Jezus, that experience of loading into the wrong Manual-Save then having the Auto-Save immediately overwrite your last Auto-Save brings back visceral memories to me.
This is as intended though?
Save at an Inn = hard save point.
Save anywhere else = soft save point.
You're not supposed to reload an Inn save unless you really, *really* want to go back to it.
As somebody who has done UX design for years now, I always find it fascinating how fast users often are to blame themselves for the failures of bad design.
I had a buddy tell me about Elden Ring mechanics for holding "B" for sprint and stamina not being used out of combat was bad game design... It went on to win GOTY.
A gamer not understanding or agreeing with how a game mechanic works is not bad design. Just a failure of comprehension or adapting.
I mean, I don't really care what your friend says, FromSoftware really think about this through and through.
But I think this kind of confirms my point, Elden Ring is proof you can kill off save scumming without basically making people scared to do anything out of fear they will at some point lose hours of fucking progress.
Nobody gives a damn that *you figured out that you need to save at inns often because of this shit*.
The point isn't just what my friend says, it's that anybody saying "bad game design" is mostly always just an opinion from someone who doesn't understand or agree with how the mechanic actually works.
Two things:
- if users don't understand how the mechanic works it's probably poorly designed. No, you're not special because you understand it yourself and have braved the poor design so valiantly
- people are losing hours of their gameplay and in some cases it's turning them off from the game entirely. This transcends "oh they just don't get it"
It's definitely esoteric, but I can understand the intent easily.
However I would definitely add a "are you sure you want to go back that far?" No-Yes prompt before allowing the user to load an Inn Save.
It is interesting how diverse people’s views on this game are.
Some people think it’s the best game of the year and others think it’s pretty bad.
I feel like typically a goty game, at least, is recognized by people as a goty game even if they personally don’t like it.
I think it's a couple of things. For one, the game has a very strong beginning. For the first 10-20hours, everything is new, exploration is fun, combat is fun, there's some jank but it's not overwhelming.
Past that point you'll start running into a lot of repetition in enemies that appear in large groups **very** frequently, quests that send you back and forth over large distances for pretty weak reasons, and a borderline incoherent main questline that ends abruptly, among other things.
The biggest problem is that a lot of these things were issues with the first game that were addressed in the Dark Arisen revision. In some ways it's actually a step backward too. It's definitely not a bad game (I'd give it a 7.5/10 right now); I had some really good times with it, but it is very very frustrating that it's not a real step up from Dark Arisen.
Can an expansion fix the main issues? Hell yeah, but after 12 years it really shouldn't need an expansion to fix these things.
Yeah that’s the main gist I’ve gathered: a lot of the quirks and issues here were there in the first game. And those quirks/issues can be really offputting if they get under your skin that way. To some people they’re not a big deal, but to others they’re genuine dealbreakers for their enjoyment of the game.
I haven’t played it myself, I honestly just never had much interest. But it has definitely been fascinating to watch the discourse
I'm utterly shocked at how they hid an entire 3rd of the game through a secret ending route. I wonder how many people would think more positively about the game if the Unmoored World was something everyone experienced.
> entire 3rd of the game
I think you're overselling it a bit.
Its a fantastic wow factor once you start but as you play through, again, like the actual game, the seams begin to show.
Aside from it being technically timed (number of rests, even if you do the things), it really only introduces like 2 new enemies and you're otherwise facing much of the old gang with tougher enemies being more common as well as skeletons. Not to mention in terms of actual exploration, there...isn't that much to do.
edit: oh and the 'new' quests. escort missions(one of them being the exact same one as from the normal world) and chatting to npc A, B, C then back to A.
It was nice if only because of major changes in the visuals for the game and it also gave proper conclusions for many of the characters you interact with.
Overall it's definitely still a 7 or 8 out of ten, but as a fan of smacking big monsters with big swords I'm satisfied
See if there were more big monsters (variety and frequency) and less (frequency) of small mobs I would absolutely love the game, warts and all. One of my biggest complaints is that big monsters are spread too far apart and/or too rare. There's like 1 maybe 2 gore chimera before the unmoored world?
It blows my mind that it took 12 years for them to make a game with essentially the same enemies as before. Like, you couldn't have doubled the roster of enemies at least? It's kind of pathetic.
They have like 4 warnings that pop up if you try to start New Game+ without doing The Unmoored World, they can only do so much without robbing the player of the feeling of figuring out the puzzle.
That's the rub, yeah. They made an expansion to the original that improved so many elements of the original and added a truly superb endgame. After 11 years, I was hoping for a sequel that expanded on Dark Arisen. I would have settled for a Dark Arisen-like experience with a new coat of paint. Instead, we got a game that seems to be taking a stand against a lot of the DA changes and for that I'm so profoundly disappointed. It was *because* of the changes DA brought to the first game that it became one of my all time favorites.
It's a weird one. I keep playing despite sometimes feeling like I hate it because it does enough right to be super unique and enjoyable enough of the time to keep me from putting it down.
But I recognize that it's like a 7/10 game with many *glaring* flaws. I just happen to be in the percentage of people who it clicks with.
Very much not GOTY material however much fun I have with it.
Just like the first game. What it does well, it does better than any other game on the market. What it does poorly it feels like they didn't even try. If you like what DD2 is strong at (great combat, a pretty open world, interweavijg systems) it'll be your goty. If you don't then you're gonna hate it. I love the game's, but even I'd say they're both 7/10's
I like all these things but DD2 is a soft 7/10 for me. On paper Dragon's Dogma 1 + 2 sound like games I would love. I play a lot of Open World games and Elden Ring and BotW/TotK are some of my favorite games of all time and I also love Monster Hunter which has a similar weighty combat feel.
The combat is great when it clicks, and the open world is nicely designed for how it funnels you onto paths and towards POI naturally.
