like and the combat seemed like a more appealing dark souls. One of my all time favorites, if not the favorite RPG. The pawn system as a party shtick that I love in stuff like Goblin slayer and berserk & other peak fantasy media. Long hands give + attack range with swords, heavy characters are knocked around less & can pin down enemies (large/small), small characters consume less stamina when climbing enemies, long legs gives +movement speed, etc. so peak. Rant over. Play Dragonsdogma
I wonder if they even know what they did. You know who. That anonymous lower-level business advisory manager who worked at EA between 2017 and 2018. Watched what happened with No Man's Sky and Battlefront 2. Crunched the numbers, surveyed the right people, did the appropriate market research, and found out that most disturbing of truths our artform will likely never fully recover from. They figured out it's financially optimal to release a game before completion. Sure, some equations needed to be done to figure out the appropriate balance between the release date and pre-orders and on release performance and how long the game has been in development and how much marketing expenditure has gone into the release cycle and the estimated time before it's in a state considered 'good' by the populous, but the conclusion is there, and will never go away. Cyberpunk proved it even further. You can have two different 'release' hype cycles around your game, and still leave people with a good taste in their mouths, excited for more, even if you rush it out the door. It's just good business. I wonder if this person knew the damage they'd be dealing. Did it trouble them at all? Did they toss and turn a little before deciding to tell their higher-ups? Or did they not even think twice? We'll never know.
This is far from an egregious example of such. Shoddy and inconsistent frame rates and pop-in are the norm for many of our lazier AAA games, it's telling the completely stock-standard 21st Century Capcom in-app purchases are getting more of the press. People are numb to it, I am usually! In the truest essence of the human experience, I'm only so upset this time because it happened to me. I genuinely really want to play this game, it looks excellent, a truly distinct and singularly innovative piece of art. One of those rare things that can be described as 'next-gen' in a complimentary sense. So what do I even do? Do I simply purchase an unfinished product and support the active malpractice occurring here? I can't do that. Do I fall for the obvious 'second release' model and buy it when they finish it? I feel like I'm supporting the continuation of this practice if I do. Do I never buy the game? This is ethically the right call, but am I supposed to forever deprive myself of engaging with the work of artists I love because the system they work within is so awful? I don't know. The only easy answer is piracy, which in 2024 is both actively illegal and the only moral way to engage with a large proportion of all video games ever released. It's so depressing to genuinely adore the whizbang technical exploration of mega-budget pop art when 90% of current examples of such are visually miserable superhero movies and legitimately unfinished open world junk. This should be neither of those things, yet the circumstances of its release make me feel just as deflated. It's a cruel world out there sometimes.
This is far from an egregious example of such. Shoddy and inconsistent frame rates and pop-in are the norm for many of our lazier AAA games, it's telling the completely stock-standard 21st Century Capcom in-app purchases are getting more of the press. People are numb to it, I am usually! In the truest essence of the human experience, I'm only so upset this time because it happened to me. I genuinely really want to play this game, it looks excellent, a truly distinct and singularly innovative piece of art. One of those rare things that can be described as 'next-gen' in a complimentary sense. So what do I even do? Do I simply purchase an unfinished product and support the active malpractice occurring here? I can't do that. Do I fall for the obvious 'second release' model and buy it when they finish it? I feel like I'm supporting the continuation of this practice if I do. Do I never buy the game? This is ethically the right call, but am I supposed to forever deprive myself of engaging with the work of artists I love because the system they work within is so awful? I don't know. The only easy answer is piracy, which in 2024 is both actively illegal and the only moral way to engage with a large proportion of all video games ever released. It's so depressing to genuinely adore the whizbang technical exploration of mega-budget pop art when 90% of current examples of such are visually miserable superhero movies and legitimately unfinished open world junk. This should be neither of those things, yet the circumstances of its release make me feel just as deflated. It's a cruel world out there sometimes.
