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[Agent_4Seven]

So, after playing for almost ~140 hrs and finishing the game, I've quite a few thought about the game and let me start by saying that it's really good a fooling you at presenting itself to you as a much better than original game, while if fact and in some aspects it sure it, but in so many others it is most surely not. But first things first. I'll be covering each aspect of the game in-depth and in the best possible way I can, but I know that not a lot of people here like to read mountains of text, so here's a quick summary, but I'd like to emphasize that these are just very basic and surface level points and if you wondering why something here, not there etc., I'm sorry, but you need to read the whole thing to find out specifics and much more in-depth thoughts. Also, there will be some spoilers so keep that in mind as well and the review is so big that it'll be in two parts with two posts. But with all that out of the way, let's begin with...

Spoiler: Quick Summary:

The Good:

1) Combat
2) Variety of classes with uniqe skills, abilities and movesets
3) Pawns & Pawn System
4) Updated, unique and expanded gameplay mechanics and systems
5) Great and addicting exploration
6) Excellent visuals & art design (mostly environments, NPC's aren so good)
7) Exceptional armor and wapon designs across the board and variety of classes
8) Visual presentation - even better with lore friendly mods

The Mixed:

1) Very limited interactions with Pawns - it's mostly just fist bumps and such (which 50% of the time don't work) after the battle and nothing else to show your appreciation or love for the pawn based on what they do
2) Pointless level up system with +2 to this and that
3) I don't feel like weapon upgrades add anything to the game or combat (maybe except knockdown power), since at the mid-endgame all of the enemies will die after the same amount of hits as in the early game and it's not good or adds to the challenge, enemies will simplu adapt to any of your weapon upgrades
4) You can't do anything with weapons and armor beyond just upping their stats, so you can't add any element type to weapons you like and make them more powerfull, you can't add any elemental resistances to any armor or shileds to add more protections from various elements
5) You can't lock pawn vocations and levels when and after you hire them
6) Paying anything more than 500 gold to sleep in the Inn is unsulting POS and BS
7) Pointless option to buy houses in the cities outside one quest, insane prices as well.
8) Though fun, but still repetative creature battles with zero set-piece moments or anything relabeling something similar
9) Not enough drastic changes in how combat works and what it offers on the base level
10) Shpinx
11) Completely pointless timer in the endgame

The Bad:

1) Enemy variety (you mostly be fighting the same mobs and bandits the whole game)
2) Hydra is nowhere to be found in the game
3) You can only find one Medusa in the whole game in one specific spot on the map and nowhere elese
4) Drakes literally nailed to specific locations, not flying anywhere (unless you agro them), can't randomly attack you outside of the locations they were placed by designers - why on earth dragon's can't fly over the map, Capcom?
5) Out of all bosses in the game (of which there aren't many), Griffins have the most unpredictability and mobility, can move around the world freely
6) Extremely bad magical weapon variety and availability - for example you literally won't find a single sword or a shield with magical properties (fire, ice, lighting, holy etc) for example, so warriors and fighters are basically fucked - mage or sourcerer's magical buffs and magical spells you can use don't count cuz it's not an effin' answer to the problem
7) Lack of presets vith various skills you can switch between in combat based on situations - you're forced to use bonfires or vocation guilds to change your skills. 4 available skills to use at a time is simply not enough!
8) Very bad, bland, uneventful and repetitive dungeon and ruins design (indoors)
9) Completely pointless affections system with gifts (vendors don't count)
10) Almost complete lack of interactivity with the world outside of combat and during exploration and quests - puzzles, environmental puzzles etc. etc.
11) Most quests in the game is either go kill everything or go talk to someone and go back
12) Visually cool and new areas to access (which are mostly just dried out river beds) but overall very bad and boring af endgame (true ending)
13) Insane prices for weapons, armor and items even with 10% discounts
14) Pointless NG+ at this point and until sory Expansion/DLC will be released in time even if you haven't found a few quests and such

And the Ugly:

