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.