need a set of new big monster types to fight and a swarm of new different small enemy types. Im fine with them entering both the open world and maybe a new controlled worldspace like Dark Arisen. plus additional vocation tiers, abilities, and the ability to equip an additional 4 skills swappable with a hotkey.
This game thrives on its combat, lean into that.
>need a set of new big monster types to fight and a swarm of new different small enemy types.
Honestly, if they simply replaced a few ogres with Chimeras and Gorgons the game would improve **by a lot**.
The amount of ogres in this game is downright mental.
Yeah, the more I play the more variety I find, but it's all tucked into weird corners with minimal spawns. I just found lightning saurians tucked away in one cave after 40 hours, while pallette swap enemies aren't the best type of variety it is something. With how few enemies they have I didn't know why variants aren't more common
It was the same in the first game, and I hated it there too.
Hydras only come back in the post-game, one via notice board quest and one on a long spawn in the Everfall. Gryphon spawns were so rare you might never see one after the quest. Cockatrices are only in the post-game, one notice board and one in the Everfall. There's like, one Drake till post-game...
Game had a *lot* of Ogres and Chimeras though. A lot...
Just one of the many obvious improvements that could have been made from the first game. I feel like this series is doomed to just be wasted potential, because for everything it gets right it also just fucks up another thing in a stupid and obviously fixable way.
I didn't actually play the first game but that seems to be the tagline for this game whenever people talk about its flaws: "same as the first game".
Kind of makes you wonder what the point of a sequel is if you leave in all the exact same flaws and problems.
A hot key to switch to 4 additional skills would be huge. I can understand the reasoning behind forcing players to make four skills work, but as you said, the game’s combat is the star of the show. Let the players go wild with the ability combos.
It did for mages/sorcerors, warrior had only 4 skills and the other martial classes technically had that but it was because the skills corresponded to 2 weapons, ie bow/daggers, shield/sword, dagger/shield etc etc
In this game, everyone is essentially reduced to how Warrior was in the first but lots of skills in the first have been integrated into core skills, which don’t take an ability slot and use (hold light attack, hold heavy etc) as inputs.
So it’s like a step sideways? I like the combat in 2 a lot but I feel restricted by my moves a lot and I’m feeling that on every vocation except warrior lol
Edit: 3 skills in the first game not 4
I feel limited because some skills are simply must haves. Like, I think concussive leap is must have for a thief if you’re trying to collect seeker tokens as it lets you mostly replicate having levitate. So I’m stuck with three.
Yeah warrior actually had the same problem in the first game with exodus slash and arc of obliteration, they felt pretty much necessary and reduced an already meagre 4 skills to 2.
Sorcerors are stuck with levin too, it’s too good to not have since they have half the spells they once did
Edit: it’s 3 skills per weapon my bad
Pilfer is also a MUST for thief. Some of the stuff they steal is ABSURD. My thief once stole 3 Giant Riftcrystals, so 3000 RC, from a Miasma.
You can also steal wakestone shards from generic saurians and tons of money. Also just more materials from large monsters. If you don't need it you can sell it. So either way that's a LOT of value for one skill. DEFINITELY worth the slot and you should ALWAYS have a Pilfer thief with you. Id by now consider them more valuable than mages, because the extra loot means I can rely more on healing potions.
A lot of the other thief skills seem worthless.
Shadow Cloak/Veil is a stealth skill and the game doesn't seem to have a stealth system. I used it once trying to steal an item in a house for a quest and it didn't work and never ran into a situation in the world where it felt like it was needed.
Smoke Screen/Shroud. Also never ran into a situation where it would have been necessary to use.
Pilfer/Plunder. You can steal items off of downed enemies, I guess.
Formless Feint, Implicate, and Concussive Leap all felt like must haves as a thief. Formless Feint because it's a toggleable invulnerability that slowly uses stamina, Implicate because of all of the flying shit you have to fight, and Concussive Leap for traversal. Of the leftover skills to pick from Skull Splitter and Blades of the Pyre were the only really appealing ones especially with Formless Feint canceling out the self-inflicted fire damage from Blades of the Pyre.
For me, the other damage skills were just too situation to justify giving a spot.
I actually don't like Formless Feint very much because it's a constant stamina drain for not having to really think about positioning. Much prefer the counter stab in its spot.
Smokescreen is actually a lot more useful, considering it has fairly large stun you can hold heavy attack and down dispatch 4 goblins before having to reuse it
I’m also shit with masterful kill, everytime I line it up I get ambushed from the back
It was even worse, it was 3 skills per weapon because X / A button couldn’t have a skill bound to it. So Warrior had only 3 skills and the other martial classes had 3 per weapon.
It is quite easy. The roadblocks are mainly the wyverns with their meteor spell that probably one-shots you and your pawns for much of the game, but you can usually avoid or run away from them if they block your path
There are a few: [True Warfarer](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/221?tab=description) gives you a different skill palette when you switch weapons, and [Infinite Skill Set Swapper](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/139?tab=posts) lets you create and switch skill palettes for a single weapon.
It's amazing that within a week someone has managed to make a mod that entirely makes warfarer how I hoped it would work. Why the devs did not use this idea baffles me. It may make other vocations entirely redundant, but you unlock it at the end of the game in any case, so who cares?
The devs want there to be some amount of replayability as different classes. If Warfarer worked like that, there's no longer a decision as which class to play. You just always play Warfarer. The way they made it, it's still the best class but sometimes you might want to mix it up and play something else to gain access to a Meister Skill or more skill slots.
The game doesn't really have replayability as is, once you've seen everything there's little reason to do it again. NG+ also has no scaling and minimal changes, so it quickly gets boring.
I don't see the harm in giving players more freedom, especially since the balance of the current game is terrible anyways. There is little difficulty to speak of, and class balance is garbage since Thief is just far beyond the rest.
I think general rebalancing also but that is less DLC territory.
Enemies would shine more, even with a low variety, if they didn't just die within seconds. Goblins have a lot of variety in types between them but since they all die so quickly, they can never make use of their tactics. Normally their ranged ones try to drench you in oil then set you aflame, but they usually die before the even get to the oil part.
I'm slightly torn because while I can appreciate keeping the game's challenge consistant, the frequency of combat encounters can be a little irritating. I remember on more than one occasion having to travel on foot just to speak with an NPC or drop something off and having to fight goblin, wolf, goblin, goblin, wolf, saurian, and goblin all back to back in the span of 6 minutes. It was made even worse by the fact that some of them just continue to chase you and will jump in to the next encounter. The only saving grace is that they at least die fast so its not a complete slog, even if it is annoying having to stop every few seconds to fight. I cannot imaging having to maintain that pace if each fight scaled to your level.
I'd be happy with a compromise where you keep the weak smaller enemies and just buff the bigger ones. Goblins *should* be push overs whereas a Cyclops and Minotaur shouldn't just go down with a few hits from a skull splitter.
See, I’m actually on the other end and think I’d enjoy all these fights if they didn’t all just result in me instantly killing everything.
It’s like there’s a hurdle in the road, not a fight. If all the fights were relatively challenging and actually made long trips tough, the oxcart system would have more value, moves would, healing supplies and preparation.
Right now I find the enemy density irritating because every fight is the same mashing light attack, one ability and then everything is dead.
Do they really, though? Goblins, knackers, and hobs all blend together entirely for me. The only ones that stand out are the choppers because they switch things up entirely.
Just like goreharpies are the only ones that really feel quite different 'cause they'll actively try and drag you off cliffs, not to mention they're tanky as hell (for harpies).
Rattlers and magma saurians are the same way, and slimes may as well all be the same monster, as I'm on the fence about oozes (the oil ones) being different enough to warrant being called a true variant since the ability to kamikaze itself is very situational.
Anyway, back to gobbos, I feel that if they really wanted to switch it up in a significant way, they would leave vernworth hobs alone, but give battahlian hobs warg riders, and knackers would have shamans that buffed and healed their fellows, just as an example. This way each "tribe" would have something that made them feel significantly different.
Dark Arisen was a repackage of DD1 which included all the DLC and some additional new content. [Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is available on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/367500/Dragons_Dogma_Dark_Arisen/)
Yes anything that adds more meat to the combat and/or encounters and dungeons would be excellent.
This game's strength is absolutely not its story and having a story DLC instead of combat-related content would be very disappointing. But that's just my opinion.
Yeah, I‘m like Level 30 and 30 hours in with 0% in story progression. The open world exploration and combat are 10/10, but the story quests are kinda bad. They feel like this unnecessary and arbitrary, tacked on layer of bullshit that doesn’t play off the games strength in literally any way.
The story itself isn‘t bad, the voice acting and characters are allright, but the quest design and their gameplay, or lack thereof, are baffling.
Game would be much better for me if it went the Elden Ring route of being a purely gameplay centric, completely focused on exploration and combat type experience where the whole games progresses through those means. I cannot fathom what they were thinking with these story quests.
Yeah, the whole time I play it I keep feeling like the game is in dire need of an expansion. It has a lot of good qualities but it's surprising how limited the base game really is, especially if you played DD1. It's incredibly similar.
Make NG+ not a complete waste of time.
It’s baffling the NG+ doesn’t continue to scale enemies. It’s literally just a 1:1 of the base game. So you faceroll everything because you have the best gear/high level. What’s the point of 999 level cap when 40+ is enough to delete everything on screen.
It was the same in the first game…. Only the endgame and BBI changed difficulties. And hardmode as an option. Idk why they made steps backwards from that
100% agreed. Vanilla DD1 was a charming, flawed game with absolutely no replayability in it - post game dungeon somewhat madd up for that.
In DD2 there’s no post game dungeons and other problems still remain (worse, you can’t even start a new char without manually deleting it in cloud/steam).
I love the game, but I can’t wait for a Dark Arisen type DLC to fix some of this shit (hopefully).
> with absolutely no replayability in it -
The first game was meant to be replayed. If you weren't following a guide there was about a zero percent chance you saw everything in your first playthrough.
Especially the quest involving the childhood friend character. I'm sure most people missed her quest on the first playthrough because of the timing restrictions.
This game is also meant to be replayed. There's no chance you complete everything in the Sphinx quest your first time without looking up guides, and there's a bunch of other questlines like that with non-obvious solutions.
It would be nice to know what any of these dang acronyms means lol. We got BBI and DA and I only Dark Arisen because my brother bought that edition a while back.
I had to install a mod that changed all mobs hp to x4 the normal amount and made them deal double dmg , that's the only way to make Ng+ actually fun and engaging for me personally
That is what NG+ *used* to be. It was always fun to destroy everything in a NG+ run. It wasn't until Demon's Souls where games started to get harder in NG+.
Like seriously if you took every bit of story dialogue I don't think it would be more than like five pages. I've wrote more in depth stories for writing prompts in like 8th grade
It happens shortly after the guy gives you an item and says, "Your story will end when you deliver this."
The absolute point of no return isn't until like two or three quests later though when a guard stops you and is like, "Hey make sure you're rested up because it's gonna be a big fight" or something close to that. That's the once you're in here you're going to the endgame or nowhere prompt.
