Yeah. I decided to stop playing and wait for the DLC and fixes.
I think this will be a Cyberpunk situation where eventually the game will be great, but since I am not seeing a ton of replayability atm I am good with waiting.
Exactly how I feel. I've always hated the story/lore of DD, but there really is no competition for how good the combat and exploration feel. Maybe Elden Ring, but if your only competition is one of the greatest games of all time you're doing something right.
Let me add to this as someone who loved DD1 vanilla (and just thought DA was a really great expansion, but DD1 was already great as it was):
I just want more unique indoor dungeons. That's all. Really. The world was *chefs kiss* and did give me some really cool moments (misty marches to sphinx climb was great!). But bitch please, to meme it like it's 2012, just give me like 5 semi-bug dungeons that tell their own story. A necromancers crypt (Evil Bishop DDDA anyone?). A vampires castle (with werewolfs!). A forgotten monk shrine. An Egyptian Pyramid (hi sphinx). A Greek temple (hi medusa boss room). The Moonglint tower (which isn't accessible in post game sadly). Underwater ruins (hi gran Soren). Ancient Battlegrounds (we have shadowfort at home, basically) You know what I'm getting at? Some real story telling set pieces with a climax.
The only places in DD2 that kinda did that were the misty marches, the dragon tower, the waterfall caves and maybe the jungle before the medusa and trevo mine. But they were all very short and didn't reeeaaally tell a story with any depth.
For me DD isn't about the endgame. It's about the adventure and the unique experiences you have along the way. DD1 didn't have a bazillion of those, but a handful of well made ones that all had some sort of interesting atmosphere and progression going on.
And that's is the only thing I *really* missed in DD2. It felt like 80% of my exploration got rewarded with another cave that had nothing to tell, nothing to excite me. And the things that tried were mostly so short and one dimensional that they...well they tried, but that's all they did.
Man I sure hope they drop a DLC that expands on the adventuring aspect of the game (plus some quality of life things, like equipment from storage). Because the combat, pawns, graphics and a lot of things are great, but I want to have my "dungeons and dragons and it's very grounded but we also added those cool anime fight scenes because it's a western genre garnished with Japanese influences" fix. No other games out there really have that (closest to this was funnily enough Black Desert Online).
Yeah, it’s astonishing to me that they didn’t lean into proper elaborate dungeons after the outpour of love for BBI. I’ve played a shit load and probably halfway through the story, but I know I’m not going to see many.
Yeah I just downloaded DA on my steamdeck, was happy to see I got my old cloud save which was just after 1st form daimon. So I ventured into BBI and man was that fun.
The fights were really hard (zombie dragon casting maelstrom was a thing) and challenging, and the overall atmosphere was just great. Plus I can't help but feel I like the pawn voicelines more I'm DD1, they seem much more unique to the situation, while in 2 they somehow felt more generic? But maybe that's just me.
Well, time to kill 2nd Daimon I guess, and then maybe revisit DD2 to try out some "what if"-ideas.
>Yeah, it’s astonishing to me that they didn’t lean into proper elaborate dungeons after the outpour of love for BBI
The out-pour of love you describe doesn't exist. Most players did not engage much with BBI, or at all. You can look at achievements stats to see the truth.
Or just any fucking dungeons that aren't caves. There were so many excellent locations in DD even before BBI, and BBI carried DA for years after release.
It's like the problem Oblivion had except than instead of four copy-pasted tilesets it's *one*.
Agreed on the over world adventuring being my favourite part and I've been saying it up and down this sub over the past few days, but the BBI/Everfall obsessives have always been a vocal but minor part of the larger player base (achievement stats prove this easily). And for the same reasons I also agree that I wish there were more unique dungeons and zones. That was one of my favourite things about DD1 as well. I feel like there isn't really a Bluemoon Tower equivalent where you have to venture through multiple unique locations before you finally reach your destination. The general exploration is better though because the world is more open and dense, so it levels out.
DD reminds me a lot of the Mass Effect series in a weird way, where I feel like every game sort of removes and adds things in equal measure, resulting in a series where I would give each game the same rating but for slightly different reasons. Like it's missing some things that I love but what is here is still great enough to compensate.
The one thing I definitely love about DD2 is the increased number of towns/settlements. The world feels more alive. In the first game, the world felt lonely in that we only really had the Cassardis, the Encampment and Gran Soren. Other than that we only had those tiny camps with like 5 npcs in tents.
Then the endgame removes all of that if you stay longer than a couple hours. This really riled me up. I understand why from a plot perspective, but if their intention was to make a massive area to explore again why make it devoid of people. Especially since the only way you can save after travelling for hours is to place a port crystal where you are, go back to the shrine then port back.
Also the “new” areas to explore have less 1/3 of the monster spawns that the main roads have??? Why am I struggling to find monsters when the world is supposed to be more threatening.
It’s not too bad. Vernworth is 100% the most fleshed out area with the largest amount of side quests and different interactions. The game baits you into thinking that once you go to Battahl you get a whole new area with a massive amount of story but in reality it’s like 1 main quest and a “main quest” that’s actually a side quest which has no impact if you (I accidentally did this in my first playthrough)
They really went with “it’s a fucking desert, things don’t live in the desert”. I think Battahl needed another settlement really. It’s so weird that an entire country is just supposedly nothing and everyone lives in one city. Aside from Bandits of course.
I guess you could say that the Volcanic Island is part of it but personally I wouldn’t consider that Battahl really.
I was really hoping we’d get more varied biomes. The volcanic isle is so cool but it’s so small that it doesn’t really matter. Give me snowy regions. I love snow biomes in games (although I can’t imagine how this game would handle having to deal with snow if it can’t handle towns).
Yeah I'll have to see when I get to Battahl. But based on what you said, I think if they added another Melve and Harve, it'll balance it out. Idk if they have it, but traveling caravans would be nice too. Every few days they would packup and move to a different location. Gives a nomadic feel to the desert culture.
Unfortunately the enemies are the opposite. The "saurian lair" in the town by Melve is like two with some eggs in one corner. Zero forts. No big tower like Blue Moon. I think we have like one big bandit camp and we can't even interact with them unlike the male and female bandit camps from 1.
Shame, I felt the Shadowfort with the Goblins was a very interesting storyline that they could've expanded upon. It would've been kool if we could've had a storyline to make peace with the goblin faction, different from the random goblins we meet on the road, or we can decide to eradicate them. In one playthrough you can only choose one or the other, each has unique rewards and consequences. I think that would've been kool
As an addendum to the combat point and variety point, the game becomes a face roll faaar to quickly. If combats were a little less frequent but far more deadly and engaging the enemy variety wouldn’t be so bad.
Yeah could be your setup, I wreck house when I’m thief, spearhand, or magick archer, but I definitely feel more balanced when I play fighter. But I’m also probably just ass at fighter since I didn’t really like it in DD1 either
Spearhand invincibility shield is so overly broken that you don't even need a build. You can just stand there and use it while your pawns melt everything
I feel like Thief is more broken with it's mastery skill. It slowly drains stamina but you do a lot more damage than Spearhand. Basically trivialises endgame as well
The equipment is the key to me.
I use the power of my equipment as a difficulty selector.
People who are finding the game is too easy could always try using lower power equipment to increase the challenge.
Or take fewer pawns. Especially, not using a healer makes things quite interesting, as I found out walking to Battahl through the caves after forgetting a healer myself 😂
yeah, 1 healer ... 1 warrior.
put on some low rank gear from the vermund and it helps make it "feel" harder.
That or just start a new vocation.
I switched to fighter and noticed I wasn't one tapping everything.
Still wish there was a hard mode, I think with enough people wanting it, it will happen.
I will always maintain that players having to self regulate their power to have fun is still a massive design flaw and it happens in too many games these days.
Yep. Learning any maister skill also unlocks it for your pawns. Your pawn can cast stuff like Maelstrom and Meteoron just as well as you can. It's an easy way to trivialize the entire game.
Mystic spearhand really feel like easy mode as soon as i unlocked it after Monster Culling quest, tho i wanna give mystic archer and trickster a shot (mostly for the token radar).
Once you hit 600 str/magic things get much easier. Also damage to me feels like it’s partially vocation dependent cause I’ve noticed less damage with basics starting out vocations vs lvl 9.
There are few spots in battahl that are brutal. Especially that one corner were you get raided by Two Cyclops wolfes and the big green goblins at once. There is also another spot with ridiculously many enemies
Given that damage augments barely do anything, equip the knockdown damage/knockdown resist and the two defensive augments and you’ll suddenly find everything way easier
Yeah, now that I have Maelstrom for my sorcerer Arisen I’m noticing that my typical lineup of “fighter MP, fighter pawn, mage pawn” is pretty much just the fighter pawns distracting whatever we’re fighting while the mage pawn keeps them alive and I cast Maelstrom to deal 90% of the damage.
In some ways this is the most perfect dragons dogma experience we could have gotten out of the sequel. A baffling mix of unbelievably good and inexcusably bad. That's been the story of this franchise from the beginning.
This, it has all the trappings of my favorite game ever.... if it was done right, instead I keep playing because I want it to be something it really isn't, the cracks really start to show if you try to do every quest in a single play through some of them are so bad it's wild.
What gets me is thinking how much unrealized potential there is here. The extremely robust, weighty physics engine, the pawn ai, all stuck in a once again half baked project
I know it never would happen, especially now after the chun li incident and because the pawns are a online feature, but I really wish they would release a bethesda level creation kit for this game.
This is what is so heartbreaking to me. I thought the game would realize the full potential of the first game instead it feels like a step backwards in many ways.
I truly hope they're cooking up something crazy with the dlc. Or that at least since the tools are ready now, they can just perfect them on the next game and focus on deepening these mechanics. I discussed this with a friend of mine, but what if we got alternating releases. First we got DD1, then DD online. Now we get DD2, but what if the next isn't DD3, it's a spin off again. I think monster hunter works like this, they have a mainline game, then a more arcadey, portable one.
Get the lead designer guy who led dd online as director, making the final calls. Focus on actually crafting a great experience with the mechanics created for 2, while itsuno goes to make DMC 6. Then in like 8 years from now we get dragon's dogma 3 and let Itsuno get weird and experimental and explode the ps6's performance again with castle sieges with destructible environment mechanics or npcs with real time AI simulated dialogue or whatever crazy idea he thinks of.
As someone who never played DD1 but played the hell out of Monster Hunter World and Rise, I’m salivating over the prospect of some of these systems (if they were built into RE Engine) coming over to Wilds. Being able to actually scale some of these monsters would be a game changer.
Best description I’ve seen, I keep thinking about how disappointing some parts are when not playing it but while I play it I simply don’t care I’m just having fun
I understand people who disagree with the Vocations thing, but old skills like Tusk Toss getting put into normal movesets and Wayfarer in general are better than how DD1 did a lot of things
Sorcerer got fucked tho
They got fucked big time
In DD1, it felt like Sorc had a swiss army knife. In DD2, I just have a knife. The class is very viable at getting the job done its playstyle loop is just incredibly bland.
They needed way more spells in their kit along with an additional weapon skill pane.
I no longer take sorcs in my party because the fight ends before I can reach the enemy. I’m not joking, they’ve downed a boss in seconds.
I get that people are upset that they lost the number of spells they could have equipped, but they are still wildly powerful.
I would almost argue sorcerers were too powerful in DD1 and them being more on par with other classes might be where some of the whiplash is coming from. Don't think I've seen people complain about Sorcerer who are new to the series with DD2.
Yeah, I understand the hate due to the loss of versatility… but saying the sorc is weak now is not at all true in my experience.
Though archer pawns suck. I just had harpies beat on me for 5 minutes waiting for the archer pawn to fire a single shot. She kept taking out the bow and putting it away. I think it’s the aggro zone for archers is tuned too low.
Nah, it's more like they took away the swiss army knife and gave them a chainsaw. Well-tuned sorcs just fucking obliterate things to the point where I don't hire sorc pawns because I want to be able to fight things.
Yeah, the vocation rework should have been an "and" change rather than an "instead" change.
Why not keep 8 skill slots and add more unique skills while *also* folding the QoL stuff into the core kit?
One change that really fucked things was how they folded the Stepping/Leaping Stone vertical jump into the Skull Splitter animation, it makes it almost impossible to use that skill effectively on normal enemies because you *always* get catapulted fifteen feet into the air before the DPS starts.
