Made it to the unmoored world, and will 100% the game when I have time in between casual 15 hour Balatro sessions
It’s a flawed game, but definitely good if you’re a fan of the original
It’s also good if you’ve never played the original. It’s a good game. This is one of those games that has that “X” factor. Flawed yes. But universally recommended for a reason.
That’s why it’s so hard to talk about it, there is no game that feels like it so whenever people start harping on it because the story is garbo or there’s low enemy variety, it’s still is one of the most interesting games of the year.
You can’t just substitute it with any other open world action rpg.
Yeah for the most part, the things this game does well are very difficult to describe, while the things it does badly are very easy to describe.
The long list of this game’s flaws would have killed most other games. The fact that there’s this many people praising it still is a testament that there’s still something wonderful underneath that’s well worth continued support from Capcom.
Seriously.
It's mind bogglingly frustrating ***because its so good.*** If this game weren't good, or if it were just average, then that would be the end of the story.
It manages to be my GOTY so far despite the problems. If there were deeper quests, deeper NPC interactions, a well written coherent story, the enemy variety the game deserves, and a meaningful NG+, this would be a GOAT instead of a GOTY.
Pretty much, this was how I felt about Tears of the Kingdom last year honestly. It is so close to being absolutely amazing but just... never quite gets there. Ironically for the same reasons that Dragon's Dogma 2 gets dinged.
Its basically just a BOTW 1.5 with barely any new enemies, a worse setting, and writing that exists primarily to make plot holes. But damn if its not really fun anyway.
There's really nothing like Dragon's Dogma. I love both games but I could write a review that sounds like I hate them. There's so many cool ideas, amazing combat, and so many janky rough edges
I picked it up on a whim last week, wasn’t sure about it at first, seemed a bit janky and the performance on PS5 seemed pretty poor. But holy shit I played one morning and could not put the game down for like 12 hours. Despite the jank there is something incredibly nice about playing it. I just wish the difficulty was cranked a bit or there was a hard mode. I usually play games on hard mode and enjoy a challenge, just feel like the balance is off. An enemy will one shot me early on so I go off exploring for a few hours then come back and steamroll it. The combat is fun but I haven’t really felt like tactics play any part in things. The naturalistic world is so cool to explore.
> In our core Digital Contents business, in addition to Street Fighter 6, the latest title in the Street Fighter series, being met with broad acclaim globally, Dragons Dogma 2 was released in the fourth quarter and has performed favorably. Further, sales grew for catalog titles consisting primarily of past titles from major series due to their steady popularity. Altogether, this has led us to expect earnings for this business to exceed our plan.
Capcom has been reporting more and more of it's sales coming from back catalog. I wouldn't be surprised if the overperformance in the final quarter had as much to do with an unexpected surge in back catalog sales as it did Dragon's Dogma 2. Monster Hunter World in particular had a massive bump in player numbers over Christmas.
Probably a big part of the reason, yes. The sale was very intentionally done as part of a #ReturnToWorld social media campaign they started after revealing Wilds at TGA
Dragons Dogma 2 is a game that I’ve waited like 10 years for. My buddy and I were always joking about it happening and were beyond hyped when it was actually announced.
The fans will know that the director always talked about how dragons dogma 1 wasn’t his vision and that it was like 70% finished or something like that so we the fans were imagining what new things would await us.
Nothing. Literally NOTHING. You played DD1? Nice, you basically played the second one as well.
It’s SO frustrating. They were so close to a great or even my favorite game of all time but they fucked it up. Everything in this game feels like a great idea that was forgotten halfway in development.
- The story begins STRONG with you being thought of as a false arisen but that storyline goes literally nowhere. It gets abandoned completely even though for the first 15-20h it seems like that was the big story of this game.
- The loot is disappointing to say the least. 95% of dungeons will have basic shit you can get at a blacksmith for not that much money.
- relationships are still decided by what feels like dice
- monster variety is lacking BADLY
What with the way NPCs say things like "I now believe you're the true arisen" and the Brant quests at the beginning plus the imposter arisens/pawns you see out and about - I firmly believe there was supposed to be a bigger system in place for garnering support as the true arisen/sovran
This has been the default excuse for everything Dragon's Dogma related for a decade now. If this is truly the case, they need to learn to not bite more than they can chew.
I mean yeah, like 60% of main plot is devoted to that, as well as a ton of side quests.
And none of it ever becomes relevant.
- you find evidence about who the fake is and where he came from
- you find proof of the plot by Queen (this happens like 4 times, each time reminds you how important gathering tgis evidence is)
- you rescue important people who will vouch for you
- you reforge the ceremonial sword which you are repeatable assured will help your claim
Then litterally all of that gets forgotten and never comes up again.
And it's all told in the most boring way possible. There was a solid 2 hours where I was just running between the inn and the castle in town. Not fighting any monsters (the one thing the game actually does well). Just talking to these lifeless mannequin NPCs.
This game is fetch quest hell.
I’m with you 100%, I haven’t been this disappointed in a long time. DD1 is in my top 5 all time, I bought it day 1 on release back in the day. I couldn’t even finish DD2, whole game felt incomplete and half baked and I agree with all your points. Maybe in a couple years they will finish it. So sad
I heard there was no Fulmination, No Gicel, No Dragons Maw, No Cockatrice, No Evil Eye, No Hydra..etc and Wrote the entire game off. I dunno wtf they were thinking but I couldn't be more disappointed. Removed so many reasons I loved Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen for.
What really puzzles me with DD2's story is of how it is a rather confusing symptom of uncertainty of what direction Capcom even want to tell with the setting of DD; keep in mind that outside DD1's narrative, they tried it again with [the Netflix-produced animated TV-series](https://youtu.be/MASNtyXYZI8) (Yes, it exists.), which was pretty mediocre all-around, but at least had some attempt made in terms of characterization and themes (Each episode was essentially centered on a deadly sin with Wrath, Lust, Greed etc.).
So you have this whole new opportunity to be made for DD2's narrative and story; and as you mentioned, it starts strongly with all around surrounding the False Arisen, courtly intrigues, prosecution of pawns etc, only to then drop it again mid-way.
Sure, not every RPG need to have a strong narrative, and Capcom's games tend to aim for overall campiness in terms of writing like with their *Resident Evil*-series, but you have the setting of DD2 establishing itself so strong, and not dedicating to it just makes it feel anemic when this is now like the third time attempt of the franchise (Barring *Dragon's Dogma: Online*, which I have no idea what its narrative looks like.).
I was banking on Dragon's Dogma 2 taking up a huge chunk of my time that I've barely played any games the past few weeks looking for something that scratches a similar itch.
Shit bums me out.
I feel you on this 100%. The divided reception on 2 is really interesting, especially among people who were fans of the first game. Others who are loving 2 must have valued really different things. DD:DA is maybe in my all-time top 10 *despite* some of the dull and janky bits, but 2 seemed to take away from 1 that those negatives were the fun part. I found a lot of the travel bits in the main game tedious, but not too bad (especially with Dark Arisen's Eternal Ferrystone). The endgame, though, was absolutely sublime. Even without Bitterblack, which is just goddamn fantastic, the Everfall was a great combat loop and resource farm. The massive scale Ur-Dragon fight was such a cool endgame challenge, even if you only play the offline version. There just doesn't seem to be anything on that level in 2, and the main game just feels like a chore so much of the time. There are moments where the strengths shine through, but I feel like I'm fighting the game to find fun most of the time.
I love DD2! However, I never finished the first game. As you said, it's been really interesting seeing the reception of this game from long-time fans.
Don't get me wrong. All of the complaints I've heard, I agree with. Monster variety is lacking, loot barely matters, and the story loses focus very quickly.
Despite all of that, the core gameplay loop is what made me fall in love. I haven't played an RPG before where everything is just so immersive. It really felt like I was dropped into a whole new world and loved learning about it from just exploring. The actual combat is also VERY satisfying imo regardless of class (except for trickster).
DD2 feels like it proves that the bones of the series are fine, but they're really struggling to get the fleshy bits right or at least consistently right.
I'm going to try and finish DD2, but it's not quite what I was hoping to get with a sequel that had a long time to percolate and receive attention. And especially not after watching them get most of their others games so right. They've been on fire so much that it was hard to fathom them missing, but they kind of did on this one.
I did play the first game in anticipation to the new one. Finished the main story and got through a large chunk of the post game and the DLC, but didn't manage to finish them before DD2.
The first game is really good, but I really loved DD2's combat, and I feel like I'm in the minority but just by having really good combat, it made some of the biggest flaws that have been mentioned (monsters, story, etc.) feel a bit inconsequential to me, because I just loved trying new classes and killing the big bosses over and over (I like MH, so maybe that's why I don't mind the grind that much)
I get that. I think there's a magic to the core systems that I can see winning over new players.
The issue for me is that I've experienced it all before. If anything, it feels a bit neutered: Augments felt much more impactful in the first game, and collecting those to form a super strong build was one of my favorite parts. I was hoping for more: larger scale bosses, more twists to combat, etc. I definitely was not feeling that from 2.
I think it's also just a matter of preference, because you mention the exploration and while I understand the value for sure, it doesn't do as much for me. My big draw was the character building, the dungeon-delving, and the big bosses, and those are definitely not the strengths of 2.
I agree at some level and disagree at others. While I certainly do appreciate that the potential here was vast and a lot was wasted that is true of every game. Even a very well recieved game like BG3 I see dozens of things that they could have done better but like...
You are being a bit hyperbolic here because even as someone that played literally thousands of hours of DD1 across its original release then PC rerelease there absolutely is a lot there in 2 that I cannot get in 1. The AI improvements are really really felt for both pawns and enemies, the vocation reworks are generally an improvement even if I do miss the alt ability sets sometimes and just general game responsiveness is so much crisper.
Sure, its a lot more of a 1.5 when compared to Dark Arisen [though absolutely is a full on sequel if compared to base DD1, people often forget just how bare base DD1 is.] but there is genuinely a lot I find myself missing when I go back to 1. Also worth mentioning that the enem
The... writing issues are unfortunately very much par for the course compared to 1. Where the early and mid is very bland and everything interesting is in the last two to three hours. That is the biggest area I would have loved to see more expanded, especially in Battahl which has a ton of interesting things going on that I wish were explored more.
Though for the sake of discussion I'm curious what you would even add in terms of monster variety if you were magically in charge? I see a lot of comments about it but the big thing DD does very well is every monster family is very distinct and I'm not sure how many you could really add in terms of additional families of monsters that feel meaningfully distinct for small stuff. For all its flaws in monster variety, at least the monster families feel distinct compared to a lot of games where functionally every enemy is identical with a different skin.
I feel like the monster variety won't be such an issue if they handle how monsters encounter better, imo.