1) Absolutely abysmal technical state and performance on all paltforms and especially on PC on high end hardware and 3 DRMs, one worse than the other
2) Practically unplayable and much less enjoyable without installing QOL mods
3) Stamina system in and outside of combat - FOFF!
4) Encumbrance and weight system - FOFF as well and eat shit!
5) Constant inventory managment
6) Practically useless crafting system - you literally don't need it if you have a mage in the party and mostly everyone has mage in theit party
7) Extremely annoying, very restrictive sliding mechanic which not only can ruin exploration for and finding secrets, but also combat!!! You can't turn it off via mods as well. Fuck everyone who implemented it into the game.
8) Very restrictive fast travel system and stupid Portcrystal & Ferrystone mechanic. You can use one other way of travel, but unless you B-line the story and will focus on exploration instead, you won't have any other means of travel to the later locations and you can't to Vulcanic island that way at all.
9) Very bad, almost none existant, absolutely unmemorable and terribly written story and characters - you literally don't care about everything what's going on in the game story wise and same goes for all of the characters
10) Vey bad and almost none existant story presentation - there is some cool stuff, but there's so little of it that it literally doesn't count at all
11) TERRIBLE, dialogue system and presentations which was practicaly and visually unchaged from the X360 game
12) Horrible, needles, pointless, borring and annoying af escort quests
13) Bad quest designs here and there - for example you can't access some really cool and devastating spells for mage or a sorcerer cuz the game does not tell you that it's a quest and there's no way for you to figure it out that it is - it looks like some randoms stuff in open world, or completely missable elf quest which can soft lock you in the endgame and there's no way for you to know that before hand and that this quest even exists, cuz there's not even a single hint in the game to tell you about it
14) Literally can't name you a single memorable quest in the game outside of finding Shpinx and her puzzles, which is a journey in itself to even fing her.
15) Even though pawns and pawn system was improved, it's still very badly explained and showed story wise in any meaningful way, moreover, I think what they do with pawns is frankly insulting to them with slave-like mentality and such and there's no way for you as a player to change that in anyway
16) Idiotic designs with no lock on system, meaning that most of your attacks and supers won't do shit and will miss enemies and you can't cancel anything
17) No dodge etc. in combat to move away from enemies
18) Absurd stagger and pin down systems - you can be stunlocked or pinned down with 0 stamina and literally massacred by enemies and bosses if you don't have items to restore stamina and pawns not always and not most of the time are good and quick enough to react and fix this. I can't even tell you how frustrating all of this is.
19) Insulting beetles with pathetic weight increases
20) Even more disrespectful and insulting is Seeker Coins system and rewards - such a giant waste of time and slap in the face

Now, let's begin the review proper. I'll start with positive things first, the first of which is....

Combat and Vocations in Dragon's Dogma "2" is basically somewhat identical to what was in original X360/PS3 game, except this time we have a couple of new classes (one is missing from the game, which is Mystic Knight with great shields and stuff) and animation quality as well as movements stuff was upgraded to modern standards. So this time around we've Fighter, Warrior, Mystic Spearhand, Thief, Mage, Sourcerer, Archer, Magick Archer and Trickster and Warfarer. I haven't played as a Mage, Sorcerer, Archer, Warfarer, Thief and especially Trickster, so I don't have anything to say about these classes. Fighter I think is one of the worst classes when it comes to Capcom's attention to it, what I mean by that is that as well as Warrior, this class simply doesn't have any magical weapons whatsoever, ZERO, shields included. Now, I know that Mage can cover you on that front but here's the thing, there's no guarantee that every pawn will have all elemental buffs for every situation and scrolls are very limited, not to mention that casting spells as a warrior or a fighter is not ideal way of doing things cuz they need to be at the frontline and always actively killing things, not casting spells to get the elemental buffs to fit specific combat situation. I've played the game as a Fighter at first for about 30 hours and then decided to switch to Warrior. Man, the warrior is insane killing machine, slow as fuck and can't cover the air at all, but when it comes to hitting thing hard and staggering, it's one of the best classes in the game, though you need to learn how to play as a Warrior properly to maximize damage and crownd control. I had a lot of fun playing as a Warrior, but it really sucks when it comes to flying enemies and it practically useless if you want to climb and hit bigger enemies and especially their weak points, Fighter and Mystic Spearhead (and I'm sure that Thief as well) are much better at this and way faster. So Warrior is only good for dealing massive damage and staggering (especially if you upgrade weapons using dwarven technique - late game stuff, not available in early / mid game), somewhat for crown control and nothing else. Climbing huge monsters is a big thing in Dragon's Dogma, cuz it is one of the most effective ways to kill them faster and Golem for example is impossible to kill faster with a Warrior, not to mention that it's the worst enemy in the game is killing him is a fuckin' chore and bore fest.