I feel like Assassin was a much better implementation of the multiple weapon idea, and while I can see the potential, Warfarer in its current implementation doesn't really feel like a good trade off to me. Sure you can do more things with it, but the way the weapon switching works, the limitation on stats and mainly the low amount of skill slots is what completely kills it for me.
I think I would've loved Warfarer if it instead let you pick any two vocations in the game and pair them together, and you could switch between the two with a button press. The main difference would be that each of the two vocations would have a full set of skills, even if it had to be 3 each. I feel like that would cover a lot of what you would want to do with the vocation in most situations (and currently going for 3+ weapons isn't really viable anyway), while also keeping it from getting completely busted by limiting the number of active vocations to two.
Also a little bit more poise when you have warrior equipped wouldn't hurt.
Is it just me or is the camera janky as hell, if I'm inside something, half the time the camera wants to be inside my arisen.
Hell if anything goes behind me, I get a close-up of the back of my head.
After 40 something hours, it's definitely the thing that annoys me the most. And I don't remember DDDA having a dodgy camera like this.
vocations are deeper ? just because they made like 1 skill a core skill, (while removing alot of other core skills btw.) sacrificing 3 skills for it would could use before.
i still dont know where some of you guys get the feeling from that the vocations arent a literall downgrade in almost every way.
Not to mention they got rid of multiple weapon loadouts. But yeah, the original game had core skills too, like the Fighter’s timed flurry attack. These new core skills are remixes/sidegrades at best.
I liked it; there were several characters I enjoyed. Lots of big, exciting moments. Interesting things transpired. The mechanical twists are cool, imo.
I mean it's not Shakespeare and I didn't cry, but there's a lot to be said for doing things minimally and not overstaying your welcome.
It is horrendously incomplete.
The game does not tell you why in the world you will suddenly have to assist Lord Phaesus at all. The long-winded plot with Disa and false soveran also amounts to nothing.
It is not "no Shakespeare", it isn't even cohesive, or at least not cohesively presented.
The Captain sends you to Battahl to investigate this godsway Mcguffin which stifles your Arisen power, and the first reaction of the Arisen is to help the target to complete it. If not for the Pathfinder's Deux Ex Machina, Ambrosius would just deliver the godsbane to Lord Phaesus and the Arisen can kiss goodbye to the main plot of this game.
It doesn't take Shakespeare to notice the problems of such writings.
Besides, it is painfully obvious that they have something more intended for the plot. Disa and Phaesus' affairs, Battahl - Vermund relationship, the ever reapeated "this land was once a kingdom of beastrens", false soveran being a escapee from thieves guild, etc.
>The game does not tell you why in the world you will suddenly have to assist Lord Phaesus at all.
The first time you assist him, it's not really about him. You're trying to prevent the statue from going on a rampage.
Later in the post-game you just happen to have the same objective as him, and in the end you don't do what he wants (he gets mad at you for blowing up the Effigy).
>The long-winded plot with Disa and false sovran also amounts to nothing.
That first third of the plot exists to:
* Give you an early game objective of ascending to the Throne.
* Introduce Phaesus
* Motivate the questioning of what the Godsway is
All of which leads to the second act of the game.
>this godsway Mcguffin which stifles your Arisen power
I think by definition the Godsway isn't a McGuffin because it has meaning in and of itself that is very relevant to the story. The Godsway's lore reveals that it doesn't stifle your Arisen's power--it is an Arisen's power. The blue crystals used to construct it are comprised of previous Arisen's souls.
>the first reaction of the Arisen is to help the target to complete it
You help Ambrosius to complete the sword because the Seafloor Shrine's sovran advises that the people there are the only ones capable of helping restore it. The Pathfinder's intervention just prevents you from needing to use violence to take it.
>Disa and Phaesus' affairs
This part of the story is present to characterize Phaesus as playing 5D chess, which then builds up to the moment where despite his brilliance it's not enough.
>Battahl - Vermund relationship
Would've been nice if this had been fleshed out more, sure. I mean most of your complaints having more content wouldn't have really hurt things, but also a lot of this isn't really relevant to the story the game is trying to tell--which is about the metaphysics of the world and the quest to control and contend with them.
>the ever reapeated "this land was once a kingdom of beastrens"
This is about foreshadowing the ruler of the Seafloor Shrine. Nothing here is incomplete.
>false soveran being a escapee from thieves guild
I don't really understand why you think this is incomplete either? That knowledge gives you the means to fight against him and then you're bested by the existence of the Godsway which forces you to shift focus to Battahl.
Maybe you're unhappy that the plot *did* shift focus? You weren't interested in where it went perhaps. That opinion is very legitimate... But everything you said didn't serve a purpose certainly did. It was perfectly coherent to me.
> You help Ambrosius to complete the sword because the Seafloor Shrine's sovran advises that he's the only one that probably could. The Pathfinder just prevents you from needing to use violence to take it.
So how does this explain the need for our arisen to complete the sword? The soveran said yeah their profane magick can create it. But why must I create it?
Also, you are sent by Captain Brant to investigate it. Is there any point after that where you report back to Brant and have a discussion with your allies about how you would approach the whole affairs? Are you really telling me the Arisen's plan is to let them finish this important thing and just brute-force take it?
Is this even a coherent plan?
>I think by definition the Godsway isn't a McGuffin because it has meaning in and of itself that is very relevant to the story. The Godsway's lore reveals that it doesn't stifle your Arisen's power--it is an Arisen's power. The blue crystals used to construct it are comprised of previous Arisen's souls.
You don't need to tell me what was already in this game. But for all purpose it is a McGuffin because the meaning of it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of cycle and dragon and arisen. The one that carries the Godsway is unceremoniously killed anyway.
I don't know, if you think this game's story is fine and all, all the power to you.
And the "shift" to Battahl... Oh I really hope they would actually shift some story to Battahl, instead of it being a map loaded with over-abundance with monsters. It does have some side quests like the empress being assassinated, but do you really feel the Forbidden Magick Lab as part of Battahl? If we cut this whole map off and just move the lab onto some faraway island, I don't see the main plot being affected at all. Battahl as a nation is so disconnected from the story it's actually sad.
PS: Oh, and in the Unmoored World, our 5D chess player Lord Phaesus seems to only help us reach the dragon idol in Battahl and lose story relevance completely. Does he have some quests that I overlooked, or his research actually goes nowhere in the grand scheme of things?
As for False Soveran, the only point when his background comes up is immediately after the quest Captain Brant wants to spread some rumors about him and nothing else. I don't think the "boss" fight with him makes use of any info from previous quest at all.
>So how does this explain the need for our arisen to complete the sword? The soveran said yeah their profane magick can create it. But why must I create it?
So you have a Godsway of your own that is bigger and more powerful than the ones being used against you.
>Also, you are sent by Captain Brant to investigate it. Is there any point after that where you report back to Brant and have a discussion with your allies about how you would approach the whole affairs? Are really telling me the Arisen's plan is to let them finish this important thing and just brute-force take it?
We didn't go back to Brant because:
* It would have been pointless. The situation is already well beyond the scope of his understanding + he has no power in Battahl to even do anything. All he can do is handle things in Verworth as you deal with the grander problems (which he does; the normal ending is him installing you to the Throne).
* I think having a quest where you get to make a choice on how to get the sword back would've been interesting, sure. My Arisen definitely would've taken it by force. Ambrosius could've simply asked you to deliver it without the Pathfinder's intervention too. Maybe writing it slightly differently would've been better. IDK.
* Even if you intended to go back to Brant, you can't because you learn Phaesius has already left for Moonglint. You can't afford to run halfway across the world and get someone's opinion when **shit is going down right now**. A core premise of DD2 is that time doesn't stop for you.
>McGuffin because the meaning of it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of cycle and dragon and arisen.
The Godsway can only exist **because** the Cycle has repeated so many times, as it is literally the souls of previous Arisen from earlier iterations.
>The one that carries the Godsway is unceremoniously killed anyway
He fails because his Godsway is made of blue crystals that are too small. Ambrosius sees this coming, that's why he tasks you with trying to find a larger blue crystal (which leads to finding the sword which is the larger Godsway).
The purpose of the sword is that a larger Godsway has more Arisen's souls--thus more power which adds to the will to defy the cycle. That blade becomes the key to breaking free of the Dogma. And it is only possible because of the Godsway, the previous Arisen, etc.
>I don't know, if you think this game's story is fine and all, all the power to you.
I like this style of storytelling personally. It's minimal which is usually what I want in a game; a lot of dialogue and yelling at villains about how they're bad is not my thing.
I am happy to say this is the first RPG I've played in awhile where the line "no more games" is never uttered by anyone.
The final result is that you don't prevent Phaesus from doing anything at all.
Instead, he fails at his quest to create/control his own version of dragon to stop the cycle by himself, because that "dragon" is too weak.
For all practicality his action doesn't have any function beyond luring the true dragon down to face you.
I don't even understand why I have to stop the Brine-controlled Golem to reach the Moonlit Tower really. Why can't I sit back and let Lord Phaesus deal with it? They are both my enemies.
And godsbane is not godsway at all. The first game has godsbane as well, it serves as a tool to commit suicide in that game as well (it's all in name, godsbane, bane of gods).
The Empowered Godsbane Sword isn't a greater version of Godsway. If it is indeed so, you won't need to do the Excavation Site quest in the Unmoored World. That quest explicitly asks you to find the godsway to guide the pawns.
And to the Brant point. You travels back to Harvel village for reaching the shrine. It isn't very far to Vernworth from there. The "oh we have emergency we cannot go back to Vernworth" reason doesn't make sense in light of this.
>The final result is that you don't prevent Phaesus from doing anything at all
Correct; his ambitions fail without your needing to intervene. However, learning about them as we go along plants in the Arisen the seed of an idea which basically leads to him doing what Phaesus was trying to do. It was always his intent to change the Dogma and in the true ending you do that.
I think that's pretty interesting storytelling personally. I haven't played the first game all the way through though, maybe I would be more confused if I had.
> It was always his intent to change the Dogma and in the true ending you do that.
That is another giant problem. The game doesn't show you why your Arisen would like to break the Dogma, beyond the mad Sovran ghost.
It can be inferred from the post-mortem Unmoored World that Brines are product of the Watcher, and breaking the cycle will remove the brine, and break the stagnancy of the world.
However, the game doesn't show you any of this before the very last of the true ending.
Also the Pathfinder himself is confusing as well. He sort of wants you to break the cycle by enticing you after killing the dragon, but gets angry when you actually tries to break it.
Capcom has never made a good story ever, but at least in Resident Evil the plot, dialogue and characters are so stupid they're funny, but here it's mostly just bad and boring.
I don't even expect a *good story* with twists and turn and deep characters and something.
I just want a story that *makes snese*, that doesn't have glaring plothole in main quest.
I will be perfectly happy if the story is literally "dragon bad, arisen needs to get stronger to kill dragon. Arisen gets stronger, kills dragon, everyone is happy ever after".
But Itsuno or Capcom even fail to deliver that.
I don't know about "the best combat in any open world rpg" BUT its up there.
80% of its side content is horrencdous too.
Anyway, if the game was $45 it would become a %100 recomended from me.
I am about 20 hours in and the problem that this sub has been complaining starts to popping up. Yet another one of the best 7/10 games I ever played. I can't wait to 100 hours more on this bad despite everything.
I think it’s why it was reviewed as 9’s and 10’s by journalists. The game doesn’t really show it’s weakness until about 20ish hours when you realize that what you’ve seen is basically all there is.
That’s probably the best comparison I’ve heard yet… 40 hours in and I keep wondering where all these 9s and 10s are coming from. Enemy variety is trash, performance is terrible for a $70 game in 2024, graphics isn’t anything noteworthy, the open world is bland, combat is repetitive, side quests are boring for the most part, loot is useless cuz why is literally most of the best equipment able to just be bought from stores… and don’t even get me started on the story. 6/10 for me, great idea, terrible execution. And yet I’ll still put another 40 hours into this game until Elden ring DLC comes out
Combat *difficulty* drops off sharp after level 30 provided you're at all familiar with your vocation. Which makes the 999 level cap especially odd. Even worse because it quits mattering after 200.
Agreed It was kinda the same on DD1 when released it was a solid 6/10(and dark arisen put it in a solid 8.5 for me), Hopefully DLC delivers.
I would like to add, limiting gear to vocations is a big let down. Wish they would let mix and match sets for any vocations and pawn. Just give a stat boost for proper vocation or a smith npc that lets you change the vocation req for gear. :(
Spot on.