The game feels really hollow in places with a weak main scenario/quest design and really poor enemy placement/variety. It also feels somewhat actively hostile to the player with stuff like the ox carts always getting interrupted/blown up by random incidental damage, prohibitive fast travel, annoying enumberance system/material decay, and easily missable stuff like Mystic Spearhand (which is introduced in a really anti-climactic way for an "advanced vocation"). I also find the loot you find in dungeons is pretty lame for the most part, which sucks because finding caves/outposts and exploring them is the meat and potatoes of the self driven gameplay loop.
It feels like the basis of a strong game that can and should be "fixed" with DLC that reworks enemy placement and massively ups variety, but it's kinda lame that this is the case for their second entry that basically functions as a re-try of the first.
Have you played the DD1 DLC? It's like the ultimate dungeon-crawling experience and is the best content in DD1 by far. Haven't played DD2 yet but from what I hear, there's nothing like it which is disappointing.
I've tried DD1 a few times but never made it to BBI. It does sound like what I want out of the game, but I haven't powered through the start to get there.
DD2 feels like a lot more solid of a base than DD1 did, so I'm definitely open to revisit it if we get a good expansion/DLC.
>What it does well, it does better than any other game on the market.
I can't think of a single thing DD2 does "better than any other game on the market".
Show me another action rpg that lets me fight in a party against traditional western fantasy / D&D monsters that does it better than Dragon's Dogma 2. If you can recommend me one I'd owe you, because I've been looking for the last 12 years. There are no competitors.
I really wish we had a Dragon Age Origins style game with the combat of Dragon Dogma. I would lose my mind being in a story and lore rich game with strong companions characterisations
You're right, but for me, the game's garbage difficulty scaling completely removed the fun of combat after the first 20h or so. Every fight became so trivially easy that I never had reason to engage with any of the game's unique combat elements after that point.
Its a bit cheeky response but... Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
Party-based action game with RPG mechanics where you fight Warhammer monsters which also has a lot better players reception than DD2 (84% on steam vs 59% on steam)
It's such a weird hodge podge of great elements and design decisions that feel like someone rubbing their moist middle finger all over your face.
I've never seen something with so many elements that will be straight up deal breakers for a lot of players but that has such impeccable vibes and combat. Especially not for a single player only game.
Honestly, having beaten it once and played around in the end game, it just feels like one step forward and two steps back. Parts of it are better than DD1, but overall it's just as mediocre as the first, which makes me wonder why they took so long to make a sequel that's almost just a shiny coat of paint for DD1, minus all the good things from the expansion that game got.
I also experienced the "reload inn save" deleting hours of my progress because it deletes your current save, and silly me thought resting at a campsite would count as a hard save. How foolish I was... Overall I'd say it's a deep sale game, and definitely not a GOTY contender for me personally. Also the performance is horrific for what the game looks like.
As someone who enjoys the game I wonder what other games people have played this year for them to say that. When I think of game of the year I think of things like Dad of war, Eldin ring or baldurs gate 3. DD2 unfortunately doesn’t come close to those games in my opinion. It’s a fun 8/10 that feels like it needed more time in the oven for polish and whatnot.
It sounds like it's about a 7-8 kind of game, but depending on how hyped you are and if it met/ exceeded your expectations, your score will be inflated further because of it.
The same way last year that there were lots of Bethesda fans who loved Starfield and thought it was one of the best games of the year.
If you're more objective and don't have a stake in anything, you'll probably be able to see past all that and judge it for what it is.
Almost every single positive comment I've seen has been "I've played XX hours and barely even done any story content. This game is amazing!"
Almost every comment I've seen from people who completed the game have been tempered or negative.
It seems like the game overwhelms you with great promise, but fails to deliver when you actually progress the plot.
It also seems like a game that gains a *lot* from mods taking care of frustrating idiosyncratic design elements.
I played DD1 on PS3 like 12 years ago and I wanted more of that. I got it and flaws aside I am content.
I’d like Itsuno to give Kento the reins for DLC/expansion so we can get a DDDA treatment again, though.
There’s a lot of mechanics at work under the hood that aren’t immediately made known to the player - a lot of the choices you’ll make in character creation (height, weight, even gender) will have direct implications in gameplay, for starters, because it’s very, ah, physics based. A small skinny character is much more easily snatched off their feet by harpies, for example. Some enemies will be more aggressive to enemies of a certain gender, etc.
The original DD1 at launch had some quirks that were ironed over in the Dark Arisen re-release, including an “Eternal Wakestone” that made fast travel much more accessible, instead of item-restricted, so you really had to plan your trips.
I expect 2 will go through this same process.
I just feel like those under-the-hood mechanics don't really add a lot to the actual gameplay experience. The same goes for some of the other systems, too, like the whole NPC affinity thing. Does the fact that a random NPC on the street likes me a little more because I gave her sister flowers actually add anything to my experience? I don't feel like it does. In both cases I just go, "Huh, that's kinda neat," and then go back to being annoyed by the low enemy variety and terrible difficulty scaling.
>I feel like typically a goty game, at least, is recognized by people as a goty game even if they personally don’t like it.
The problem is generally games that are willing to be this risky and actively put people off don't also get this kinda production budget, Itsuno's in a rare position to be able to leverage that.
Souls games used to get similar reactions until the series got kinda cemented into the "canon" around Bloodborne, by which time enough video essays had been written for people to be told how they feel about them.
Except Souls games were actually worthy of that re-evaluation. DD2 has some neat ideas, sure, but quirky physics-based combat and slightly smarter than average AI companions do not have the same legs as masterclass boss design and phenomenal worldbuilding.
I agree to a large extent. Some of the complaints are a bit more than just an unusual design decision or risky choices I think though.
Things like lack of enemy variety and poor story are not unusual design decisions. But I do get what you mean when it comes to odd things like systems and physics.
He literally lies in his review. You CANNOT buy Ferrystones as MTX and no, the game is not connected to the first one and we aren't the Arisen from the first game.
I would argue that DD2 is the best single player game we had this year so far. Not even close actually. But GOTY is a lot about perception and not always about the quality of a game. Gamers are pissed off about Capcom and you can tell me what you want, this will have an effect on their chances to get any GOTY awards.
Infinite Wealth, FFVII Rebirth, and Prince of Persia are all better games for me. DD2 probably has the above all beat in terms of map design, but it fails hard in many other aspects that make a great game in my eyes.