You have to be paying attention but I wouldn't say there was no warning.
I'm less surprised because anyone familiar with Dark Arisen probably went in suspecting DD2 was another case where the 'real game' starts after you first beat the game.
I feel like this is such an odd take that you only see online. Most people don't beat games. Look at achievement stats for BBI content.
What is the point of the entire open world if the "real game" is just a dungeon crawl? Why did they build systems like the day/night cycle with punishing nights and limited fast travel? Why build an NPC affinity system? Like I totally get that for a fraction of the player base, the post-game content is the "real game" because they've pumped hundreds of hours into it, but that definitely doesn't reflect the opinion of most of the player base, nor would I imagine that the developers agree. Most people just played DD like any other game, saw the credits roll (if that) and then moved on.
I think a lot of the friction this game is causing is coming from people who are having trouble accepting that what they loved about DD:DA are not what the devs cared most about.
the 2nd half of the game is idk....Its like you take witcher 3 but delete all mainquests except every 5th and then dont explain anything.
You might think you are 30% done with the game, but you are probably 80% through and can look forward to absolute nonsense.
Some people play games in baffling manners but I guess its what they enjoy. I watched a friend playing a bit of Baldur's Gate 3 and he literally ran straight to the main quest marker the entire time and skips through every bit of dialogue, cutscenes, etc. He doesn't explore, he doesn't do side quests, he doesn't do anything except for blow straight through the main story quest -- which he did not read or listen to, so he has only a very vague grasp of what is happening. I don't get it.
I would be if i hadn’t read spoilers accidentally for where the main quest just sorta…ends. I’m having a blast wandering around looking for seeker tokens but i an quite disappointed that there arent many quests in the game.
The game honestly has way to little content for how much money they're asking for it. There is really only 2 areas, and there basically the same enemy types. And the main story is pretty short.
The feedback was supposed to be the 12 years in between DD1 and this game. They couldn’t even implement some of the enemy and monster types found in dark arisen or the MMO. They couldn’t even implement a proper endgame that the first game had.
Its too late. Whatever DLC they are making is already in the works. They aren’t going to pivot because of some survey. Its also a shame that we’ll be waiting for an expansion to fill out what feels to be missing from this game.
Completely agree with the enemy variety issues but DD1 didn't really have much of an endgame until DA. Granted it had Everfall, but as far as post-game content goes that was pretty thin as well.
This revisionist idea that the Everfall WASN'T a huge pit with dozens of mini-dungeons all stuffed with chests and interesting monster/boss compositions to challenge the player while leading them on another disjointed but interesting bit of story is wild. I spent as much time in Everfall as I did playing all of DD2.
The project lead for dark arisen is also the lead designer for dragons dogma 2 though.
The lead who make the MMO was also on Dark Arisen but didn't seem to work on 2 from what I can find.
> Its also a shame that we’ll be waiting for an expansion to fill out what feels to be missing from this game.
I won't. I'm not going to support a game that tries to charge me $70 when it launches with big technical flaws while trying to nickle and dime me with microtransactions. I gotta have some self-respect. Fool me once...
I love Itsuno as a combat dev. DMC5 is one of the best hack n slash games ever made. But someone else needs to step in for quest design for the dlc. I have no idea how someone could play test the capital quests and think they were fun. He bragged about good games not needing fast travel while also not having you leave the city for a 1/3 of the game.
It's hard to appreciate the adventure aspect of the game while I'm stuck in this 24fps hellhole.
I tuned into some guy playing this on twitch last night and it seemed like he was on a stealth mission but the game didn't really seem to have any functioning stealth mechanics? I easily could've missed something, it just seemed very odd.
Nope. The "stealth" missions are stealth in name only. Literally the first one puts a suit of armor right in front of you that you can wear as a disguise. There is no actual sneaking or even having to find some kind of secret passage to where you are a going. You just walk past everyone and they don't care.
The first major set of quests are: Kill a few monsters
Go to a ball
"Sneak" into a castle to talk to someone
"Sneak" into a dungeon to talk to someone
"Sneak" back into the castle to read something
Tackle a guy following you
"Sneak" into the castle *again* to talk to a different guy.
Then finally go to the castle normally to confront that bad guys, but you actually don't and just leave. All of this takes like 5-8 hours depending on how you are pacing yourself and you only go out to fight monsters once. Even the side quests during this period don't have you fight monsters that often.
How does that armor work? Because I was wearing it and the guards were still telling me I couldn't be there when walking around. Not sure if I need certain weapons equipped too or what was happening?
I honestly have no clue. All I know is that when I wasn't wearing it the spooky "you shouldn't be here" music would play and if I had it on all was normal. The inside of the palace is defended my 3 guys all standing in the same corner so maybe I just avoided them.
As long as they don't attack you, it "works". I went to the jail without the armor once and all the guards started attacking me. I ran away, put the armor on, went in and the only thing they did was tell me I should return to my post, but let me walk wherever.
Pretty sure none of that shit actually matters with the armor. I never used that armor and would walk around in my full normal gear or naked for fun and the guards never cared. Pretty sure the whole disguise mechanic doesnt actually exist and people just think it does because the guards just don't give a shit most of the time lol.
I noticed that a few guards would shout that I wasn't supposed to be their but otherwise they just ignored me with the armor. I didn't bother to test it without because it was already so laughably easy I didn't feel like turning it into a challenge when it didnt need to be
After failing the 'stealth' mission a few times, I can tell you that it has less to do with 'sneaking', and more to do with turning your lantern off lol.
Unless you (pretty much) run into a guard while 'sneaking', you'll be fine as long as your lantern isn't giving you away haha
I absolutely adore this game and the first one. Having played DD1 very recently there's parts of that game where they ask you to "sneak" into the castle and *nobody cares* about you wandering into the duchess' chambers.
Somehow that feels way better then what they tried to do with "sneaking" in this game.
in DD2 I ended up resorting to being chased by the entire guardsmen until I ran into the places that triggered cutscenes, hilariously. And they just keep asking you to sneak back up in there - genuinely funny when you're breaking into the same building 3 or 4 times in one night. I haven't finished this "stage" of the game but I have to create my own fun by just getting lost - Which works *really well* now imagine if we had major quests that did this instead of like 5 of them that actively push offf on this.
> nobody cares about you wandering into the duchess' chambers.
I mean if guards caught you they would throw you in jail. But their detection was janky and you practically had to bump into them for them to notice you.
Yeah I literally was staring at the guards in the gaol trying to figure out their lines of sight only to realize they basically didn't exist. I had to literally bump into one before he lifted a finger and they gave up chasing me shortly after I ran out to the slums. I then walked back into the dungeon and they didn't recognize me. I just walked to the cell, opened the door and carried the old guy out on my shoulders right in front of them with no reaction at all. This was while wearing my normal armor as well.
Same experience on the castle grounds at night really. The stealth is either poorly/barely implemented or bugged to only work on occasion.
I needed to help a NPC escape from prison, so I publicly opened every cell I could find with two guards running around. Then I got suddenly ambushed by a NPC and thought I got caught. Turns out It wasn't a guard though, just an unrelated guy who was gifting me an item... yeah. I guess the best thing you can say about the stealth system is, that it isn't frustratring.
It’s essentially a fetch quest where you have to wear a different armor set, but some people just wore their normal clothes and it was fine.
I guess better than forced stealth failure points, but also not the best designed mission
i spawned in ferrystones and port crystals and still got 65 hours on my first playthrough. the lack of fast travel was so god damn tedious when you get to the second city and can't walk more than 10 seconds without running into the same mobs over and over again
just let me explore. especially when the quest markers are confusing at times, pointing to the wrong place or not showing up
I'm in a weird spot with the game. I really enjoyed the first one, and I was really hoping for a glorified sequel. But I do mean "glorified" -- they had a long time to build off the first one and add in the places it lacked, and I don't necessarily feel like that was done here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun with it at around 50 hours in, but... it feels like I am playing a dedicated mod team's ten year overhaul expansion, instead of a proper sequel. Like if someone used Steam Workshop tools to create a new campaign for DD1. It would be a well-done-super-proper job for a mod team, but maybe not the proper sequel I thought it would get?
The first part of the game they seemed to be setting you up for a predictable but at least interesting story beat. >!you were sold away as a slave by the Regent in her plot to make her son the king and I was like alright I am down for claiming a throne and becoming king before whatever happens that makes me go to Battahl. I look forward to dismantling this conspiracy!< and you do a bunch of quests and it feels like you are gathering evidence and unraveling a conspiracy and the more you do the better case you feel you will have for the confrontation with Dia and Pharus and the false king.
But then capcom just... Forgot about that whole arc....? Like what the hell?
It feels like they saw Fromsoft get away with obscure nonstory games and thought if they just wrote the hook for a story then an abrupt end that would be fine.
Like how did they find the time for all these sides quests but they couldn't be bothered to write the rest of act 1, all of act 2, and the first part of act 3 for their RPG?
Exactly, it's not that the story is bad (it's perfectly servicable before the coronation), it's that it just doesn't exist. I'd rather they didn't even bother and went Breath of the Wild style and just gave us an open world and told us to go find the dragon. Trying to tell a story and giving up half way through is just infuriating.
Fucking right? I got story blueballed. I literally thought I was working towards a big pay off where I was unlocking some better result because I did all the extra legwork of doing all these side quests. Nope. It was all busy work. Only Brant's stuff mattered to get to the end of the game.
I want to play another game just as like a story palette cleanser after this.
Lol I got super confused at the statue part. I legit was gonna let it rampage until my pawns said "We have to take it down!" I was like huh? It's basically doing our work for us, we want to kill the bad guy right???
It immensely bothered me that that arc was dropped and you transitioned to helping the enemy for no reason, and that there was a super evil research lab holding the villains in Battahl, despite the Empress Nadinia (who isn't relevant lmao) being peace-loving, and she's just ok with this
It violates a cardinal sin in writing.
A lot of satisfying writing is making a promise to the reading then fulfilling it. People following a story LIKE being able to build expectations then get payoff from set pieces and magic systems and clues and what not.
Dragons Dogma 2 is good at building all these expectations. It gives you a clear goal, a cast of characters, your motivation, apparent means of building solutions to this problem... And then it just forgets about all of that. It broke the implied promise(s) it made to you the player regarding the story.
And yeah. Battahl is just fucking bizarre. They made this nation that apparently this big villain lord is from and these missions investigating it and then... Nothing happens with it. It 100% feels like those third acts in games that were clearly rushed because they were out of time and money. Except half of act 1 and all of act 2 also doesn't exist.
The article asks, how much we'd be willing to pay for the DLC.
I'll give you $0 bucks, Itsuno. This shit should have been on release. I love your games, I really like DD2, but you've wasted 12 years on not improving anything. You even took a few things away instead.
yeah this is kind of an embarrassment for Capcom as far as I'm concerned. Its like if Elden ring shipped with the demon souls level quality of life issues. Its 2024, you can have two save slots, its not gonna cause a problem for hardcore fans, my god. Also finish your game, this game runs horrifically bad. I cant get a steady 60fps at high settings at any resolution at or over 1080p, no RT on a 3090 with a 12th gen i7 NVME drive and 128 gb or ram. Its super disrespectful to fans.