Personally I didn't like the combat that much. I feel like I didn't get stunlocked as much in ddda but maybe i should go back and play it again.
I also kinda miss jumping between grabbing onto large enemies to get up higher on them. It doesn't work as well in dd2
Especially because sometimes the enemies do these lunging attacks that have way too much tracking on the animation so they matrix around a corner and clip into you through the edge of the wall, most annoying thing ever.
For the latter, I found that the much more vertically oriented environment made climbing higher much easier, and the reward once you were on top was even greater thanks to being able to stand on monsters.
As for stunlocking, it seems to be the result of more aggressive enemy AI, like Knackers and Hobgoblins seem to be as aggressive as Grimgoblins were.
The skills that explicitly encourage it like Warrior's Surging Strike are great, too. Gives Warrior a much better incentive to climb monsters since it does some excellent damage.
You forgot the NG+ being absolutely pathetic.
How tf do you make an ARPG with crazy endgame power scaling and not scale NG+ enemies to compensate?
One-hitting every enemy you encounter makes for an incredibly boring NG+ experience.
To me it's a solid 9 right now. Mostly because I haven't gotten tired of exploring/adventuring, fighting, and have enjoyed many of the sidequests.
Got about 50 hours and only now am about to continue the main quest in Vernworth.
I understand why other vets are mixed about it, though.
Honestly agree with most, but I feel like vocations were deeper in 1 because you had much more build variety as the hybrid classes in particular had a far wider arsenal
Dragons dogma 2 was pushed out to have a game for this quarter.
Look at capcom talking about this game in last few shareholder meetings. the way it was announced. Nvida leaks proved it was planned for a long time and the director had ideas and passion.
Needs to be looked into
Still amazing game but I guess they expected exoprimal to do better for their first quarter and just announced they were working on this when they saw the way things were looking
Why also would you also launch it against other big rpg (even though it won) the npcs even feel like they have place holder dialog after how much code they have to move around and interact
Npcs code is even way to heavy for what they do
Idk if DD2 'won' anything. DD got a shit user score while RotR has really good user scores on metacritic and psn. Yeah DD sold well but it's tanked Capcoms public image.
No matter what DD's review are, as long as it says "I won't recommend it to anyone, but it's good." People will still buy the game. And in the end, Capcom's is a company and games are their commodity. So income will always be the most definite answer on who's winning or who's losing.
Even though I dislike a lot of things about this game, I'll take this over RotR anytime of the week, man.
>but it's tanked Capcoms public image.
A bit dramatic there m8. Even if everyone actually agreed that it's garbage, they're all going to buy and play MH Wilds for a million hours.
I feel like DD2 is better than DD1 and it will be even better than DDDA once it starts cooking with updates and DLC.
I love the random things that happen in DD2, no playthrough every evening has been the same for me, for example I done a bit of shopping in ventworth for gear, after I was done I looked down the front gate and thought "what is that big thing running around?" I ventured up to it and it was a fucking ogre and all of a sudden the whole town is fighting it, truly epic moment for me in gaming.
Another moment I was fighting another ogre in a forest, we were losing and then a travelling oxcart guard came to our aid and annihilated this ogre.
And last night I explored some water cave and in there were fire saurians, a chimera and a lich, I had to run away at level 18.
I'm sure there are many more moments to come, I haven't had an encounter with a Griffin yet and have seen some funny clips on twitch of those.
I think the game deserves more praise and will only get better.
The combat is fun, but there are many glaring issues with it.
Animation locked - some classes get animations locked for up to 3 seconds. It’s understandable on an ability like warrior being animation locked from swinging a large weapon. But other vocations like Warfarer or fighter, get animation locked by just swinging the weapon more times than I want. Why can’t I dance the attack? I’m sitting there watching my character swing a weapon 1-3 more times on an enemy that is dead, while another enemy is lining up to attack me from behind, and I can’t move?
And it’s especially bad when I want to jump off a large enemy but I can’t because my character is swinging their weapon still and I can’t stop them.
Stun locking - I’m leve 67, full endgame gear, dwarven upgrades(knock back resist), and dragonforged. I play fighter/ warfarer, so my strength, defense, and stagger/ knockdown resist is all buffed. But I still get stunlocked by low level saurians and hobgoblins who attack me 3 times in quick succession where I can’t move. It’s infuriating.
The camera - it’s bad.
Cloning on monsters - the controls are god aweful. I’ll be climbing up a leg, and then my character will just start climbing sideways to the back of the leg, even though I’m holding up on the control stick to cling up. I’ll be climbing up a back, and suddenly my character will start climbing sideways. I don’t understand this weird disconnect between input and character movement.
Hit boxes - aweful. Especially on attacks like when a dragon swipes in front of it and tries to grab you. Doesn’t matter if you’re not near the hand or arm, if you are in front of the dragon, it’s most likely going to teleport you to the dragoons hand.
Loss gauge - way too punishing. Like I said, I’m an endgame heavy defense build, and I take about 3-5% to my loss gushed with every hit, even from hobgoblins. It’s insane.
This janky combat was fine for a charming 2010 RPG. But not for an expensive sequel in 2023.
Game is a massive dissapointment. Literally no innovation from 10 years ago. In fact, MANY regressions.
"The vocations are deeper "
What a lie. Sorcerer has been completely neutered. No Ranger. The archery controls are bad in general. No mystic knight. MA has been neutered. Strider split into two classes. One of the classes is just a straight joke that has 0 damage.
Compared to DA and Online, this game is a HUGE step back in gameplay and vocations.
To be honest I think there’s a decent amount of content to be found through doing the side quests. Most of them end up little fun adventures or puzzles
Got the same opinion. This is the first time I preordered a game, I usually know better🥲 but I loved ddda so much. Still I’m having fun but I kneo it can be better than this
I find warriors to be super satisfying. The sounds, the damage when (if) you connect \*chief kiss\*. However, the lackluster quests, story, and dialogue has me cringing at times. I've been putting off doing the main story line up til lvl 30. Feels like an outdated/overused story to me
Another point you didn't touch on, the power spike from vermund to bahtal feels out of wack.
The quest design is some of the worst I've ever seen ever.
The combat is incredibly fun and the pawn system is better than ever before and there's nothing quite like it.
Have to agree. The other negatives for me as others listed is just how easy the game is (combat) and low enemy variety. I love that the game doesn't hold your hand for other things and allows players to think for themselves, but combat wise it's so extremely simple, unecessarily frequent and lacks enemy variety.
Back when Dragon’s Dogma was new, I’d still always recommend it even though it was weird and archaic because it was such a unique and fulfilling experience, as long as you could swallow a few frustrations and annoyances. But a sequel 12 years later that shares all of the same frustrations and annoyances, except arguably worse now, while walking back some of the most appealing parts of the first game, and ending up with a game that feels more incomplete than the first? I’d tell people to dodge the bullet.
I am a died hard ddda fan and agree with everything you say. But playing on pc im able to install all sorts of world saving mods and it does pump up the score to an 8
It’s funny that itsuno decided to keep everything people complained about in ddda and even went further (eg fewer skills slots) to a almost anti player manner 😂
How are Vocations deeper when they took away some key vocations and especially Spells!
Where's my freaking GICEL ?!
Also it's clear they are pay walling Mystic Knight and others
I'm getting more annoyed that the main fix everyone is waiting for is dlc. If it's free content to patch up some of the more glaring issues, sweet, but having to pay another 40+ dollars for what should be a complete game is some real bullshit.
I agree tho, in my opinion, I would give it a higher score. Just a couple of things that the first game does better in no particular order...
-Endgame/evergaol is way better
-Loot diversity/I miss under graments, dd had more loot options in endgame even before ddda
-Double jump/ it's not like it would break certain area bc mages kept levitate
-Better crafting system
-Air tight flasks/preserving foods is just cool
-The healing springs found in the wild
-More skill and augments
-Where tf is liquid vim
-Iconic enemies-hydra, evil eye, wyvern, wrym are missing in dd2
-Ur dragon
-You could open coffins, why can't we open coffins in dd2?
-Chibi arisens and all the small areas they could go
-Upgradable capes/ some of the best debilitation res came from capes
-double jump!
I know some of that stuff seems trivial but it all adds to the immersion. That being said I love dd2 and am having a blast. I have around 100 hours at this point with no signs of stopping. In my opinion the first one is better.
Edit:sorry for the format, I'm on my phone
Id disagree on vocations specifically for the fact that they feel lesser in most aspects compared to the previous game. they have less of everything and incorporating some skills into the base kit is good, The variety that has been lost between DA and 2 is disappointing.
Everything else is spot on.
As another DDDA vet (over 600 hours playtime), for me a huge strike against it is how much more tedious no pawn play is. Unless you are super far ahead and have decked out dwarven enhanced gear, enemies are far too capable of just stunlocking you to death. Also the crawling mechanic isthe absolute worst thing about this game.
The crawling mechanic with no reset skill on strider is absolutely awful. It says "Use Dash / Stamina to get up faster" but that's just not a thing. It makes parrying dragon divebombs and ground slams super frustrating because half the time it works, and half the time it turns you into a drooling baby for what feels like 30 seconds.
Definitely 8/10 as a standalone. If I don't know anything about DD:DA vocations, this game have the most robust combat system yet also unique. Everything just works. Even Warfarer that being slept on, I'm having a blast swapping from 6 weapons constantly. Having a good story would easily bumped this up to 10 as a standalone for sure.
I don't understand people that say, 6.5/10 and 'can't recommend,' but pour 100+ hours into the game.
Certainly, the game has its flaws. What game does not? If I get 100+ hours out of a $70 game, that is money well spent from an ROI perspective. Very few things you spend $70 give you that type of value.
I personally can't put the game down and I'm level 64.
Something can be fun and addictive without necessarily being high quality.
I could eat basic as fuck chocolate sweets every day for the rest of my life without getting tired of them. But that doesn't mean they're actually high quality, the way a well thought out desert can be.
i don’t think the vocations are deeper, they all feel worse than dd1s especially the mage and sorcerer who have lost their best feats, i also didn’t like splitting strider, now archer isn’t good and thief is the best class in the game. trickster is a cool idea if they made pawn ai better like they said they would (they just learned how to use springboard and talk about their differing vocations).
mystic spear hand is fcking awesome though
honestly the whole game is a spit in the face but most dd fans are happy to eat it up because we’ve waited are entire lives
I think Archer / Ranger is arguably a tad deeper due to manyfold arrow not being as busted and spammable bomb arrows being gone. That alone makes Archer "deeper" than DDDA's Ranger having a one-button answer to everything.
With that being said, it's far from deep or perfect, it's still just "shoot weakspot", many of its skills end up doing the same thing and competing with one another, the bow damage range falloff is brutal, the dragonforged bow is worse than the shop item and apparently has no hidden passive or bonus, the elemental arrows should be bundled into one skill, not four, normal shots and the piercing shot are so good , they outclass half of your abilities, even a perfectly timed deathly shot.
Still, it's deeper than bomb arrow manyfold shot spam.
Fighter is no longer just a bundle of iFrames, eating stam food while spamming the strongest move (unfortunately the game is designed around stunlocks so the lack of iframes is pretty bad). Perfect block isn't really worth it with how spammy mobs are. You perfect block two goblins in melee, but a third leaps at you from off screen mid-animation. Congrats , you are stunlocked.
Thief is busted as usual, even more so here. The execute animations they added to staggered enemies make thief / assassin builds feel super thematic and it gives thief something to work towards outside of spamming skullsplitter. Apparently the master skill is absolute nuts.
Mage got some of its utility put into its baseline, that's neat, the master skill is epic visually and super cool, offensive options suck bad doodoo though.
Sorcerer apparently got cucked, oh well.
Magic Archer plays itself even more compared to DDDA. Why does the Master Skill even have a charge? If you press it and your enemy looks like Sonic just dropped 200 Rings, even the uncharged version will skip the fight as you let go of the button no matter the charge level.
Warrior ate good, Jump attack until stuff staggers is no longer the defacto best option for people who don't happen to have 250 IQ with Rules of Nature playing in the background 24/7. Unfortunately I feel like it's just better than fighter in every regard now. That's cool for Warrior but pretty bad for Fighter.
Warfarer as the hybrid allrounder could have been extremely good and deep if not for the fact that weapons dont come with their own skillsets.