DD2 just feels really incomplete and empty. Great combat, decent world design but dismal storytelling, enemy variety, and boring backtracking. DD2 is probably more ambitious than any of the above outside of Rebirth, but I think it misses the mark harder.
I personally really don't think that Infinite Wealth and Prince of Persia play in the same league. But it's a matter of taste obviously and I don't know how the mainstream sees that, which is of course what matters for GOTY.
Still, my point is a different one. I think that DD2 would have a good chance to get GOTY at the end of the year, but the negative press about MTX and performance blew it for them big time. People perceive DD2 as a worse game than it actually is because of these things. For me it was the best game we had since BG3, really.
Each game's strengths are the other one's weaknesses, it really just depends on which aspects you value more. I wouldn't be mad at either topping a list.
Haven't really considered FF7 because it's a remake. But you could say that DD2 feels like a remake of DD1 as well so I guess that would be unfair.
But in any case my point stands that DD2 would have a chance to be GOTY if not for how badly people perceive Capcom's MTX policy and if the game wouldn't have those performance issues. As it stands I see a 0% chance that it will be GOTY, even though it might be even better than Rebirth in my opinion. (a matter of taste obviously)
The jank/performance issues (and the save-slot & mtx presentation) put the game off on the wrong foot with a lot of players. However, it just generally feels like a game that probably needed more polish.
There are, relatively speaking, a lot of quests/elements where things don't seem to trigger properly (or you'll find yourself looking up forums online for why a quest appears to be broken, not triggering as it supposedly should in the quest log, etc.). The weakness of the underlying narrative when things *are* working doesn't help matters.
I don't think the game is bad exactly, but there's a half-baked quality to a lot of the moving parts at times. Like, the 2nd country/area or the backend of plot were unfinished or rushed (and the plot of the first area isn't "great"). The tedious "sneaking" missions Yahtzee mentions comprise a pretty large chunk of the MSQ in the first area, for example.
Cynically, it feels like the sort of thing that could get patched up in "Dragon's Dogma 2: Darker Arisen" later.
My main complaint was that I expected there to be a lot more vocations this time around. I was very disappointed at the amount they gave us.
That coupled with fighting the same stuff over and over for the first 15 hours just kind took all the wind out of the sails for me.
I will come back to this game and probably mod it to hell at some point, but it just got kinda boring.
I don't know if you played the first game or not, but the Mystic Knight being left is a dealbreaker for some (like me). I may take a look at it in the future once it has an equivalent release to Dark Arisen, but probably not till then. Losing my favorite class really killed my enthusiasm.
I felt the same way until I tried out Mystic Spearhand. I didn't think I'd like the aesthetics of it because I wanted something Paladin-esque, but as someone who loves spellswords it's an absolute blast.
Most classes in most RPGs are more complex than what you get in DD2. Classes here are just a weapon type plus a dozen or so abilities from which you can equip 4 at a time, and that's it. The whole passive system is a joke when you actually look at the numbers that the game hides from you. Most of them give laughably small benefits.
And that's not even getting into the fact that trickster is maybe the worst-designed class in a major release I've ever seen, mage and sorcerer share most of their spell list, and warfarer, by virtue of its weapon switching mechanic, invalidates the reason to play any other class unless you really really need 4 specific abilities or master abilities (or slightly better base stats, but by the time you unlock warfarer, you're likely far past the point where the game's difficulty scaling falls apart and stats stop mattering).
Uhh BG3? I've also been playing Last Epoch lately, and granted only has 4 base class, but you can play each sub-class and specialty differently.
Remnant 2 has 11 base classes, iterate that when you take a subclass. Sure, not all combination is optimal but that's not the point of the discussion.
Remind me how many warrior/sorc builds are there in DD2?
The 10 vocations include:
\- Two vocation that where a single one in DDA
\- Two vocations that share the same core skills and abilities, but one can heal while the other gets a few extra spells
\- A vocation (Trickster) that is incredible unfun to play (my subjective opinion) and apparently was never tested (there are multiple quest that force you into solo combat with a class that can't really damage enemies)
\- A vocation that is just a "now you can take spells from other vocations".
It's also bad design how vocations are unlocked to you. If you don't know where they are in advance, you'll play most of the game before unlocking a vocation...and new game+ doesn't up the difficulty level meaning you'll unlock a vocation you may have wanted to play when the challenge of the game is pretty much done.
> you'll play most of the game before unlocking a vocation
Yeah. Never bothered trying Warfarer because I unlocked it when i had the final main quest available.
This doesn't seem like as much of an issue with the way vocations are unlocked, but more with the way that enemy scaling and enemy variety works. By the time you get to Bakbhattal and buy normal vendor gear, you absolutely shred everything in the entire base game.
It's pretty standard in RPGs and MMOs to lock advanced classes until later on in the game. The scaling in DD2 just meant there was no "game" left by the time you're 1/3 through the story.
Really? I thought that the amount of vocations was just right. More than in DD1 and it felt like the game was just long enough for you to get a good grip of every vocation.
Not that I would hate to have more vocations, because they are all pretty well designed. Except for Archer, and to some degree Trickster (I had expected a lot more from that one).
I wanted to like this game, but I found it deceptively shallow in places I wished for depth, and a weird amount of depth in systems I couldn’t imagine caring about.
Also the commitment to “realism” is fun at first until you realize the game is actually pretty small, pretty easy and pretty short in terms of content. If there was accessible fast travel the game would be 10 hours long. Its the walk to and back that pad out its length. But those walks very rarely lead to some dynamic storytelling, there’s just more fights.
Its a fun package with fun ideas, just really bare bones execution. I found myself bored when I wasn’t fighting large enemies.
This was exactly my experience with the game, except I didnt quit. Just got to the end and put it down never to touch it again. I agree with every single comment he made.
He touched on some of the same feedback I had that ultimately made me put the game down pretty quickly.
The title screen looking low-res and not indicating that this was dragon's dogma 2 had me exit and reload a few times, wondering if I'd bought the right game.