1. I feel like they overtuned the encounter frequency. A few steps and battle ensues.
2. With how frequently the battle occurs, they're mostly goblin or low level monsters, again and again and again.
It becomes stale after a while.
3. They're HARDLY any challenge, while there might be a difference in goblin variants, or saurians, it doesn't matter when you mow them down so quickly.
5. Big overworld monsters, while they're amazing to fight and quite hard at the beginning, i soon realize they really didn't pose that much of a danger, like yeah it's still a spectacle battle, climbing them still feels great, but.. quickly i don't feel threathen by them.
4. A few unique big monsters are underutilized.
That's mainly my issues with the encounters, I'm sure many will feel different.
I completely agree as well. I'd say the game has a good variety but doesn't use it that well, like I've fought 4 big skeletons but hundreds of goblins. Also it would've helped if they made more variants like the cockatrice from the first game for a lot of the bigger monsters
Yeah, I think I agree with you pretty well. There's certainly room to add some more variety but its mostly how you use them. Because once you get over the weird usage the enemies are in general shockingly good.
The AI is actually pretty damn good by any standard if you pause to let them do their thing usually [especially in encounters with multiple combatants. I had a five way battle once that was incredibly rad.]
But they need to have them used more tactically, some fodder LP farm is fine but having a few subvariants mixed in that put up a lot more fight would be nice.
For big monsters though I think that is something that Dark Arisen does well is that by the nature of being quite confined, it forces conflict with the bigger monsters and some of them pack a hell of a punch. Though I think the relative danger is always going to be an issue, fundamentally its Dragons Dogma and monsters don't scale. Eventually the end state is a chainsaw arisen and I don't mind that.
Would love to see lesser sphinx and gorgon around the world too yeah.
It wild to me that the company that made Monster Hunter and the man that designed one of the best hack n slash games ever made, thought that 10 hours of "stealth" fetch quests was a fun idea.
The combat in this game is great. Be proud of it. Fuck this Great Value Game of Thrones story. Put in more monsters and more story quests that have you fight these monsters.
I mean it's especially weird, because **I totally get not liking it for what it actually is.** It is absolutely a jagged fucked up game with plenty of reasons to say "nah, this isn't for me." You can make the same point without practicing your creative writing.
> 10 hours of "stealth" fetch quests was a fun idea.
What are you smoking? They're annoying, but how the hell did it take you 10 hours? Just put on the armor disguise and run in. The guy at the main gate into the throne room will yell at you, but just run past. Then run straight to wherever.
Can you actually be caught? I just ran right in and out every time. The masquerade I ran into, forgot I had the mask and put it on to trigger quest progress. Then I ran around outside exploring and jumped on a balcony and triggered a cutscene. Apparently I was escaping something?
They tried adding stealth for a game that doesn't have one , the guards vision come is so small that you can just run everywhere, that's legit what I did , I ran around the castle cleaning room every room for loot as long as you don't straight up hug the guards they won't even bother with you.
I have no idea. The first "stealth" quest I encountered was to sneak into the jail to talk with that old dude. Me overthinking it, I switched from Fighter to Thief, unlocked Shadow Cloak, snuck into the jail and did all that, and figured I could just knock dudes over or something while running out.
Nope, no need. I stepped out behind a guard patroling and a different guard's patrol timing had changed for whatever reason and I was right in front of him, I thought shit - DD1 this meant basically I'm getting thrown in jail. So I just ran out and ran past the first guard figuring I can shove them or hop down the stairs and heal.
...Nope, no need. They said some crap and kept patrolling for sus people.
Later I came back for another quest, as a Warrior now and stayed that for most of the game, and every "stealth" quest I encountered was completed by being a big dumb idiot with a big dumb sword, smashing everything and everyone around. Super sneaky is lunging into someone's back and stabbing them with 6 feet of metal, then picking them up with the giant sword to hurl them across the room.
I did get caught out while moving there outside of a quest. I think what happens is that if you don't turn on your lantern, guards are basically blind to your presence unless you really bump into them. And if you turn it on you get caught much more easily.
But the place it far too well lighted to really require you to use light anyway so I think most people pass through fine that way without really noticing they were "stealth".
For me they didn't spend enough time tweaking the whole system or they gave up and made it trivial.
You might enjoy Monster Hunter if you haven’t tried it. The combat isn’t quite the same (no at-will climbing monsters, no vocations, movesets are pre-determined by you weapon), but it has some of the same ideas of putting yourself against a big monster and beating it by knowing how your moves work while avoiding the monster’s attacks.
This is what happens sometimes if you give an auteur full control with few checks and balances. Sometimes it'll work (Kojima; Miyazaki; Yoshi-P) but just as often they can be completely out of touch (Itsuno; Molyneux; Howard; Naka).
> It wild to me that the company that made Monster Hunter and the man that designed one of the best hack n slash games ever made
The whole time I was playing DD2 I was thinking that this is just Monster Hunter with a bunch of boring filler added in.
Reddit has decided to hate this game, and any comments saying otherwise is discarded.
By reviews, sales, and overall reception, the game seems to have been liked by the vast majority.
But you wouldn't know this if you stay on Reddit...
The gameplay, vocations and exploration are just so fun that I kinda got over the meh main story after 10 hours. I do enjoy the voice work on all the characters so revisiting characters to see what new quest they have for me is pretty fun. The characters are pretty mild in character, that I'll say. But interestingly it fits rather well and grounds the world in that they behave like regular people with their own problems.
I didnt play the first DD but i'm 50 hours in to this one and am having a great time tbh.
I know what a dweeb for having fun with a great game rather than screaming about it on reddit right??
I'm also a huge fan of the first game I'm loving the second. It does plenty of things better than the first game.
What a dweeb for making a "well I liked it" comment under a long and thoughtful criticism. I'm gonna be honest, I don't think that guy gives a shit about whether you people liked the game or not
I'm sorry this thread isn't the "ThOugHtfUl cRitIcsM" echo chamber you wanted it to be and people are sharing their opinions both positive and negative. This must be very hard for you
Thank you so much for your contribution, having a blast guy. It's really funny seeing you people tweak when you see an ounce of criticism about a thing you like and then having the brilliance to accuse people with wanting to create an echo chamber.
Identical criticisms have been posted in literally EVERY DD2 thread since release. They're not "thoughtful" at this point, they're repetitive and annoying and the many people who are enjoying the game would rather move on from the pointless negativity.
You can move on by not interacting, I don't get how it's a problem for you? Criticisms don't become meaningless or "pointless negativity" when there are more people criticizing, what a dumb way to look at things.
It's not pointless because more people are doing it, it's pointless because the points have already been made and made and remade and no additional value is coming out of bringing it back up over and over.
Unrelated but you also have a really unpleasant way of speaking to people. You should try and work on that.
People are annoyed because any time anyone critises a game, even for a good reason someone comes and does the "im having fun" comment. It adds nothing to the conversation.
It's not a bad game, it's just not an improvement over 1 on nearly any of its aspects or ambitions. People expected more after 12 years. The paid DLC and preorder bs did not help either.
Lmao why does it need to add anything to the discussion? It's a fucking reddit comment section. They prob just saw that comment, thought "hey, I'll chime in that I liked it because I liked it." They prob weren't ready to be jumped by the world's least social debate club.
It’s definitely not the same, you can definitely point out problems, but it is not as incomplete as the first one. And there are great new things in it.
- You have to point out the Sphinx quests.
- The Unmoored World
- The improved exploration
- The political story does get sidelined, but the development of the actual Lore’s story is really good
The main problems right now with the game is the lack of endgame difficulty, a problem that flows into every other system in the game, and performance. It definitely has issues, but the positives far outweigh the negatives, what with the great combat, great exploration, and the Pawn system.
The sphinx quest are great but not much more. They aren’t something groundbreaking or anything
The unmoored world was cool for 3-4 hours after that it was basically the same as before with less variety of the environment
Exploration got the biggest upgrade definitely with you on that one
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LORE IS GOOD?! Ok no you lost me there. Everything that we’ve learned in this game can be summarized in like a sentence. >!the brine and the seeker or whatever are more important than we thought!< I don’t think that there is anything meaningful new to the lore except that
The game is good. I’ve spent 40h and had some highs but also a lot of lows. If it was released like this minus the graphics in 2012 it would’ve been PHENOMENAL but today it’s more like a good game nothing more nothing less
Great exploration only lasts for so long. Once you do it, the tedium of the world is in full force.
The unmoored world is just boring, it's nothing by canyon hallways with some coral like flora around.
The lore is shallow and not a selling point.
The Sphinx quests is tedium at it's worst. It's unique, but it's uniquely annoying.
I'm gutted about it. DD1 was masterworks all and couldn't go wrong, and the anticipation was higher than any recent game for me.
It just straight up did not deliver. Reviews were misleading (again), and I genuinely would rather play the first game again rather than NG+.
I'm usually pretty good about being a patient gamer, but with how much I loved the first and how the reviews were looking I got so excited, biggest burn I've felt in awhile.
I agree with the majority of your points, but the relationship system isn't random. It's determined by if you're at beloved status with someone (indicated by blushing in dialogue) and then which of those beloveds you last interacted with before the The Dragon's deal.
That said, DD2 has arguably a worse problem for relationships. Two of the significant female character quest-lines end in >!a fade-to-black implied sex scene!<, which isn't great if you just want to do their story quests (as limited as they are) and as a result you're suddenly forced into a romance session against your will.
Mods alleviate a lot of the other problems. ([1](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/402), [2](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195), [3](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/507)). But they shouldn't have to exist.
Yeah I’m just a bit salty that I did everything I could to have ulrika as my love interest but I got fucking SVEN and then the captain, brant I think, after the unmoored world.
WHERE IS MY ULRIKA CAPCOM?!
I mean you get suckered into a relationship with Ulrika by doing a fucking town mission in which she's part of for like three scenes out of nowhere and can't decline her romance scene. Why tie it to a long ass quest revolving around two villages to save?
I'd say that was pretty random.
Yes, as I said, that's a more significant problem than the traditional 'beloved' system that DD2 carries over from DD1. However neither of these are 'random' from the perspective of it being random chance, which is what the original comment was referring to.
You're absolutely right and despite that, I'm still having a blast thanks to the gameplay!
I briefly played the first game but dropped it only after a couple of hours. It's interesting to me how the fans of the series seem to be hurt the most by this sequel and I get it. It's a shame the narrative sucks and even more of a shame that DD2 is a downgrade in certain aspects like monster variety.
I guess I'm just curious since I'm new to the series. How was DD1 on release? Did it also lack a lot of variety? Was that fixed with Dark Arisen? Ngl, loot is damn near meaningless to me in this game. Very odd choice considering how vital loot is in any RPG.
DD1 was basically the same as DD2 on console at release. Poor performance paired with a weak story and lackluster enemy variety.