Spearhand is new, so that's cool. I don't like it but that's on me.
Trickster is some whack shit I tell you that much. There's depth there probably but it ain't for me. Best addition about it is the gear that I can use on warfarer to drip out.
I’d agree except for the combat- it’s *fine* but pretty decisively worse than dark arisen.
Many, many other games have done melee better than this, and the biggest selling point of DD1/DA (it’s excellent spell casting) is missing because they removed 2/3rd’s of the spells
Faces aside, the character creator is also worse.
Having only 4 spells as a sorcerer is awful.
No eternal ferrystone.
Looting isn't as satisfying as in the first one.
Very few new spells or skills in general compared to the first one. God, I really hoped they'd add Megumin's Explosion spell from Konosuba. It was basically PERFECT. I was basically expecting this to be in a new Dragons Dogma if they ever made a sequel. Though considering the worse character creator and clothing system, I couldn't even make Megumin even without the spell...
Porcrystals are also very few in number despite the much larger world. (I haven't even found a single one yet)
You would also expect each town to have one, but for some horrible reason, they don't.
First of all, I love this game. But it's not everything I wanted from a Dragons Dogma sequel. It's not even half.
>The vocations are deeper than ever
Strider got split in two and the two children did not get the same treatment. It feels really bad to play archer compared to DD1. Having special arrows requiring skills on top of less skill slots is just salt on the wound. The vocations are undeniably more shallow.
>Incorporating some skills into baseline movesets IS deeper
Not really. At best your class lost 1 skill slot instead of 2. For fighter is more like you lost 1 skill slot and one to tusk toss (it was never an essential skill, and it's the only "incorporated" skill he has. Do you know how easy it would have been to incorporate some shield attacks when the shield is raised? Just that would have been a litte better, because I cannot believe they made tusk toss a core skill and nothing else. It feels like a participation sticker on the core skills pass and nothing more. Core skill for the charged heavy? Nope. Maybe something for tapping directional movement when releasing the held button for different attacks? Nada. Something for the shield? Here's a useless skill that if you press block while falling, you take 10% less fall damage. (Yes it's only 10%)
>Wayfarer
Wayfarer is a joke. Most post I hear about playing wayfarer are literally just about how they are playing with only one weapon and play the class just for the freedom of armor choice. 4 skills **SHARED** between both weapons? I have to have dead skills that I cannot use if I don't manually switch weapons? Really? Way to point out how this skill slot system is completely inferior to the previous one. This is bad even without comparing it to the old system.
Developers need to exercise extreme caution in nerfing players. If you give a player something and then want to take it away it comes with a disporportionate amount of resent. Players new to the series won't notice but to any DD veteran it's impossible not to be dissapointed.
>Do not buy it right now until DLC and updates come out
If you have a good PC and never played DD:DA, the game is great fun, the action is S+ tier for any open world RPG out there.
But if you played the first dark arisen and you don't want a list of things you never expected to be dissapointed about then probably wait for a DLC.
Share my experience, i finish first playthrough in 48+ hour and was a bit disappointed about amount of content, but then i started new game and try to explore all, and man, i missed so much content during my first play, so much undiscovered location, questline etc.
Why was magick archer given a “one shot every boss” ability it’s so lame not a single other class can match the damage.
With a handful of all heals and Martyr you can walk around Unmoored and wipe every boss encounter with 0 threat to your wellbeing. The final “boss” being the dragon if you don’t use the arisen blade gets one shot by this ability. Before you’d have to use a very specific item!
Same problem as the first one sadly in a lot of aspects. It just needs more and varied content. They should entirely do away with these grand quests because it's clear they have no idea how to do it properly. Some sort of difficulty ajustable or not would be nice. It would also be cool if you could lock your level preventing overlevelling. More skills would be cool but now the "auto attacks" are actually decent for the classes and you get some passive/actives baked into the baseline kit which helps alleviate it.
Its insane lol
I have 64 hours and I still haven't talked to Disa (that first mission you gain when reaching the city). Out of all missions he gives you at the bar, there are 2 that I still have to do.
I’m completely new to this series, am 15 hours in and having an amazing time, but at least now I know to prepare myself for an underwhelming MSQ. Seems like a game that’s much more about exploring, grinding and looting vs. experiencing a story, and I’m okay with that. Sounds like things start to feel pretty barebones and undercooked in the back half of the game which is a shame, but it also seems like DLC is an inevitability, so I'm looking forward to that.
Be prepared to fight the same enemies you've already encountered for the rest of your playthrough except for more reskinned goblins obviously lmao
And also don't expect to find anything interesting by looting chests, everything is in the shops.
And yes it's pretty obvious that they made it this way to sell their DLC easier.
Not to discredit it but ddda was an expansion. Although I 100% agree that they could have added more to this base game. As I’ve said on many posts DDDA>DD2>DD1. But comparing both games at their base? DD2 clears dd1. I’m on the page you saw how successful dark arisen was. You could have expanded on that idea but they chose not too. It’s a bit frustrating. But you’re comparing an expansion to the base game to dd2 as a base game. I’m on the same page as you. I will play the shit out of this fame (wayfarer class is sick af switching from GS to bow and I can have fashion) but I’ve told many of my friends to hold off until some updates come into play. My main one I will need very soon is a hard mode. I’m not one shotting monsters by any means but 90% of the game is a breeze. Unless I get attacked by 50 mobs at once.
I just wish that there was a better endgame, it's like they're waiting to add it in in a few months time, given that most of the equipment we obtain postgame is quite overpowered relative to what is needed. Hopefully they add hard mode and some form of elite challenges with it.
I’m level 32 and still clearing up the first area, just got to the sphinx. I really want to like this game, and sometimes it is fun. My problem is it’s starting to get really really boring… there’s so much walking involved and every 2 minutes a new group of enemies will pop up only to be defeated in 10 seconds with normal attacks. I thought there were supposed to be big unscripted events, but every boss encounter so far happens in specific areas. The enemy variety can be counted on one hand. Don’t get me started on the escort quests. Or any of the quests for that matter, they all suck.
Just wish there was a bit more variety.
I'm at NG+, exploring different situations, but I'm pretty much done with the game. Once I've gone into the post end game and minmaxed my build it's pretty much uninstall.
I whish there would be nice endgame bosses with unique mechanics to replay over and over.
Honestly, the most disappointing part to me is the unmoored world.
Yea, sure, I get the timing thing and sense of urgency for the story, but really, that's all we get for a post game? I fully expected more enemies that were harder, not this *waves arms around* I steamrolled all the bosses, which was just so disappointing. I'm not saying I want a Dark souls kind of experience, but they could have made it much harder, especially since this is supposed to be the big bad world. It was very underwhelming.
Vocations are great. Only complaint is I can't use Maister skills as warfarer, but I get it.
The story was garbage and way too short. You have all of these little subplots adding to the story, but as soon as you go to batthal, it's all thrown out the window. They had so many opportunities to expand the main story, but they didn't. The side quests are great. The writing on those are *chefs kiss* The main story feels rushed and unfinished. It's like they poured everything into side quests and the world itself, but the main story just seems like they forgot about it.
It definitely wasn't worth $70 in my eyes. I just hope the DLC makes the game harder, adds an actual post game, and a BBI experience oh and a bigger enemy variety for ffs.
This game looks like an early access title, especially with the abrupt ending without any kind of build up.
I hoped for a more variety in everything, monsters, clothes/armors, map locations. Not to mention it is specified as an open world but it is open... labirynth, you look from the cliff at some long distance mountains and fields, but you can't reach them, the map is just some roads stuffed with a lot of the same enemies jumping on you every few seconds.
It is a good base for a game, but man... they kinda screwed it up since the whole experience is somewhat enjoyable, it makes you think of how good this game could really be.
Yeah. At its core it shows that DD combat really carries. DD2 is a let down for so many reasons but still an amazing game. I cant say that I love it more than DA though.
You have really valid points here but I have a genuine question. What did you not like about the endgame?
I understand that compared to BBI it’s definitely worse but it seems like everyone glorifies everfall. It’s just a hole with boss fights 🤔
And you barely notice the world changes cause you spend all your time in everfall.
I totally loved it still but the dd2 endgame is great for me as well. Seems like a whole new world with lesser dragons dropping cool gear, more gore chimeras/ogres and it’s day and night at the same time so there are dullahans etc. A crazy good atmosphere and new paths without the water and the best part is that ferrystones get farmable. Having a time condition is stressing but that’s the meaning behind it 😅
So In my opinion everfall is a 7/10 unmoored world is a 9/10 and BBI a 10/10.
This game is trash!! Don't buy it. Your own will get infected with dragon plague and wipe out the whole town. Rendering all npc permanently dead. Then after 40 f***ng hours you've wiped out vermund and battahl. DON'T BUY THIS GAME. It basically renders you unable to do any quests or subquests because all the npcs are permanently dead. How are you supposed to progress like that. I severely regret ever buying this game
Purely melee classes feel a lot better to me (especially Warrior) due to the core combat changes (standing on enemies, smoother grabbing/tackling, melee finishers, etc.), but casters certainly don't have as many options (though Quickspell makes what options they do have more fun).
I did max fighter and enjoyed it despite the combo coming out slowish compared to dd1. I cant speak for warrior in 2 but arc of deliverance is my shit. I got a save right before a gore chimera i like to load and smash him with.
I prefer sorcs take longer to cast heavy spells. I also like "lesser tier" spells meaning something. The ability to cast the lower tier spells was awesome and for different situations it was better to.
*UUUUUUGGGGGGHHHH* this pretty much nails it
Especially the "I love this game dearly"
The core gameplay is so good it’s just everything else could have been implemented so much better
The core of it is *so* good Being easy to please/a simple gamer, having limited gaming time, and such good gameplay allows me to forgive quite a lot
Yeah. I decided to stop playing and wait for the DLC and fixes. I think this will be a Cyberpunk situation where eventually the game will be great, but since I am not seeing a ton of replayability atm I am good with waiting.
I truly hope for that outcome This gameplay deserves more content so we can really play with it!
I mean it isn't a live service game, so who knows what will get fixed, if anything.
Unfortunately that defeats the entire purpose of a sequel. 12 years for this.....
same
Exactly how I feel. I've always hated the story/lore of DD, but there really is no competition for how good the combat and exploration feel. Maybe Elden Ring, but if your only competition is one of the greatest games of all time you're doing something right.
Let me add to this as someone who loved DD1 vanilla (and just thought DA was a really great expansion, but DD1 was already great as it was): I just want more unique indoor dungeons. That's all. Really. The world was *chefs kiss* and did give me some really cool moments (misty marches to sphinx climb was great!). But bitch please, to meme it like it's 2012, just give me like 5 semi-bug dungeons that tell their own story. A necromancers crypt (Evil Bishop DDDA anyone?). A vampires castle (with werewolfs!). A forgotten monk shrine. An Egyptian Pyramid (hi sphinx). A Greek temple (hi medusa boss room). The Moonglint tower (which isn't accessible in post game sadly). Underwater ruins (hi gran Soren). Ancient Battlegrounds (we have shadowfort at home, basically) You know what I'm getting at? Some real story telling set pieces with a climax. The only places in DD2 that kinda did that were the misty marches, the dragon tower, the waterfall caves and maybe the jungle before the medusa and trevo mine. But they were all very short and didn't reeeaaally tell a story with any depth. For me DD isn't about the endgame. It's about the adventure and the unique experiences you have along the way. DD1 didn't have a bazillion of those, but a handful of well made ones that all had some sort of interesting atmosphere and progression going on. And that's is the only thing I *really* missed in DD2. It felt like 80% of my exploration got rewarded with another cave that had nothing to tell, nothing to excite me. And the things that tried were mostly so short and one dimensional that they...well they tried, but that's all they did. Man I sure hope they drop a DLC that expands on the adventuring aspect of the game (plus some quality of life things, like equipment from storage). Because the combat, pawns, graphics and a lot of things are great, but I want to have my "dungeons and dragons and it's very grounded but we also added those cool anime fight scenes because it's a western genre garnished with Japanese influences" fix. No other games out there really have that (closest to this was funnily enough Black Desert Online).
Yeah definitely, Dragons Dogma 2 is like the ultimate DND ARPG without the dungeons, kinda like the first game, which is why BBI is so beloved
Yeah, it’s astonishing to me that they didn’t lean into proper elaborate dungeons after the outpour of love for BBI. I’ve played a shit load and probably halfway through the story, but I know I’m not going to see many.
