Dragon's Dogma II is all rough edges - intended and otherwise. But as I marched through to its true ending, I came to navigate those the way I can navigate my parents' house in the dark. Sometimes I still stub my toe, but I not only understand all its intricacies but love them. I don't love DD2 despite its flaws, I love DD2 because of them. The game is janky, there are plenty of glitches, the story is weird, and half the time that I completed an objective or reached a goal, I felt like I broke something along the way. But I liked playing in that space and pushing it, figuring out how the game works and embracing where I, and it, fell short.
It doesn't feel like DD2 is a game full of oversights, it just feels like it's a beautifully game-y and authentic creation that has none of the polish that makes a lot of AAA games feel way too smooth. Whenever I had to fight against the controls when scaling a boss or wrestle with the camera, whenever I had to try and find a seemingly despawned NPC, I was intrigued by how I felt like I could see the game's gears turning, like I could see where their teeth didn't quite mesh. This is very subjective but to me I felt like a lot of the hiccups actually helped make the game feel more playable. Like I, and the developers at Capcom alike, would be surprised both intentionally and unintentionally around each corner.
Much has been made about the game's friction, and I think what works most for me about DD2 in this regard is just how dispassionately it treated me as a player. I could screw up questlines if I wanted to (and I did), I could get bodied by an enemy in one brutal hit (and I did several times). It really made the adventure's stakes feel higher, and I think that's part of why the jank was appealing here.
I specifically want to call attention to the geography - I loved how natural it felt. The idea of dispassionate design feels really clear here too, I don't have the typically game-y tools to bend the environment to my will, and it wasn't designed for the sake of convenience. It really felt like Capcom made a fantasy world with little care for how annoyingly tall its mountains would be, how frustratingly wide its rivers would be, how many times I'd get confused and have to consult my map, how many times I'd have to reroute when nature impeded my way. To me these are all positives. It all feels very organic.
Also the combat just rocks. I was playing as a thief and at a certain point DD2 just turned into an open-world character action game. I maxed this vocation out and just stuck with it - curating a set of weapon abilities that let me play this almost like Devil May Cry (Itsuno is one of the greatest to ever do it). Scaling massive bosses is just a perfect mechanic and idea, by the way. Despite the enemy density being way too high in some places I never got tired of the combat because it's just so much fun.
Ultimately, DD2 just let me explore at my own pace, dip into the main quest whenever I felt ready, and generally craft my own adventure, which I greatly appreciate. I felt a Breath of the Wild level of agency here, and that's a hard sentiment to recapture. Highest praise I can give DD2: I will definitely be starting a New Game+ sometime soon, and I never do that. Absolute highlight of 2024.
It doesn't feel like DD2 is a game full of oversights, it just feels like it's a beautifully game-y and authentic creation that has none of the polish that makes a lot of AAA games feel way too smooth. Whenever I had to fight against the controls when scaling a boss or wrestle with the camera, whenever I had to try and find a seemingly despawned NPC, I was intrigued by how I felt like I could see the game's gears turning, like I could see where their teeth didn't quite mesh. This is very subjective but to me I felt like a lot of the hiccups actually helped make the game feel more playable. Like I, and the developers at Capcom alike, would be surprised both intentionally and unintentionally around each corner.
Much has been made about the game's friction, and I think what works most for me about DD2 in this regard is just how dispassionately it treated me as a player. I could screw up questlines if I wanted to (and I did), I could get bodied by an enemy in one brutal hit (and I did several times). It really made the adventure's stakes feel higher, and I think that's part of why the jank was appealing here.
I specifically want to call attention to the geography - I loved how natural it felt. The idea of dispassionate design feels really clear here too, I don't have the typically game-y tools to bend the environment to my will, and it wasn't designed for the sake of convenience. It really felt like Capcom made a fantasy world with little care for how annoyingly tall its mountains would be, how frustratingly wide its rivers would be, how many times I'd get confused and have to consult my map, how many times I'd have to reroute when nature impeded my way. To me these are all positives. It all feels very organic.
Also the combat just rocks. I was playing as a thief and at a certain point DD2 just turned into an open-world character action game. I maxed this vocation out and just stuck with it - curating a set of weapon abilities that let me play this almost like Devil May Cry (Itsuno is one of the greatest to ever do it). Scaling massive bosses is just a perfect mechanic and idea, by the way. Despite the enemy density being way too high in some places I never got tired of the combat because it's just so much fun.
Ultimately, DD2 just let me explore at my own pace, dip into the main quest whenever I felt ready, and generally craft my own adventure, which I greatly appreciate. I felt a Breath of the Wild level of agency here, and that's a hard sentiment to recapture. Highest praise I can give DD2: I will definitely be starting a New Game+ sometime soon, and I never do that. Absolute highlight of 2024.