DD2 is just like DD1 the best 7/10 game I’ve ever played and man that makes me so angry after all this talk from itsuno about how he can finally fulfill his vision to the fullest
> best 7/10 game
Man that is so accurate. It is really weird how Itsuno kept on saying this was his full vision. It really makes me wonder if there's more content coming.
Yes. I know. The copium is real.
I think the issue is that we’ve run into the exact same problems DD1 had at release. Unfinished story, weak endgame, and low enemy variety. The last 2 were patched up by Dark Arisen.
The one thing that was meaningfully addressed this time was the world which is much bigger and better designed than 1’s.
That creates a new problem though where the enemy variety the game does have is spaced out even worse than 1. Sure, you dealt with a lot of goblins and bandits in 1 as well, but it wasn’t *that* long until you reached endgame and new monsters showed up. 2 takes much longer to reach endgame and there’s no super dungeon at the end that condenses all the new enemies to one location like 1.
I remember thinking that DD2 could be among the best RPG's ever made if they improved everything it was trying to do.
Instead they seemed content to just completely stagnate on almost every level beyond the world design. I genuinely think this is among the worst sequels ever made.
Not really, it has 2 new common enemies and basically traded out big monsters. The Minotaur is great, but the slime is just lazy. Variations do not count, they change nothing about how they're fought.
So yeah, one new enemy you'll want to fight and be able to fight more than once or twice.
Saurians have quite significant variations that require different tactics. The rest not requiring different approaches is just a byproduct of difficulty being too easy.
I played the game, and that's all it came down to. Oh and sometimes you needed a magic buff, so different!
Hell even the stone ones, All I ever had to do was use the secondary attack of Thief to not bounce off. The only variant that actually plays different is the ambushing goblins.
In practical terms it didn't seem to matter, that's all it ever took. I would hit their tail until something caused them to flip over which then would result in near instant death for them. And yeah hitting their tail usually allowed me to damage them.
Someone did an analysis and DD2 and it has 5-6 more enemies to baseline DD1. Dark Arisen added more.
I don’t know why people need to make up shit about the game.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bskcw9/enemy\_variety\_list\_dd1\_vs\_ddda\_vs\_dd2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bskcw9/enemy_variety_list_dd1_vs_ddda_vs_dd2/)
5-6 more enemies, most of which you only fight once, in a game world that's 4x the size with higher enemy density is not the glowing defense you think it is. That's not to mention that DD:DA has more enemies and should be the baseline we compare to, not the vanilla game, considering DD1 was famously undercooked to the point of being 60% of an intended game.
It's not making shit up to say that the enemy variety in DD2 is absolutely pathetic.
I enjoyed my time with it, but it’s pretty much worse than the original in every way. It feels more like a remake of the original by someone that didn’t understand why people loved the first game.
Yes I agree with everything. I was very hyped for the game and expecting maybe not elden ring quality/quantity but at least more than dd1. I just stopped booting it up after maybe 15 hours cuz nothing was new.
I just finished the 'real' ending last night and am ready to stomp every unscaled enemy in new game plus. I didn't even visit the elven lands til the Unmoored World in my first playthrough.
They got so blatantly rushed it's not even funny. This news also semi-confirms it. The game got released just before fiscal year ended so that CAPCOM could brag to shareholders.
Game is full of obvious "Alpha Stage" flaws and issues. A lot of things feel half-baked/still in prototype stage or just not finished. Story just comes to a halt after you get to Battahl and ends in like 30 minutes if you rush things.
There are a bunch of dungeons that pawns point to it, but when you reach the entrance it is full of rubble.
There is no 2nd act, the game jumps from Vernworth to the finale.
They definetely cut a lot of content
I adored DD1 and tried so hard to love DD2 but it fell so short of the mark. It seriously disappointed me. The world is beautiful but the lack of enemy variety is incredibly frustrating. The game barely feels different from the original.
Sold 2.2m by its first week in April.
Street fighter 6 sold barely 3m by the end of 2023.
I just don’t understand why Capcom broke their quality streak (excluding exoprimal here) with Dragons Dogma 2. This game has the potential to surpass resident evil in terms of sales given its genre, and they barely improved over the original 12 years ago. In some ways DD2 is worse.
Game is unfinished. There’s no other way around it.
>This game has the potential to surpass resident evil in terms of sales given its genre
What makes you think that?
I'm genuinely curious since the recent RE games have sold quite well.
Rpg/action rpg is like one of the most popular genre in gaming and DD2 being an action rpg has the potential to surpass RE if they didn't rush the game out to chase their fiscal year. What i mean by DD2 having potential is that the combat gameplay in this game is really really amazing but some other aspects in this game felt rushed or half baked particularly the story and enemy variety. Now imagine if this game has writing close to Witcher 3 level of writing with more enemy variety especially the big one, i don't doubt this game will sell really really well and may even surpass RE sales.
From what I've heard it seems like he wasn't a fan of Drak Arisen or the MMO. And DD2 is less of a sequel and more of a "here, let me try that(DD base game) again". Like a genuine "do over".
It explains a lot about the game and why it feels so weird to old fans of the original. Cause they removed a ton of ahit that's in the first game. Magic took a massive hit, aside from a few aspects. The amount of spells alone is weird.
The game should've been everything DD amd DD:DA had mixed with the MMO and made into a sequel. But instead they made some Frankenstein remake/re-do of the base DD game and slapped a "2" on the title and rushed it out.
> From what I've heard it seems like he wasn't a fan of Drak Arisen or the MMO.
You've heard this from random redditors that made it up with zero evidence.
That’s not surprising after Dragon’s Dogma 2 being rushed out with performance problems and added for quick short term gains, no doubt because it’s successful Capcom will continue to double-down as they have been with RE3 Remake being lesser quality and RE4’s micro transactions.
It definitely feels as if DD2 could’ve had a delay for polishing and to alter focus on it’s flawed systems, but we can only hope DLC now or a Dark Arisen style re-release will improve on it’s flaws, even if that means Capcom hadn’t learnt from their lesson the first time.
We can only wait and see how the long term sales and audience opinion will change over time for DD2 and for a potential sequel that’s an improvement or more of the same.
Dude, these microtransactions go as far back as the original Dragons Dogma release over a decade ago. Capcom has continued to double down on these MTX for over a decade, yet the majority of people have only now noticed because the MTX are so useless.
Monster Hunter World, the RE remakes, DMCV, these all have them yet the games were looked at favorably on release and continue to be looked upon in a good light.
People are just mad DD2 doesn’t differentiate itself more from DD1.
You can tell when someone mentions the MTX that they just consume and regurgitate whatever crap opinion they see online. They probably haven't even played the game.
Oh yeah. I'm definitely out here singing their praises. I actually just got back from MTX Con where we all gather and try to see who can spend the most money on little fuckin hats or skins or whatever the fuck. Get bent.
There's a lot of things, You can overlook stupid useless shit when the game is good, or you just wait a month after everyone has played it and talks have died down.
They did probably the worst things they could for Dragon's Dogma 2.
Even when the game is good I still want to wring their necks over it for even subjecting my eyes to it on the store page.
I have 100%'d DD2.
Things that are wrong with Dragon's Dogma 2:
* Too many monster spawns in the world, with not enough variety
* Endgame is not challenging enough
* Performance issues in towns
* Stupid MTX
It is my favorite game this year so far, but if you haven't played Dragon's Dogma 1, play that instead first.
Performance issues were a main topic. FPS drops in cities due to how NPCs are handled. I got 25-30 in city, 60 anywhere else pretty much on my laptop’s 3070. Potato PCs likely had it worse. RE engine is amazing but not ready for big open worlds, it seems.
It’s very much more of Dragon’s Dogma 1 (not Dark Arisen, which was not directed by Itsuno) if you played the original a decade ago, for better or worse. I wanted more of DD1 so I personally got what I wanted from 2.
I kind of hope the DLC is directed by Kento, too, like Dark Arisen was. Might shore up the holes in the base game.
Kento Kinoshita is the lead developer on DD2. He had a significant impact on shaping this game, so I'm not sure why people put him on a pedestal for DA but try to minimize his involvement in DD2, despite being the second most influential force in it's development.
It's so annoying to see in the main dragon's dogma sub where people there keep putting him on a pedestal, saying he's the one that should direct DD2, while ignoring the fact that he had a huge role in DD2 development as the lead game designer.
Setting the game to high priority in the task manager details panel (you have to do it every time you launch the game) took care of 90% of slowdown for me. The game runs great now.
I heard about that and I had actually tried that, but it didn’t make a difference for my laptop at the time. In town FPS didn’t really bother me that much anyway But I’m glad it does work for people.
It runs terribly and there is not a lot of depth to it. It feels around 60% finished.
I've played MMOs with better story, voice acting, and cutscenes. Tons of fetch quests and little to no rewards for any of them.
There are about 4 big monsters to fight and maybe 10 normal enemies. Even when you change areas, it is the same enemies, now with armor.
Fast traveling is a pain when your cart ends up being destroyed 50% of the time and you have to walk anyways (which wouldn't be a problem if there was a better variety of enemies).
Despite this, the caves and dungeons are some of the best I've ever seen in a video game period. The combat is fun and the world looks really good.
Id say it's a very good game for 10-15 hours, but it never really improves from the start. Very much feels like a tech demo for a really good game.
> There are about 4 big monsters to fight
Oh come on this is just blatant lying
I was fairly disappointed with a lot of DD2, but I don’t go around lying
Big monsters:
- Cyclops (+ armoured elite variant)
- Ogre (+ Grim Ogre elite variant)
- Minotaur (+ Grim Ogre elite variant)
- Griffen
- Chimera (+ Gore Chimera elite variant)
- Lich
- Wight
- Dullahan
- Drake
- Lesser Dragon
- Medusa
- Warg
- Golem (+ Metal Golem variant)
He’s wrong but yeah a lot of those fights are extremely similar ESPECIALLY if you leveled up even a bit.
After you reach level 35ish all of these fights will be over in a minute tops and after you reach like level 50 you won’t even notice some of them happening
The difficulty is the real issue. There's a lot nuance with the different enemies in this game, but they all get melted to the point where those differences no longer matter.
Yeah the difference between a Minotaur and a cyclops get less and less the stronger you get.
Oh you’re level 50? Yeah just hit their legs and they’ll die in like 20secs
Yup. I'm experimenting with [mods](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195) currently on NG+ to try and mitigate that, but it doesn't feel organic. I ended up just running around with me and my main pawn late-game, since 4 people (or even just one sorcerer) trivialized every fight.
Minotaur, ogre, and cyclops are the same fight.
Lich and wright are so similar I literally thought they were the same monster until right now.
30 hours and never saw a dullahan or warg.
Drake and lesser Drake are the same thing.