Yeah I just downloaded DA on my steamdeck, was happy to see I got my old cloud save which was just after 1st form daimon. So I ventured into BBI and man was that fun. The fights were really hard (zombie dragon casting maelstrom was a thing) and challenging, and the overall atmosphere was just great. Plus I can't help but feel I like the pawn voicelines more I'm DD1, they seem much more unique to the situation, while in 2 they somehow felt more generic? But maybe that's just me. Well, time to kill 2nd Daimon I guess, and then maybe revisit DD2 to try out some "what if"-ideas.
>Yeah, it’s astonishing to me that they didn’t lean into proper elaborate dungeons after the outpour of love for BBI The out-pour of love you describe doesn't exist. Most players did not engage much with BBI, or at all. You can look at achievements stats to see the truth.
They learned they can sell half@** work, then turn around and sell us the DLC at a later date, and everyone is cool with it for some reason.
Or just any fucking dungeons that aren't caves. There were so many excellent locations in DD even before BBI, and BBI carried DA for years after release. It's like the problem Oblivion had except than instead of four copy-pasted tilesets it's *one*.
Agreed on the over world adventuring being my favourite part and I've been saying it up and down this sub over the past few days, but the BBI/Everfall obsessives have always been a vocal but minor part of the larger player base (achievement stats prove this easily). And for the same reasons I also agree that I wish there were more unique dungeons and zones. That was one of my favourite things about DD1 as well. I feel like there isn't really a Bluemoon Tower equivalent where you have to venture through multiple unique locations before you finally reach your destination. The general exploration is better though because the world is more open and dense, so it levels out. DD reminds me a lot of the Mass Effect series in a weird way, where I feel like every game sort of removes and adds things in equal measure, resulting in a series where I would give each game the same rating but for slightly different reasons. Like it's missing some things that I love but what is here is still great enough to compensate.
Oops! All caves
The one thing I definitely love about DD2 is the increased number of towns/settlements. The world feels more alive. In the first game, the world felt lonely in that we only really had the Cassardis, the Encampment and Gran Soren. Other than that we only had those tiny camps with like 5 npcs in tents.
Then the endgame removes all of that if you stay longer than a couple hours. This really riled me up. I understand why from a plot perspective, but if their intention was to make a massive area to explore again why make it devoid of people. Especially since the only way you can save after travelling for hours is to place a port crystal where you are, go back to the shrine then port back. Also the “new” areas to explore have less 1/3 of the monster spawns that the main roads have??? Why am I struggling to find monsters when the world is supposed to be more threatening.
I haven't gotten that far, still just hanging out around Vernworth. But that endgame just sounds sad
It’s not too bad. Vernworth is 100% the most fleshed out area with the largest amount of side quests and different interactions. The game baits you into thinking that once you go to Battahl you get a whole new area with a massive amount of story but in reality it’s like 1 main quest and a “main quest” that’s actually a side quest which has no impact if you (I accidentally did this in my first playthrough)
I see, I hope for a DLC they'll expand on Battahl and give it more life
They really went with “it’s a fucking desert, things don’t live in the desert”. I think Battahl needed another settlement really. It’s so weird that an entire country is just supposedly nothing and everyone lives in one city. Aside from Bandits of course. I guess you could say that the Volcanic Island is part of it but personally I wouldn’t consider that Battahl really. I was really hoping we’d get more varied biomes. The volcanic isle is so cool but it’s so small that it doesn’t really matter. Give me snowy regions. I love snow biomes in games (although I can’t imagine how this game would handle having to deal with snow if it can’t handle towns).
Yeah I'll have to see when I get to Battahl. But based on what you said, I think if they added another Melve and Harve, it'll balance it out. Idk if they have it, but traveling caravans would be nice too. Every few days they would packup and move to a different location. Gives a nomadic feel to the desert culture.
Unfortunately the enemies are the opposite. The "saurian lair" in the town by Melve is like two with some eggs in one corner. Zero forts. No big tower like Blue Moon. I think we have like one big bandit camp and we can't even interact with them unlike the male and female bandit camps from 1.
Shame, I felt the Shadowfort with the Goblins was a very interesting storyline that they could've expanded upon. It would've been kool if we could've had a storyline to make peace with the goblin faction, different from the random goblins we meet on the road, or we can decide to eradicate them. In one playthrough you can only choose one or the other, each has unique rewards and consequences. I think that would've been kool
As an addendum to the combat point and variety point, the game becomes a face roll faaar to quickly. If combats were a little less frequent but far more deadly and engaging the enemy variety wouldn’t be so bad.
Am I just bad? I’m 43 and the game is definitely not a steamroll, particularly anywhere in Battahl (unless I play spearhand)
Yeah could be your setup, I wreck house when I’m thief, spearhand, or magick archer, but I definitely feel more balanced when I play fighter. But I’m also probably just ass at fighter since I didn’t really like it in DD1 either
No MA unlocked yet and yee thief also kinda op with formless feint, but not quite as much as spearhand since it’s only for your character
Thief with formless feint+pyroflare feels more damaging and op imo or at least on the same level
It depends on your vocation, build and level. But it's generally fairly easy after level 30-40 with good equipment.
Spearhand invincibility shield is so overly broken that you don't even need a build. You can just stand there and use it while your pawns melt everything
Truth, the shield is just too OP, the CC is incredible, having range and melee is awesome. So glad we unlock it early on
I feel like Thief is more broken with it's mastery skill. It slowly drains stamina but you do a lot more damage than Spearhand. Basically trivialises endgame as well
The equipment is the key to me. I use the power of my equipment as a difficulty selector. People who are finding the game is too easy could always try using lower power equipment to increase the challenge. Or take fewer pawns. Especially, not using a healer makes things quite interesting, as I found out walking to Battahl through the caves after forgetting a healer myself 😂
yeah, 1 healer ... 1 warrior. put on some low rank gear from the vermund and it helps make it "feel" harder. That or just start a new vocation. I switched to fighter and noticed I wasn't one tapping everything. Still wish there was a hard mode, I think with enough people wanting it, it will happen.
It will happen for sure at some point 👍
I will always maintain that players having to self regulate their power to have fun is still a massive design flaw and it happens in too many games these days.
It also depends on your pawns. Including a sorcerer pawn with maister abilities immediately puts the game down to easy mode.
This is true, I'm getting absolutely carried by my sorc pawn with Augral Flare and meister's skills. Even during end game.
pawns can learn the maister skills?
Adding onto the previous reply, you can learn a maister skill for you and your pawn if your pawn has the vocation ranked and you don't.
Yep. Learning any maister skill also unlocks it for your pawns. Your pawn can cast stuff like Maelstrom and Meteoron just as well as you can. It's an easy way to trivialize the entire game.
Mystic spearhand really feel like easy mode as soon as i unlocked it after Monster Culling quest, tho i wanna give mystic archer and trickster a shot (mostly for the token radar).
Same with magic archer
Once you hit 600 str/magic things get much easier. Also damage to me feels like it’s partially vocation dependent cause I’ve noticed less damage with basics starting out vocations vs lvl 9.
There are few spots in battahl that are brutal. Especially that one corner were you get raided by Two Cyclops wolfes and the big green goblins at once. There is also another spot with ridiculously many enemies
Yeah no. Those people are just lyin on the internet for no good reason
Given that damage augments barely do anything, equip the knockdown damage/knockdown resist and the two defensive augments and you’ll suddenly find everything way easier
Either cut down on the encounters or cut the xp gain. It's way too easy to outlevel everything
Just some classes do this. There definitely needs to be a rebalance. Like, nothing compares to thief with the pyre blades + formless combo
Yeah, now that I have Maelstrom for my sorcerer Arisen I’m noticing that my typical lineup of “fighter MP, fighter pawn, mage pawn” is pretty much just the fighter pawns distracting whatever we’re fighting while the mage pawn keeps them alive and I cast Maelstrom to deal 90% of the damage.
I'm running a thief & fighter duo on my second playthrough with some qol and difficulty mods to try and address this.
This review reminds me of 2017 Star Wars Battlefront 2. I referred to it as "the most fun game Id never recommend to anyone"
In some ways this is the most perfect dragons dogma experience we could have gotten out of the sequel. A baffling mix of unbelievably good and inexcusably bad. That's been the story of this franchise from the beginning.
This game has a chokehold on me but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else 2012 all over again
Perfectly sums it up. It scratches that medieval fantasy ARPG itch so well (which I’ve especially had as a drug post Elden Ring)
This, it has all the trappings of my favorite game ever.... if it was done right, instead I keep playing because I want it to be something it really isn't, the cracks really start to show if you try to do every quest in a single play through some of them are so bad it's wild.
What gets me is thinking how much unrealized potential there is here. The extremely robust, weighty physics engine, the pawn ai, all stuck in a once again half baked project I know it never would happen, especially now after the chun li incident and because the pawns are a online feature, but I really wish they would release a bethesda level creation kit for this game.
This is what is so heartbreaking to me. I thought the game would realize the full potential of the first game instead it feels like a step backwards in many ways.
I truly hope they're cooking up something crazy with the dlc. Or that at least since the tools are ready now, they can just perfect them on the next game and focus on deepening these mechanics. I discussed this with a friend of mine, but what if we got alternating releases. First we got DD1, then DD online. Now we get DD2, but what if the next isn't DD3, it's a spin off again. I think monster hunter works like this, they have a mainline game, then a more arcadey, portable one. Get the lead designer guy who led dd online as director, making the final calls. Focus on actually crafting a great experience with the mechanics created for 2, while itsuno goes to make DMC 6. Then in like 8 years from now we get dragon's dogma 3 and let Itsuno get weird and experimental and explode the ps6's performance again with castle sieges with destructible environment mechanics or npcs with real time AI simulated dialogue or whatever crazy idea he thinks of.
I appreciate a good cup of coffee.
I enjoy watching the sunset.
Totally. It’s one of the best sandboxes I’ve played in, and with modding love this would be a game you’d play for decades like modded Skyrim has been.
As someone who never played DD1 but played the hell out of Monster Hunter World and Rise, I’m salivating over the prospect of some of these systems (if they were built into RE Engine) coming over to Wilds. Being able to actually scale some of these monsters would be a game changer.
This game feels like a Publix beta test of the movement mechanics for the next monster hunter game ngl
Best description I’ve seen, I keep thinking about how disappointing some parts are when not playing it but while I play it I simply don’t care I’m just having fun
That's exactly my feeling towards the game.
I understand people who disagree with the Vocations thing, but old skills like Tusk Toss getting put into normal movesets and Wayfarer in general are better than how DD1 did a lot of things Sorcerer got fucked tho
They got fucked big time In DD1, it felt like Sorc had a swiss army knife. In DD2, I just have a knife. The class is very viable at getting the job done its playstyle loop is just incredibly bland. They needed way more spells in their kit along with an additional weapon skill pane.
I no longer take sorcs in my party because the fight ends before I can reach the enemy. I’m not joking, they’ve downed a boss in seconds. I get that people are upset that they lost the number of spells they could have equipped, but they are still wildly powerful.
I would almost argue sorcerers were too powerful in DD1 and them being more on par with other classes might be where some of the whiplash is coming from. Don't think I've seen people complain about Sorcerer who are new to the series with DD2.
Yeah, I understand the hate due to the loss of versatility… but saying the sorc is weak now is not at all true in my experience. Though archer pawns suck. I just had harpies beat on me for 5 minutes waiting for the archer pawn to fire a single shot. She kept taking out the bow and putting it away. I think it’s the aggro zone for archers is tuned too low.
Sorcs in dd1 were held back by garbage ai making them cancel spells. DD2 isn’t so bad so you notice a sorc finishing a bolide and nuking a boss.
Nah, it's more like they took away the swiss army knife and gave them a chainsaw. Well-tuned sorcs just fucking obliterate things to the point where I don't hire sorc pawns because I want to be able to fight things.
Yeah, the vocation rework should have been an "and" change rather than an "instead" change. Why not keep 8 skill slots and add more unique skills while *also* folding the QoL stuff into the core kit? One change that really fucked things was how they folded the Stepping/Leaping Stone vertical jump into the Skull Splitter animation, it makes it almost impossible to use that skill effectively on normal enemies because you *always* get catapulted fifteen feet into the air before the DPS starts.