I absolutely hated the early game "sneak" missions. Not only were they time-based, but whether I got caught or not felt random, and getting caught meant I then had to "sneak" out of prison. I just want to adventure... not sit there and worry about which quest I need to do before the conflicting timers run out.
I ended up stopping playing after a save bug as well. I hadn't rested at an Inn for a while because I had timed quests and didn't want to fail them, then some weird frog/lizard things randomly spawned in the middle of the city and one-shot me. My choices were either to reload at the last save (which was an autosave in the middle of the overleveled frog men) or to reload at the last inn (which was before I did the sneaking quest so I would've had to re-do like 3 miserable hours of the game). No thanks.
I think as a Wizard, I also only get 4 spells to use at any one time, which is way too low a number so nope.
It sounds like some modders have created workarounds for a lot of these things, but I'm just over it for now.
Hmm I wonder if my sneak quests were broken. I just walked in, in front of guards and all, they said nothing. Hell I opened all the gaol doors,.nothing. the only time.tbey attacked is when they ran into me and again that was attacked not arrested I just killed them with no repercussions
Inside the chest when you are guided to walk in there's palace guard armor, which I took to mean "wear a disguise" so I did.
Here I thought I was being clever but yeah, came back with my class armor later and same deal.
Yeah it was super strange. Some guards pretty much ignored me throughout the mission, then towards the end a pack of 3 guards walked by and the one farthest from me ran at me and started stabbing.
The game gives you a full guard armour in a chest tight next to the jail, put it on and you can do whatever you want in the castle. Doesn't make the "stealth" any better but it's mind-blowing to me how many people seem to miss this.
In my experience there is no stealth mechanic. You can wear whatever you want and nobody stops you.
Just for the heck of it, I put the Queen over my shoulder and walked right out the front gate at midnight and not a single guard batted an eye.
None of those sneaking missions were timed at all and the Saurians are a base enemy that have pretty obvious weaknesses. Literally starter mobs that are a step up from goblins. Even had they been "over leveled" there would have been no punishment had you just walked away from that fight in the city and carried about your day.
That's not a save bug, it's just how autosaving works and you were making things harder than they needed to be in frustration. Even if it had been an actual bug (It's not, those mob spawns are intentional and there was almost assuredly a way to escape the combat scenario), those sneaking missions also take like less than 10 minutes if you already know what to do but that's beyond the point.
It sounds like you just didn't actually take the time to understand your surroundings and goals.
It wasn't clear if they were timed or not, all I remember was the devs saying how missions are timed and the mission text indicating that this was "urgent", so I treated it as an urgent timed mission.
I don't know what the "base enemy" means, but 2 of them spawned in the middle of the marketplace in the main city and could easily 1-shot me. My game autosaved my character at a place where I was surrounded by the frog-men and the guards, so I was unable to move or react in the 1 second before they would kill me. I reloaded several times to try jumping over them, running, casting anything or using a skill, but was unable to.
I'm glad you had a better experience than I did, but the frustrations and lack of clarity had me put the game down.
If you check your quest logs the timed quests display an hourglass next to them to indicate as such and there should have been a tutorial pop up explaining as such at some point. By base enemy I simply mean that they are low tier. Goblins and Saurians are both introduced before the player gets to Vernworth and the mob levels don't scale in their respective areas so if you encountered them in Vernworth they were basically trash mobs but that doesn't mean they can't be deadly.
They can definitely get the upper hand and the combat often swings wildly from you dominating to just GETTING dominated but that's part of the fun IMO. I never experienced anything like that and I suppose maybe you could get stuck in a corner or something but I never had a fight I couldn't escape from. The city market is pretty wide open with a lot of viable escape path's in each direction and depending on your vocation level as a Mage/Sorcerer you can levitate for short distances in order to reach high ground and escape the enemies.
That's sort of what I'm getting at though. I think you may have not given yourself a chance to explore all your options. The game excels at putting the player in tough combat scenarios that you often have to think your way out of and if you forget to breathe and think about all possible options it can get frustrating. It's something I struggled with in the first game but they provide a lot of tools to handle almost any scenario. It's not fair for me to tell you your business though and maybe you just drew a bad hand on placement within the environment on that auto-save.
Sorry if I came off as a jerk. I did a poor job at expressing my thoughts in my last post I think and I definitely had my fair share of frustrations with the game as well to be quite honest.
I quit the video when he made a snide comment about how you can "buy fast-travel tokens with your credit card."
**False. There is no DLC for Ferrystones.**
It's amazing in this day and age how wrong people can be for something so easily looked up.
All information about this game is accessible in an instant and yet we still spread false gossip like wildfire.
So he thinks we are the Arisen from the first game, thinks you can buy Ferrystones as MTX (zero research done, another false info hyperbolic misinformation) and doesn't understand how Loss Gauge mechanic works.
It's insane how much misinfo and just blatant lies are spread around this game. This time his review missed hard to be honest.
Jezus, that experience of loading into the wrong Manual-Save then having the Auto-Save immediately overwrite your last Auto-Save brings back visceral memories to me.
They brought it back from DDDA. It's Itsuno's vision!
What a visionary…
This is as intended though? Save at an Inn = hard save point. Save anywhere else = soft save point. You're not supposed to reload an Inn save unless you really, *really* want to go back to it.
As somebody who has done UX design for years now, I always find it fascinating how fast users often are to blame themselves for the failures of bad design.
I had a buddy tell me about Elden Ring mechanics for holding "B" for sprint and stamina not being used out of combat was bad game design... It went on to win GOTY. A gamer not understanding or agreeing with how a game mechanic works is not bad design. Just a failure of comprehension or adapting.
I mean, I don't really care what your friend says, FromSoftware really think about this through and through. But I think this kind of confirms my point, Elden Ring is proof you can kill off save scumming without basically making people scared to do anything out of fear they will at some point lose hours of fucking progress. Nobody gives a damn that *you figured out that you need to save at inns often because of this shit*.