I've never been the biggest fan of the first Dragons Dogma game. Tbh. I never finished the game yet I still deciced to play the second one. I overall enjoyed Dragons Dogma 2 but I do think it has some major flaws and no I'm not talking about the microtransactions. Because for everyone who has lived under a rock, Capcom has done this for years and never anyone complained. Not for Monster Hunter World and not for Resident Evil 4 Remake. And why even would I buy mtx to ruin the experience that the developers had intended. Anyway this out of the way, I like the character creator and it's probably one of the most detailed ones I've seen in recent years. The climbing monsters was also fun and it reminded me of games like Shadow of the Colossus. I liked that your Main-Pawn has their own voice, it gives you the feeling that your Main-Pawn is an actual side character. But that the character of the Pawns is just not there. Because they keep saying the same lines over and over again and the dialogue is boring bin general. The problem comes with the core gameplay loop itself. Most of the quests are Fetch-Quest which maybe was intentional because selling point of Dragons Dogma 2 is the traveling that you do during the quests, almost like on a roadtrip where the journey is the goal. The side activities are also useless, you can buy everyone a round of beer or go to the local fun house. What does it do? Nothing, no buffs and no rewards. When I pay 20.000 gold to sleep with someone than I at least what a cool cutscene but no there is nothing.
Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno said that "the traveling is only boring when your game is boring" and I agree but the problem with Dragons Dogma 2 is that the gameplay loop gets indeed boring fast. Because you have these dynamic encounters during your travels between cities where you have to fight Orcs or Ogre. At first fighting them is fun but the more I play the more I noticed that I mostly fought the same enemies at the same locations over and over again. The result is that the fighting gets repetitive very quick and the time between fighting one horde of orcs and the next one was often very small. What did I do ? I told my pawns to wait somewhere and then ran past all of the dynamic encounters. So the core gameplay loop is boring, the characters and quest aren't memorable at all because the dialogues mostly consist out of pressing "next" and in the whole game there were maybe two opportunities to choose your answer. Since the dialogue system is rather shallow, the romancing feels also very trivial. Same can be said about the housing, you can buy 2 houses but you can't customize them. They are only there for you to rest and customization in general isn't a big part of the game. Armor is locked to the vocations which means "Fashion Souls" is not possible. This may not be a problem for some people but I'm just a sucker for customizing stuff and it's a missed opportunity in my opinion. A good example is probably the fight against the Dragon Endboss. It kidnaps a character that supposed to be Important to your character based on affinity. The problem is that there is no way for you to tell how high the affinity between your character and the NPC is. Which lead to a hilarious situation where I thought I was romancing Doireann and expected the Dragon to take her hostage but instead that stupid Lizard took her brother for whom I did like two quests. So the Dragon Endboss took a character hostage that I didn't care about and then gave me the decision to fight him or just walk away. I decided to just walk away and got one of the most underwhelming endings in recent years. This just showed that the story and characters are extremly boring and there aren't really any main-characters. The while storyline with the false Arisen also didn't get resolve at the end. So after that I reloaded my save file, fought the Dragon and got an ending almost identical to the first one. Which disappointed quite a bit and is reminiscent for the rest of the game. Because Dragons Dogma 2 is overall a rather disappointing game with gameplay mechanics that feel rather shallow like the romancing, housing, activities or the dialogues and a core gameplay loop that gets annonying fast. As said before the story and characters aren't there. All of them are really shallow or have like 2 lines of dialogue. But I liked that the game creates situations that are different for every player s and which you will tell your friends about, similar like Elden Ring did. Like when the first Dragon I was about to beat deciced to jump into the water and got itself eaten by those hentai noodles. I can still recommend the game in some form because you can have fun with it but sadly most of the mechanics lack depth, story, characters and quests are nothing memorable. I know there is a "secret" ending but I did not care at the end. This results in a game that's mediocre at best.