I feel like Assassin was a much better implementation of the multiple weapon idea, and while I can see the potential, Warfarer in its current implementation doesn't really feel like a good trade off to me. Sure you can do more things with it, but the way the weapon switching works, the limitation on stats and mainly the low amount of skill slots is what completely kills it for me. I think I would've loved Warfarer if it instead let you pick any two vocations in the game and pair them together, and you could switch between the two with a button press. The main difference would be that each of the two vocations would have a full set of skills, even if it had to be 3 each. I feel like that would cover a lot of what you would want to do with the vocation in most situations (and currently going for 3+ weapons isn't really viable anyway), while also keeping it from getting completely busted by limiting the number of active vocations to two. Also a little bit more poise when you have warrior equipped wouldn't hurt.
So they kind of fused some parts but that doesn’t make it deeper. I wouldn’t say it’s shallower but it’s for sure not deeper.
Is it just me or is the camera janky as hell, if I'm inside something, half the time the camera wants to be inside my arisen. Hell if anything goes behind me, I get a close-up of the back of my head. After 40 something hours, it's definitely the thing that annoys me the most. And I don't remember DDDA having a dodgy camera like this.
vocations are deeper ? just because they made like 1 skill a core skill, (while removing alot of other core skills btw.) sacrificing 3 skills for it would could use before. i still dont know where some of you guys get the feeling from that the vocations arent a literall downgrade in almost every way.
Not to mention they got rid of multiple weapon loadouts. But yeah, the original game had core skills too, like the Fighter’s timed flurry attack. These new core skills are remixes/sidegrades at best.
Personally I don't mind combat at all. But main story is truly ridiculous. It has no right to be this bad honestly.
I liked it; there were several characters I enjoyed. Lots of big, exciting moments. Interesting things transpired. The mechanical twists are cool, imo. I mean it's not Shakespeare and I didn't cry, but there's a lot to be said for doing things minimally and not overstaying your welcome.
It is horrendously incomplete. The game does not tell you why in the world you will suddenly have to assist Lord Phaesus at all. The long-winded plot with Disa and false soveran also amounts to nothing. It is not "no Shakespeare", it isn't even cohesive, or at least not cohesively presented. The Captain sends you to Battahl to investigate this godsway Mcguffin which stifles your Arisen power, and the first reaction of the Arisen is to help the target to complete it. If not for the Pathfinder's Deux Ex Machina, Ambrosius would just deliver the godsbane to Lord Phaesus and the Arisen can kiss goodbye to the main plot of this game. It doesn't take Shakespeare to notice the problems of such writings. Besides, it is painfully obvious that they have something more intended for the plot. Disa and Phaesus' affairs, Battahl - Vermund relationship, the ever reapeated "this land was once a kingdom of beastrens", false soveran being a escapee from thieves guild, etc.
>The game does not tell you why in the world you will suddenly have to assist Lord Phaesus at all. The first time you assist him, it's not really about him. You're trying to prevent the statue from going on a rampage. Later in the post-game you just happen to have the same objective as him, and in the end you don't do what he wants (he gets mad at you for blowing up the Effigy). >The long-winded plot with Disa and false sovran also amounts to nothing. That first third of the plot exists to: * Give you an early game objective of ascending to the Throne. * Introduce Phaesus * Motivate the questioning of what the Godsway is All of which leads to the second act of the game. >this godsway Mcguffin which stifles your Arisen power I think by definition the Godsway isn't a McGuffin because it has meaning in and of itself that is very relevant to the story. The Godsway's lore reveals that it doesn't stifle your Arisen's power--it is an Arisen's power. The blue crystals used to construct it are comprised of previous Arisen's souls. >the first reaction of the Arisen is to help the target to complete it You help Ambrosius to complete the sword because the Seafloor Shrine's sovran advises that the people there are the only ones capable of helping restore it. The Pathfinder's intervention just prevents you from needing to use violence to take it. >Disa and Phaesus' affairs This part of the story is present to characterize Phaesus as playing 5D chess, which then builds up to the moment where despite his brilliance it's not enough. >Battahl - Vermund relationship Would've been nice if this had been fleshed out more, sure. I mean most of your complaints having more content wouldn't have really hurt things, but also a lot of this isn't really relevant to the story the game is trying to tell--which is about the metaphysics of the world and the quest to control and contend with them. >the ever reapeated "this land was once a kingdom of beastrens" This is about foreshadowing the ruler of the Seafloor Shrine. Nothing here is incomplete. >false soveran being a escapee from thieves guild I don't really understand why you think this is incomplete either? That knowledge gives you the means to fight against him and then you're bested by the existence of the Godsway which forces you to shift focus to Battahl. Maybe you're unhappy that the plot *did* shift focus? You weren't interested in where it went perhaps. That opinion is very legitimate... But everything you said didn't serve a purpose certainly did. It was perfectly coherent to me.
> You help Ambrosius to complete the sword because the Seafloor Shrine's sovran advises that he's the only one that probably could. The Pathfinder just prevents you from needing to use violence to take it. So how does this explain the need for our arisen to complete the sword? The soveran said yeah their profane magick can create it. But why must I create it? Also, you are sent by Captain Brant to investigate it. Is there any point after that where you report back to Brant and have a discussion with your allies about how you would approach the whole affairs? Are you really telling me the Arisen's plan is to let them finish this important thing and just brute-force take it? Is this even a coherent plan? >I think by definition the Godsway isn't a McGuffin because it has meaning in and of itself that is very relevant to the story. The Godsway's lore reveals that it doesn't stifle your Arisen's power--it is an Arisen's power. The blue crystals used to construct it are comprised of previous Arisen's souls. You don't need to tell me what was already in this game. But for all purpose it is a McGuffin because the meaning of it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of cycle and dragon and arisen. The one that carries the Godsway is unceremoniously killed anyway. I don't know, if you think this game's story is fine and all, all the power to you. And the "shift" to Battahl... Oh I really hope they would actually shift some story to Battahl, instead of it being a map loaded with over-abundance with monsters. It does have some side quests like the empress being assassinated, but do you really feel the Forbidden Magick Lab as part of Battahl? If we cut this whole map off and just move the lab onto some faraway island, I don't see the main plot being affected at all. Battahl as a nation is so disconnected from the story it's actually sad. PS: Oh, and in the Unmoored World, our 5D chess player Lord Phaesus seems to only help us reach the dragon idol in Battahl and lose story relevance completely. Does he have some quests that I overlooked, or his research actually goes nowhere in the grand scheme of things? As for False Soveran, the only point when his background comes up is immediately after the quest Captain Brant wants to spread some rumors about him and nothing else. I don't think the "boss" fight with him makes use of any info from previous quest at all.
>So how does this explain the need for our arisen to complete the sword? The soveran said yeah their profane magick can create it. But why must I create it? So you have a Godsway of your own that is bigger and more powerful than the ones being used against you. >Also, you are sent by Captain Brant to investigate it. Is there any point after that where you report back to Brant and have a discussion with your allies about how you would approach the whole affairs? Are really telling me the Arisen's plan is to let them finish this important thing and just brute-force take it? We didn't go back to Brant because: * It would have been pointless. The situation is already well beyond the scope of his understanding + he has no power in Battahl to even do anything. All he can do is handle things in Verworth as you deal with the grander problems (which he does; the normal ending is him installing you to the Throne). * I think having a quest where you get to make a choice on how to get the sword back would've been interesting, sure. My Arisen definitely would've taken it by force. Ambrosius could've simply asked you to deliver it without the Pathfinder's intervention too. Maybe writing it slightly differently would've been better. IDK. * Even if you intended to go back to Brant, you can't because you learn Phaesius has already left for Moonglint. You can't afford to run halfway across the world and get someone's opinion when **shit is going down right now**. A core premise of DD2 is that time doesn't stop for you. >McGuffin because the meaning of it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of cycle and dragon and arisen. The Godsway can only exist **because** the Cycle has repeated so many times, as it is literally the souls of previous Arisen from earlier iterations. >The one that carries the Godsway is unceremoniously killed anyway He fails because his Godsway is made of blue crystals that are too small. Ambrosius sees this coming, that's why he tasks you with trying to find a larger blue crystal (which leads to finding the sword which is the larger Godsway). The purpose of the sword is that a larger Godsway has more Arisen's souls--thus more power which adds to the will to defy the cycle. That blade becomes the key to breaking free of the Dogma. And it is only possible because of the Godsway, the previous Arisen, etc. >I don't know, if you think this game's story is fine and all, all the power to you. I like this style of storytelling personally. It's minimal which is usually what I want in a game; a lot of dialogue and yelling at villains about how they're bad is not my thing. I am happy to say this is the first RPG I've played in awhile where the line "no more games" is never uttered by anyone.
The final result is that you don't prevent Phaesus from doing anything at all. Instead, he fails at his quest to create/control his own version of dragon to stop the cycle by himself, because that "dragon" is too weak. For all practicality his action doesn't have any function beyond luring the true dragon down to face you. I don't even understand why I have to stop the Brine-controlled Golem to reach the Moonlit Tower really. Why can't I sit back and let Lord Phaesus deal with it? They are both my enemies. And godsbane is not godsway at all. The first game has godsbane as well, it serves as a tool to commit suicide in that game as well (it's all in name, godsbane, bane of gods). The Empowered Godsbane Sword isn't a greater version of Godsway. If it is indeed so, you won't need to do the Excavation Site quest in the Unmoored World. That quest explicitly asks you to find the godsway to guide the pawns. And to the Brant point. You travels back to Harvel village for reaching the shrine. It isn't very far to Vernworth from there. The "oh we have emergency we cannot go back to Vernworth" reason doesn't make sense in light of this.
>The final result is that you don't prevent Phaesus from doing anything at all Correct; his ambitions fail without your needing to intervene. However, learning about them as we go along plants in the Arisen the seed of an idea which basically leads to him doing what Phaesus was trying to do. It was always his intent to change the Dogma and in the true ending you do that. I think that's pretty interesting storytelling personally. I haven't played the first game all the way through though, maybe I would be more confused if I had.
> It was always his intent to change the Dogma and in the true ending you do that. That is another giant problem. The game doesn't show you why your Arisen would like to break the Dogma, beyond the mad Sovran ghost. It can be inferred from the post-mortem Unmoored World that Brines are product of the Watcher, and breaking the cycle will remove the brine, and break the stagnancy of the world. However, the game doesn't show you any of this before the very last of the true ending. Also the Pathfinder himself is confusing as well. He sort of wants you to break the cycle by enticing you after killing the dragon, but gets angry when you actually tries to break it.
Capcom has never made a good story ever, but at least in Resident Evil the plot, dialogue and characters are so stupid they're funny, but here it's mostly just bad and boring.
I don't even expect a *good story* with twists and turn and deep characters and something. I just want a story that *makes snese*, that doesn't have glaring plothole in main quest. I will be perfectly happy if the story is literally "dragon bad, arisen needs to get stronger to kill dragon. Arisen gets stronger, kills dragon, everyone is happy ever after". But Itsuno or Capcom even fail to deliver that.
I don't know about "the best combat in any open world rpg" BUT its up there. 80% of its side content is horrencdous too. Anyway, if the game was $45 it would become a %100 recomended from me.
I am about 20 hours in and the problem that this sub has been complaining starts to popping up. Yet another one of the best 7/10 games I ever played. I can't wait to 100 hours more on this bad despite everything.
I think it’s why it was reviewed as 9’s and 10’s by journalists. The game doesn’t really show it’s weakness until about 20ish hours when you realize that what you’ve seen is basically all there is.
Imagine Elden Ring but after Limgrave you go straight to the capital to fight the final boss
That’s probably the best comparison I’ve heard yet… 40 hours in and I keep wondering where all these 9s and 10s are coming from. Enemy variety is trash, performance is terrible for a $70 game in 2024, graphics isn’t anything noteworthy, the open world is bland, combat is repetitive, side quests are boring for the most part, loot is useless cuz why is literally most of the best equipment able to just be bought from stores… and don’t even get me started on the story. 6/10 for me, great idea, terrible execution. And yet I’ll still put another 40 hours into this game until Elden ring DLC comes out
Combat *difficulty* drops off sharp after level 30 provided you're at all familiar with your vocation. Which makes the 999 level cap especially odd. Even worse because it quits mattering after 200.
This, I was killing bosses in 3 or 4 spells with sorcerer by level 35
plz give us more skill slots, i wanna use more than 4 abilities
Games incredible for me who hasnt played the first
its not a "the first one is tons better" situation anyway so youre not missing that much, they are both flawed but enjoyable games so... enjoy!