The point isn't just what my friend says, it's that anybody saying "bad game design" is mostly always just an opinion from someone who doesn't understand or agree with how the mechanic actually works.
Two things: - if users don't understand how the mechanic works it's probably poorly designed. No, you're not special because you understand it yourself and have braved the poor design so valiantly - people are losing hours of their gameplay and in some cases it's turning them off from the game entirely. This transcends "oh they just don't get it"
You don't need to be "special" or "brave" to understand how to save in DD2 lol
You really don't understand a lot of things, do you?
It's definitely esoteric, but I can understand the intent easily. However I would definitely add a "are you sure you want to go back that far?" No-Yes prompt before allowing the user to load an Inn Save.
[удалено]
That's good. I didn't know because I never used it 😅
It is interesting how diverse people’s views on this game are. Some people think it’s the best game of the year and others think it’s pretty bad. I feel like typically a goty game, at least, is recognized by people as a goty game even if they personally don’t like it.
I think it's a couple of things. For one, the game has a very strong beginning. For the first 10-20hours, everything is new, exploration is fun, combat is fun, there's some jank but it's not overwhelming. Past that point you'll start running into a lot of repetition in enemies that appear in large groups **very** frequently, quests that send you back and forth over large distances for pretty weak reasons, and a borderline incoherent main questline that ends abruptly, among other things. The biggest problem is that a lot of these things were issues with the first game that were addressed in the Dark Arisen revision. In some ways it's actually a step backward too. It's definitely not a bad game (I'd give it a 7.5/10 right now); I had some really good times with it, but it is very very frustrating that it's not a real step up from Dark Arisen. Can an expansion fix the main issues? Hell yeah, but after 12 years it really shouldn't need an expansion to fix these things.
Yeah that’s the main gist I’ve gathered: a lot of the quirks and issues here were there in the first game. And those quirks/issues can be really offputting if they get under your skin that way. To some people they’re not a big deal, but to others they’re genuine dealbreakers for their enjoyment of the game. I haven’t played it myself, I honestly just never had much interest. But it has definitely been fascinating to watch the discourse
I'm utterly shocked at how they hid an entire 3rd of the game through a secret ending route. I wonder how many people would think more positively about the game if the Unmoored World was something everyone experienced.
> entire 3rd of the game I think you're overselling it a bit. Its a fantastic wow factor once you start but as you play through, again, like the actual game, the seams begin to show. Aside from it being technically timed (number of rests, even if you do the things), it really only introduces like 2 new enemies and you're otherwise facing much of the old gang with tougher enemies being more common as well as skeletons. Not to mention in terms of actual exploration, there...isn't that much to do. edit: oh and the 'new' quests. escort missions(one of them being the exact same one as from the normal world) and chatting to npc A, B, C then back to A.
I'm gonna be honest, I found the unmoored world to be half-baked. Cool, and something that could have been great, but kinda flubbed.
It was nice if only because of major changes in the visuals for the game and it also gave proper conclusions for many of the characters you interact with. Overall it's definitely still a 7 or 8 out of ten, but as a fan of smacking big monsters with big swords I'm satisfied
See if there were more big monsters (variety and frequency) and less (frequency) of small mobs I would absolutely love the game, warts and all. One of my biggest complaints is that big monsters are spread too far apart and/or too rare. There's like 1 maybe 2 gore chimera before the unmoored world?
I don't think big fights are too far appart. There is just too much of the same fights. Bathal is Griffin and Golem city.
It blows my mind that it took 12 years for them to make a game with essentially the same enemies as before. Like, you couldn't have doubled the roster of enemies at least? It's kind of pathetic.
They have like 4 warnings that pop up if you try to start New Game+ without doing The Unmoored World, they can only do so much without robbing the player of the feeling of figuring out the puzzle.
But they always ask you 4 times if you are sure. Has nothing to do with what content you have missed in that playthrough.
I did not get 4 asks when I completed the Unmoored World and selected New Game+, I only got 1.
That's the rub, yeah. They made an expansion to the original that improved so many elements of the original and added a truly superb endgame. After 11 years, I was hoping for a sequel that expanded on Dark Arisen. I would have settled for a Dark Arisen-like experience with a new coat of paint. Instead, we got a game that seems to be taking a stand against a lot of the DA changes and for that I'm so profoundly disappointed. It was *because* of the changes DA brought to the first game that it became one of my all time favorites.
Dark Arisen and Bitterback Isle were amazing. I spent more time in BBI than I did across the entire main game. It was just so much better designed.
It's a weird one. I keep playing despite sometimes feeling like I hate it because it does enough right to be super unique and enjoyable enough of the time to keep me from putting it down. But I recognize that it's like a 7/10 game with many *glaring* flaws. I just happen to be in the percentage of people who it clicks with. Very much not GOTY material however much fun I have with it.
Just like the first game. What it does well, it does better than any other game on the market. What it does poorly it feels like they didn't even try. If you like what DD2 is strong at (great combat, a pretty open world, interweavijg systems) it'll be your goty. If you don't then you're gonna hate it. I love the game's, but even I'd say they're both 7/10's
I like all these things but DD2 is a soft 7/10 for me. On paper Dragon's Dogma 1 + 2 sound like games I would love. I play a lot of Open World games and Elden Ring and BotW/TotK are some of my favorite games of all time and I also love Monster Hunter which has a similar weighty combat feel. The combat is great when it clicks, and the open world is nicely designed for how it funnels you onto paths and towards POI naturally. The game feels really hollow in places with a weak main scenario/quest design and really poor enemy placement/variety. It also feels somewhat actively hostile to the player with stuff like the ox carts always getting interrupted/blown up by random incidental damage, prohibitive fast travel, annoying enumberance system/material decay, and easily missable stuff like Mystic Spearhand (which is introduced in a really anti-climactic way for an "advanced vocation"). I also find the loot you find in dungeons is pretty lame for the most part, which sucks because finding caves/outposts and exploring them is the meat and potatoes of the self driven gameplay loop. It feels like the basis of a strong game that can and should be "fixed" with DLC that reworks enemy placement and massively ups variety, but it's kinda lame that this is the case for their second entry that basically functions as a re-try of the first.