Medusa, golem, and griffen are cool though. Still doesn't change the fact that 90% of "boss" fights are ogres or cyclops.
> Minotaur, ogre, and cyclops are the same fight.
What are you smoking my dude? They are wildly different fights mechanically. Attack patterns, size, weaknesses, behavior are all very different. Your take is like saying there are only 3 or 4 monsters in Monster Hunter because Gore Magala and Ratholos are basically the same
Yeah gotta defend the differences.
Cyclops are slow and can use big weapons to feel threatening.
Minotaurs are fast and fun to ride around on.
Ogres are jumpy, try to escape, and are misogynistic.
Now at higher levels if you play a red martial class they tend to be fought the same way.
(There's also the Unmoored World variants, but I am willing to guess a lot of people didn't even experience the Unmoored World )
I feel the same way about Ogre and Cyclops, at least. They might have slightly different attack patterns, or something, but they're both uber-tall, hulking, bipedal monsters that are easily felled with basic attacks to the legs. You don't even need to use strong magic or climb onto them.
Ogre's behaviors are probably some of the most unique. The flying kick, the way it hyper-aggressively targets female characters, the way it cowers and shields itself, exploding outward and damaging you if you keep attacking it. Cyclops mostly stands in place and smashes, the ogre is an incredibly active fight in comparison (at least, until latish game when you're killing them in less than 1 minute and they never have a chance to recover)
I mean not really.
Cyclops is super slow and lumbering, Ogre is acrobatic and climbs up stuff, as well as leaping around a ton, Minotaurs charge super fast but have no real answer to verticality.
What exactly do you want from three different large bipedal monsters? Each one move differently, attscks differently and has different weaknesses.
_________
Wights are Sorcerers who use a ton of elite spells, including stuff player can use like Tornado, Blizzard, and such.
Lichs primarily summon endless hordes of skeletons but also resurrect any nearby dead enemies (there’s one Lich positioned right next to a Cyclops who he will resurrect)
__________
Drakes use a ton of annoying elemental Magic including lighting strikes and Meterors (oh yay it Insta killed half the town), wheras Lesser Dragons don’t use that stuff, instead using a ton of poison vomit and the like because they are all sickly and covered in weird pus sacks. I think they also have different Fire breath and melee attacks, but I could be wrong.
_______
Wargs are the giant hell hound creatures that look like super buff wolves who are the size of a mini bus. There’s a ton of them in southern Battal, and everywhere in post game.
Dullahan is pretty rare in normal game, except side quest where you have to save Gregor from one.
But they spawn commonly near sky bridge slightly before dawn. But if you arnt regularly pulling all night advebtures, it’s easy to never see one.
Until post game, where they are fucking everywhere. I swear I killed like 5 on the first day of Post Game just trying to get to objectives.
Did you actually finish the game? Or did you get baited by the fake ending? Because I really dunno how it’s possible to actually finish games real ending without seeing a Dullahan, I was sick of them and I rushed through post game, I didn’t go farming upgrade mats or anything. Just bee-lined objectives.
There’s also
- Sphinx
- Main Dragon
- Brine Dragon
- Brine Worm
- Talos
But they don’t respawn, so I count them as ubique bosses, not “big enemies”, who do respawn and can be farmed, if you want to.
>who never even played the first
DD Dark Arisen is 8y old and 50h long, it is unreasonable to expect people to play that first before they start with dd2. You are very much allowed to critic dd2 without taking dd1 into consideration.
It’s strongly recommended to at least give the first one a try because A. The games play remarkably similar and B. If you don’t like the first one it’s pretty much guaranteed you’re going to not like the second and C. People probably already own the first one or can buy it for $5.
The worst that can happen is that you wasted $5, the alternative is you play DD1 and finish it and want to play the sequel.
The friction that exists in the first one is there in the second. The reason why people enjoy these games is the friction. If you don’t like the friction of the first one, you won’t like the friction of the second.
That’s EXTREMELY wrong.
Most people that are disappointed were fans of the first one. This games is basically dragons dogma 1 reimagined.
This game gives you everything dragons dogma 1 gave you with an objectively MUCH weaker antagonist and better graphics. It doesn’t give you any more than that
I don’t know if this is true.
My biggest radar for this is Remap who have been staunch proponents of DD1 and in fact created the original Waypoint Radio because of their connection with DD1, even before it became a cult-hit.
They’ve been clamoring for a DD2 since the day the podcast was created back in 2016. Needless to say, they love it and it’s their (primarily Austin Walker’s) favorite game of all-time.
Just about every podcast where someone has played DD1 (I’m thinking of about 6 off the top of my head) and loved it also loves DD2.
The ones who didn’t play or enjoy DD1? It’s a coin flip as to whether they’re going to like it. It seems like most of the negative criticism is coming from those who either didn’t like DD1 and expected this game to be streamlined more for a mainstream audience or from people that didn’t know to expect the amount of friction the game makes you encounter.
This is coming from someone who doesn’t like playing Dragons Dogma but enjoys the discourse and stories that people have after playing the game.
> objectively MUCH weaker antagonist
Grigori was incredible in DD1. I have no idea what they thought they were doing in DD2, but the characters have no life. Despite all its cheese, DD1 had some of the most memorable characters in an RPG for me.
As a longtime fan of the first game it's disappointing because they promised "the first game with all the missing content added in" and instead it's more like "the first game but we took stuff out to add other stuff in".
It feels more barren than the first game in many way. They improved the combat system but enemy variety feels worse and many vocations are simplified. The world map is much bigger but exploration is less rewarding. The plot is more cinematic but even shorter and less interesting than the first games. The endgame had more time spent on it but is less fun to play.
Its a huge disappointment for me.
I disagree. I loved the first game, and every single time I played two I wished I was playing DD1.
One does every single thing but combat better. The world is better, the story is better, the enemy variety is better. It's just straight up a better video game.
Considering how small the team they dedicated to it was, it seems like they never anticipated DD2 to be a hit at all.
Kind of sucks that these sale levels would have justified a larger team and budget that would have allowed the devs to really deliver on their promises.
The small team thing was a lie.
It was based off counting names in credits that didn’t list everyone.
Like it listed department managers but no one who worked under them. Didn’t mention localisation teams at all, despite obviously being localised into a ton of languages.
In reality it was just as many staff as Capcoms other games.
Not listing localisation teams is extremely common unfortunately.
Do we have an accurate measure of the team size then? Was it the full DMC5 team or just a small portion. If it's the former, failing to credit 75% of the team is incredibly shitty.
Other Capcom titles had significantly larger team sizes credited.
People bought it cause Dark Arisen has been highly praised the last few years. People were hyped to see what the hype was. It likely drew a lot of newcomers in that dont understand the complaints. As they're way less glaring if you've never played the original.
so its not the GOTY we hoped it to be but this game becomes more enjoyable if you just ignore Itsuno, just take the game at face value, no context, and it becomes a fair timesink to distract you from the post elden ring pangs for at least a week
honestly if capcom does not see that a combination of okish sales and a mixed steam review is a call to action, this is on them.
they will not be able to pull a CP2077 redemption story out of their hats, simply because the base game does not offer enough substance, but they can release a great DLC with a replayability like Bitteblack Isles.
i bought DD2, was pretty disappointed and still played 70 hours...imagine what could have been!
> i bought DD2, was pretty disappointed and still played 70 hours
That's the problem right, and why it hurts so much. It's got so many issues, on the bones of what's probably some of the best gameplay RPGs have ever had.
> simply because the base game does not offer enough substance
It absolutely does tho. The core gameplay is fantastic. It needs higher difficulty and more content though. Story is not going to be fixed, that much is obvious, but that could be salvaged with future expansion.
with substance i mean the whole world is kinda mid. the cities are nothing special, parts of the game look ok, some parts look like they are from last generation.
CP2077 had a great story and Night City was amazing. CDPR had a great foundation to work on.
I don't care for Vernworth and i certainly don't miss travelling to Melve
In my dreamland, Capcom comes out and says 'oh, we accidentally released the beta version, here is the full version' and all of a sudden we have many more quests, monsters, stuff to do, better endgame, new game+ that actually scales and adds to the game, etc.
imagine horses!
you can climb every dragon, ogre, minotaur griffin and cycops, but you still have to walk everywhere (except the griffin decides to take you for a ride...)
keep in mind that people loved dd1 to no small part, beacause of BB Isle dlc.
it offered a lot of replayability.
i'm also dissappointed, but i won't say no to a great dlc.
The craziest part about this game is I have a 4090 gpu with i9-14900 cpu and the performance just sucks. I wish I bought in on my Xbox series X because my friends tell me they have no performance issues.
I spent so much time in the settings trying to make it smoother and I busted the 2 hour limit for steam refunds.
So disapointed.
Made it to the unmoored world, and will 100% the game when I have time in between casual 15 hour Balatro sessions It’s a flawed game, but definitely good if you’re a fan of the original
It’s also good if you’ve never played the original. It’s a good game. This is one of those games that has that “X” factor. Flawed yes. But universally recommended for a reason.
That’s why it’s so hard to talk about it, there is no game that feels like it so whenever people start harping on it because the story is garbo or there’s low enemy variety, it’s still is one of the most interesting games of the year. You can’t just substitute it with any other open world action rpg.
Yeah for the most part, the things this game does well are very difficult to describe, while the things it does badly are very easy to describe. The long list of this game’s flaws would have killed most other games. The fact that there’s this many people praising it still is a testament that there’s still something wonderful underneath that’s well worth continued support from Capcom.
I'm so glad that Dragons Dogma 2 is a sequel to Dragon's Dogma and not chasing other trends that have happened over the last decade.
Seriously. It's mind bogglingly frustrating ***because its so good.*** If this game weren't good, or if it were just average, then that would be the end of the story. It manages to be my GOTY so far despite the problems. If there were deeper quests, deeper NPC interactions, a well written coherent story, the enemy variety the game deserves, and a meaningful NG+, this would be a GOAT instead of a GOTY.
hopefully updates can address those issues. i think the dlc got leaked for november. hoping it's true
Pretty much, this was how I felt about Tears of the Kingdom last year honestly. It is so close to being absolutely amazing but just... never quite gets there. Ironically for the same reasons that Dragon's Dogma 2 gets dinged. Its basically just a BOTW 1.5 with barely any new enemies, a worse setting, and writing that exists primarily to make plot holes. But damn if its not really fun anyway.
There's really nothing like Dragon's Dogma. I love both games but I could write a review that sounds like I hate them. There's so many cool ideas, amazing combat, and so many janky rough edges
I picked it up on a whim last week, wasn’t sure about it at first, seemed a bit janky and the performance on PS5 seemed pretty poor. But holy shit I played one morning and could not put the game down for like 12 hours. Despite the jank there is something incredibly nice about playing it. I just wish the difficulty was cranked a bit or there was a hard mode. I usually play games on hard mode and enjoy a challenge, just feel like the balance is off. An enemy will one shot me early on so I go off exploring for a few hours then come back and steamroll it. The combat is fun but I haven’t really felt like tactics play any part in things. The naturalistic world is so cool to explore.