Games I finished in 2024 Ranked
Dragon's Dogma 2 director Hideaki Itsuno said that "the traveling is only boring when your game is boring" and I agree but the problem with Dragons Dogma 2 is that the gameplay loop gets indeed boring fast. Because you have these dynamic encounters during your travels between cities where you have to fight Orcs or Ogre. At first fighting them is fun but the more I play the more I noticed that I mostly fought the same enemies at the same locations over and over again. The result is that the fighting gets repetitive very quick and the time between fighting one horde of orcs and the next one was often very small. What did I do ? I told my pawns to wait somewhere and then ran past all of the dynamic encounters. So the core gameplay loop is boring, the characters and quest aren't memorable at all because the dialogues mostly consist out of pressing "next" and in the whole game there were maybe two opportunities to choose your answer. Since the dialogue system is rather shallow, the romancing feels also very trivial. Same can be said about the housing, you can buy 2 houses but you can't customize them. They are only there for you to rest and customization in general isn't a big part of the game. Armor is locked to the vocations which means "Fashion Souls" is not possible. This may not be a problem for some people but I'm just a sucker for customizing stuff and it's a missed opportunity in my opinion. A good example is probably the fight against the Dragon Endboss. It kidnaps a character that supposed to be Important to your character based on affinity. The problem is that there is no way for you to tell how high the affinity between your character and the NPC is. Which lead to a hilarious situation where I thought I was romancing Doireann and expected the Dragon to take her hostage but instead that stupid Lizard took her brother for whom I did like two quests. So the Dragon Endboss took a character hostage that I didn't care about and then gave me the decision to fight him or just walk away. I decided to just walk away and got one of the most underwhelming endings in recent years. This just showed that the story and characters are extremly boring and there aren't really any main-characters. The while storyline with the false Arisen also didn't get resolve at the end. So after that I reloaded my save file, fought the Dragon and got an ending almost identical to the first one. Which disappointed quite a bit and is reminiscent for the rest of the game. Because Dragons Dogma 2 is overall a rather disappointing game with gameplay mechanics that feel rather shallow like the romancing, housing, activities or the dialogues and a core gameplay loop that gets annonying fast. As said before the story and characters aren't there. All of them are really shallow or have like 2 lines of dialogue. But I liked that the game creates situations that are different for every player s and which you will tell your friends about, similar like Elden Ring did. Like when the first Dragon I was about to beat deciced to jump into the water and got itself eaten by those hentai noodles. I can still recommend the game in some form because you can have fun with it but sadly most of the mechanics lack depth, story, characters and quests are nothing memorable. I know there is a "secret" ending but I did not care at the end. This results in a game that's mediocre at best.
Games I finished in 2024 Ranked
Feels more like a solid remake or a Dragons Dogma 1.5 than a sequel. It's more of the same which can be a good or bad thing depending on your expectations. For example, if you're expecting plenty of new enemy types, bosses or drastic changes to gameplay systems (like improved Pawn AI) compared to the first game that's really not here.
It's mostly the same game as Dragons Dogma 1 base game but bigger. The focus of the game is clearly on a general open world experience with fun to control player classes. There is very little on the side of tight combat focused dungeons like Bitterblack Isle (DD1 Dark Arisen expansion).
The combat and party management is still fun make no mistake, but it's definitely on the side of a power trip game where the player character grows powerful quickly (both statistically and mechanically) but enemies do not improve to match.
The variety of enemy encounters seems like one of the weakest points of the game. It's a sequel but 90% of the enemies you face are things you might already know from DD1. The bulk of enemies are trash mob level goblins, bandits and saurians which have 4-5 recolors based on how far you are in the game. But the way you fight them is exactly the same. It's not like they gain some threatening new attack or AI behavior, so going back to the first area to fight the same enemy class feels much the same.
I think this is a big loss since the core combat does feel good but the enemies really blur together and by the end of the game you might just be doing the same attack sequences and not care about what enemy you're fighting.
The difficulty level is low and XP gain from enemies scales very little; a mid-tier enemy like a Cyclops gives 1/3 the XP of an endgame boss. Exploring the map thoroughly will have you get overleveled for the main story quests quickly even if you don't intend to.
If you're looking for a challenging action RPG dungeon crawling experience like Bitterblack Isle or just lots of new enemies to face and new gameplay systems compared to DD1 that's not in DD2, at least on release.
It's mostly the same game as Dragons Dogma 1 base game but bigger. The focus of the game is clearly on a general open world experience with fun to control player classes. There is very little on the side of tight combat focused dungeons like Bitterblack Isle (DD1 Dark Arisen expansion).