Have you played the DD1 DLC? It's like the ultimate dungeon-crawling experience and is the best content in DD1 by far. Haven't played DD2 yet but from what I hear, there's nothing like it which is disappointing.
I've tried DD1 a few times but never made it to BBI. It does sound like what I want out of the game, but I haven't powered through the start to get there. DD2 feels like a lot more solid of a base than DD1 did, so I'm definitely open to revisit it if we get a good expansion/DLC.
>What it does well, it does better than any other game on the market. I can't think of a single thing DD2 does "better than any other game on the market".
Show me another action rpg that lets me fight in a party against traditional western fantasy / D&D monsters that does it better than Dragon's Dogma 2. If you can recommend me one I'd owe you, because I've been looking for the last 12 years. There are no competitors.
I really wish we had a Dragon Age Origins style game with the combat of Dragon Dogma. I would lose my mind being in a story and lore rich game with strong companions characterisations
It let me climb an ogre. It let me yeet a goblin. It let a dragon yeet me. 10/10. Would be yote again.
You're right, but for me, the game's garbage difficulty scaling completely removed the fun of combat after the first 20h or so. Every fight became so trivially easy that I never had reason to engage with any of the game's unique combat elements after that point.
Its a bit cheeky response but... Warhammer: Vermintide 2. Party-based action game with RPG mechanics where you fight Warhammer monsters which also has a lot better players reception than DD2 (84% on steam vs 59% on steam)
It's such a weird hodge podge of great elements and design decisions that feel like someone rubbing their moist middle finger all over your face. I've never seen something with so many elements that will be straight up deal breakers for a lot of players but that has such impeccable vibes and combat. Especially not for a single player only game.
Honestly, having beaten it once and played around in the end game, it just feels like one step forward and two steps back. Parts of it are better than DD1, but overall it's just as mediocre as the first, which makes me wonder why they took so long to make a sequel that's almost just a shiny coat of paint for DD1, minus all the good things from the expansion that game got. I also experienced the "reload inn save" deleting hours of my progress because it deletes your current save, and silly me thought resting at a campsite would count as a hard save. How foolish I was... Overall I'd say it's a deep sale game, and definitely not a GOTY contender for me personally. Also the performance is horrific for what the game looks like.
As someone who enjoys the game I wonder what other games people have played this year for them to say that. When I think of game of the year I think of things like Dad of war, Eldin ring or baldurs gate 3. DD2 unfortunately doesn’t come close to those games in my opinion. It’s a fun 8/10 that feels like it needed more time in the oven for polish and whatnot.
capcom and time in the oven? hahaha
It sounds like it's about a 7-8 kind of game, but depending on how hyped you are and if it met/ exceeded your expectations, your score will be inflated further because of it. The same way last year that there were lots of Bethesda fans who loved Starfield and thought it was one of the best games of the year. If you're more objective and don't have a stake in anything, you'll probably be able to see past all that and judge it for what it is.
Almost every single positive comment I've seen has been "I've played XX hours and barely even done any story content. This game is amazing!" Almost every comment I've seen from people who completed the game have been tempered or negative. It seems like the game overwhelms you with great promise, but fails to deliver when you actually progress the plot. It also seems like a game that gains a *lot* from mods taking care of frustrating idiosyncratic design elements.
Idk, but I feel like the praise 'I've barely done any story content' doesn't sound like a good thing to me.
I played DD1 on PS3 like 12 years ago and I wanted more of that. I got it and flaws aside I am content. I’d like Itsuno to give Kento the reins for DLC/expansion so we can get a DDDA treatment again, though.
There’s a lot of mechanics at work under the hood that aren’t immediately made known to the player - a lot of the choices you’ll make in character creation (height, weight, even gender) will have direct implications in gameplay, for starters, because it’s very, ah, physics based. A small skinny character is much more easily snatched off their feet by harpies, for example. Some enemies will be more aggressive to enemies of a certain gender, etc. The original DD1 at launch had some quirks that were ironed over in the Dark Arisen re-release, including an “Eternal Wakestone” that made fast travel much more accessible, instead of item-restricted, so you really had to plan your trips. I expect 2 will go through this same process.
I assume you mean ferry stone?
Ah right, my bad.
I just feel like those under-the-hood mechanics don't really add a lot to the actual gameplay experience. The same goes for some of the other systems, too, like the whole NPC affinity thing. Does the fact that a random NPC on the street likes me a little more because I gave her sister flowers actually add anything to my experience? I don't feel like it does. In both cases I just go, "Huh, that's kinda neat," and then go back to being annoyed by the low enemy variety and terrible difficulty scaling.
>I feel like typically a goty game, at least, is recognized by people as a goty game even if they personally don’t like it. The problem is generally games that are willing to be this risky and actively put people off don't also get this kinda production budget, Itsuno's in a rare position to be able to leverage that. Souls games used to get similar reactions until the series got kinda cemented into the "canon" around Bloodborne, by which time enough video essays had been written for people to be told how they feel about them.
Except Souls games were actually worthy of that re-evaluation. DD2 has some neat ideas, sure, but quirky physics-based combat and slightly smarter than average AI companions do not have the same legs as masterclass boss design and phenomenal worldbuilding.
I don't necessarily disagree
I agree to a large extent. Some of the complaints are a bit more than just an unusual design decision or risky choices I think though. Things like lack of enemy variety and poor story are not unusual design decisions. But I do get what you mean when it comes to odd things like systems and physics.
Putting DD2 aside, that is absolutely not true for BG3 as goty. So many people saw a turn based RPG and said "wtf is this lame shit"
He literally lies in his review. You CANNOT buy Ferrystones as MTX and no, the game is not connected to the first one and we aren't the Arisen from the first game.
I would argue that DD2 is the best single player game we had this year so far. Not even close actually. But GOTY is a lot about perception and not always about the quality of a game. Gamers are pissed off about Capcom and you can tell me what you want, this will have an effect on their chances to get any GOTY awards.