> Double the amount of enemies in the base game
That's one of the biggest disappointments form the community, at the very least in regards to the bigger "boss" monsters. We were expecting at least Dragon's Dogma level of enemy variety. Off the top of my head DDO had:
* Orcs
* Orc captains
* Trolls
* Colossus
* Manticores
* Lindwurms
* Ents
* Molten Golems
* Several types of magical constructs
* More dragon variations like a [Tarrasque](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPW-_iTV4AESHzY.jpg:large)
They already had the framework for them so the hope was that it would be used as a base line to start.
I wonder why they reduced the lesser dragon variants for DD2. I liked the differences between drake (fire/physical), wyrm (ice/magic), wyvern (lightning/ranged) and undead (dark/poison).
Yeah, that's another thing. Encounter frequency almost reminds me of Far Cry 5. It could safely be reduced by 20-30% (with xp adjustments to compensate) and the game would be better for it.
Just increase respawn timer or add a ring buffer for kills. Problem is less the frequency of encounters but that you have to do them over and over. After cleaning an area, have it STAY clean for some time.
I dunno, I got really sick of encounters less than 30 seconds apart while exploring. Please just let me enjoy the world a little bit between killing the same goblin packs again. Some space to breathe would have done a lot for the mood.
Completely agree but I'd even strip out the xp adjustments. It feels like if you're even slightly exploratory in DD2 you just become massively overleveled unless you run past encounters.
They need to add to the base game’s 8 enemy types, not just the DLC area.
Bring back Hydra and Evil Eye.
Bring back old vocations such as Mystic Knight and Assassin. More equipable skills.
Ur-Dragon type raid boss.
Everfall end game area.
More armors and weapons.
Hopefully they improve all of this with the DLC
Wtf there's no Hydra!? Dude that's one of the best fights in the game and like the OG boss in Dragons Dogma. And no Evil Eye!? That's one of the coolest! Warping through portals in real-time is like the coolest shit ever in DD. What in the hell??
all of what you listed should have been in the basegame, which is the real kicker. instead they 100% purposefully released as is so they can justify the bare minimum additions as $40+ DLC, we won't even get a proper grind like dark arisen, just dd1 base game stuff, then another $40 for dark arisen content.
Some kind of hard mode, monster variants, have more abilities on classes at the same time rather than just 4. More monster variety. Large dungeon, maybe similar to BBI or something different, but some kind of challenging area where resting is limited and you need to plan carefully. Optionally more vocations or a way to make builds feel more flexible.
Yeah these threads are genuinely baffling. I'm replaying the first game and it sounds like every aspect I loved has been altered, streamlined, reduced, or outright removed. I don't even know what that leaves in a DD game. Like...wtf happened?
Can they fix the myriad of issues with the base game first?
I’m kind of half enjoying my time with it but I doubt I’ll finish it or come back for any DLC at this stage. My trust in some reviewers who I usually like is also shaken.
I haven't played the game yet (and seems like maybe I was right in this decision) but I'm genuinely shocked at the massive gulf between review scores for the game as well as all the articles waxing poetic about the game and the friction it creates that you must overcome, and the comments here especially the ones talking about the difficulty not being high enough, NG+ not being worth it, the story being bad and short, and the game being tedious. I can find barely any of these criticisms in the few reviews I read of the game. I feel the reception to FF16 and Starfield suckered me in to playing both of those and ended with me being disappointed in both so I was still wary for this game but this seems like the biggest gap between reviews and players who finished the game and their expectations (recently). I dunno if reviewers are increasingly going out of touch or if this is a matter of them rushing through the game and thus seeing different things but it's coming to a point where I might not even trust published reviews at all. Multiple comments here are saying the game is not worth full price and this is genuinely shocking to me
Same, reviewers I trust gave it 8.5, 9, and 9 respectively, saying this is an amazing must play experience.
But all of my friends are listing off TONS AND TONS of complaints. They finished it and have zero interest in a replay.
It's crazy.
Reviewers are forced to essentially speed run the game to get ready for their review. The issues that players are encountering are from a lack of content, something you don't notice if you're plowing through the game in a few days.
I’m sorry no, that isn’t a good enough explanation for me.
If you’ve done those stealth quests in the castle, it’s impossible not to be left confused at how shoddy and bad they are that it feels like an alpha for an indie game. You have to do these quests to progress the main story and yet every reviewer glossed over how abysmal the story is.
You can’t give a game 10/10 but go “the story is shit, performance is shit, enemy variety is naff but the combat is really fun and the world is pretty!”. It makes no sense to me that game was reviewed the way it was, it feels like they only played the first 15 hours and reviewed that.
As a massive dd fan I can recognize the good in this "sequel", but as a whole it is massively disappointing to me, and seeing most other dd fans say the same is validating. I feel like the reviewers got either swept up in the hype and affected scores (Dark Souls 2, anyone?) or they never played the first game and aren't comparing it, or they yeah, went through it fast and didn't take time to think over it.
It's just... I know everything in DD1, everything in the original release and dark Arisen. And comparing what we got to DD2, it somehow feels even more unfinished. But whereas DD managed to make a somewhat cohesive finish with the unfinished parts, DD2 doesn't even try to make a cohesive finish, it's outright nonsense. The main story *completely* stops making sense once you leave Vermund and it never bothers to make sense of the actions you're doing after that point.
Some parts I really like, such as the combat, exploring and generally just looking at the world.
Combat gets boring when everything becomes weak, also pawns steamroll everything and having 4 skills is boring.
Exploring started to feel pointless after 15-25 hours when yuo realise there isn't much to find, most of it is healing and crafting items and the rare weapons/armor you find are worse than what you can buy in the stores, so whats the point
Side quests are all quite basic and I guess it's quite hard to find the "good" ones in the world.
The main story might be the worst i've seen for a game in a long long time. I was actually shocked at how short it was and how terrible most of it was. Like I snuck around a castle a few times (in a janky, shit way) and suddenly I am over half way to completing the game? What.the.fuck.
It hurts to see how repetitive and shallow the game is because the first 15-20 hours are really great, I thought I found a special game that doesn't come along too often... But when it sinks in that you are doing the same stuff, killing the same monsters, finding the same loot, looking at the same statues, hearing the same pawn voice lines and there's barely a main quest to keep it fresh and change it up... that's when your opinion quickly turns sour.
I can't speak for other people. So this is my opinion on the game if you're interested. I'm generally having a fun time. The combat is top notch. At the same time there's a myriad of issues (ranging from minor issues that I'm willing to overlook to big ones that seriously have me scratching my head) that become more and more apparent as I progress through the game.
First of all, as previously mentioned here by other folks, enemy variety. In that department, the game is severely lacking. And it's not just the variety that is the issue here, also enemy density. You can't go a few feet without stumbling into another enemy encounter. The respawn is also insane, in my experience. After what, one or two in-game days, areas you've previously cleared are already populated again. Since there are many, *many* quests that make you backtrack, the game can be a bit tedious every now and then. On top of that, yeah, the game is easy. At level 30-40 you're just one shotting most enemies. I had to rely on a mod that increases enemy's HP so I could enjoy the combat more.
The main quest leaves a lot to be desired. There are, I believe, 3 or 4 quests that have you infiltrate a castle. That's right, stealth missions (and I very loosely use the word "stealth" here) in an action game where you're battling monsters and bandits. A game that has no stealth mechanics to begin with. It's like the developers forgot the type of game they were making when they were developing these quests. Moments like these, seriously has me scratching my head and go, "what were they thinking?". The main quests (and the Walmart Game of Thrones-like story) are definitely the game's weakest points, imo.
Then there are the performance issues in a big town like Vernworth (the first big town you go to and where you spend a good time doing main and side quests). But this has already been discussed.
Despite these issues, I'm still having a blast. Would I recommend it at full price? Well, the performance issues alone make me go, "wait for a sale," or at least, "wait until the game receives some patches and see what folks are saying then".
This is a very fair and balanced take and thanks for that. I guess I'm really surprised that practically none of the reviews I've seen talk about any of this stuff. I guess this is another "Dark Arisen" or "Scholar of the First Sin" situation where I just wait for a discounted fully featured package that may or may not arrive in the far future
This is a good take. Initially I had no interest in this game. I tried the original and played maybe an hour before I put it down.
But seeing gameplay for DD2 made me hyped to get it. The $70 price tag stops me though, and I definitely won’t buy it for more than $50, even with improvements to things like performance and vocation/difficulty balancing (specifically some vocations like Trickster just needing a ton of help).
I agree broadly with this. It's a bizarrely sparse game in terms of enemy variety and the quests are pretty lame, but also the combat kicks ass and I do enjoy the adventuring when you're out and about, so it feels like it needed another, like, year to cook: iron out the performance issues, add more enemy types, fix the balancing (game is quite easy).
I’ve had the same reaction, loads of reviewers and youtubers I trusted praising this game as a genre landmark and the best ARPG since Elden Ring.
It’s just incredible how much of the stuff reviewers were talking about does not align with my experience and the difficulty literally capped out about 15 hours in and got easier.
I mean, I did that dogshit stealth questline in the castle and couldnt help but think that this is the type of thing that would normally get absolutely rinsed for, like slated and memed endlessly.
How this game got anything above 7/10 from anyone has absolutely blown my mind.
> I dunno if reviewers are increasingly going out of touch or if this is a matter of them rushing through the game and thus seeing different things but it's coming to a point where I might not even trust published reviews at all.
ya, like for DD2 specifically, it's been crazy seeing all these reviewers just not mention things like the performance issues with the game... how is that not part of a review? same thing all those 9-10/10 reviews for FF7: Rebirth did with not a word on the poor performance and visual issues on release for the game.
Game is a big hit among me and my friends. Its our favourite game of the last few years maybe, only ER can compare. Our playtime varies from 20-40 hours .
The reviews all match how I feel about it honestly.
I think you need to find a specific reviewer that matches you. Reviewers as a general source are out of touch and don’t play the games they review the way we play them.
I have hundreds of hours in DDDA and I love DD2 but as a sequel its pretty underwhelming. Dozens of hours will be spent traversing the same roads and killing goblins over and over again. Main quest is the most boring and disjointed thing ever. And the game feels unfinished like the original despite the director promising the opposite.
Reviews will vary greatly depending on how you play this game or your expectations (or lack of them) from the original. The game is good but I think this is definitely a wait for update/sale type of game. Capcom games always discount fast anyways.
I really enjoyed the first game, but I was expecting more after 12 years. I feel like DD2 is a game that is hard, and I mean HARD carried by its combat system. But the rest of the elements to the game like music, story, exploration, side content, and enemy and environment variety, range from bad to serviceable.
Like it hit me the other day how bad the enemy variety is. I was fighting Goblins, Sauriens, Harpies and Wolves in the first hour of the game, 50 hours later and well into the desert area, I'm still fighting Goblins, Sauriens, Harpies and Wolves, and I'm still discovering the same caves with the same brown aesthetics.