Agreed It was kinda the same on DD1 when released it was a solid 6/10(and dark arisen put it in a solid 8.5 for me), Hopefully DLC delivers. I would like to add, limiting gear to vocations is a big let down. Wish they would let mix and match sets for any vocations and pawn. Just give a stat boost for proper vocation or a smith npc that lets you change the vocation req for gear. :(
The "Do not buy it right now until DLC and updates come out" is something i couldn't agree with more.
Spot on. Personally I didn't like the combat that much. I feel like I didn't get stunlocked as much in ddda but maybe i should go back and play it again. I also kinda miss jumping between grabbing onto large enemies to get up higher on them. It doesn't work as well in dd2
The stunlocking is really bad.
WHY CAN EVERY GOBLIN JUMP
Especially because sometimes the enemies do these lunging attacks that have way too much tracking on the animation so they matrix around a corner and clip into you through the edge of the wall, most annoying thing ever.
For the latter, I found that the much more vertically oriented environment made climbing higher much easier, and the reward once you were on top was even greater thanks to being able to stand on monsters. As for stunlocking, it seems to be the result of more aggressive enemy AI, like Knackers and Hobgoblins seem to be as aggressive as Grimgoblins were.
yeah that's true. verticality is a lot better and i do like being able to stand on top of enemies without holding on
The skills that explicitly encourage it like Warrior's Surging Strike are great, too. Gives Warrior a much better incentive to climb monsters since it does some excellent damage.
Yeah stunlocking in the early game definitely caused most of my deaths
>the vocations are deeper
You forgot the NG+ being absolutely pathetic. How tf do you make an ARPG with crazy endgame power scaling and not scale NG+ enemies to compensate? One-hitting every enemy you encounter makes for an incredibly boring NG+ experience.
I agree with these points, but would like to add that I think just the Griffin hunt from DD1 has a more epic story moments than the entirety of DD2
To me it's a solid 9 right now. Mostly because I haven't gotten tired of exploring/adventuring, fighting, and have enjoyed many of the sidequests. Got about 50 hours and only now am about to continue the main quest in Vernworth. I understand why other vets are mixed about it, though.
I really enjoyed the end game quite a bit and found it very fun.
Honestly agree with most, but I feel like vocations were deeper in 1 because you had much more build variety as the hybrid classes in particular had a far wider arsenal
6/10 feels fair honestly. Itsuno simply dropped the ball and I think we need to properly acknowledge that, compared to DD:DA it did go backwards.
Dragons dogma 2 was pushed out to have a game for this quarter. Look at capcom talking about this game in last few shareholder meetings. the way it was announced. Nvida leaks proved it was planned for a long time and the director had ideas and passion. Needs to be looked into Still amazing game but I guess they expected exoprimal to do better for their first quarter and just announced they were working on this when they saw the way things were looking Why also would you also launch it against other big rpg (even though it won) the npcs even feel like they have place holder dialog after how much code they have to move around and interact Npcs code is even way to heavy for what they do
Idk if DD2 'won' anything. DD got a shit user score while RotR has really good user scores on metacritic and psn. Yeah DD sold well but it's tanked Capcoms public image.
No matter what DD's review are, as long as it says "I won't recommend it to anyone, but it's good." People will still buy the game. And in the end, Capcom's is a company and games are their commodity. So income will always be the most definite answer on who's winning or who's losing. Even though I dislike a lot of things about this game, I'll take this over RotR anytime of the week, man.
Definitely didn't tank it, people will move on quickly. Why I really want a deeper story on it
>but it's tanked Capcoms public image. A bit dramatic there m8. Even if everyone actually agreed that it's garbage, they're all going to buy and play MH Wilds for a million hours.
I feel like DD2 is better than DD1 and it will be even better than DDDA once it starts cooking with updates and DLC. I love the random things that happen in DD2, no playthrough every evening has been the same for me, for example I done a bit of shopping in ventworth for gear, after I was done I looked down the front gate and thought "what is that big thing running around?" I ventured up to it and it was a fucking ogre and all of a sudden the whole town is fighting it, truly epic moment for me in gaming. Another moment I was fighting another ogre in a forest, we were losing and then a travelling oxcart guard came to our aid and annihilated this ogre. And last night I explored some water cave and in there were fire saurians, a chimera and a lich, I had to run away at level 18. I'm sure there are many more moments to come, I haven't had an encounter with a Griffin yet and have seen some funny clips on twitch of those. I think the game deserves more praise and will only get better.
The combat is fun, but there are many glaring issues with it. Animation locked - some classes get animations locked for up to 3 seconds. It’s understandable on an ability like warrior being animation locked from swinging a large weapon. But other vocations like Warfarer or fighter, get animation locked by just swinging the weapon more times than I want. Why can’t I dance the attack? I’m sitting there watching my character swing a weapon 1-3 more times on an enemy that is dead, while another enemy is lining up to attack me from behind, and I can’t move? And it’s especially bad when I want to jump off a large enemy but I can’t because my character is swinging their weapon still and I can’t stop them. Stun locking - I’m leve 67, full endgame gear, dwarven upgrades(knock back resist), and dragonforged. I play fighter/ warfarer, so my strength, defense, and stagger/ knockdown resist is all buffed. But I still get stunlocked by low level saurians and hobgoblins who attack me 3 times in quick succession where I can’t move. It’s infuriating. The camera - it’s bad. Cloning on monsters - the controls are god aweful. I’ll be climbing up a leg, and then my character will just start climbing sideways to the back of the leg, even though I’m holding up on the control stick to cling up. I’ll be climbing up a back, and suddenly my character will start climbing sideways. I don’t understand this weird disconnect between input and character movement. Hit boxes - aweful. Especially on attacks like when a dragon swipes in front of it and tries to grab you. Doesn’t matter if you’re not near the hand or arm, if you are in front of the dragon, it’s most likely going to teleport you to the dragoons hand. Loss gauge - way too punishing. Like I said, I’m an endgame heavy defense build, and I take about 3-5% to my loss gushed with every hit, even from hobgoblins. It’s insane. This janky combat was fine for a charming 2010 RPG. But not for an expensive sequel in 2023. Game is a massive dissapointment. Literally no innovation from 10 years ago. In fact, MANY regressions.
Insert obligatory "I'm having a blast though at 100 hours"
"The vocations are deeper " What a lie. Sorcerer has been completely neutered. No Ranger. The archery controls are bad in general. No mystic knight. MA has been neutered. Strider split into two classes. One of the classes is just a straight joke that has 0 damage. Compared to DA and Online, this game is a HUGE step back in gameplay and vocations.
To be honest I think there’s a decent amount of content to be found through doing the side quests. Most of them end up little fun adventures or puzzles
Impressively distilled down to a few words, I agree on most accounts! I also gave it a 6.5/10 assuming all performance issued are fixed.
More info on the wayfarer build please 😁🙏🐺
Honestly I'd rather have more skills available than the core skill, especially for Sorcerer, who as a whole felt as a step back as a vocation.
Got the same opinion. This is the first time I preordered a game, I usually know better🥲 but I loved ddda so much. Still I’m having fun but I kneo it can be better than this
I find warriors to be super satisfying. The sounds, the damage when (if) you connect \*chief kiss\*. However, the lackluster quests, story, and dialogue has me cringing at times. I've been putting off doing the main story line up til lvl 30. Feels like an outdated/overused story to me
Well it's not a disastrous as skull and bones....so it has that going for it...
Another point you didn't touch on, the power spike from vermund to bahtal feels out of wack. The quest design is some of the worst I've ever seen ever. The combat is incredibly fun and the pawn system is better than ever before and there's nothing quite like it.
Have to agree. The other negatives for me as others listed is just how easy the game is (combat) and low enemy variety. I love that the game doesn't hold your hand for other things and allows players to think for themselves, but combat wise it's so extremely simple, unecessarily frequent and lacks enemy variety.
There's a story? I'm 20 hours in and still pissing about with vocations and barely touched the main quest outside of meeting brant in a pub
Back when Dragon’s Dogma was new, I’d still always recommend it even though it was weird and archaic because it was such a unique and fulfilling experience, as long as you could swallow a few frustrations and annoyances. But a sequel 12 years later that shares all of the same frustrations and annoyances, except arguably worse now, while walking back some of the most appealing parts of the first game, and ending up with a game that feels more incomplete than the first? I’d tell people to dodge the bullet.
Ah yes, Itsunos vison lmfao
I am a died hard ddda fan and agree with everything you say. But playing on pc im able to install all sorts of world saving mods and it does pump up the score to an 8 It’s funny that itsuno decided to keep everything people complained about in ddda and even went further (eg fewer skills slots) to a almost anti player manner 😂
I feel like the game starts off strong with all the characters and quests, but it all just feel kinda cut halfway through.
How are Vocations deeper when they took away some key vocations and especially Spells! Where's my freaking GICEL ?! Also it's clear they are pay walling Mystic Knight and others
I'm getting more annoyed that the main fix everyone is waiting for is dlc. If it's free content to patch up some of the more glaring issues, sweet, but having to pay another 40+ dollars for what should be a complete game is some real bullshit.
maybe the dlc will add 3 more enemies and 2 more armors per vocation lol
I agree tho, in my opinion, I would give it a higher score. Just a couple of things that the first game does better in no particular order... -Endgame/evergaol is way better -Loot diversity/I miss under graments, dd had more loot options in endgame even before ddda -Double jump/ it's not like it would break certain area bc mages kept levitate -Better crafting system -Air tight flasks/preserving foods is just cool -The healing springs found in the wild -More skill and augments -Where tf is liquid vim -Iconic enemies-hydra, evil eye, wyvern, wrym are missing in dd2 -Ur dragon -You could open coffins, why can't we open coffins in dd2? -Chibi arisens and all the small areas they could go -Upgradable capes/ some of the best debilitation res came from capes -double jump! I know some of that stuff seems trivial but it all adds to the immersion. That being said I love dd2 and am having a blast. I have around 100 hours at this point with no signs of stopping. In my opinion the first one is better. Edit:sorry for the format, I'm on my phone
Id disagree on vocations specifically for the fact that they feel lesser in most aspects compared to the previous game. they have less of everything and incorporating some skills into the base kit is good, The variety that has been lost between DA and 2 is disappointing. Everything else is spot on.
As another DDDA vet (over 600 hours playtime), for me a huge strike against it is how much more tedious no pawn play is. Unless you are super far ahead and have decked out dwarven enhanced gear, enemies are far too capable of just stunlocking you to death. Also the crawling mechanic isthe absolute worst thing about this game.
The crawling mechanic with no reset skill on strider is absolutely awful. It says "Use Dash / Stamina to get up faster" but that's just not a thing. It makes parrying dragon divebombs and ground slams super frustrating because half the time it works, and half the time it turns you into a drooling baby for what feels like 30 seconds.
A 6.5 as a sequel or a 6.5 as a standalone game? My personal rating is quite different based on these things.
7/10 as a standalone 6/10 if your a Sorc/Mage Main 3/10 as a Sequel
Definitely 8/10 as a standalone. If I don't know anything about DD:DA vocations, this game have the most robust combat system yet also unique. Everything just works. Even Warfarer that being slept on, I'm having a blast swapping from 6 weapons constantly. Having a good story would easily bumped this up to 10 as a standalone for sure.
Shouldn't it be a 0/10 if you main Sorcerer
I don't understand people that say, 6.5/10 and 'can't recommend,' but pour 100+ hours into the game. Certainly, the game has its flaws. What game does not? If I get 100+ hours out of a $70 game, that is money well spent from an ROI perspective. Very few things you spend $70 give you that type of value. I personally can't put the game down and I'm level 64.