The combat and party management is still fun make no mistake, but it's definitely on the side of a power trip game where the player character grows powerful quickly (both statistically and mechanically) but enemies do not improve to match.
The variety of enemy encounters seems like one of the weakest points of the game. It's a sequel but 90% of the enemies you face are things you might already know from DD1. The bulk of enemies are trash mob level goblins, bandits and saurians which have 4-5 recolors based on how far you are in the game. But the way you fight them is exactly the same. It's not like they gain some threatening new attack or AI behavior, so going back to the first area to fight the same enemy class feels much the same.
I think this is a big loss since the core combat does feel good but the enemies really blur together and by the end of the game you might just be doing the same attack sequences and not care about what enemy you're fighting.
The difficulty level is low and XP gain from enemies scales very little; a mid-tier enemy like a Cyclops gives 1/3 the XP of an endgame boss. Exploring the map thoroughly will have you get overleveled for the main story quests quickly even if you don't intend to.
If you're looking for a challenging action RPG dungeon crawling experience like Bitterblack Isle or just lots of new enemies to face and new gameplay systems compared to DD1 that's not in DD2, at least on release.
I'm not done the game yet or anything, but I've done the main quest and a bunch of side quests, so I felt like writing up about it.
As much as I decently enjoyed dragons dogma 1 it was definitely an extremely annoying game with jank overload and just the most egregious traveling ever even though I was playing dark arisen I didn't even know the eternal ferrystone was a thing so most of it I was just playing normally. It has fine combat, but you get pretty busted pretty quick, and the game felt like it ended multiple times just to keep going.
This game very much ends a bit abruptly. Despite that, though, I enjoyed it a bit more being a more straightforward boss rather than a script fest. Dragons Dogma 2 has some great gameplay with a great sense of exploration. I know that people will dog on the enemy variety and how often you'll find hobgoblins, harpies, or bandits, yet I find the enemy variety to be quite good since they offer different changes to your playstyle. (I'm especially glad there's no evil eye) I hope this game reaches the group that finds games nowadays to be boring or the people who think devs don't make more bold games anymore.
Overall, I think this game shouldn't exist in a good way. I'm glad we got it even with its performance issues and use of microtransactions (which are extremely tame for microtransactions and the first game already used). I think it's worth playing, and there's a lot of secret substories you probably wouldn't know about and secret bosses you wouldn't find just doing the main story. Like the first game, there's way more to it than just killing the dragon. I recommend it.
As much as I decently enjoyed dragons dogma 1 it was definitely an extremely annoying game with jank overload and just the most egregious traveling ever even though I was playing dark arisen I didn't even know the eternal ferrystone was a thing so most of it I was just playing normally. It has fine combat, but you get pretty busted pretty quick, and the game felt like it ended multiple times just to keep going.
This game very much ends a bit abruptly. Despite that, though, I enjoyed it a bit more being a more straightforward boss rather than a script fest. Dragons Dogma 2 has some great gameplay with a great sense of exploration. I know that people will dog on the enemy variety and how often you'll find hobgoblins, harpies, or bandits, yet I find the enemy variety to be quite good since they offer different changes to your playstyle. (I'm especially glad there's no evil eye) I hope this game reaches the group that finds games nowadays to be boring or the people who think devs don't make more bold games anymore.
Overall, I think this game shouldn't exist in a good way. I'm glad we got it even with its performance issues and use of microtransactions (which are extremely tame for microtransactions and the first game already used). I think it's worth playing, and there's a lot of secret substories you probably wouldn't know about and secret bosses you wouldn't find just doing the main story. Like the first game, there's way more to it than just killing the dragon. I recommend it.
This review contains spoilers
Not as conflicted but very confused for sure!