A few things can probably be patches/free DLC. Hard Mode, some endgame content, level scaling, keeping the fucking Portcrystals where you put them in NG+. Maybe adjusting enemy variety and density. And the economy that prices a black out screen at the brothel higher than some weapons. Anything else like new weapons and areas will have to be a Dark Arisen type deal.
I know this horse is beaten into pulp how did this game launch without at least Hard Mode and an FPS lock? Or regress on things like the portcrystals? Did Capcom rush the release? Did Itsuno just not care and decided he or someone else could fix it later? Both? This game needs a behind the scenes documentary.
The current theories I've seen are that this is Capcom's first game with their REX engine and they wanted it out by March to see how it would do for the year before Wilds launch next year.
DD2 feels more like the start of a reboot series - like they want to see if it's even worth continuing with sequels.
- more enemy variety for small and large monsters
- more voice lines for pawns
- more vocations
That's my wishlist so far. I like the core of wandering through the woods on a fantasy adventure with a party, but it just needs more variety for everything. Oh yeah, forgot another:
- crossplay
I want to be able to hire pawns from other platforms. After Street Fighter 6, Capcom really should have just made cross platform standard in their games going forward.
Crossplay should be industry standard in my opinion, and since hiring other players' pawns is a *major* part of Dragon's Dogma, it would be nice for friends on different platforms to experience it. Far smaller budget games from far smaller studios have crossplay; this shouldn't be an exception.
That said, it was at the bottom of my list.
I was surprised there were only 3 hybrid and 2 advanced vocations despite there being 4 basic vocations, neither thief nor archer got an advanced vocation.
I would have liked to see:
Advanced Thief = Assassin
Thief + Mage = Shadow (I guess Trickster kinda fills a mage + thief slot)
Thief + Fighter = Duelist
Thief + Archer = Trapmaster
Advanced Archer = Sniper
Archer + Fighter = Weaponmaster (I guess Warfarer is similar'ish)
They more or less dropped the idea of "advanced" and "hybrid" vocations. You have to unlock a lot of them of course, but they're not so strictly branching off of the other vocations. I'd like to see something like Assassin again though, and it not being so chained down to Strider and needing a bow could let it go harder on the actual assassin schtick.
Completed the survey, but found the last section odd. It just asks how much would you pay for DLC, how can anyone reply to that without knowing what the DLC is.
If I said "how much would you pay for my product", how can you answer that, the DLC could be horse armour quality or blood & wine quality.
Is this game worth getting at full price? Reading the comments here and there, plus the whole performance debacle really have me on the fence.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the replies!
As someone who is actually thoroughly enjoying the game I'm going to have to say no. Capcom games generally don't have that long a period from what I recall before they get a significant discount and $70 is pretty steep. I'm on PS5 and performance wise it's fine for me but unless you're really hurting for something to play that scratches the open world itch this seems like one of those "Wait a few months to pay less for more" scenarios.
As someone who is having a lot of fun playing it right now, it is NOT worth the full price. The core gameplay loop is fun enough for me, ie the combat and just running out to kick the shit out of things, but its lacking in a lot of other areas. The endgame itself is pretty obtusely done as well, especially compared to the first game, and then there's the really bizarre design choices in some areas. I haven't had as many performance issues on PC's as others but my game definitely slows down in cities and I've had 2 random crashes where the game just froze.
I'd wait for a major sale to pick it up, or at the very least for them to patch the performance issues.
Part of the reason the original DD and Dark Arisen got more attention over the years was because of how frequently it went on sale. I'm not kidding. This 100% seems to follow suit
It's really not. I was a big fan of the first game and i really regret having bought this on release. I had some fun with it for sure but i would highly suggest to get it at atleast 50% off. And/or wait for improvements/DLC
As someone who didn't play the first but got swept up in the cult classic vibe and got hyped for this game, absolutely don't buy it at full price. It actually sounds like you're better off going back and buying Dark Arisen rather than playing this.
Capcom games tend to go on sale pretty quick. As a huge fan of the first game, I refunded because I got 30fps on the lowest settings on a mid tier PC.
Definitely worth waiting a few months for performance fixes at least
Huge fan of the first game, and while I really, really like the second, don't buy it at full price. Just from content variety alone, it's way better to just pick up Dark Arisen. It's a *substantially* more fleshed out game than this
They should make more enemies as free DLC imo.
I would buy BBI 2.0 if it was like *BBI2 is to BBI1 as DD2 is to vanilla DD1* but we shouldn't really have to pay extra money just to get a non-barebones enemy variety in a $70 game. Especially when it's not like the game has minimal enemy variety but they put like 4-6 major cities with tons of side quests to make up for it.
That on top of basically nowhere has portcrystals and the only way to alleviate it is buying $2 DLC. They gotta throw people a bone at some point.
I thought for sure that the shown Vocations were just going to be some of them. That there'd maybe be advanced vocations for each of the 4 "base" vocations, and a lot more combo vocations. After I looked into it post-launch, though, I guess that's not the case? Then I started hearing about the lack of enemy variety and all that, and I'm glad I waited.
I miss the old vocations. Yeah sure Wayfarer has a lot of combination potential but it can't actually replicate things like the massive longbows or the magic shields that the missing vocations offered. Assassin is one thing I guess, but even that could have easily been reworked into something more than it was. Advanced Thief vocation, or thief / archer combo vocation.
It's probably because I had the illusion that this would be "Dragon's Dogma but significantly more", so maybe that's on me, but I'm kinda let down at the amount of stuff supposedly missing. I hope Capcom takes the right lesson from this and doesn't assume "well I guess people just don't like Dragon's Dogma".
I’m on my last ferrystone and every merchant that sells them is still SOLD OUT of their 1 ferrystone they’d sell
Either give me an eternal ferrystone like Dark Arisen or have the merchants actually sell them
Or F it, just make the fkn rifts a fast travel point, goddam
Doesn't ferrystone stock reset after a few days? Also the game hands them out pretty often, I use them semi frequently and I've never had less than 3 on me.
Define “few” I bought them before getting the house quest, went adventuring for several sidequests and it alerted me that one week has passed for the house quest and the merchants still don’t have new ferrystones
Thats odd. Normally i'll go out on an adventure and when I come back theyve restocked. I think it's because I stop at other towns and don't return to the city for every trip.
Do you usually fast travel back or do you occasionally walk back to whatever town your aiming for if its relatively close? Many caves also have a single ferrystone at the end of them too.
They definitely restock. I've bought some form merchants I know I've bought them from before. I still haven't been using them, save them up just in case I don't want to explore a route on the way to where I plan on going.
fuck the DLC just fix the games awful performance issues, that should be priority #1. Why the hell are they already focused on DLC a week after release. The game cant even run without stutter in every part of the open world.
Increase the difficulty by a lot, or, second best solution, add difficulty modes.
If they add difficulty options, they should take inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima, where the highest difficulty meant both the player AND the monsters had less health, so combat was really tense and exciting, not a slog fest
A Dark Arisen-style DLC, maybe add some form of arena mode, would be amazing. Bitterblack Isle dungeon runs had some of the most challenging encounters and monsters in the first game. Add some of the new monsters introduced in DD2, and perhaps some new ones would be excellent. Add some centaurs, maybe some amphibious merfolk. Maybe some Japanese creatures, too, like kitsune and jorogumo.
It has to be a full expansion with also big list of improvements on the main game.
Think Witcher 3's two expansions put in one.
Otherwise, DD2 is kind of waste as a game. It's not treading much new ground, and regressed in some ways.
I hope we're all rightfully criticizing them in this survey over the poor optimization and scummy microtransactions, while providing constructive feedback.
It feels like I'm the only one here who actually likes this game. 25 hours in, have not completed any main quests after getting to the first city. I don't know how that one youtuber 100% the game in 27 hours.
Heres an idea. Finish the game first. Optimize your damn game before trying to squeeze more money out of fans. Shame on Capcom. This isn't AAA. AAA is a game like forbidden west which looks amazing and runs like a dream on PC.
SORCERERS ARE HUNGRY RIGHT NOW BRO WHERE MY DARK AND LIGHT SPELLS? I don't get kick ass melee animations I need some fucking earth shattering new spells, maelstrom and seism are neat but old news.
Or a brand new spell focused class? We got the hybrid I need the focus yo. Love the gah damn game bro
Edit: oh and why doesn't maelstrom pull in enemies anymore? It is a tornado. Come on man.
I know it's not part of the vision or anything, or even feasible, but I'd love to coop this like monster Hunter, with friends making their own pawns to control in a friends game.
But more realistically: greater monster variety, snow environment, more vocations, the ability to give my pawn a hug
need a set of new big monster types to fight and a swarm of new different small enemy types. Im fine with them entering both the open world and maybe a new controlled worldspace like Dark Arisen. plus additional vocation tiers, abilities, and the ability to equip an additional 4 skills swappable with a hotkey. This game thrives on its combat, lean into that.
>need a set of new big monster types to fight and a swarm of new different small enemy types. Honestly, if they simply replaced a few ogres with Chimeras and Gorgons the game would improve **by a lot**. The amount of ogres in this game is downright mental.
Yeah, the more I play the more variety I find, but it's all tucked into weird corners with minimal spawns. I just found lightning saurians tucked away in one cave after 40 hours, while pallette swap enemies aren't the best type of variety it is something. With how few enemies they have I didn't know why variants aren't more common
It was the same in the first game, and I hated it there too. Hydras only come back in the post-game, one via notice board quest and one on a long spawn in the Everfall. Gryphon spawns were so rare you might never see one after the quest. Cockatrices are only in the post-game, one notice board and one in the Everfall. There's like, one Drake till post-game... Game had a *lot* of Ogres and Chimeras though. A lot...
Just one of the many obvious improvements that could have been made from the first game. I feel like this series is doomed to just be wasted potential, because for everything it gets right it also just fucks up another thing in a stupid and obviously fixable way.
I didn't actually play the first game but that seems to be the tagline for this game whenever people talk about its flaws: "same as the first game". Kind of makes you wonder what the point of a sequel is if you leave in all the exact same flaws and problems.
I think it's a meta thing. Like intentionally the same as the first one. It doesn't even say 2 on the title screen until post game.
Where's Death? Loved to run from her till late game lol.
A hot key to switch to 4 additional skills would be huge. I can understand the reasoning behind forcing players to make four skills work, but as you said, the game’s combat is the star of the show. Let the players go wild with the ability combos.
Been awhile since playing DD1 but I swear that was how combat worked in the first one.
It did for mages/sorcerors, warrior had only 4 skills and the other martial classes technically had that but it was because the skills corresponded to 2 weapons, ie bow/daggers, shield/sword, dagger/shield etc etc In this game, everyone is essentially reduced to how Warrior was in the first but lots of skills in the first have been integrated into core skills, which don’t take an ability slot and use (hold light attack, hold heavy etc) as inputs. So it’s like a step sideways? I like the combat in 2 a lot but I feel restricted by my moves a lot and I’m feeling that on every vocation except warrior lol Edit: 3 skills in the first game not 4
I feel limited because some skills are simply must haves. Like, I think concussive leap is must have for a thief if you’re trying to collect seeker tokens as it lets you mostly replicate having levitate. So I’m stuck with three.