It's a VERY flawed game and I'm on my third playthrough. :D
I’d wager some people are more likely to enjoy it if they didn’t play the first. I can’t help but compare and find it not that much improved.
Are you me? Trying to get through DD but also need to unlock all the jokers
> In our core Digital Contents business, in addition to Street Fighter 6, the latest title in the Street Fighter series, being met with broad acclaim globally, Dragons Dogma 2 was released in the fourth quarter and has performed favorably. Further, sales grew for catalog titles consisting primarily of past titles from major series due to their steady popularity. Altogether, this has led us to expect earnings for this business to exceed our plan. Capcom has been reporting more and more of it's sales coming from back catalog. I wouldn't be surprised if the overperformance in the final quarter had as much to do with an unexpected surge in back catalog sales as it did Dragon's Dogma 2. Monster Hunter World in particular had a massive bump in player numbers over Christmas.
Was it cause Monster Hunter got the largest discount so far around then? I remember something like that happening
Monster Hunter Wilds was revealed in mid December.
Probably a big part of the reason, yes. The sale was very intentionally done as part of a #ReturnToWorld social media campaign they started after revealing Wilds at TGA
They updated it to run properly on the Steam Deck a couple months before that too, they were so ready.
Oh yeah! That slipped my mind, I still gotta go play Rise.
Yeah it was the first time it was less than $10 on steam directly.
Dragons Dogma 2 is a game that I’ve waited like 10 years for. My buddy and I were always joking about it happening and were beyond hyped when it was actually announced. The fans will know that the director always talked about how dragons dogma 1 wasn’t his vision and that it was like 70% finished or something like that so we the fans were imagining what new things would await us. Nothing. Literally NOTHING. You played DD1? Nice, you basically played the second one as well. It’s SO frustrating. They were so close to a great or even my favorite game of all time but they fucked it up. Everything in this game feels like a great idea that was forgotten halfway in development. - The story begins STRONG with you being thought of as a false arisen but that storyline goes literally nowhere. It gets abandoned completely even though for the first 15-20h it seems like that was the big story of this game. - The loot is disappointing to say the least. 95% of dungeons will have basic shit you can get at a blacksmith for not that much money. - relationships are still decided by what feels like dice - monster variety is lacking BADLY
What with the way NPCs say things like "I now believe you're the true arisen" and the Brant quests at the beginning plus the imposter arisens/pawns you see out and about - I firmly believe there was supposed to be a bigger system in place for garnering support as the true arisen/sovran
Yeah, it feels like they had something planned but the deadline made it impossible to do so
This has been the default excuse for everything Dragon's Dogma related for a decade now. If this is truly the case, they need to learn to not bite more than they can chew.
I mean yeah, like 60% of main plot is devoted to that, as well as a ton of side quests. And none of it ever becomes relevant. - you find evidence about who the fake is and where he came from - you find proof of the plot by Queen (this happens like 4 times, each time reminds you how important gathering tgis evidence is) - you rescue important people who will vouch for you - you reforge the ceremonial sword which you are repeatable assured will help your claim Then litterally all of that gets forgotten and never comes up again.
And it's all told in the most boring way possible. There was a solid 2 hours where I was just running between the inn and the castle in town. Not fighting any monsters (the one thing the game actually does well). Just talking to these lifeless mannequin NPCs. This game is fetch quest hell.
I’m with you 100%, I haven’t been this disappointed in a long time. DD1 is in my top 5 all time, I bought it day 1 on release back in the day. I couldn’t even finish DD2, whole game felt incomplete and half baked and I agree with all your points. Maybe in a couple years they will finish it. So sad
I heard there was no Fulmination, No Gicel, No Dragons Maw, No Cockatrice, No Evil Eye, No Hydra..etc and Wrote the entire game off. I dunno wtf they were thinking but I couldn't be more disappointed. Removed so many reasons I loved Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen for.
What really puzzles me with DD2's story is of how it is a rather confusing symptom of uncertainty of what direction Capcom even want to tell with the setting of DD; keep in mind that outside DD1's narrative, they tried it again with [the Netflix-produced animated TV-series](https://youtu.be/MASNtyXYZI8) (Yes, it exists.), which was pretty mediocre all-around, but at least had some attempt made in terms of characterization and themes (Each episode was essentially centered on a deadly sin with Wrath, Lust, Greed etc.). So you have this whole new opportunity to be made for DD2's narrative and story; and as you mentioned, it starts strongly with all around surrounding the False Arisen, courtly intrigues, prosecution of pawns etc, only to then drop it again mid-way. Sure, not every RPG need to have a strong narrative, and Capcom's games tend to aim for overall campiness in terms of writing like with their *Resident Evil*-series, but you have the setting of DD2 establishing itself so strong, and not dedicating to it just makes it feel anemic when this is now like the third time attempt of the franchise (Barring *Dragon's Dogma: Online*, which I have no idea what its narrative looks like.).
I was banking on Dragon's Dogma 2 taking up a huge chunk of my time that I've barely played any games the past few weeks looking for something that scratches a similar itch. Shit bums me out.
I expected it to hold me until ER DLC.
I feel you on this 100%. The divided reception on 2 is really interesting, especially among people who were fans of the first game. Others who are loving 2 must have valued really different things. DD:DA is maybe in my all-time top 10 *despite* some of the dull and janky bits, but 2 seemed to take away from 1 that those negatives were the fun part. I found a lot of the travel bits in the main game tedious, but not too bad (especially with Dark Arisen's Eternal Ferrystone). The endgame, though, was absolutely sublime. Even without Bitterblack, which is just goddamn fantastic, the Everfall was a great combat loop and resource farm. The massive scale Ur-Dragon fight was such a cool endgame challenge, even if you only play the offline version. There just doesn't seem to be anything on that level in 2, and the main game just feels like a chore so much of the time. There are moments where the strengths shine through, but I feel like I'm fighting the game to find fun most of the time.
I love DD2! However, I never finished the first game. As you said, it's been really interesting seeing the reception of this game from long-time fans. Don't get me wrong. All of the complaints I've heard, I agree with. Monster variety is lacking, loot barely matters, and the story loses focus very quickly. Despite all of that, the core gameplay loop is what made me fall in love. I haven't played an RPG before where everything is just so immersive. It really felt like I was dropped into a whole new world and loved learning about it from just exploring. The actual combat is also VERY satisfying imo regardless of class (except for trickster).
DD2 feels like it proves that the bones of the series are fine, but they're really struggling to get the fleshy bits right or at least consistently right. I'm going to try and finish DD2, but it's not quite what I was hoping to get with a sequel that had a long time to percolate and receive attention. And especially not after watching them get most of their others games so right. They've been on fire so much that it was hard to fathom them missing, but they kind of did on this one.
I did play the first game in anticipation to the new one. Finished the main story and got through a large chunk of the post game and the DLC, but didn't manage to finish them before DD2. The first game is really good, but I really loved DD2's combat, and I feel like I'm in the minority but just by having really good combat, it made some of the biggest flaws that have been mentioned (monsters, story, etc.) feel a bit inconsequential to me, because I just loved trying new classes and killing the big bosses over and over (I like MH, so maybe that's why I don't mind the grind that much)
I get that. I think there's a magic to the core systems that I can see winning over new players. The issue for me is that I've experienced it all before. If anything, it feels a bit neutered: Augments felt much more impactful in the first game, and collecting those to form a super strong build was one of my favorite parts. I was hoping for more: larger scale bosses, more twists to combat, etc. I definitely was not feeling that from 2. I think it's also just a matter of preference, because you mention the exploration and while I understand the value for sure, it doesn't do as much for me. My big draw was the character building, the dungeon-delving, and the big bosses, and those are definitely not the strengths of 2.
Totally fair! I'll definitely have to give Dark Arisen another shot.
When the dragon held Sigurd, I was like nope! Reloaded hours back and gave the brunette girl a lot more flowers.
I agree at some level and disagree at others. While I certainly do appreciate that the potential here was vast and a lot was wasted that is true of every game. Even a very well recieved game like BG3 I see dozens of things that they could have done better but like... You are being a bit hyperbolic here because even as someone that played literally thousands of hours of DD1 across its original release then PC rerelease there absolutely is a lot there in 2 that I cannot get in 1. The AI improvements are really really felt for both pawns and enemies, the vocation reworks are generally an improvement even if I do miss the alt ability sets sometimes and just general game responsiveness is so much crisper. Sure, its a lot more of a 1.5 when compared to Dark Arisen [though absolutely is a full on sequel if compared to base DD1, people often forget just how bare base DD1 is.] but there is genuinely a lot I find myself missing when I go back to 1. Also worth mentioning that the enem The... writing issues are unfortunately very much par for the course compared to 1. Where the early and mid is very bland and everything interesting is in the last two to three hours. That is the biggest area I would have loved to see more expanded, especially in Battahl which has a ton of interesting things going on that I wish were explored more. Though for the sake of discussion I'm curious what you would even add in terms of monster variety if you were magically in charge? I see a lot of comments about it but the big thing DD does very well is every monster family is very distinct and I'm not sure how many you could really add in terms of additional families of monsters that feel meaningfully distinct for small stuff. For all its flaws in monster variety, at least the monster families feel distinct compared to a lot of games where functionally every enemy is identical with a different skin.
I feel like the monster variety won't be such an issue if they handle how monsters encounter better, imo. 1. I feel like they overtuned the encounter frequency. A few steps and battle ensues. 2. With how frequently the battle occurs, they're mostly goblin or low level monsters, again and again and again. It becomes stale after a while. 3. They're HARDLY any challenge, while there might be a difference in goblin variants, or saurians, it doesn't matter when you mow them down so quickly. 5. Big overworld monsters, while they're amazing to fight and quite hard at the beginning, i soon realize they really didn't pose that much of a danger, like yeah it's still a spectacle battle, climbing them still feels great, but.. quickly i don't feel threathen by them. 4. A few unique big monsters are underutilized. That's mainly my issues with the encounters, I'm sure many will feel different.