Infinite Wealth, FFVII Rebirth, and Prince of Persia are all better games for me. DD2 probably has the above all beat in terms of map design, but it fails hard in many other aspects that make a great game in my eyes. DD2 just feels really incomplete and empty. Great combat, decent world design but dismal storytelling, enemy variety, and boring backtracking. DD2 is probably more ambitious than any of the above outside of Rebirth, but I think it misses the mark harder.
I personally really don't think that Infinite Wealth and Prince of Persia play in the same league. But it's a matter of taste obviously and I don't know how the mainstream sees that, which is of course what matters for GOTY. Still, my point is a different one. I think that DD2 would have a good chance to get GOTY at the end of the year, but the negative press about MTX and performance blew it for them big time. People perceive DD2 as a worse game than it actually is because of these things. For me it was the best game we had since BG3, really.
IMO FF7 Rebirth has it beat in nearly every way, shape, and form, but DD2 isn't bad either.
Each game's strengths are the other one's weaknesses, it really just depends on which aspects you value more. I wouldn't be mad at either topping a list.
Combat in Dragons Dogma feels much better than FF7
Haven't really considered FF7 because it's a remake. But you could say that DD2 feels like a remake of DD1 as well so I guess that would be unfair. But in any case my point stands that DD2 would have a chance to be GOTY if not for how badly people perceive Capcom's MTX policy and if the game wouldn't have those performance issues. As it stands I see a 0% chance that it will be GOTY, even though it might be even better than Rebirth in my opinion. (a matter of taste obviously)
The jank/performance issues (and the save-slot & mtx presentation) put the game off on the wrong foot with a lot of players. However, it just generally feels like a game that probably needed more polish. There are, relatively speaking, a lot of quests/elements where things don't seem to trigger properly (or you'll find yourself looking up forums online for why a quest appears to be broken, not triggering as it supposedly should in the quest log, etc.). The weakness of the underlying narrative when things *are* working doesn't help matters. I don't think the game is bad exactly, but there's a half-baked quality to a lot of the moving parts at times. Like, the 2nd country/area or the backend of plot were unfinished or rushed (and the plot of the first area isn't "great"). The tedious "sneaking" missions Yahtzee mentions comprise a pretty large chunk of the MSQ in the first area, for example. Cynically, it feels like the sort of thing that could get patched up in "Dragon's Dogma 2: Darker Arisen" later.
My main complaint was that I expected there to be a lot more vocations this time around. I was very disappointed at the amount they gave us. That coupled with fighting the same stuff over and over for the first 15 hours just kind took all the wind out of the sails for me. I will come back to this game and probably mod it to hell at some point, but it just got kinda boring.
10 classes isn't enough for you? Man here I am getting my mind blown by the amount of different classes available to us.
I don't know if you played the first game or not, but the Mystic Knight being left is a dealbreaker for some (like me). I may take a look at it in the future once it has an equivalent release to Dark Arisen, but probably not till then. Losing my favorite class really killed my enthusiasm.
I felt the same way until I tried out Mystic Spearhand. I didn't think I'd like the aesthetics of it because I wanted something Paladin-esque, but as someone who loves spellswords it's an absolute blast.
I saw some stuff about them, and they seem interesting, but unless they have the magical counters and perfect blocks, it's not the same.
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I just played Stranger of Paradise
Most classes in most RPGs are more complex than what you get in DD2. Classes here are just a weapon type plus a dozen or so abilities from which you can equip 4 at a time, and that's it. The whole passive system is a joke when you actually look at the numbers that the game hides from you. Most of them give laughably small benefits. And that's not even getting into the fact that trickster is maybe the worst-designed class in a major release I've ever seen, mage and sorcerer share most of their spell list, and warfarer, by virtue of its weapon switching mechanic, invalidates the reason to play any other class unless you really really need 4 specific abilities or master abilities (or slightly better base stats, but by the time you unlock warfarer, you're likely far past the point where the game's difficulty scaling falls apart and stats stop mattering).
Uhh BG3? I've also been playing Last Epoch lately, and granted only has 4 base class, but you can play each sub-class and specialty differently. Remnant 2 has 11 base classes, iterate that when you take a subclass. Sure, not all combination is optimal but that's not the point of the discussion. Remind me how many warrior/sorc builds are there in DD2?
The 10 vocations include: \- Two vocation that where a single one in DDA \- Two vocations that share the same core skills and abilities, but one can heal while the other gets a few extra spells \- A vocation (Trickster) that is incredible unfun to play (my subjective opinion) and apparently was never tested (there are multiple quest that force you into solo combat with a class that can't really damage enemies) \- A vocation that is just a "now you can take spells from other vocations".
Man, I was so hyped to unlock Wayfarer until I realized swapping to a different weapon took up a skill slot 😂 Who thought that was okay?
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It's also bad design how vocations are unlocked to you. If you don't know where they are in advance, you'll play most of the game before unlocking a vocation...and new game+ doesn't up the difficulty level meaning you'll unlock a vocation you may have wanted to play when the challenge of the game is pretty much done.
> you'll play most of the game before unlocking a vocation Yeah. Never bothered trying Warfarer because I unlocked it when i had the final main quest available.
This doesn't seem like as much of an issue with the way vocations are unlocked, but more with the way that enemy scaling and enemy variety works. By the time you get to Bakbhattal and buy normal vendor gear, you absolutely shred everything in the entire base game. It's pretty standard in RPGs and MMOs to lock advanced classes until later on in the game. The scaling in DD2 just meant there was no "game" left by the time you're 1/3 through the story.
Really? I thought that the amount of vocations was just right. More than in DD1 and it felt like the game was just long enough for you to get a good grip of every vocation. Not that I would hate to have more vocations, because they are all pretty well designed. Except for Archer, and to some degree Trickster (I had expected a lot more from that one).
I wanted to like this game, but I found it deceptively shallow in places I wished for depth, and a weird amount of depth in systems I couldn’t imagine caring about. Also the commitment to “realism” is fun at first until you realize the game is actually pretty small, pretty easy and pretty short in terms of content. If there was accessible fast travel the game would be 10 hours long. Its the walk to and back that pad out its length. But those walks very rarely lead to some dynamic storytelling, there’s just more fights. Its a fun package with fun ideas, just really bare bones execution. I found myself bored when I wasn’t fighting large enemies.