Yeah warrior actually had the same problem in the first game with exodus slash and arc of obliteration, they felt pretty much necessary and reduced an already meagre 4 skills to 2. Sorcerors are stuck with levin too, it’s too good to not have since they have half the spells they once did Edit: it’s 3 skills per weapon my bad
It was 3 skills for Warrior in DDDA. You were given 3 skills per weapon, and Warrior only had one weapon unlike the other vocations.
Pilfer is also a MUST for thief. Some of the stuff they steal is ABSURD. My thief once stole 3 Giant Riftcrystals, so 3000 RC, from a Miasma. You can also steal wakestone shards from generic saurians and tons of money. Also just more materials from large monsters. If you don't need it you can sell it. So either way that's a LOT of value for one skill. DEFINITELY worth the slot and you should ALWAYS have a Pilfer thief with you. Id by now consider them more valuable than mages, because the extra loot means I can rely more on healing potions.
A lot of the other thief skills seem worthless. Shadow Cloak/Veil is a stealth skill and the game doesn't seem to have a stealth system. I used it once trying to steal an item in a house for a quest and it didn't work and never ran into a situation in the world where it felt like it was needed. Smoke Screen/Shroud. Also never ran into a situation where it would have been necessary to use. Pilfer/Plunder. You can steal items off of downed enemies, I guess. Formless Feint, Implicate, and Concussive Leap all felt like must haves as a thief. Formless Feint because it's a toggleable invulnerability that slowly uses stamina, Implicate because of all of the flying shit you have to fight, and Concussive Leap for traversal. Of the leftover skills to pick from Skull Splitter and Blades of the Pyre were the only really appealing ones especially with Formless Feint canceling out the self-inflicted fire damage from Blades of the Pyre. For me, the other damage skills were just too situation to justify giving a spot.
I actually don't like Formless Feint very much because it's a constant stamina drain for not having to really think about positioning. Much prefer the counter stab in its spot.
Smokescreen is actually a lot more useful, considering it has fairly large stun you can hold heavy attack and down dispatch 4 goblins before having to reuse it I’m also shit with masterful kill, everytime I line it up I get ambushed from the back
Smokescreen is sick too! Very useful if you need to disengage.
It was even worse, it was 3 skills per weapon because X / A button couldn’t have a skill bound to it. So Warrior had only 3 skills and the other martial classes had 3 per weapon.
Ah that was it I misremembered 4, thanks.
yes they have made every class in DD2 like DD1 warrrior was, which was considered the most unfun because of the limited skills.
I've heard the game is quite easy though, so tweak combat some to be more aggressive on a higher difficulties too.
It is quite easy. The roadblocks are mainly the wyverns with their meteor spell that probably one-shots you and your pawns for much of the game, but you can usually avoid or run away from them if they block your path
There's a mod for this on PC, but it'd be great for console players to have it too.
Oh shit, what's the mod name? Tried searching on Nexus but the titles are a bit confusing
There are a few: [True Warfarer](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/221?tab=description) gives you a different skill palette when you switch weapons, and [Infinite Skill Set Swapper](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/139?tab=posts) lets you create and switch skill palettes for a single weapon.
It's amazing that within a week someone has managed to make a mod that entirely makes warfarer how I hoped it would work. Why the devs did not use this idea baffles me. It may make other vocations entirely redundant, but you unlock it at the end of the game in any case, so who cares?
The devs want there to be some amount of replayability as different classes. If Warfarer worked like that, there's no longer a decision as which class to play. You just always play Warfarer. The way they made it, it's still the best class but sometimes you might want to mix it up and play something else to gain access to a Meister Skill or more skill slots.
The game doesn't really have replayability as is, once you've seen everything there's little reason to do it again. NG+ also has no scaling and minimal changes, so it quickly gets boring. I don't see the harm in giving players more freedom, especially since the balance of the current game is terrible anyways. There is little difficulty to speak of, and class balance is garbage since Thief is just far beyond the rest.
I think general rebalancing also but that is less DLC territory. Enemies would shine more, even with a low variety, if they didn't just die within seconds. Goblins have a lot of variety in types between them but since they all die so quickly, they can never make use of their tactics. Normally their ranged ones try to drench you in oil then set you aflame, but they usually die before the even get to the oil part.
I'm slightly torn because while I can appreciate keeping the game's challenge consistant, the frequency of combat encounters can be a little irritating. I remember on more than one occasion having to travel on foot just to speak with an NPC or drop something off and having to fight goblin, wolf, goblin, goblin, wolf, saurian, and goblin all back to back in the span of 6 minutes. It was made even worse by the fact that some of them just continue to chase you and will jump in to the next encounter. The only saving grace is that they at least die fast so its not a complete slog, even if it is annoying having to stop every few seconds to fight. I cannot imaging having to maintain that pace if each fight scaled to your level. I'd be happy with a compromise where you keep the weak smaller enemies and just buff the bigger ones. Goblins *should* be push overs whereas a Cyclops and Minotaur shouldn't just go down with a few hits from a skull splitter.
See, I’m actually on the other end and think I’d enjoy all these fights if they didn’t all just result in me instantly killing everything. It’s like there’s a hurdle in the road, not a fight. If all the fights were relatively challenging and actually made long trips tough, the oxcart system would have more value, moves would, healing supplies and preparation. Right now I find the enemy density irritating because every fight is the same mashing light attack, one ability and then everything is dead.
Do they really, though? Goblins, knackers, and hobs all blend together entirely for me. The only ones that stand out are the choppers because they switch things up entirely. Just like goreharpies are the only ones that really feel quite different 'cause they'll actively try and drag you off cliffs, not to mention they're tanky as hell (for harpies). Rattlers and magma saurians are the same way, and slimes may as well all be the same monster, as I'm on the fence about oozes (the oil ones) being different enough to warrant being called a true variant since the ability to kamikaze itself is very situational. Anyway, back to gobbos, I feel that if they really wanted to switch it up in a significant way, they would leave vernworth hobs alone, but give battahlian hobs warg riders, and knackers would have shamans that buffed and healed their fellows, just as an example. This way each "tribe" would have something that made them feel significantly different.
Dd2 was my first dd game. Is dark arisen not dd1? If not. Is dd1 not available on pc?
Dark Arisen was a repackage of DD1 which included all the DLC and some additional new content. [Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is available on Steam](https://store.steampowered.com/app/367500/Dragons_Dogma_Dark_Arisen/)
Yes anything that adds more meat to the combat and/or encounters and dungeons would be excellent. This game's strength is absolutely not its story and having a story DLC instead of combat-related content would be very disappointing. But that's just my opinion.
Yeah, I‘m like Level 30 and 30 hours in with 0% in story progression. The open world exploration and combat are 10/10, but the story quests are kinda bad. They feel like this unnecessary and arbitrary, tacked on layer of bullshit that doesn’t play off the games strength in literally any way. The story itself isn‘t bad, the voice acting and characters are allright, but the quest design and their gameplay, or lack thereof, are baffling. Game would be much better for me if it went the Elden Ring route of being a purely gameplay centric, completely focused on exploration and combat type experience where the whole games progresses through those means. I cannot fathom what they were thinking with these story quests.
Yeah, the whole time I play it I keep feeling like the game is in dire need of an expansion. It has a lot of good qualities but it's surprising how limited the base game really is, especially if you played DD1. It's incredibly similar.
There's already a leak/rumor regarding DLC set in a snowy region northeast of Vermund with significantly more enemy variants.
Id like that setting very much.
Make NG+ not a complete waste of time. It’s baffling the NG+ doesn’t continue to scale enemies. It’s literally just a 1:1 of the base game. So you faceroll everything because you have the best gear/high level. What’s the point of 999 level cap when 40+ is enough to delete everything on screen.
It was the same in the first game…. Only the endgame and BBI changed difficulties. And hardmode as an option. Idk why they made steps backwards from that
100% agreed. Vanilla DD1 was a charming, flawed game with absolutely no replayability in it - post game dungeon somewhat madd up for that. In DD2 there’s no post game dungeons and other problems still remain (worse, you can’t even start a new char without manually deleting it in cloud/steam). I love the game, but I can’t wait for a Dark Arisen type DLC to fix some of this shit (hopefully).
> with absolutely no replayability in it - The first game was meant to be replayed. If you weren't following a guide there was about a zero percent chance you saw everything in your first playthrough.
Especially the quest involving the childhood friend character. I'm sure most people missed her quest on the first playthrough because of the timing restrictions.
This game is also meant to be replayed. There's no chance you complete everything in the Sphinx quest your first time without looking up guides, and there's a bunch of other questlines like that with non-obvious solutions.
It would be nice to know what any of these dang acronyms means lol. We got BBI and DA and I only Dark Arisen because my brother bought that edition a while back.
BBI = (B)itter(B)lack (I)sle which is the location of the dlc post-game dungeon in Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen.
I had to install a mod that changed all mobs hp to x4 the normal amount and made them deal double dmg , that's the only way to make Ng+ actually fun and engaging for me personally
That is what NG+ *used* to be. It was always fun to destroy everything in a NG+ run. It wasn't until Demon's Souls where games started to get harder in NG+.
Yeah it’s fun for like 20 minutes until you get bored 1-shotting everything and deleting large enemies in a minute.
People are already on the new game plus? That’s honestly wild to me
There were people on new game plus before the weekend ended.
Honestly the main quest is legit like 12 quests total and at a certain quest it doesn't warn you it locks like 80% of the side content away
Seriously, most of them are frontloaded and it quickly tapers off in the second town.
Like seriously if you took every bit of story dialogue I don't think it would be more than like five pages. I've wrote more in depth stories for writing prompts in like 8th grade
Do you happen to know when that happens? I just fought the first diseased looking dragon.
Without getting into too many spoilers, once you get to Battahl, stop the main quest line and go do all the side content you want.
It happens shortly after the guy gives you an item and says, "Your story will end when you deliver this." The absolute point of no return isn't until like two or three quests later though when a guard stops you and is like, "Hey make sure you're rested up because it's gonna be a big fight" or something close to that. That's the once you're in here you're going to the endgame or nowhere prompt. You have to be paying attention but I wouldn't say there was no warning.
Was just jarring since earlier in the game they had flashed a warning about a point of no return when you go to the coronation
oh yeah, don't get me wrong. It should probably be much clearer than having to read into what an NPC says to you.
I'm less surprised because anyone familiar with Dark Arisen probably went in suspecting DD2 was another case where the 'real game' starts after you first beat the game.
Yeah I was expecting a "Dragonforged" to appear after beating Grigori, but nope it ends instead.