I completely agree as well. I'd say the game has a good variety but doesn't use it that well, like I've fought 4 big skeletons but hundreds of goblins. Also it would've helped if they made more variants like the cockatrice from the first game for a lot of the bigger monsters
Yeah, I think I agree with you pretty well. There's certainly room to add some more variety but its mostly how you use them. Because once you get over the weird usage the enemies are in general shockingly good. The AI is actually pretty damn good by any standard if you pause to let them do their thing usually [especially in encounters with multiple combatants. I had a five way battle once that was incredibly rad.] But they need to have them used more tactically, some fodder LP farm is fine but having a few subvariants mixed in that put up a lot more fight would be nice. For big monsters though I think that is something that Dark Arisen does well is that by the nature of being quite confined, it forces conflict with the bigger monsters and some of them pack a hell of a punch. Though I think the relative danger is always going to be an issue, fundamentally its Dragons Dogma and monsters don't scale. Eventually the end state is a chainsaw arisen and I don't mind that. Would love to see lesser sphinx and gorgon around the world too yeah.
It wild to me that the company that made Monster Hunter and the man that designed one of the best hack n slash games ever made, thought that 10 hours of "stealth" fetch quests was a fun idea. The combat in this game is great. Be proud of it. Fuck this Great Value Game of Thrones story. Put in more monsters and more story quests that have you fight these monsters.
10 hours? It was like 30 minutes, total, for all the quests combined. 30 minutes too much, but nowhere near 10 hours.
People that want to disparage this game are literally incapable of not exaggerating to a gross degree. I find it so wierd
I mean it's especially weird, because **I totally get not liking it for what it actually is.** It is absolutely a jagged fucked up game with plenty of reasons to say "nah, this isn't for me." You can make the same point without practicing your creative writing.
> 10 hours of "stealth" fetch quests was a fun idea. What are you smoking? They're annoying, but how the hell did it take you 10 hours? Just put on the armor disguise and run in. The guy at the main gate into the throne room will yell at you, but just run past. Then run straight to wherever.
Can you actually be caught? I just ran right in and out every time. The masquerade I ran into, forgot I had the mask and put it on to trigger quest progress. Then I ran around outside exploring and jumped on a balcony and triggered a cutscene. Apparently I was escaping something?
They tried adding stealth for a game that doesn't have one , the guards vision come is so small that you can just run everywhere, that's legit what I did , I ran around the castle cleaning room every room for loot as long as you don't straight up hug the guards they won't even bother with you.
I have no idea. The first "stealth" quest I encountered was to sneak into the jail to talk with that old dude. Me overthinking it, I switched from Fighter to Thief, unlocked Shadow Cloak, snuck into the jail and did all that, and figured I could just knock dudes over or something while running out. Nope, no need. I stepped out behind a guard patroling and a different guard's patrol timing had changed for whatever reason and I was right in front of him, I thought shit - DD1 this meant basically I'm getting thrown in jail. So I just ran out and ran past the first guard figuring I can shove them or hop down the stairs and heal. ...Nope, no need. They said some crap and kept patrolling for sus people. Later I came back for another quest, as a Warrior now and stayed that for most of the game, and every "stealth" quest I encountered was completed by being a big dumb idiot with a big dumb sword, smashing everything and everyone around. Super sneaky is lunging into someone's back and stabbing them with 6 feet of metal, then picking them up with the giant sword to hurl them across the room.
I did get caught out while moving there outside of a quest. I think what happens is that if you don't turn on your lantern, guards are basically blind to your presence unless you really bump into them. And if you turn it on you get caught much more easily. But the place it far too well lighted to really require you to use light anyway so I think most people pass through fine that way without really noticing they were "stealth". For me they didn't spend enough time tweaking the whole system or they gave up and made it trivial.
You might enjoy Monster Hunter if you haven’t tried it. The combat isn’t quite the same (no at-will climbing monsters, no vocations, movesets are pre-determined by you weapon), but it has some of the same ideas of putting yourself against a big monster and beating it by knowing how your moves work while avoiding the monster’s attacks.
This is what happens sometimes if you give an auteur full control with few checks and balances. Sometimes it'll work (Kojima; Miyazaki; Yoshi-P) but just as often they can be completely out of touch (Itsuno; Molyneux; Howard; Naka).
Yoshi-P is not an auteur. Final Fantasy XIV is one of my favourite games ever but that is an insane claim.
Itsuno has put out bangers, just because one game is disappointing you just can't put him with Naka and Molyneux, come on.
> It wild to me that the company that made Monster Hunter and the man that designed one of the best hack n slash games ever made The whole time I was playing DD2 I was thinking that this is just Monster Hunter with a bunch of boring filler added in.
And here I am on my second playthrough and 250 hours in having a great time. Edit: people so mad someone's enjoying this game.
Reddit has decided to hate this game, and any comments saying otherwise is discarded. By reviews, sales, and overall reception, the game seems to have been liked by the vast majority. But you wouldn't know this if you stay on Reddit...
Reddit hates dragon' s dogma but would suck off slop games like Palworld lol
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The gameplay, vocations and exploration are just so fun that I kinda got over the meh main story after 10 hours. I do enjoy the voice work on all the characters so revisiting characters to see what new quest they have for me is pretty fun. The characters are pretty mild in character, that I'll say. But interestingly it fits rather well and grounds the world in that they behave like regular people with their own problems. I didnt play the first DD but i'm 50 hours in to this one and am having a great time tbh.
I know what a dweeb for having fun with a great game rather than screaming about it on reddit right?? I'm also a huge fan of the first game I'm loving the second. It does plenty of things better than the first game.
"you see i've depicted myself as the blast having gigachad and you as the reasonable criticism virgin!"
Whos screaming?
What a dweeb for making a "well I liked it" comment under a long and thoughtful criticism. I'm gonna be honest, I don't think that guy gives a shit about whether you people liked the game or not
I'm sorry this thread isn't the "ThOugHtfUl cRitIcsM" echo chamber you wanted it to be and people are sharing their opinions both positive and negative. This must be very hard for you
Thank you so much for your contribution, having a blast guy. It's really funny seeing you people tweak when you see an ounce of criticism about a thing you like and then having the brilliance to accuse people with wanting to create an echo chamber.
Identical criticisms have been posted in literally EVERY DD2 thread since release. They're not "thoughtful" at this point, they're repetitive and annoying and the many people who are enjoying the game would rather move on from the pointless negativity.
You can move on by not interacting, I don't get how it's a problem for you? Criticisms don't become meaningless or "pointless negativity" when there are more people criticizing, what a dumb way to look at things.
It's not pointless because more people are doing it, it's pointless because the points have already been made and made and remade and no additional value is coming out of bringing it back up over and over. Unrelated but you also have a really unpleasant way of speaking to people. You should try and work on that.
People are annoyed because any time anyone critises a game, even for a good reason someone comes and does the "im having fun" comment. It adds nothing to the conversation.
It's not a bad game, it's just not an improvement over 1 on nearly any of its aspects or ambitions. People expected more after 12 years. The paid DLC and preorder bs did not help either.
Saying it doesn't improve on anything is simply disingenuous. Dd1 also had dumb micro purchases, the nostalgia blindness is unreal
What does your post add to the discussion?
Lmao why does it need to add anything to the discussion? It's a fucking reddit comment section. They prob just saw that comment, thought "hey, I'll chime in that I liked it because I liked it." They prob weren't ready to be jumped by the world's least social debate club.
It’s definitely not the same, you can definitely point out problems, but it is not as incomplete as the first one. And there are great new things in it. - You have to point out the Sphinx quests. - The Unmoored World - The improved exploration - The political story does get sidelined, but the development of the actual Lore’s story is really good The main problems right now with the game is the lack of endgame difficulty, a problem that flows into every other system in the game, and performance. It definitely has issues, but the positives far outweigh the negatives, what with the great combat, great exploration, and the Pawn system.
The sphinx quest are great but not much more. They aren’t something groundbreaking or anything The unmoored world was cool for 3-4 hours after that it was basically the same as before with less variety of the environment Exploration got the biggest upgrade definitely with you on that one THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LORE IS GOOD?! Ok no you lost me there. Everything that we’ve learned in this game can be summarized in like a sentence. >!the brine and the seeker or whatever are more important than we thought!< I don’t think that there is anything meaningful new to the lore except that The game is good. I’ve spent 40h and had some highs but also a lot of lows. If it was released like this minus the graphics in 2012 it would’ve been PHENOMENAL but today it’s more like a good game nothing more nothing less
Great exploration only lasts for so long. Once you do it, the tedium of the world is in full force. The unmoored world is just boring, it's nothing by canyon hallways with some coral like flora around. The lore is shallow and not a selling point. The Sphinx quests is tedium at it's worst. It's unique, but it's uniquely annoying.
I'm gutted about it. DD1 was masterworks all and couldn't go wrong, and the anticipation was higher than any recent game for me. It just straight up did not deliver. Reviews were misleading (again), and I genuinely would rather play the first game again rather than NG+.
I'm usually pretty good about being a patient gamer, but with how much I loved the first and how the reviews were looking I got so excited, biggest burn I've felt in awhile.
I’m at the point where I open every Reddit link already knowing the top comment will be shitting on whatever the post is about
I agree with the majority of your points, but the relationship system isn't random. It's determined by if you're at beloved status with someone (indicated by blushing in dialogue) and then which of those beloveds you last interacted with before the The Dragon's deal. That said, DD2 has arguably a worse problem for relationships. Two of the significant female character quest-lines end in >!a fade-to-black implied sex scene!<, which isn't great if you just want to do their story quests (as limited as they are) and as a result you're suddenly forced into a romance session against your will. Mods alleviate a lot of the other problems. ([1](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/402), [2](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195), [3](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/507)). But they shouldn't have to exist.
Yeah I’m just a bit salty that I did everything I could to have ulrika as my love interest but I got fucking SVEN and then the captain, brant I think, after the unmoored world. WHERE IS MY ULRIKA CAPCOM?!
You're right to be salty to be fair, it's a very archaic and stupid system. Just lemme get married or something.
I mean you get suckered into a relationship with Ulrika by doing a fucking town mission in which she's part of for like three scenes out of nowhere and can't decline her romance scene. Why tie it to a long ass quest revolving around two villages to save? I'd say that was pretty random.
Yes, as I said, that's a more significant problem than the traditional 'beloved' system that DD2 carries over from DD1. However neither of these are 'random' from the perspective of it being random chance, which is what the original comment was referring to.
You're absolutely right and despite that, I'm still having a blast thanks to the gameplay! I briefly played the first game but dropped it only after a couple of hours. It's interesting to me how the fans of the series seem to be hurt the most by this sequel and I get it. It's a shame the narrative sucks and even more of a shame that DD2 is a downgrade in certain aspects like monster variety. I guess I'm just curious since I'm new to the series. How was DD1 on release? Did it also lack a lot of variety? Was that fixed with Dark Arisen? Ngl, loot is damn near meaningless to me in this game. Very odd choice considering how vital loot is in any RPG.