So, as soon as I unlocked Mystic Spearhead I instantly switched to it and man, it's so much better than warrior and fighter. Not only do you have way better mobility and basically have air dash move to help with exploration, but you also have some pretty op and extremely fast combat spells and moves so there's like zero time lag in combat while doing it, it's probably the most satisfying direct combat class in the game period, I had a shit ton of fun playing as Mystic Spearhead and also one other cool thing about it is that it also has magical weapons, so you can easily kill slimes without Mage or Sorcerer's help with their buffs, scrolls etc. But I do think that magick balls you can shoot are pathetic and only useful as a fully charged shot, I wish there was more to this basic skill like chain lighting and stuff, but unfortunately this was locked behind other stupid ability which I haven't even used cuz I don't like how it works and wasting skill slot. Here's the thing about the Mystic Spearhead and it's kinda funny actually.... it's so OP (especially if you're using magic shield) even before the end game that I've decided to switch to Fighter to have some resemblance of challenge, even though I sacrificed much needed movement upgrades and speed in the process. I ended up playing a pretty significant late and endgame chunk of the game as a fighter and finished the game without switching to any other class. I've played as an Archer for a bit, liked it and decided to give it a shot in NG+ (more on that later). I also played the game as a Magick Archer for quite a few levels and... I just don't like this class at all. I mean, Magic Archer is basically a boring af Archer with mecha-like auto-targeting magical arrows which can hit multiple enemies / weak spots etc. I tried to give this class a chance but it's just not for me, as well as Trickster. So, what, you're not allowing other classes to wear all armor sets which makes no sense, but here you have a significantly compromised class which is completely wasting one ability slot to use different weapons while at the same time can't use supers of other classes and on top of that is very limited to only 3 ability slots? SERIOUSLY? FUCK YOU WITH THIS BS! This class alone clearly shows that armor restrictions make no sense, add nothing to the game and only makes it worse by limiting player freedom and options of how they want to play the game. I can't stress this enough, it's very bad design and it makes no sense whatsoever.

What I don't like about the combat, is that even though it's fun and enjoyable and they've added the best close combat class which is Mystic Spearhead, the core of it is almost exactly the same as in original game, so there's no any significant changes as to how it works, there no way for you to alter it in any way to make it better, you can't use crafting system to upgrade weapons and add elemental damage to them etc. Not only that, there's also so much annoying stuff about it which makes it very frustrating at times. So, stamina is your worst enemy in the game, literally, and there's only one way for you to restore it - very small amount of items you can craft, you always have very few of them, there's no potions to restore only stamina and magic classes can't restore stamina for you as well. Very often you'll be stunlocked when out of stamina and enemies can slother you in seconds and there's nothing you can do. Not only that, but pawns can only restore a tiny bit of your stamina if they'll touch you, but they're not always doing that even if you're asking for help. As if that's not enough, staggering is also one of the worst enemies in the game cuz you can be staggered by just one hit and then a few enemies can hit you multiple times and you can't do shit! There's no dodge move of any kind, you can't roll at all, the games doesn't have any kind of slow time mechanic and perfect dodge system, so regardless of any class you're playing expect maybe Thief, cuz I've seen how bandits dodging attacks, so I guess you can do it as a Thief. WHY THE FUCK you can't dodge, roll or side step as a Fighter, Warrior or Mystic Spearhead? WHY THE FUCK CAN'T YOU?! IT MAKES NO FUCKIN' SENSE! But as if that's not enough to frustrate the fuck outta you, say hello to a fuckin' slide mechanic which can literally suck all the fun out of combat (and exploration, more on that later) and make you pull your hair out in rage. What a complete brain dead idiot and moron thought that it was a good idea to add this to the game? How did it even get through testing and QA and end up in the launch build? WHAT THE FUCK? FOR WHOM IT IS FOR? I can't tell you how many times sliding stuff completely destroyed combat encounters and all the fun I had, cuz yeah, there's nothing better than to slide into a bottomless pit, fall from a ledge etc. while performing super moves or any other combat stuff for that matter, right? NO! And it happens so many times that you literally move away to a more open space just so you don't have to deal with this frustrating af BS. I hope that people responsible for this will suffer in hell. Another huge issue is that combat wasn't designed for tight spaces such as caves and stuff, so you also have to deal with various, annoying af and frustrating camera issues in caves and during normal exploration of tight spaces outside in open world.

I can't help but to compare combat in DD"2" to FFXVI, cuz both of them were made and designed by Capcom or ex-Capcom combat designers, yet DD"2" combat is so much better overall cuz you've much better and different options and classes, while in FFXVI you can only spam the same abilities and basic combat moves the whole game, even the fact that you can lock on during combat and dodge with slowing time stuff doesn't make it better. But it's not the only comparison to FFXVI, more on that later. Ultimately, combat is definitely one of the best parts of DD"2", it's such a shame though that there's nothing more to it outside of new classes and there's also quite a few very frustrating parts of it only mods can fix, but even they can't fix everything, like completely turning off slide stuff in and outside of combat, camera issues etc.