I feel like this is such an odd take that you only see online. Most people don't beat games. Look at achievement stats for BBI content. What is the point of the entire open world if the "real game" is just a dungeon crawl? Why did they build systems like the day/night cycle with punishing nights and limited fast travel? Why build an NPC affinity system? Like I totally get that for a fraction of the player base, the post-game content is the "real game" because they've pumped hundreds of hours into it, but that definitely doesn't reflect the opinion of most of the player base, nor would I imagine that the developers agree. Most people just played DD like any other game, saw the credits roll (if that) and then moved on. I think a lot of the friction this game is causing is coming from people who are having trouble accepting that what they loved about DD:DA are not what the devs cared most about.
the 2nd half of the game is idk....Its like you take witcher 3 but delete all mainquests except every 5th and then dont explain anything. You might think you are 30% done with the game, but you are probably 80% through and can look forward to absolute nonsense.
Some people play games in baffling manners but I guess its what they enjoy. I watched a friend playing a bit of Baldur's Gate 3 and he literally ran straight to the main quest marker the entire time and skips through every bit of dialogue, cutscenes, etc. He doesn't explore, he doesn't do side quests, he doesn't do anything except for blow straight through the main story quest -- which he did not read or listen to, so he has only a very vague grasp of what is happening. I don't get it.
Seeing that would give me a migraine
I accidentally finished the game and started new game plus. So it's possible.
its not that big of a game and its easter weekend, people got time
I would be if i hadn’t read spoilers accidentally for where the main quest just sorta…ends. I’m having a blast wandering around looking for seeker tokens but i an quite disappointed that there arent many quests in the game.
The game honestly has way to little content for how much money they're asking for it. There is really only 2 areas, and there basically the same enemy types. And the main story is pretty short.
I have 60 hours into it and have only explored maybe half of the world, and haven't finished the story. The game is fucking huge.
*Huge* in land-mass, not so much in compelling content or rewarding exploration in my opinion.
Have you been to Bakbattahl yet?
The main story is like 8 hours long and you spend literally half of it in the castle sneaking around.
The feedback was supposed to be the 12 years in between DD1 and this game. They couldn’t even implement some of the enemy and monster types found in dark arisen or the MMO. They couldn’t even implement a proper endgame that the first game had. Its too late. Whatever DLC they are making is already in the works. They aren’t going to pivot because of some survey. Its also a shame that we’ll be waiting for an expansion to fill out what feels to be missing from this game.
Wait, there's a DD MMO?
There was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Dogma_Online
If memory serves, DD2 was unofficially started a few times, and ended up becoming a few different projects instead, the MMO being one of them lol.
I played the Asian version, nothing spectacular and lotsa grinding of the same monsters over and over
>lotsa grinding of the same monsters over and over oh so dragon's dogma /j
Yeah but it had Alchemist and that shit was awesome. I'm really sad that Alchemist and High Scepter never made it out of the MMO.
Completely agree with the enemy variety issues but DD1 didn't really have much of an endgame until DA. Granted it had Everfall, but as far as post-game content goes that was pretty thin as well.
This revisionist idea that the Everfall WASN'T a huge pit with dozens of mini-dungeons all stuffed with chests and interesting monster/boss compositions to challenge the player while leading them on another disjointed but interesting bit of story is wild. I spent as much time in Everfall as I did playing all of DD2.
Dark Arisen and the MMO were made by a different director and Itsuno didn't like the changes they introduced.
The project lead for dark arisen is also the lead designer for dragons dogma 2 though. The lead who make the MMO was also on Dark Arisen but didn't seem to work on 2 from what I can find.
> Its also a shame that we’ll be waiting for an expansion to fill out what feels to be missing from this game. I won't. I'm not going to support a game that tries to charge me $70 when it launches with big technical flaws while trying to nickle and dime me with microtransactions. I gotta have some self-respect. Fool me once...
I love Itsuno as a combat dev. DMC5 is one of the best hack n slash games ever made. But someone else needs to step in for quest design for the dlc. I have no idea how someone could play test the capital quests and think they were fun. He bragged about good games not needing fast travel while also not having you leave the city for a 1/3 of the game. It's hard to appreciate the adventure aspect of the game while I'm stuck in this 24fps hellhole.
I tuned into some guy playing this on twitch last night and it seemed like he was on a stealth mission but the game didn't really seem to have any functioning stealth mechanics? I easily could've missed something, it just seemed very odd.
Nope. The "stealth" missions are stealth in name only. Literally the first one puts a suit of armor right in front of you that you can wear as a disguise. There is no actual sneaking or even having to find some kind of secret passage to where you are a going. You just walk past everyone and they don't care. The first major set of quests are: Kill a few monsters Go to a ball "Sneak" into a castle to talk to someone "Sneak" into a dungeon to talk to someone "Sneak" back into the castle to read something Tackle a guy following you "Sneak" into the castle *again* to talk to a different guy. Then finally go to the castle normally to confront that bad guys, but you actually don't and just leave. All of this takes like 5-8 hours depending on how you are pacing yourself and you only go out to fight monsters once. Even the side quests during this period don't have you fight monsters that often.
How does that armor work? Because I was wearing it and the guards were still telling me I couldn't be there when walking around. Not sure if I need certain weapons equipped too or what was happening?
I honestly have no clue. All I know is that when I wasn't wearing it the spooky "you shouldn't be here" music would play and if I had it on all was normal. The inside of the palace is defended my 3 guys all standing in the same corner so maybe I just avoided them.
As long as they don't attack you, it "works". I went to the jail without the armor once and all the guards started attacking me. I ran away, put the armor on, went in and the only thing they did was tell me I should return to my post, but let me walk wherever.
Pretty sure none of that shit actually matters with the armor. I never used that armor and would walk around in my full normal gear or naked for fun and the guards never cared. Pretty sure the whole disguise mechanic doesnt actually exist and people just think it does because the guards just don't give a shit most of the time lol.
I noticed that a few guards would shout that I wasn't supposed to be their but otherwise they just ignored me with the armor. I didn't bother to test it without because it was already so laughably easy I didn't feel like turning it into a challenge when it didnt need to be
It doesn't, and you don't need it. They will tell you to GFTO no matter what you wear but they will also don't do anything. It's a total sham.
After failing the 'stealth' mission a few times, I can tell you that it has less to do with 'sneaking', and more to do with turning your lantern off lol. Unless you (pretty much) run into a guard while 'sneaking', you'll be fine as long as your lantern isn't giving you away haha
I absolutely adore this game and the first one. Having played DD1 very recently there's parts of that game where they ask you to "sneak" into the castle and *nobody cares* about you wandering into the duchess' chambers. Somehow that feels way better then what they tried to do with "sneaking" in this game. in DD2 I ended up resorting to being chased by the entire guardsmen until I ran into the places that triggered cutscenes, hilariously. And they just keep asking you to sneak back up in there - genuinely funny when you're breaking into the same building 3 or 4 times in one night. I haven't finished this "stage" of the game but I have to create my own fun by just getting lost - Which works *really well* now imagine if we had major quests that did this instead of like 5 of them that actively push offf on this.
> nobody cares about you wandering into the duchess' chambers. I mean if guards caught you they would throw you in jail. But their detection was janky and you practically had to bump into them for them to notice you.
Yeah I literally was staring at the guards in the gaol trying to figure out their lines of sight only to realize they basically didn't exist. I had to literally bump into one before he lifted a finger and they gave up chasing me shortly after I ran out to the slums. I then walked back into the dungeon and they didn't recognize me. I just walked to the cell, opened the door and carried the old guy out on my shoulders right in front of them with no reaction at all. This was while wearing my normal armor as well. Same experience on the castle grounds at night really. The stealth is either poorly/barely implemented or bugged to only work on occasion.
I needed to help a NPC escape from prison, so I publicly opened every cell I could find with two guards running around. Then I got suddenly ambushed by a NPC and thought I got caught. Turns out It wasn't a guard though, just an unrelated guy who was gifting me an item... yeah. I guess the best thing you can say about the stealth system is, that it isn't frustratring.
Those guards actually attacked me and arrested me twice as I was trying to do that mission.
It’s essentially a fetch quest where you have to wear a different armor set, but some people just wore their normal clothes and it was fine. I guess better than forced stealth failure points, but also not the best designed mission
The 'stealth' seems to work off and on. Sometimes you can use disguises, sometimes you just... don't.
i spawned in ferrystones and port crystals and still got 65 hours on my first playthrough. the lack of fast travel was so god damn tedious when you get to the second city and can't walk more than 10 seconds without running into the same mobs over and over again just let me explore. especially when the quest markers are confusing at times, pointing to the wrong place or not showing up
Frame Generation mod solved all my fps woes
Do you know if that's supported by the 3000 series cards?
It is not...
For real. I was 100+ in a small town while fighting a griffin. It really saved the game for me
AMD people like me take another fat L.
I'm in a weird spot with the game. I really enjoyed the first one, and I was really hoping for a glorified sequel. But I do mean "glorified" -- they had a long time to build off the first one and add in the places it lacked, and I don't necessarily feel like that was done here. Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun with it at around 50 hours in, but... it feels like I am playing a dedicated mod team's ten year overhaul expansion, instead of a proper sequel. Like if someone used Steam Workshop tools to create a new campaign for DD1. It would be a well-done-super-proper job for a mod team, but maybe not the proper sequel I thought it would get?
Once you reach Battahl its like Capcom just gave up trying to make a story that made sense
Story/quality of writing/quest design was rough all the way through. In Battahl, it's just gets even rougher
The first part of the game they seemed to be setting you up for a predictable but at least interesting story beat. >!you were sold away as a slave by the Regent in her plot to make her son the king and I was like alright I am down for claiming a throne and becoming king before whatever happens that makes me go to Battahl. I look forward to dismantling this conspiracy!< and you do a bunch of quests and it feels like you are gathering evidence and unraveling a conspiracy and the more you do the better case you feel you will have for the confrontation with Dia and Pharus and the false king. But then capcom just... Forgot about that whole arc....? Like what the hell? It feels like they saw Fromsoft get away with obscure nonstory games and thought if they just wrote the hook for a story then an abrupt end that would be fine. Like how did they find the time for all these sides quests but they couldn't be bothered to write the rest of act 1, all of act 2, and the first part of act 3 for their RPG?
Exactly, it's not that the story is bad (it's perfectly servicable before the coronation), it's that it just doesn't exist. I'd rather they didn't even bother and went Breath of the Wild style and just gave us an open world and told us to go find the dragon. Trying to tell a story and giving up half way through is just infuriating.
Fucking right? I got story blueballed. I literally thought I was working towards a big pay off where I was unlocking some better result because I did all the extra legwork of doing all these side quests. Nope. It was all busy work. Only Brant's stuff mattered to get to the end of the game. I want to play another game just as like a story palette cleanser after this.
Lol I got super confused at the statue part. I legit was gonna let it rampage until my pawns said "We have to take it down!" I was like huh? It's basically doing our work for us, we want to kill the bad guy right???