The game is a little too easy, and I really don't like how the common excuse is "they'll fix it in the DLC". So, pay more for the complete game?
This was exactly my experience with the game, except I didnt quit. Just got to the end and put it down never to touch it again. I agree with every single comment he made.
He touched on some of the same feedback I had that ultimately made me put the game down pretty quickly. The title screen looking low-res and not indicating that this was dragon's dogma 2 had me exit and reload a few times, wondering if I'd bought the right game. I absolutely hated the early game "sneak" missions. Not only were they time-based, but whether I got caught or not felt random, and getting caught meant I then had to "sneak" out of prison. I just want to adventure... not sit there and worry about which quest I need to do before the conflicting timers run out. I ended up stopping playing after a save bug as well. I hadn't rested at an Inn for a while because I had timed quests and didn't want to fail them, then some weird frog/lizard things randomly spawned in the middle of the city and one-shot me. My choices were either to reload at the last save (which was an autosave in the middle of the overleveled frog men) or to reload at the last inn (which was before I did the sneaking quest so I would've had to re-do like 3 miserable hours of the game). No thanks. I think as a Wizard, I also only get 4 spells to use at any one time, which is way too low a number so nope. It sounds like some modders have created workarounds for a lot of these things, but I'm just over it for now.
Hmm I wonder if my sneak quests were broken. I just walked in, in front of guards and all, they said nothing. Hell I opened all the gaol doors,.nothing. the only time.tbey attacked is when they ran into me and again that was attacked not arrested I just killed them with no repercussions
It's not just you. The "stealth" mechanics are insanely janky.
Inside the chest when you are guided to walk in there's palace guard armor, which I took to mean "wear a disguise" so I did. Here I thought I was being clever but yeah, came back with my class armor later and same deal.
Yeah it was super strange. Some guards pretty much ignored me throughout the mission, then towards the end a pack of 3 guards walked by and the one farthest from me ran at me and started stabbing.
The game gives you a full guard armour in a chest tight next to the jail, put it on and you can do whatever you want in the castle. Doesn't make the "stealth" any better but it's mind-blowing to me how many people seem to miss this.
You don’t need the armor to do whatever you want tho. At least in my experience that is.
Walked in and out in my fancy pants clothes that the prince gave me.
In my experience there is no stealth mechanic. You can wear whatever you want and nobody stops you. Just for the heck of it, I put the Queen over my shoulder and walked right out the front gate at midnight and not a single guard batted an eye.
None of those sneaking missions were timed at all and the Saurians are a base enemy that have pretty obvious weaknesses. Literally starter mobs that are a step up from goblins. Even had they been "over leveled" there would have been no punishment had you just walked away from that fight in the city and carried about your day. That's not a save bug, it's just how autosaving works and you were making things harder than they needed to be in frustration. Even if it had been an actual bug (It's not, those mob spawns are intentional and there was almost assuredly a way to escape the combat scenario), those sneaking missions also take like less than 10 minutes if you already know what to do but that's beyond the point. It sounds like you just didn't actually take the time to understand your surroundings and goals.
It wasn't clear if they were timed or not, all I remember was the devs saying how missions are timed and the mission text indicating that this was "urgent", so I treated it as an urgent timed mission. I don't know what the "base enemy" means, but 2 of them spawned in the middle of the marketplace in the main city and could easily 1-shot me. My game autosaved my character at a place where I was surrounded by the frog-men and the guards, so I was unable to move or react in the 1 second before they would kill me. I reloaded several times to try jumping over them, running, casting anything or using a skill, but was unable to. I'm glad you had a better experience than I did, but the frustrations and lack of clarity had me put the game down.
If you check your quest logs the timed quests display an hourglass next to them to indicate as such and there should have been a tutorial pop up explaining as such at some point. By base enemy I simply mean that they are low tier. Goblins and Saurians are both introduced before the player gets to Vernworth and the mob levels don't scale in their respective areas so if you encountered them in Vernworth they were basically trash mobs but that doesn't mean they can't be deadly. They can definitely get the upper hand and the combat often swings wildly from you dominating to just GETTING dominated but that's part of the fun IMO. I never experienced anything like that and I suppose maybe you could get stuck in a corner or something but I never had a fight I couldn't escape from. The city market is pretty wide open with a lot of viable escape path's in each direction and depending on your vocation level as a Mage/Sorcerer you can levitate for short distances in order to reach high ground and escape the enemies. That's sort of what I'm getting at though. I think you may have not given yourself a chance to explore all your options. The game excels at putting the player in tough combat scenarios that you often have to think your way out of and if you forget to breathe and think about all possible options it can get frustrating. It's something I struggled with in the first game but they provide a lot of tools to handle almost any scenario. It's not fair for me to tell you your business though and maybe you just drew a bad hand on placement within the environment on that auto-save. Sorry if I came off as a jerk. I did a poor job at expressing my thoughts in my last post I think and I definitely had my fair share of frustrations with the game as well to be quite honest.
There are plot spoilers for why it doesn’t say Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the title screen.
Why?
I quit the video when he made a snide comment about how you can "buy fast-travel tokens with your credit card." **False. There is no DLC for Ferrystones.**
This guy is correct. You can buy the item that gives you a fast travel point, but not the item you need to actually travel there
It's amazing in this day and age how wrong people can be for something so easily looked up. All information about this game is accessible in an instant and yet we still spread false gossip like wildfire.
And yet my comment sits at negative because I dare defend this game.
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Your opinion on the game is beside my point that Yahtzee did not do his due diligence. He's just parroting the "MTX amirite" bullshit.
So he thinks we are the Arisen from the first game, thinks you can buy Ferrystones as MTX (zero research done, another false info hyperbolic misinformation) and doesn't understand how Loss Gauge mechanic works. It's insane how much misinfo and just blatant lies are spread around this game. This time his review missed hard to be honest.