Dragon's Dogma II holds the same essence twelve years later on that defined its predecessor and took me by surprise with how compelling and unique I found the overall experience to be for an open world (action) rpg. Exploring the new world is thriving both on foot and on the new ox carts while sitting back and taking in the quiet and dense scenery until an ogre or another presence interrupts the tranquility, even with the threat of destroying the cart and forcing the trek back on foot. Camping and the loss gauge are fresh additions that add up the attrition of the adventure and channel the tension that is baked in to its core design. The pawns themselves are as strange as they were before and still manage to surprise me with all that they can do and lead me to through the open world.
The open world was a slight concern given the bigger size and presence of two nations (Vermund and Battahl) this time around, despite Gransys being a memorable locale ignoring the recycled enemies and lacking diverse environmental and town detail. Vermund itself feels like Gransys with even more of a budget and careful hand behind it with a sizable number of hidden platforming parts and uneven flourishes to drive careful travel and ambush opportunities for enemies or the party. What's striking is the amount of verticality and elevation pumped in with lots of cliffs, mountains, gorges and so many damn bridges decorating the landscape, not just inviting curiosity of what's there but in adding subtle tension and strategy with enemy encounters. This might have been just a me thing, but I felt anxious in encounters where these possibilities were so clear and the consequences even more perilous if I was already struggling to get to a safe spot nearby. Interesting standoffs aren’t the only star of the show as the world contains a balanced amount of points of interest that either I or my pawns noticed and diverted me from the main path towards. While mileage may depend on what the discoveries amount to, the world design feels paced well with a good amount of interesting pathways and rewards, along with the randomness that prevents progressing and backtracking from becoming a mindless chore of running forward for x amount of time to reach a town or space. I still desire for way more towns to scale and run around in as they are still few and far between, though with the performance issues in Vernworth it might be for the best.
While the sequel does great work in making the world feel interesting and alive, the exploration and magic of it all doesn’t hide the more glaring problems present as the hours drag on. What makes DDII fall short for me is this whole feeling of unfinishedness that seeps throughout the experience, even though much discussion of this game revolved around it finally executing the vision that the original didn’t meet because of how rushed it was like the main narrative. The first game's main campaign was very short and forgettable that a part of me wondered if the sequel would add more meat and grip this time around. It has a promising start unraveling the conspiracy at the capital surrounding the Arisen, but falls victim to being front loaded with run of the mill main quests, and the pacing and intrigue of the plot falls to the wayside a good amount through Battahl and doesn’t really recover going forward. The side quests and the paths to discover and complete them are once again the more intriguing part of the journey where I was thoroughly invested in DD2's world, but it’s a weird blemish considering the first game’s attempt and the sequel’s gesturing towards something grander, even in the interviews from Itsuno and other developers themselves! It almost feels intentional. Even the beloved system is still as underdeveloped and aggressively heterosexual as before and you can only romance two women who aren’t given a ton of screen time in the story.
Enemy variety is somehow still dull as the first but the density exacerbates it to be in a way worse form than originally. Given the scale of the world, enemies are sprinkled absolutely everywhere with very little change across regions and it becomes tedious and grating with how much it interrupts the world traversal for another squad of goblins, another ogre, another set of wolves, another group of bandits, another… While the combat itself saves them from becoming full on monotonous trash mobs, the lack of escalating challenge and diversity of foes (color swapping enemies doesn’t fare much difference) doesn’t alleviate the issue. Even the more rare foes feel less visceral; I was taken aback by how “normal” the first encounters with the drakes and Medusa were that I thought I did something wrong…but at least there's dungeons to look forward to?
DD1 didn't sport the most amazing set of dungeons but I can recall a handful of memorable ones based on story reasons but also the light puzzle elements with the combat in making the spaces like the catacombs feel important in the world. DD2 isn’t without a few that host unique interactions like Dragonsbreath Tower, but across the board it somehow messes this up with a lack of meaty dungeons to dive into, and instead there are like 50+ caves seemingly copy and pasted with very similar, rote layouts, rewards and enemies. This has been driving me mad especially since so much care has went into crafting the outer lands, but these spaces feels so lacking and substance-less for no reason other than to possible fill in more space. Did the budget and time run out here or was there not much of a mind to do them this time around?