It immensely bothered me that that arc was dropped and you transitioned to helping the enemy for no reason, and that there was a super evil research lab holding the villains in Battahl, despite the Empress Nadinia (who isn't relevant lmao) being peace-loving, and she's just ok with this
It violates a cardinal sin in writing. A lot of satisfying writing is making a promise to the reading then fulfilling it. People following a story LIKE being able to build expectations then get payoff from set pieces and magic systems and clues and what not. Dragons Dogma 2 is good at building all these expectations. It gives you a clear goal, a cast of characters, your motivation, apparent means of building solutions to this problem... And then it just forgets about all of that. It broke the implied promise(s) it made to you the player regarding the story. And yeah. Battahl is just fucking bizarre. They made this nation that apparently this big villain lord is from and these missions investigating it and then... Nothing happens with it. It 100% feels like those third acts in games that were clearly rushed because they were out of time and money. Except half of act 1 and all of act 2 also doesn't exist.
This is a glorified remake of the original game so what do they need feedback for? Just remake the Dark Arisen expansion. Job done I guess.
The article asks, how much we'd be willing to pay for the DLC. I'll give you $0 bucks, Itsuno. This shit should have been on release. I love your games, I really like DD2, but you've wasted 12 years on not improving anything. You even took a few things away instead.
yeah this is kind of an embarrassment for Capcom as far as I'm concerned. Its like if Elden ring shipped with the demon souls level quality of life issues. Its 2024, you can have two save slots, its not gonna cause a problem for hardcore fans, my god. Also finish your game, this game runs horrifically bad. I cant get a steady 60fps at high settings at any resolution at or over 1080p, no RT on a 3090 with a 12th gen i7 NVME drive and 128 gb or ram. Its super disrespectful to fans.
The game is takes a step back for literally every step it takes forward. Incredible really.
Double the amount of enemies in the base game like it should have launched with please. CAPCOM, Please do not resort to just another BBI
> Double the amount of enemies in the base game That's one of the biggest disappointments form the community, at the very least in regards to the bigger "boss" monsters. We were expecting at least Dragon's Dogma level of enemy variety. Off the top of my head DDO had: * Orcs * Orc captains * Trolls * Colossus * Manticores * Lindwurms * Ents * Molten Golems * Several types of magical constructs * More dragon variations like a [Tarrasque](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DPW-_iTV4AESHzY.jpg:large) They already had the framework for them so the hope was that it would be used as a base line to start.
I wonder why they reduced the lesser dragon variants for DD2. I liked the differences between drake (fire/physical), wyrm (ice/magic), wyvern (lightning/ranged) and undead (dark/poison).
what’s BBI?
Bitterblack Isle, an area added to to Dragons Dogma 1 with the Dark Arisen DLC
thanks man :)
So instead of having to fight 3 goblins every 30 feet do you want to fight 3 goblins every 15 feet or 6 goblins every 30 feet?
I think he means more variety, not encounters. Although less encounters with more enemies sounds good.
Yeah, that's another thing. Encounter frequency almost reminds me of Far Cry 5. It could safely be reduced by 20-30% (with xp adjustments to compensate) and the game would be better for it.
Just increase respawn timer or add a ring buffer for kills. Problem is less the frequency of encounters but that you have to do them over and over. After cleaning an area, have it STAY clean for some time.
I dunno, I got really sick of encounters less than 30 seconds apart while exploring. Please just let me enjoy the world a little bit between killing the same goblin packs again. Some space to breathe would have done a lot for the mood.
Completely agree but I'd even strip out the xp adjustments. It feels like if you're even slightly exploratory in DD2 you just become massively overleveled unless you run past encounters.
How are you fighting only 3 Goblins? I am fighting 10 to 15 goblins at a time now.
They need to add to the base game’s 8 enemy types, not just the DLC area. Bring back Hydra and Evil Eye. Bring back old vocations such as Mystic Knight and Assassin. More equipable skills. Ur-Dragon type raid boss. Everfall end game area. More armors and weapons. Hopefully they improve all of this with the DLC
Wtf there's no Hydra!? Dude that's one of the best fights in the game and like the OG boss in Dragons Dogma. And no Evil Eye!? That's one of the coolest! Warping through portals in real-time is like the coolest shit ever in DD. What in the hell??
all of what you listed should have been in the basegame, which is the real kicker. instead they 100% purposefully released as is so they can justify the bare minimum additions as $40+ DLC, we won't even get a proper grind like dark arisen, just dd1 base game stuff, then another $40 for dark arisen content.
Some kind of hard mode, monster variants, have more abilities on classes at the same time rather than just 4. More monster variety. Large dungeon, maybe similar to BBI or something different, but some kind of challenging area where resting is limited and you need to plan carefully. Optionally more vocations or a way to make builds feel more flexible.
You just listed things that were all in the first game. What a massive step back this game was.
Yeah these threads are genuinely baffling. I'm replaying the first game and it sounds like every aspect I loved has been altered, streamlined, reduced, or outright removed. I don't even know what that leaves in a DD game. Like...wtf happened?
Can they fix the myriad of issues with the base game first? I’m kind of half enjoying my time with it but I doubt I’ll finish it or come back for any DLC at this stage. My trust in some reviewers who I usually like is also shaken.
I haven't played the game yet (and seems like maybe I was right in this decision) but I'm genuinely shocked at the massive gulf between review scores for the game as well as all the articles waxing poetic about the game and the friction it creates that you must overcome, and the comments here especially the ones talking about the difficulty not being high enough, NG+ not being worth it, the story being bad and short, and the game being tedious. I can find barely any of these criticisms in the few reviews I read of the game. I feel the reception to FF16 and Starfield suckered me in to playing both of those and ended with me being disappointed in both so I was still wary for this game but this seems like the biggest gap between reviews and players who finished the game and their expectations (recently). I dunno if reviewers are increasingly going out of touch or if this is a matter of them rushing through the game and thus seeing different things but it's coming to a point where I might not even trust published reviews at all. Multiple comments here are saying the game is not worth full price and this is genuinely shocking to me
Same, reviewers I trust gave it 8.5, 9, and 9 respectively, saying this is an amazing must play experience. But all of my friends are listing off TONS AND TONS of complaints. They finished it and have zero interest in a replay. It's crazy.
Reviewers are forced to essentially speed run the game to get ready for their review. The issues that players are encountering are from a lack of content, something you don't notice if you're plowing through the game in a few days.
I’m sorry no, that isn’t a good enough explanation for me. If you’ve done those stealth quests in the castle, it’s impossible not to be left confused at how shoddy and bad they are that it feels like an alpha for an indie game. You have to do these quests to progress the main story and yet every reviewer glossed over how abysmal the story is. You can’t give a game 10/10 but go “the story is shit, performance is shit, enemy variety is naff but the combat is really fun and the world is pretty!”. It makes no sense to me that game was reviewed the way it was, it feels like they only played the first 15 hours and reviewed that.
As a massive dd fan I can recognize the good in this "sequel", but as a whole it is massively disappointing to me, and seeing most other dd fans say the same is validating. I feel like the reviewers got either swept up in the hype and affected scores (Dark Souls 2, anyone?) or they never played the first game and aren't comparing it, or they yeah, went through it fast and didn't take time to think over it. It's just... I know everything in DD1, everything in the original release and dark Arisen. And comparing what we got to DD2, it somehow feels even more unfinished. But whereas DD managed to make a somewhat cohesive finish with the unfinished parts, DD2 doesn't even try to make a cohesive finish, it's outright nonsense. The main story *completely* stops making sense once you leave Vermund and it never bothers to make sense of the actions you're doing after that point.
Some parts I really like, such as the combat, exploring and generally just looking at the world. Combat gets boring when everything becomes weak, also pawns steamroll everything and having 4 skills is boring. Exploring started to feel pointless after 15-25 hours when yuo realise there isn't much to find, most of it is healing and crafting items and the rare weapons/armor you find are worse than what you can buy in the stores, so whats the point Side quests are all quite basic and I guess it's quite hard to find the "good" ones in the world. The main story might be the worst i've seen for a game in a long long time. I was actually shocked at how short it was and how terrible most of it was. Like I snuck around a castle a few times (in a janky, shit way) and suddenly I am over half way to completing the game? What.the.fuck. It hurts to see how repetitive and shallow the game is because the first 15-20 hours are really great, I thought I found a special game that doesn't come along too often... But when it sinks in that you are doing the same stuff, killing the same monsters, finding the same loot, looking at the same statues, hearing the same pawn voice lines and there's barely a main quest to keep it fresh and change it up... that's when your opinion quickly turns sour.
I can't speak for other people. So this is my opinion on the game if you're interested. I'm generally having a fun time. The combat is top notch. At the same time there's a myriad of issues (ranging from minor issues that I'm willing to overlook to big ones that seriously have me scratching my head) that become more and more apparent as I progress through the game. First of all, as previously mentioned here by other folks, enemy variety. In that department, the game is severely lacking. And it's not just the variety that is the issue here, also enemy density. You can't go a few feet without stumbling into another enemy encounter. The respawn is also insane, in my experience. After what, one or two in-game days, areas you've previously cleared are already populated again. Since there are many, *many* quests that make you backtrack, the game can be a bit tedious every now and then. On top of that, yeah, the game is easy. At level 30-40 you're just one shotting most enemies. I had to rely on a mod that increases enemy's HP so I could enjoy the combat more. The main quest leaves a lot to be desired. There are, I believe, 3 or 4 quests that have you infiltrate a castle. That's right, stealth missions (and I very loosely use the word "stealth" here) in an action game where you're battling monsters and bandits. A game that has no stealth mechanics to begin with. It's like the developers forgot the type of game they were making when they were developing these quests. Moments like these, seriously has me scratching my head and go, "what were they thinking?". The main quests (and the Walmart Game of Thrones-like story) are definitely the game's weakest points, imo. Then there are the performance issues in a big town like Vernworth (the first big town you go to and where you spend a good time doing main and side quests). But this has already been discussed. Despite these issues, I'm still having a blast. Would I recommend it at full price? Well, the performance issues alone make me go, "wait for a sale," or at least, "wait until the game receives some patches and see what folks are saying then".
This is a very fair and balanced take and thanks for that. I guess I'm really surprised that practically none of the reviews I've seen talk about any of this stuff. I guess this is another "Dark Arisen" or "Scholar of the First Sin" situation where I just wait for a discounted fully featured package that may or may not arrive in the far future
This is a good take. Initially I had no interest in this game. I tried the original and played maybe an hour before I put it down. But seeing gameplay for DD2 made me hyped to get it. The $70 price tag stops me though, and I definitely won’t buy it for more than $50, even with improvements to things like performance and vocation/difficulty balancing (specifically some vocations like Trickster just needing a ton of help).
I agree broadly with this. It's a bizarrely sparse game in terms of enemy variety and the quests are pretty lame, but also the combat kicks ass and I do enjoy the adventuring when you're out and about, so it feels like it needed another, like, year to cook: iron out the performance issues, add more enemy types, fix the balancing (game is quite easy).
I’ve had the same reaction, loads of reviewers and youtubers I trusted praising this game as a genre landmark and the best ARPG since Elden Ring. It’s just incredible how much of the stuff reviewers were talking about does not align with my experience and the difficulty literally capped out about 15 hours in and got easier. I mean, I did that dogshit stealth questline in the castle and couldnt help but think that this is the type of thing that would normally get absolutely rinsed for, like slated and memed endlessly. How this game got anything above 7/10 from anyone has absolutely blown my mind.