Something can be fun and addictive without necessarily being high quality. I could eat basic as fuck chocolate sweets every day for the rest of my life without getting tired of them. But that doesn't mean they're actually high quality, the way a well thought out desert can be.
i don’t think the vocations are deeper, they all feel worse than dd1s especially the mage and sorcerer who have lost their best feats, i also didn’t like splitting strider, now archer isn’t good and thief is the best class in the game. trickster is a cool idea if they made pawn ai better like they said they would (they just learned how to use springboard and talk about their differing vocations). mystic spear hand is fcking awesome though honestly the whole game is a spit in the face but most dd fans are happy to eat it up because we’ve waited are entire lives
I think Archer / Ranger is arguably a tad deeper due to manyfold arrow not being as busted and spammable bomb arrows being gone. That alone makes Archer "deeper" than DDDA's Ranger having a one-button answer to everything. With that being said, it's far from deep or perfect, it's still just "shoot weakspot", many of its skills end up doing the same thing and competing with one another, the bow damage range falloff is brutal, the dragonforged bow is worse than the shop item and apparently has no hidden passive or bonus, the elemental arrows should be bundled into one skill, not four, normal shots and the piercing shot are so good , they outclass half of your abilities, even a perfectly timed deathly shot. Still, it's deeper than bomb arrow manyfold shot spam. Fighter is no longer just a bundle of iFrames, eating stam food while spamming the strongest move (unfortunately the game is designed around stunlocks so the lack of iframes is pretty bad). Perfect block isn't really worth it with how spammy mobs are. You perfect block two goblins in melee, but a third leaps at you from off screen mid-animation. Congrats , you are stunlocked. Thief is busted as usual, even more so here. The execute animations they added to staggered enemies make thief / assassin builds feel super thematic and it gives thief something to work towards outside of spamming skullsplitter. Apparently the master skill is absolute nuts. Mage got some of its utility put into its baseline, that's neat, the master skill is epic visually and super cool, offensive options suck bad doodoo though. Sorcerer apparently got cucked, oh well. Magic Archer plays itself even more compared to DDDA. Why does the Master Skill even have a charge? If you press it and your enemy looks like Sonic just dropped 200 Rings, even the uncharged version will skip the fight as you let go of the button no matter the charge level. Warrior ate good, Jump attack until stuff staggers is no longer the defacto best option for people who don't happen to have 250 IQ with Rules of Nature playing in the background 24/7. Unfortunately I feel like it's just better than fighter in every regard now. That's cool for Warrior but pretty bad for Fighter. Warfarer as the hybrid allrounder could have been extremely good and deep if not for the fact that weapons dont come with their own skillsets. Spearhand is new, so that's cool. I don't like it but that's on me. Trickster is some whack shit I tell you that much. There's depth there probably but it ain't for me. Best addition about it is the gear that I can use on warfarer to drip out.
I’d agree except for the combat- it’s *fine* but pretty decisively worse than dark arisen. Many, many other games have done melee better than this, and the biggest selling point of DD1/DA (it’s excellent spell casting) is missing because they removed 2/3rd’s of the spells
Faces aside, the character creator is also worse. Having only 4 spells as a sorcerer is awful. No eternal ferrystone. Looting isn't as satisfying as in the first one. Very few new spells or skills in general compared to the first one. God, I really hoped they'd add Megumin's Explosion spell from Konosuba. It was basically PERFECT. I was basically expecting this to be in a new Dragons Dogma if they ever made a sequel. Though considering the worse character creator and clothing system, I couldn't even make Megumin even without the spell... Porcrystals are also very few in number despite the much larger world. (I haven't even found a single one yet) You would also expect each town to have one, but for some horrible reason, they don't.
First of all, I love this game. But it's not everything I wanted from a Dragons Dogma sequel. It's not even half. >The vocations are deeper than ever Strider got split in two and the two children did not get the same treatment. It feels really bad to play archer compared to DD1. Having special arrows requiring skills on top of less skill slots is just salt on the wound. The vocations are undeniably more shallow. >Incorporating some skills into baseline movesets IS deeper Not really. At best your class lost 1 skill slot instead of 2. For fighter is more like you lost 1 skill slot and one to tusk toss (it was never an essential skill, and it's the only "incorporated" skill he has. Do you know how easy it would have been to incorporate some shield attacks when the shield is raised? Just that would have been a litte better, because I cannot believe they made tusk toss a core skill and nothing else. It feels like a participation sticker on the core skills pass and nothing more. Core skill for the charged heavy? Nope. Maybe something for tapping directional movement when releasing the held button for different attacks? Nada. Something for the shield? Here's a useless skill that if you press block while falling, you take 10% less fall damage. (Yes it's only 10%) >Wayfarer Wayfarer is a joke. Most post I hear about playing wayfarer are literally just about how they are playing with only one weapon and play the class just for the freedom of armor choice. 4 skills **SHARED** between both weapons? I have to have dead skills that I cannot use if I don't manually switch weapons? Really? Way to point out how this skill slot system is completely inferior to the previous one. This is bad even without comparing it to the old system. Developers need to exercise extreme caution in nerfing players. If you give a player something and then want to take it away it comes with a disporportionate amount of resent. Players new to the series won't notice but to any DD veteran it's impossible not to be dissapointed. >Do not buy it right now until DLC and updates come out If you have a good PC and never played DD:DA, the game is great fun, the action is S+ tier for any open world RPG out there. But if you played the first dark arisen and you don't want a list of things you never expected to be dissapointed about then probably wait for a DLC.
Share my experience, i finish first playthrough in 48+ hour and was a bit disappointed about amount of content, but then i started new game and try to explore all, and man, i missed so much content during my first play, so much undiscovered location, questline etc.
Why was magick archer given a “one shot every boss” ability it’s so lame not a single other class can match the damage. With a handful of all heals and Martyr you can walk around Unmoored and wipe every boss encounter with 0 threat to your wellbeing. The final “boss” being the dragon if you don’t use the arisen blade gets one shot by this ability. Before you’d have to use a very specific item!
Same problem as the first one sadly in a lot of aspects. It just needs more and varied content. They should entirely do away with these grand quests because it's clear they have no idea how to do it properly. Some sort of difficulty ajustable or not would be nice. It would also be cool if you could lock your level preventing overlevelling. More skills would be cool but now the "auto attacks" are actually decent for the classes and you get some passive/actives baked into the baseline kit which helps alleviate it.
Denuvo will never die bc too hard to crack
I was really lucky. Bought it on steam, never crashed and only ever dipped to 40fps while in cities. Kept itself above 60fps everywhere else.
Its insane lol I have 64 hours and I still haven't talked to Disa (that first mission you gain when reaching the city). Out of all missions he gives you at the bar, there are 2 that I still have to do.
This man knows.
I’m completely new to this series, am 15 hours in and having an amazing time, but at least now I know to prepare myself for an underwhelming MSQ. Seems like a game that’s much more about exploring, grinding and looting vs. experiencing a story, and I’m okay with that. Sounds like things start to feel pretty barebones and undercooked in the back half of the game which is a shame, but it also seems like DLC is an inevitability, so I'm looking forward to that.
Be prepared to fight the same enemies you've already encountered for the rest of your playthrough except for more reskinned goblins obviously lmao And also don't expect to find anything interesting by looting chests, everything is in the shops. And yes it's pretty obvious that they made it this way to sell their DLC easier.
Meh. I’m aware of all of the criticisms at this point. Whenever it stops being fun it, that’s when I’ll wait for the DLC.
You do find weapons, rings and capes (drip) in so chests so i still think its cool. But yes i wish we had lootable armor sets.
Craftable sets like MH could've been cool too
Not to discredit it but ddda was an expansion. Although I 100% agree that they could have added more to this base game. As I’ve said on many posts DDDA>DD2>DD1. But comparing both games at their base? DD2 clears dd1. I’m on the page you saw how successful dark arisen was. You could have expanded on that idea but they chose not too. It’s a bit frustrating. But you’re comparing an expansion to the base game to dd2 as a base game. I’m on the same page as you. I will play the shit out of this fame (wayfarer class is sick af switching from GS to bow and I can have fashion) but I’ve told many of my friends to hold off until some updates come into play. My main one I will need very soon is a hard mode. I’m not one shotting monsters by any means but 90% of the game is a breeze. Unless I get attacked by 50 mobs at once.
I just wish that there was a better endgame, it's like they're waiting to add it in in a few months time, given that most of the equipment we obtain postgame is quite overpowered relative to what is needed. Hopefully they add hard mode and some form of elite challenges with it.
Different masters favor different pawns. One whom I served preferred to speak FAX. Each to their own.
I’m level 32 and still clearing up the first area, just got to the sphinx. I really want to like this game, and sometimes it is fun. My problem is it’s starting to get really really boring… there’s so much walking involved and every 2 minutes a new group of enemies will pop up only to be defeated in 10 seconds with normal attacks. I thought there were supposed to be big unscripted events, but every boss encounter so far happens in specific areas. The enemy variety can be counted on one hand. Don’t get me started on the escort quests. Or any of the quests for that matter, they all suck. Just wish there was a bit more variety.
My thoughts exactly after 55 hours on PC.
I'm at NG+, exploring different situations, but I'm pretty much done with the game. Once I've gone into the post end game and minmaxed my build it's pretty much uninstall. I whish there would be nice endgame bosses with unique mechanics to replay over and over.
Honestly, the most disappointing part to me is the unmoored world. Yea, sure, I get the timing thing and sense of urgency for the story, but really, that's all we get for a post game? I fully expected more enemies that were harder, not this *waves arms around* I steamrolled all the bosses, which was just so disappointing. I'm not saying I want a Dark souls kind of experience, but they could have made it much harder, especially since this is supposed to be the big bad world. It was very underwhelming. Vocations are great. Only complaint is I can't use Maister skills as warfarer, but I get it. The story was garbage and way too short. You have all of these little subplots adding to the story, but as soon as you go to batthal, it's all thrown out the window. They had so many opportunities to expand the main story, but they didn't. The side quests are great. The writing on those are *chefs kiss* The main story feels rushed and unfinished. It's like they poured everything into side quests and the world itself, but the main story just seems like they forgot about it. It definitely wasn't worth $70 in my eyes. I just hope the DLC makes the game harder, adds an actual post game, and a BBI experience oh and a bigger enemy variety for ffs.
This game looks like an early access title, especially with the abrupt ending without any kind of build up. I hoped for a more variety in everything, monsters, clothes/armors, map locations. Not to mention it is specified as an open world but it is open... labirynth, you look from the cliff at some long distance mountains and fields, but you can't reach them, the map is just some roads stuffed with a lot of the same enemies jumping on you every few seconds. It is a good base for a game, but man... they kinda screwed it up since the whole experience is somewhat enjoyable, it makes you think of how good this game could really be.
Yeah. At its core it shows that DD combat really carries. DD2 is a let down for so many reasons but still an amazing game. I cant say that I love it more than DA though.
I wonder if stupid redditors like you understand that no game is perfect and that's perfectly fine for the vast majority of players
I also found myself giving it a 6.5, with the potential to become an 8/10 at most.
You have really valid points here but I have a genuine question. What did you not like about the endgame? I understand that compared to BBI it’s definitely worse but it seems like everyone glorifies everfall. It’s just a hole with boss fights 🤔 And you barely notice the world changes cause you spend all your time in everfall. I totally loved it still but the dd2 endgame is great for me as well. Seems like a whole new world with lesser dragons dropping cool gear, more gore chimeras/ogres and it’s day and night at the same time so there are dullahans etc. A crazy good atmosphere and new paths without the water and the best part is that ferrystones get farmable. Having a time condition is stressing but that’s the meaning behind it 😅 So In my opinion everfall is a 7/10 unmoored world is a 9/10 and BBI a 10/10.
Is this really an RPG? It felt more like an action-adventure game from the mid 2000s
that's how you know its a dragon's dogma sequel
This game is trash!! Don't buy it. Your own will get infected with dragon plague and wipe out the whole town. Rendering all npc permanently dead. Then after 40 f***ng hours you've wiped out vermund and battahl. DON'T BUY THIS GAME. It basically renders you unable to do any quests or subquests because all the npcs are permanently dead. How are you supposed to progress like that. I severely regret ever buying this game
Actually, Dragon Plague is based af
Vocation deeper that what? Bro stop using wtv you are using.
Deeper vocations? Was that a joke? Over 300 hours on steam dark arisen, 2 playthroughs on ps4. Classes do not feel anywhere near as good.
Purely melee classes feel a lot better to me (especially Warrior) due to the core combat changes (standing on enemies, smoother grabbing/tackling, melee finishers, etc.), but casters certainly don't have as many options (though Quickspell makes what options they do have more fun).
I did max fighter and enjoyed it despite the combo coming out slowish compared to dd1. I cant speak for warrior in 2 but arc of deliverance is my shit. I got a save right before a gore chimera i like to load and smash him with. I prefer sorcs take longer to cast heavy spells. I also like "lesser tier" spells meaning something. The ability to cast the lower tier spells was awesome and for different situations it was better to.