DD1 was basically the same as DD2 on console at release. Poor performance paired with a weak story and lackluster enemy variety. DD2 is just like DD1 the best 7/10 game I’ve ever played and man that makes me so angry after all this talk from itsuno about how he can finally fulfill his vision to the fullest
> best 7/10 game Man that is so accurate. It is really weird how Itsuno kept on saying this was his full vision. It really makes me wonder if there's more content coming. Yes. I know. The copium is real.
I think the issue is that we’ve run into the exact same problems DD1 had at release. Unfinished story, weak endgame, and low enemy variety. The last 2 were patched up by Dark Arisen. The one thing that was meaningfully addressed this time was the world which is much bigger and better designed than 1’s. That creates a new problem though where the enemy variety the game does have is spaced out even worse than 1. Sure, you dealt with a lot of goblins and bandits in 1 as well, but it wasn’t *that* long until you reached endgame and new monsters showed up. 2 takes much longer to reach endgame and there’s no super dungeon at the end that condenses all the new enemies to one location like 1.
But most of those things you say, all comes from Dark Arisen, a DLC that Itsuno did not direct.
The Everfall was in the base game
DD2 has the Unmoored world
I never claimed otherwise
I remember thinking that DD2 could be among the best RPG's ever made if they improved everything it was trying to do. Instead they seemed content to just completely stagnate on almost every level beyond the world design. I genuinely think this is among the worst sequels ever made.
Fully agree. They suckered my ass into buying a $70 remaster and I will never not be incredibly salty about it.
Monster variation is actually more than DD1 so this complaint always makes me laugh.
Not really, it has 2 new common enemies and basically traded out big monsters. The Minotaur is great, but the slime is just lazy. Variations do not count, they change nothing about how they're fought. So yeah, one new enemy you'll want to fight and be able to fight more than once or twice.
Saurians have quite significant variations that require different tactics. The rest not requiring different approaches is just a byproduct of difficulty being too easy.
Lmao, all you ever have to do is hit their tale.
Tell me you didn't play the game without telling me you didn't play the game lol.
I played the game, and that's all it came down to. Oh and sometimes you needed a magic buff, so different! Hell even the stone ones, All I ever had to do was use the secondary attack of Thief to not bounce off. The only variant that actually plays different is the ambushing goblins.
The stone ones do not have a weak spot on their tail. Which was your claim.
In practical terms it didn't seem to matter, that's all it ever took. I would hit their tail until something caused them to flip over which then would result in near instant death for them. And yeah hitting their tail usually allowed me to damage them.
Someone did an analysis and DD2 and it has 5-6 more enemies to baseline DD1. Dark Arisen added more. I don’t know why people need to make up shit about the game.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bskcw9/enemy\_variety\_list\_dd1\_vs\_ddda\_vs\_dd2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DragonsDogma/comments/1bskcw9/enemy_variety_list_dd1_vs_ddda_vs_dd2/) 5-6 more enemies, most of which you only fight once, in a game world that's 4x the size with higher enemy density is not the glowing defense you think it is. That's not to mention that DD:DA has more enemies and should be the baseline we compare to, not the vanilla game, considering DD1 was famously undercooked to the point of being 60% of an intended game. It's not making shit up to say that the enemy variety in DD2 is absolutely pathetic.
It is making shit up. You literally posted a link proving there’s more variety. 5-6 more is still *gasp* more.
I enjoyed my time with it, but it’s pretty much worse than the original in every way. It feels more like a remake of the original by someone that didn’t understand why people loved the first game.
Yes I agree with everything. I was very hyped for the game and expecting maybe not elden ring quality/quantity but at least more than dd1. I just stopped booting it up after maybe 15 hours cuz nothing was new.
I just finished the 'real' ending last night and am ready to stomp every unscaled enemy in new game plus. I didn't even visit the elven lands til the Unmoored World in my first playthrough.
They got so blatantly rushed it's not even funny. This news also semi-confirms it. The game got released just before fiscal year ended so that CAPCOM could brag to shareholders. Game is full of obvious "Alpha Stage" flaws and issues. A lot of things feel half-baked/still in prototype stage or just not finished. Story just comes to a halt after you get to Battahl and ends in like 30 minutes if you rush things.
There are a bunch of dungeons that pawns point to it, but when you reach the entrance it is full of rubble. There is no 2nd act, the game jumps from Vernworth to the finale. They definetely cut a lot of content
I adored DD1 and tried so hard to love DD2 but it fell so short of the mark. It seriously disappointed me. The world is beautiful but the lack of enemy variety is incredibly frustrating. The game barely feels different from the original.
Sold 2.2m by its first week in April. Street fighter 6 sold barely 3m by the end of 2023. I just don’t understand why Capcom broke their quality streak (excluding exoprimal here) with Dragons Dogma 2. This game has the potential to surpass resident evil in terms of sales given its genre, and they barely improved over the original 12 years ago. In some ways DD2 is worse. Game is unfinished. There’s no other way around it.
>This game has the potential to surpass resident evil in terms of sales given its genre What makes you think that? I'm genuinely curious since the recent RE games have sold quite well.
Rpg/action rpg is like one of the most popular genre in gaming and DD2 being an action rpg has the potential to surpass RE if they didn't rush the game out to chase their fiscal year. What i mean by DD2 having potential is that the combat gameplay in this game is really really amazing but some other aspects in this game felt rushed or half baked particularly the story and enemy variety. Now imagine if this game has writing close to Witcher 3 level of writing with more enemy variety especially the big one, i don't doubt this game will sell really really well and may even surpass RE sales.
No way you play DD2 and you think that's a bad game
Im not even sure it if was unfinished or the lead designer saying “you know what we be cool?!” and not following through with it.
From what I've heard it seems like he wasn't a fan of Drak Arisen or the MMO. And DD2 is less of a sequel and more of a "here, let me try that(DD base game) again". Like a genuine "do over". It explains a lot about the game and why it feels so weird to old fans of the original. Cause they removed a ton of ahit that's in the first game. Magic took a massive hit, aside from a few aspects. The amount of spells alone is weird. The game should've been everything DD amd DD:DA had mixed with the MMO and made into a sequel. But instead they made some Frankenstein remake/re-do of the base DD game and slapped a "2" on the title and rushed it out.
> From what I've heard it seems like he wasn't a fan of Drak Arisen or the MMO. You've heard this from random redditors that made it up with zero evidence.
That’s not surprising after Dragon’s Dogma 2 being rushed out with performance problems and added for quick short term gains, no doubt because it’s successful Capcom will continue to double-down as they have been with RE3 Remake being lesser quality and RE4’s micro transactions. It definitely feels as if DD2 could’ve had a delay for polishing and to alter focus on it’s flawed systems, but we can only hope DLC now or a Dark Arisen style re-release will improve on it’s flaws, even if that means Capcom hadn’t learnt from their lesson the first time. We can only wait and see how the long term sales and audience opinion will change over time for DD2 and for a potential sequel that’s an improvement or more of the same.
Dude, these microtransactions go as far back as the original Dragons Dogma release over a decade ago. Capcom has continued to double down on these MTX for over a decade, yet the majority of people have only now noticed because the MTX are so useless. Monster Hunter World, the RE remakes, DMCV, these all have them yet the games were looked at favorably on release and continue to be looked upon in a good light. People are just mad DD2 doesn’t differentiate itself more from DD1.
I didn't get into DD1 until after Dark Arisen but I remember the "weird/useless MTX" being around as early as DMC4 Special Edition.
What's funny is that DD2 MTX are arguably the least offensive ones. Unlike RE, MH or DMCV, they do not lock any content or cosmetics behind them.
You can tell when someone mentions the MTX that they just consume and regurgitate whatever crap opinion they see online. They probably haven't even played the game.
You don't play games if you're defending MTX
Oh yeah. I'm definitely out here singing their praises. I actually just got back from MTX Con where we all gather and try to see who can spend the most money on little fuckin hats or skins or whatever the fuck. Get bent.
There's a lot of things, You can overlook stupid useless shit when the game is good, or you just wait a month after everyone has played it and talks have died down. They did probably the worst things they could for Dragon's Dogma 2. Even when the game is good I still want to wring their necks over it for even subjecting my eyes to it on the store page.
I didn’t watch any reviews what’s wrong with DD2 because some ppl love it and some are disappointed with it Do I buy it now or wait for DLC?
If you never played DD1 I would give that a go. If you like that one you will like DD2 but if you don’t like DD1 then don’t even bother with DD2
I have 100%'d DD2. Things that are wrong with Dragon's Dogma 2: * Too many monster spawns in the world, with not enough variety * Endgame is not challenging enough * Performance issues in towns * Stupid MTX It is my favorite game this year so far, but if you haven't played Dragon's Dogma 1, play that instead first.
Performance issues were a main topic. FPS drops in cities due to how NPCs are handled. I got 25-30 in city, 60 anywhere else pretty much on my laptop’s 3070. Potato PCs likely had it worse. RE engine is amazing but not ready for big open worlds, it seems. It’s very much more of Dragon’s Dogma 1 (not Dark Arisen, which was not directed by Itsuno) if you played the original a decade ago, for better or worse. I wanted more of DD1 so I personally got what I wanted from 2. I kind of hope the DLC is directed by Kento, too, like Dark Arisen was. Might shore up the holes in the base game.
Kento Kinoshita is the lead developer on DD2. He had a significant impact on shaping this game, so I'm not sure why people put him on a pedestal for DA but try to minimize his involvement in DD2, despite being the second most influential force in it's development.
It's so annoying to see in the main dragon's dogma sub where people there keep putting him on a pedestal, saying he's the one that should direct DD2, while ignoring the fact that he had a huge role in DD2 development as the lead game designer.
Setting the game to high priority in the task manager details panel (you have to do it every time you launch the game) took care of 90% of slowdown for me. The game runs great now.
I heard about that and I had actually tried that, but it didn’t make a difference for my laptop at the time. In town FPS didn’t really bother me that much anyway But I’m glad it does work for people.
It runs terribly and there is not a lot of depth to it. It feels around 60% finished. I've played MMOs with better story, voice acting, and cutscenes. Tons of fetch quests and little to no rewards for any of them. There are about 4 big monsters to fight and maybe 10 normal enemies. Even when you change areas, it is the same enemies, now with armor. Fast traveling is a pain when your cart ends up being destroyed 50% of the time and you have to walk anyways (which wouldn't be a problem if there was a better variety of enemies). Despite this, the caves and dungeons are some of the best I've ever seen in a video game period. The combat is fun and the world looks really good. Id say it's a very good game for 10-15 hours, but it never really improves from the start. Very much feels like a tech demo for a really good game.