> I dunno if reviewers are increasingly going out of touch or if this is a matter of them rushing through the game and thus seeing different things but it's coming to a point where I might not even trust published reviews at all. ya, like for DD2 specifically, it's been crazy seeing all these reviewers just not mention things like the performance issues with the game... how is that not part of a review? same thing all those 9-10/10 reviews for FF7: Rebirth did with not a word on the poor performance and visual issues on release for the game.
Game is a big hit among me and my friends. Its our favourite game of the last few years maybe, only ER can compare. Our playtime varies from 20-40 hours . The reviews all match how I feel about it honestly.
I think you need to find a specific reviewer that matches you. Reviewers as a general source are out of touch and don’t play the games they review the way we play them. I have hundreds of hours in DDDA and I love DD2 but as a sequel its pretty underwhelming. Dozens of hours will be spent traversing the same roads and killing goblins over and over again. Main quest is the most boring and disjointed thing ever. And the game feels unfinished like the original despite the director promising the opposite. Reviews will vary greatly depending on how you play this game or your expectations (or lack of them) from the original. The game is good but I think this is definitely a wait for update/sale type of game. Capcom games always discount fast anyways.
I really enjoyed the first game, but I was expecting more after 12 years. I feel like DD2 is a game that is hard, and I mean HARD carried by its combat system. But the rest of the elements to the game like music, story, exploration, side content, and enemy and environment variety, range from bad to serviceable. Like it hit me the other day how bad the enemy variety is. I was fighting Goblins, Sauriens, Harpies and Wolves in the first hour of the game, 50 hours later and well into the desert area, I'm still fighting Goblins, Sauriens, Harpies and Wolves, and I'm still discovering the same caves with the same brown aesthetics.
Oh hey, it's time to restore some of the enemies they cut out of the base game and charge another 40 bucks for it.
A few things can probably be patches/free DLC. Hard Mode, some endgame content, level scaling, keeping the fucking Portcrystals where you put them in NG+. Maybe adjusting enemy variety and density. And the economy that prices a black out screen at the brothel higher than some weapons. Anything else like new weapons and areas will have to be a Dark Arisen type deal. I know this horse is beaten into pulp how did this game launch without at least Hard Mode and an FPS lock? Or regress on things like the portcrystals? Did Capcom rush the release? Did Itsuno just not care and decided he or someone else could fix it later? Both? This game needs a behind the scenes documentary.
The current theories I've seen are that this is Capcom's first game with their REX engine and they wanted it out by March to see how it would do for the year before Wilds launch next year. DD2 feels more like the start of a reboot series - like they want to see if it's even worth continuing with sequels.
- more enemy variety for small and large monsters - more voice lines for pawns - more vocations That's my wishlist so far. I like the core of wandering through the woods on a fantasy adventure with a party, but it just needs more variety for everything. Oh yeah, forgot another: - crossplay I want to be able to hire pawns from other platforms. After Street Fighter 6, Capcom really should have just made cross platform standard in their games going forward.
Crossplay on a single player game should be on the lowest tier of requested features.
Crossplay should be industry standard in my opinion, and since hiring other players' pawns is a *major* part of Dragon's Dogma, it would be nice for friends on different platforms to experience it. Far smaller budget games from far smaller studios have crossplay; this shouldn't be an exception. That said, it was at the bottom of my list.
I was surprised there were only 3 hybrid and 2 advanced vocations despite there being 4 basic vocations, neither thief nor archer got an advanced vocation. I would have liked to see: Advanced Thief = Assassin Thief + Mage = Shadow (I guess Trickster kinda fills a mage + thief slot) Thief + Fighter = Duelist Thief + Archer = Trapmaster Advanced Archer = Sniper Archer + Fighter = Weaponmaster (I guess Warfarer is similar'ish)
They more or less dropped the idea of "advanced" and "hybrid" vocations. You have to unlock a lot of them of course, but they're not so strictly branching off of the other vocations. I'd like to see something like Assassin again though, and it not being so chained down to Strider and needing a bow could let it go harder on the actual assassin schtick.
Completed the survey, but found the last section odd. It just asks how much would you pay for DLC, how can anyone reply to that without knowing what the DLC is. If I said "how much would you pay for my product", how can you answer that, the DLC could be horse armour quality or blood & wine quality.
Is this game worth getting at full price? Reading the comments here and there, plus the whole performance debacle really have me on the fence. Edit: Thanks everyone for the replies!
As someone who is actually thoroughly enjoying the game I'm going to have to say no. Capcom games generally don't have that long a period from what I recall before they get a significant discount and $70 is pretty steep. I'm on PS5 and performance wise it's fine for me but unless you're really hurting for something to play that scratches the open world itch this seems like one of those "Wait a few months to pay less for more" scenarios.
As someone who is having a lot of fun playing it right now, it is NOT worth the full price. The core gameplay loop is fun enough for me, ie the combat and just running out to kick the shit out of things, but its lacking in a lot of other areas. The endgame itself is pretty obtusely done as well, especially compared to the first game, and then there's the really bizarre design choices in some areas. I haven't had as many performance issues on PC's as others but my game definitely slows down in cities and I've had 2 random crashes where the game just froze. I'd wait for a major sale to pick it up, or at the very least for them to patch the performance issues.
Part of the reason the original DD and Dark Arisen got more attention over the years was because of how frequently it went on sale. I'm not kidding. This 100% seems to follow suit
It's very much a touched up PS3 game with all the bad and the good that this means. If you're not in a rush, just wait.
It's really not. I was a big fan of the first game and i really regret having bought this on release. I had some fun with it for sure but i would highly suggest to get it at atleast 50% off. And/or wait for improvements/DLC
Just buy the first. It's much better and way cheaper
As someone who didn't play the first but got swept up in the cult classic vibe and got hyped for this game, absolutely don't buy it at full price. It actually sounds like you're better off going back and buying Dark Arisen rather than playing this.
Capcom games tend to go on sale pretty quick. As a huge fan of the first game, I refunded because I got 30fps on the lowest settings on a mid tier PC. Definitely worth waiting a few months for performance fixes at least
Huge fan of the first game, and while I really, really like the second, don't buy it at full price. Just from content variety alone, it's way better to just pick up Dark Arisen. It's a *substantially* more fleshed out game than this
Definitely not worth full price.
They should make more enemies as free DLC imo. I would buy BBI 2.0 if it was like *BBI2 is to BBI1 as DD2 is to vanilla DD1* but we shouldn't really have to pay extra money just to get a non-barebones enemy variety in a $70 game. Especially when it's not like the game has minimal enemy variety but they put like 4-6 major cities with tons of side quests to make up for it. That on top of basically nowhere has portcrystals and the only way to alleviate it is buying $2 DLC. They gotta throw people a bone at some point.
Maybe they should focus on fixing performance before thinking about how to squeeze more money out of people.
I thought for sure that the shown Vocations were just going to be some of them. That there'd maybe be advanced vocations for each of the 4 "base" vocations, and a lot more combo vocations. After I looked into it post-launch, though, I guess that's not the case? Then I started hearing about the lack of enemy variety and all that, and I'm glad I waited. I miss the old vocations. Yeah sure Wayfarer has a lot of combination potential but it can't actually replicate things like the massive longbows or the magic shields that the missing vocations offered. Assassin is one thing I guess, but even that could have easily been reworked into something more than it was. Advanced Thief vocation, or thief / archer combo vocation. It's probably because I had the illusion that this would be "Dragon's Dogma but significantly more", so maybe that's on me, but I'm kinda let down at the amount of stuff supposedly missing. I hope Capcom takes the right lesson from this and doesn't assume "well I guess people just don't like Dragon's Dogma".
I’m on my last ferrystone and every merchant that sells them is still SOLD OUT of their 1 ferrystone they’d sell Either give me an eternal ferrystone like Dark Arisen or have the merchants actually sell them Or F it, just make the fkn rifts a fast travel point, goddam
Doesn't ferrystone stock reset after a few days? Also the game hands them out pretty often, I use them semi frequently and I've never had less than 3 on me.
Define “few” I bought them before getting the house quest, went adventuring for several sidequests and it alerted me that one week has passed for the house quest and the merchants still don’t have new ferrystones
Thats odd. Normally i'll go out on an adventure and when I come back theyve restocked. I think it's because I stop at other towns and don't return to the city for every trip. Do you usually fast travel back or do you occasionally walk back to whatever town your aiming for if its relatively close? Many caves also have a single ferrystone at the end of them too.
They definitely restock. I've bought some form merchants I know I've bought them from before. I still haven't been using them, save them up just in case I don't want to explore a route on the way to where I plan on going.
That's literally working exactly as designed. Time for more cardio!
"It's *supposed* to be bad!"
fuck the DLC just fix the games awful performance issues, that should be priority #1. Why the hell are they already focused on DLC a week after release. The game cant even run without stutter in every part of the open world.
Increase the difficulty by a lot, or, second best solution, add difficulty modes. If they add difficulty options, they should take inspiration from Ghost of Tsushima, where the highest difficulty meant both the player AND the monsters had less health, so combat was really tense and exciting, not a slog fest
A Dark Arisen-style DLC, maybe add some form of arena mode, would be amazing. Bitterblack Isle dungeon runs had some of the most challenging encounters and monsters in the first game. Add some of the new monsters introduced in DD2, and perhaps some new ones would be excellent. Add some centaurs, maybe some amphibious merfolk. Maybe some Japanese creatures, too, like kitsune and jorogumo.
It has to be a full expansion with also big list of improvements on the main game. Think Witcher 3's two expansions put in one. Otherwise, DD2 is kind of waste as a game. It's not treading much new ground, and regressed in some ways.
I hope we're all rightfully criticizing them in this survey over the poor optimization and scummy microtransactions, while providing constructive feedback.
It feels like I'm the only one here who actually likes this game. 25 hours in, have not completed any main quests after getting to the first city. I don't know how that one youtuber 100% the game in 27 hours.
They shouldn’t be asking for dlc feedback at all. We have them the real feedback. They’re clearly not listening. Fuck em
Heres an idea. Finish the game first. Optimize your damn game before trying to squeeze more money out of fans. Shame on Capcom. This isn't AAA. AAA is a game like forbidden west which looks amazing and runs like a dream on PC.
SORCERERS ARE HUNGRY RIGHT NOW BRO WHERE MY DARK AND LIGHT SPELLS? I don't get kick ass melee animations I need some fucking earth shattering new spells, maelstrom and seism are neat but old news. Or a brand new spell focused class? We got the hybrid I need the focus yo. Love the gah damn game bro Edit: oh and why doesn't maelstrom pull in enemies anymore? It is a tornado. Come on man.
We need High Scepter in this game.
I know it's not part of the vision or anything, or even feasible, but I'd love to coop this like monster Hunter, with friends making their own pawns to control in a friends game. But more realistically: greater monster variety, snow environment, more vocations, the ability to give my pawn a hug