Much of the discourse around this game, outside of the tacked on MTX, is the frictional nature that DD2 drenches itself in and commits to. It doesn’t feel too uncommon from the reactions to Armored Core VI last year on release despite the legacy of FromSoft and their game philosophies, but worthless MTX has made it even more insufferable and disingenuous to sift through. A part of me is glad that something like DD2 exists and is pretty popular despite the blowback to making features feel less mindless than the standard fare in other AAA titles. On the other hand, I feel that this game could have went even harder than it actually is when it comes to “friction” everyone talks about. It manifests mostly in the open world traversal and how quests are achieved and play out, but generally it doesn’t go hard enough without an additional higher level difficulty option being available, which I guess will come later down the road at some point but I’m just left with a lot of questions.
Dragon's Dogma II is such a strange experience going in with the first one impressing me so much even with much being left on the cutting room floor. I'm not as miffed as others are about this, and yet I can't but feel a little disappointed with what's here despite still enjoying the main gameplay loop outside of the main story. The microtransactions become such a small issue when staring down at the more structural problems that are actually hard to ignore in DD2 and drag down the experience. 12 years later and Dragon’s Dogma still feels haunted by the spector of missed potential of a grander journey that it suggests but hasn’t really accomplished, and I suppose some expansion will be a thing at some point to address that but it’s just so tired. There's still so much I love here and will be coming back to, but I can't really kick the "that's it?" feeling at this point with this game that’s been in the making for quite awhile. Weirdly leaves me feeling like how I felt about Tears of the Kingdom last year, but I don't feel cold on DD2, at least yet.
Dragon's Dogma II holds the same essence twelve years later on that defined its predecessor and took me by surprise with how compelling and unique I found the overall experience to be for an open world (action) rpg. Exploring the new world is thriving both on foot and on the new ox carts while sitting back and taking in the quiet and dense scenery until an ogre or another presence interrupts the tranquility, even with the threat of destroying the cart and forcing the trek back on foot. Camping and the loss gauge are fresh additions that add up the attrition of the adventure and channel the tension that is baked in to its core design. The pawns themselves are as strange as they were before and still manage to surprise me with all that they can do and lead me to through the open world.
The open world was a slight concern given the bigger size and presence of two nations (Vermund and Battahl) this time around, despite Gransys being a memorable locale ignoring the recycled enemies and lacking diverse environmental and town detail. Vermund itself feels like Gransys with even more of a budget and careful hand behind it with a sizable number of hidden platforming parts and uneven flourishes to drive careful travel and ambush opportunities for enemies or the party. What's striking is the amount of verticality and elevation pumped in with lots of cliffs, mountains, gorges and so many damn bridges decorating the landscape, not just inviting curiosity of what's there but in adding subtle tension and strategy with enemy encounters. This might have been just a me thing, but I felt anxious in encounters where these possibilities were so clear and the consequences even more perilous if I was already struggling to get to a safe spot nearby. Interesting standoffs aren’t the only star of the show as the world contains a balanced amount of points of interest that either I or my pawns noticed and diverted me from the main path towards. While mileage may depend on what the discoveries amount to, the world design feels paced well with a good amount of interesting pathways and rewards, along with the randomness that prevents progressing and backtracking from becoming a mindless chore of running forward for x amount of time to reach a town or space. I still desire for way more towns to scale and run around in as they are still few and far between, though with the performance issues in Vernworth it might be for the best.
While the sequel does great work in making the world feel interesting and alive, the exploration and magic of it all doesn’t hide the more glaring problems present as the hours drag on. What makes DDII fall short for me is this whole feeling of unfinishedness that seeps throughout the experience, even though much discussion of this game revolved around it finally executing the vision that the original didn’t meet because of how rushed it was like the main narrative. The first game's main campaign was very short and forgettable that a part of me wondered if the sequel would add more meat and grip this time around. It has a promising start unraveling the conspiracy at the capital surrounding the Arisen, but falls victim to being front loaded with run of the mill main quests, and the pacing and intrigue of the plot falls to the wayside a good amount through Battahl and doesn’t really recover going forward. The side quests and the paths to discover and complete them are once again the more intriguing part of the journey where I was thoroughly invested in DD2's world, but it’s a weird blemish considering the first game’s attempt and the sequel’s gesturing towards something grander, even in the interviews from Itsuno and other developers themselves! It almost feels intentional. Even the beloved system is still as underdeveloped and aggressively heterosexual as before and you can only romance two women who aren’t given a ton of screen time in the story.