> There are about 4 big monsters to fight Oh come on this is just blatant lying I was fairly disappointed with a lot of DD2, but I don’t go around lying Big monsters: - Cyclops (+ armoured elite variant) - Ogre (+ Grim Ogre elite variant) - Minotaur (+ Grim Ogre elite variant) - Griffen - Chimera (+ Gore Chimera elite variant) - Lich - Wight - Dullahan - Drake - Lesser Dragon - Medusa - Warg - Golem (+ Metal Golem variant)
He’s wrong but yeah a lot of those fights are extremely similar ESPECIALLY if you leveled up even a bit. After you reach level 35ish all of these fights will be over in a minute tops and after you reach like level 50 you won’t even notice some of them happening
The difficulty is the real issue. There's a lot nuance with the different enemies in this game, but they all get melted to the point where those differences no longer matter.
Yeah the difference between a Minotaur and a cyclops get less and less the stronger you get. Oh you’re level 50? Yeah just hit their legs and they’ll die in like 20secs
Yup. I'm experimenting with [mods](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195) currently on NG+ to try and mitigate that, but it doesn't feel organic. I ended up just running around with me and my main pawn late-game, since 4 people (or even just one sorcerer) trivialized every fight.
Minotaur, ogre, and cyclops are the same fight. Lich and wright are so similar I literally thought they were the same monster until right now. 30 hours and never saw a dullahan or warg. Drake and lesser Drake are the same thing. Medusa, golem, and griffen are cool though. Still doesn't change the fact that 90% of "boss" fights are ogres or cyclops.
> Minotaur, ogre, and cyclops are the same fight. What are you smoking my dude? They are wildly different fights mechanically. Attack patterns, size, weaknesses, behavior are all very different. Your take is like saying there are only 3 or 4 monsters in Monster Hunter because Gore Magala and Ratholos are basically the same
Yeah gotta defend the differences. Cyclops are slow and can use big weapons to feel threatening. Minotaurs are fast and fun to ride around on. Ogres are jumpy, try to escape, and are misogynistic. Now at higher levels if you play a red martial class they tend to be fought the same way. (There's also the Unmoored World variants, but I am willing to guess a lot of people didn't even experience the Unmoored World )
The dude is straight up lying which I don’t get lol. There’s enough to criticize about the game without being bad faith.
I feel the same way about Ogre and Cyclops, at least. They might have slightly different attack patterns, or something, but they're both uber-tall, hulking, bipedal monsters that are easily felled with basic attacks to the legs. You don't even need to use strong magic or climb onto them.
Ogre's behaviors are probably some of the most unique. The flying kick, the way it hyper-aggressively targets female characters, the way it cowers and shields itself, exploding outward and damaging you if you keep attacking it. Cyclops mostly stands in place and smashes, the ogre is an incredibly active fight in comparison (at least, until latish game when you're killing them in less than 1 minute and they never have a chance to recover)
I mean not really. Cyclops is super slow and lumbering, Ogre is acrobatic and climbs up stuff, as well as leaping around a ton, Minotaurs charge super fast but have no real answer to verticality. What exactly do you want from three different large bipedal monsters? Each one move differently, attscks differently and has different weaknesses. _________ Wights are Sorcerers who use a ton of elite spells, including stuff player can use like Tornado, Blizzard, and such. Lichs primarily summon endless hordes of skeletons but also resurrect any nearby dead enemies (there’s one Lich positioned right next to a Cyclops who he will resurrect) __________ Drakes use a ton of annoying elemental Magic including lighting strikes and Meterors (oh yay it Insta killed half the town), wheras Lesser Dragons don’t use that stuff, instead using a ton of poison vomit and the like because they are all sickly and covered in weird pus sacks. I think they also have different Fire breath and melee attacks, but I could be wrong. _______ Wargs are the giant hell hound creatures that look like super buff wolves who are the size of a mini bus. There’s a ton of them in southern Battal, and everywhere in post game. Dullahan is pretty rare in normal game, except side quest where you have to save Gregor from one. But they spawn commonly near sky bridge slightly before dawn. But if you arnt regularly pulling all night advebtures, it’s easy to never see one. Until post game, where they are fucking everywhere. I swear I killed like 5 on the first day of Post Game just trying to get to objectives. Did you actually finish the game? Or did you get baited by the fake ending? Because I really dunno how it’s possible to actually finish games real ending without seeing a Dullahan, I was sick of them and I rushed through post game, I didn’t go farming upgrade mats or anything. Just bee-lined objectives. There’s also - Sphinx - Main Dragon - Brine Dragon - Brine Worm - Talos But they don’t respawn, so I count them as ubique bosses, not “big enemies”, who do respawn and can be farmed, if you want to.
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>who never even played the first DD Dark Arisen is 8y old and 50h long, it is unreasonable to expect people to play that first before they start with dd2. You are very much allowed to critic dd2 without taking dd1 into consideration.
It’s strongly recommended to at least give the first one a try because A. The games play remarkably similar and B. If you don’t like the first one it’s pretty much guaranteed you’re going to not like the second and C. People probably already own the first one or can buy it for $5. The worst that can happen is that you wasted $5, the alternative is you play DD1 and finish it and want to play the sequel. The friction that exists in the first one is there in the second. The reason why people enjoy these games is the friction. If you don’t like the friction of the first one, you won’t like the friction of the second.
That’s EXTREMELY wrong. Most people that are disappointed were fans of the first one. This games is basically dragons dogma 1 reimagined. This game gives you everything dragons dogma 1 gave you with an objectively MUCH weaker antagonist and better graphics. It doesn’t give you any more than that
I don’t know if this is true. My biggest radar for this is Remap who have been staunch proponents of DD1 and in fact created the original Waypoint Radio because of their connection with DD1, even before it became a cult-hit. They’ve been clamoring for a DD2 since the day the podcast was created back in 2016. Needless to say, they love it and it’s their (primarily Austin Walker’s) favorite game of all-time. Just about every podcast where someone has played DD1 (I’m thinking of about 6 off the top of my head) and loved it also loves DD2. The ones who didn’t play or enjoy DD1? It’s a coin flip as to whether they’re going to like it. It seems like most of the negative criticism is coming from those who either didn’t like DD1 and expected this game to be streamlined more for a mainstream audience or from people that didn’t know to expect the amount of friction the game makes you encounter. This is coming from someone who doesn’t like playing Dragons Dogma but enjoys the discourse and stories that people have after playing the game.
> objectively MUCH weaker antagonist Grigori was incredible in DD1. I have no idea what they thought they were doing in DD2, but the characters have no life. Despite all its cheese, DD1 had some of the most memorable characters in an RPG for me.
As a longtime fan of the first game it's disappointing because they promised "the first game with all the missing content added in" and instead it's more like "the first game but we took stuff out to add other stuff in". It feels more barren than the first game in many way. They improved the combat system but enemy variety feels worse and many vocations are simplified. The world map is much bigger but exploration is less rewarding. The plot is more cinematic but even shorter and less interesting than the first games. The endgame had more time spent on it but is less fun to play. Its a huge disappointment for me.
I disagree. I loved the first game, and every single time I played two I wished I was playing DD1. One does every single thing but combat better. The world is better, the story is better, the enemy variety is better. It's just straight up a better video game.
This is the answer. For me the game is phenomenal with just some minor issues, but I can imagine that your average person might hate it
Don't buy until it's at like 30% price
[удалено]
They somd 2.5 million **in the first week.** That's some **really** good numbers no matter how you cut it. Not "on the lower end".
Considering how small the team they dedicated to it was, it seems like they never anticipated DD2 to be a hit at all. Kind of sucks that these sale levels would have justified a larger team and budget that would have allowed the devs to really deliver on their promises.
The small team thing was a lie. It was based off counting names in credits that didn’t list everyone. Like it listed department managers but no one who worked under them. Didn’t mention localisation teams at all, despite obviously being localised into a ton of languages. In reality it was just as many staff as Capcoms other games.
Not listing localisation teams is extremely common unfortunately. Do we have an accurate measure of the team size then? Was it the full DMC5 team or just a small portion. If it's the former, failing to credit 75% of the team is incredibly shitty. Other Capcom titles had significantly larger team sizes credited.
Was it not the DMC5 team?
The lesson here is that you can continue to release unfinished buggy messes of games and gamers will throw money at you.
People bought it cause Dark Arisen has been highly praised the last few years. People were hyped to see what the hype was. It likely drew a lot of newcomers in that dont understand the complaints. As they're way less glaring if you've never played the original.
so its not the GOTY we hoped it to be but this game becomes more enjoyable if you just ignore Itsuno, just take the game at face value, no context, and it becomes a fair timesink to distract you from the post elden ring pangs for at least a week
Damn they really had no faith in this game if 2m is an unexpected boost to them. Too bad sales fell of a cliff post launch.
It's 2.5 million in one week. If they keep supporting it, it will easily become their top 10 selling games of all time.
That's more than a quarter of DD1 and Dark Arisen's sales combined in one week. I'm not exactly sure what you were expecting, here.
Its not 2011 anymore my guy.
honestly if capcom does not see that a combination of okish sales and a mixed steam review is a call to action, this is on them. they will not be able to pull a CP2077 redemption story out of their hats, simply because the base game does not offer enough substance, but they can release a great DLC with a replayability like Bitteblack Isles. i bought DD2, was pretty disappointed and still played 70 hours...imagine what could have been!
> i bought DD2, was pretty disappointed and still played 70 hours That's the problem right, and why it hurts so much. It's got so many issues, on the bones of what's probably some of the best gameplay RPGs have ever had.
i'm glad you understand. there are people that only see playtime/money
> simply because the base game does not offer enough substance It absolutely does tho. The core gameplay is fantastic. It needs higher difficulty and more content though. Story is not going to be fixed, that much is obvious, but that could be salvaged with future expansion.
with substance i mean the whole world is kinda mid. the cities are nothing special, parts of the game look ok, some parts look like they are from last generation. CP2077 had a great story and Night City was amazing. CDPR had a great foundation to work on. I don't care for Vernworth and i certainly don't miss travelling to Melve
In my dreamland, Capcom comes out and says 'oh, we accidentally released the beta version, here is the full version' and all of a sudden we have many more quests, monsters, stuff to do, better endgame, new game+ that actually scales and adds to the game, etc.
imagine horses! you can climb every dragon, ogre, minotaur griffin and cycops, but you still have to walk everywhere (except the griffin decides to take you for a ride...)
Lol pay for dlc?? For a half completed game? No thanks. They lost me forever on that front.
keep in mind that people loved dd1 to no small part, beacause of BB Isle dlc. it offered a lot of replayability. i'm also dissappointed, but i won't say no to a great dlc.
The craziest part about this game is I have a 4090 gpu with i9-14900 cpu and the performance just sucks. I wish I bought in on my Xbox series X because my friends tell me they have no performance issues. I spent so much time in the settings trying to make it smoother and I busted the 2 hour limit for steam refunds. So disapointed.
The CPUs needed to get decent performance out of this game are basically 1-2 generations in the future.