Enemy variety is somehow still dull as the first but the density exacerbates it to be in a way worse form than originally. Given the scale of the world, enemies are sprinkled absolutely everywhere with very little change across regions and it becomes tedious and grating with how much it interrupts the world traversal for another squad of goblins, another ogre, another set of wolves, another group of bandits, another… While the combat itself saves them from becoming full on monotonous trash mobs, the lack of escalating challenge and diversity of foes (color swapping enemies doesn’t fare much difference) doesn’t alleviate the issue. Even the more rare foes feel less visceral; I was taken aback by how “normal” the first encounters with the drakes and Medusa were that I thought I did something wrong…but at least there's dungeons to look forward to?
DD1 didn't sport the most amazing set of dungeons but I can recall a handful of memorable ones based on story reasons but also the light puzzle elements with the combat in making the spaces like the catacombs feel important in the world. DD2 isn’t without a few that host unique interactions like Dragonsbreath Tower, but across the board it somehow messes this up with a lack of meaty dungeons to dive into, and instead there are like 50+ caves seemingly copy and pasted with very similar, rote layouts, rewards and enemies. This has been driving me mad especially since so much care has went into crafting the outer lands, but these spaces feels so lacking and substance-less for no reason other than to possible fill in more space. Did the budget and time run out here or was there not much of a mind to do them this time around?
Much of the discourse around this game, outside of the tacked on MTX, is the frictional nature that DD2 drenches itself in and commits to. It doesn’t feel too uncommon from the reactions to Armored Core VI last year on release despite the legacy of FromSoft and their game philosophies, but worthless MTX has made it even more insufferable and disingenuous to sift through. A part of me is glad that something like DD2 exists and is pretty popular despite the blowback to making features feel less mindless than the standard fare in other AAA titles. On the other hand, I feel that this game could have went even harder than it actually is when it comes to “friction” everyone talks about. It manifests mostly in the open world traversal and how quests are achieved and play out, but generally it doesn’t go hard enough without an additional higher level difficulty option being available, which I guess will come later down the road at some point but I’m just left with a lot of questions.
Dragon's Dogma II is such a strange experience going in with the first one impressing me so much even with much being left on the cutting room floor. I'm not as miffed as others are about this, and yet I can't but feel a little disappointed with what's here despite still enjoying the main gameplay loop outside of the main story. The microtransactions become such a small issue when staring down at the more structural problems that are actually hard to ignore in DD2 and drag down the experience. 12 years later and Dragon’s Dogma still feels haunted by the spector of missed potential of a grander journey that it suggests but hasn’t really accomplished, and I suppose some expansion will be a thing at some point to address that but it’s just so tired. There's still so much I love here and will be coming back to, but I can't really kick the "that's it?" feeling at this point with this game that’s been in the making for quite awhile. Weirdly leaves me feeling like how I felt about Tears of the Kingdom last year, but I don't feel cold on DD2, at least yet.
Getting filtered by this game is a sign that your bloodline is weak and should refrain from touching video games for the rest of your life
Chock full of all the growing pains and nagging annoyances of both the title that preceded it as well as that of the open world genre at large, DDII offers a satisfying moment to moment exploration experience and a fulfilling conclusion only earnt after a poorly structured main story quest. Familiar narrative elements line your path like markers illuminating the way forward as this title exists as a simultaneous remake and sequel; there is a Dragon who threatens a far away kingdom, there is an Arisen who must rise to His challenge, and there is a Pawn conjured of pure thought at their side, all as the infernal chain demands of this world. The unique roleplaying capabilities the Arisen storytelling model provides remains a captivating experience just as it did in the first entry, further explored with the underdog nature of this iteration's Arisen and their place of weakness as a victim of stolen valour, and once again the dynamic between master and Pawn invite many interpretations to the nature of their relationship beyond surface level character customisations available ingame.
A reader would note I place a lot of bearing on the narrative of the Dogma titles and it's because I see it as their strength, there's little I can constructively say about the vocation-based combat that hasn't already been said by those better written than I. Of course all games which allow character customisation to some capacity leave wriggle room for roleplay on the player's part, to explore regarding individual reactions to events and splinter canons or endings, and the Arisen/Pawn dynamic illustrates this potential stronger than other titles. It is purely because of DD's vagueities and space between major quests (especially utilising the breathing room of methodical travel) that allows one to fill in their own blanks and organically develop characteristics through gameplay.
I acknowledge mine is a special case as my sentimental tie to DD extends beyond mere rose tinted glasses or nostalgia. My family was homeless and hotel/sharehouse-hopping for an extended length of time during my teenage formative years, a period hazy even to myself as I still underestimate its effects on my current personhood and mental condition. It was a special and difficult circumstance in which my brother and I kept our heads down while my mother worked the hardest years in her life, and the video games I had the opportunity to play during this period endure as those closest to me: NieR, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dragon's Dogma. The destined heroism of the Arisen and having their fate so clearly etched into the very order of reality proved an escape from my own unmoored existence, kicking off the most artistically inspired years of my time drawing and seeing the creation of numerous individual original characters all brought to life from the same narrative device, their scribbled intricacies lost to sketchbooks long gone. DD was so much more than just a jank open world game to me then, it was where I first explored my own transgenderism without a prior outlet and where I could receive acknowledgement of my being alive from strangers across the Pawn network. I was here and existed, and I could aid others even if in an insignificant way.
I've yet to see a similar burst of unabashed creativity following this period not even seen during my exploration of FFXIV character development, and while DDII couldn't possibly foster a child's productivity in me, I feel the inkling of potential within once again. Yeah that one Nadinia quest bothered me, yes the pacing felt really off at times, yes the loss gauge is abysmally unfair, but it's more Dragon's Dogma. How could I not love it? Thank you to my partner for allowing me to use his PC with far better specifications than mine.
A reader would note I place a lot of bearing on the narrative of the Dogma titles and it's because I see it as their strength, there's little I can constructively say about the vocation-based combat that hasn't already been said by those better written than I. Of course all games which allow character customisation to some capacity leave wriggle room for roleplay on the player's part, to explore regarding individual reactions to events and splinter canons or endings, and the Arisen/Pawn dynamic illustrates this potential stronger than other titles. It is purely because of DD's vagueities and space between major quests (especially utilising the breathing room of methodical travel) that allows one to fill in their own blanks and organically develop characteristics through gameplay.
I acknowledge mine is a special case as my sentimental tie to DD extends beyond mere rose tinted glasses or nostalgia. My family was homeless and hotel/sharehouse-hopping for an extended length of time during my teenage formative years, a period hazy even to myself as I still underestimate its effects on my current personhood and mental condition. It was a special and difficult circumstance in which my brother and I kept our heads down while my mother worked the hardest years in her life, and the video games I had the opportunity to play during this period endure as those closest to me: NieR, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dragon's Dogma. The destined heroism of the Arisen and having their fate so clearly etched into the very order of reality proved an escape from my own unmoored existence, kicking off the most artistically inspired years of my time drawing and seeing the creation of numerous individual original characters all brought to life from the same narrative device, their scribbled intricacies lost to sketchbooks long gone. DD was so much more than just a jank open world game to me then, it was where I first explored my own transgenderism without a prior outlet and where I could receive acknowledgement of my being alive from strangers across the Pawn network. I was here and existed, and I could aid others even if in an insignificant way.
I've yet to see a similar burst of unabashed creativity following this period not even seen during my exploration of FFXIV character development, and while DDII couldn't possibly foster a child's productivity in me, I feel the inkling of potential within once again. Yeah that one Nadinia quest bothered me, yes the pacing felt really off at times, yes the loss gauge is abysmally unfair, but it's more Dragon's Dogma. How could I not love it? Thank you to my partner for allowing me to use his PC with far better specifications than mine.