But let's talk about another best part of the game, which is Pawns and Pawn System.

I FUCKIN' LOVE PAWNS AND PAWN SYSTEM! Literally and objectively the best AI party system in gaming period (ancient, old and modern)! It is so, SO MUCH IMPROVED in DD"2" in comparison to the original game like you wouldn't believe. You can say - Agent, but wait, it was pretty good in the original game already and there's no match to it still outside of this remake, so.... what's even improved and added and how can you make it better? Well, let me explain. So first of all, remember how annoying and talkative pawns were in the original game, they talked all the time in combat and basically wouldn't shut up ever. Well, there's nothing like that in DD"2" at all, they obviously talk and comment on things, saying the same things (which is already addressed via patch) etc. but in no way it is so bad as in the original game and it's NEVER annoying to make your ears bleed. So, there's no need for mods to make them shut up. What's also cool about Pawns and Pawn System in DD''2'' and them commenting things is that they have a lot, A LOT more personality now based on various specializations and behaviour, so Calm pawns will be way different than Straightforward ones and so on in terms of how the act, how they look at you, at the world, what's going in it etc. It's so fuckin' good and fascinating to watch, hear and experience, that no language in the world have enough words to discribe how good this system is and how much I love it. Pawns can comment on that you carry too much weight and maybe you should let them carry stuff for you, they can comment on their past experiences based on their experience with other players and with you while talking to other pawns, they can talk about specializations, vocations and such, and that they feel much better and more confident now that they're helping you while being a warrior, sorcerer etc. Paws can also comment on your actions, quest outcomes, on what's happening in the world, they can guide you to caves and locations they know of based on experience with other players and it basically eliminates the need for map markers etc. cuz it's a much better, way more realistic and organic system ever build for a game. But as if that's not enough, Pawn's personality can make very mundane, repetitive stuff in the game so much not a problem at all cuz of just how they react to things that it's never an issue anymore and it can also very positively affect your personal mood in real life as well. I mean, again', as if you can't tell, I FUCKIN' LOVE PAWN'S AND PAWNS SYSTEM!

There was this one Pawn (but not the only one) I fuckin' adore and I traveled with her for dozens of hours even though she was undeleveled (more on that later), Imagine extremely lighthearted, very cozy and comfy beaster pawn Warrrior which is very supportive of you, sees the world in super positive light, has this really cute voice, extremely adventurous to the point that every second is an adventure to her and she sees treasure chest everywhere. OOOOOOH! LOOK! MATSER! A TREASURE CHEST!.... Oh, no, he-he-he, I'm sorry master, don't mind me, it's just a regular crate. And there's so much stuff like this I even stopped counting, IT NEVER GETS OLD AND ALWAYS LIGHTEN UP YOU MOOD AND KILL STRESS IN SECONDS LIKE IT'S NOTHING! Whoever made all this possible 12 years ago and now 12 later made it even better should be promoted to the highest possible rank, get paid for life and be blessed by every kind of miracle in existence. I want to meet this person, shake his or her hand and hug him or her to death. What I also want to do is show my appreciation for the pawns in the game, but I can't do that at all, cuz there's no system like that, you can only fist bump / high five and that's it after combat encounters and it's such a shame. I want to hug Pawns to show how much I love what they do, for who they are and to show them that I am grateful that they catched me after I fell off the cliff or something, I want to give them gifts without sending them away, I want a deep bond system which can let them love you more as well, work together better etc. I think it's a real missed opportunity that system like this is not in the game and I just don't like how pawns react to you as a player like they're slaves and must obey your every command, I personally think that it's very insulting in regards to Pawn and I always feel bad when they're saying that they must obey and stuff. What I also don't like is that there's no way for you to lock other players pawn states and choose between the pawn you last had (vocation, personality etc.) and not the current and up to date, cuz remember this warrior pawn I talked about, well, she was killed, I got so upset cuz I loved her to death and guess what... main player changed her vocations, personality etc. and I can't hire this pawn I loved to death anymore and I hate this with passion! Why can't you choose different pawn states and be forced to choose what other players did after you hired their pawn and played for dozens of hours? Clearly Pawn was different before and has changed since last you hired him or her, but since you also have a world, why can't Pawns be stored in it on a server somewhere and offer you a choice? Why? I don't like this one bit and if we'll get a true sequel I want this to be improved cuz it's a huge issue for me personaly.

All in all, Pawns and Pawn System is an absolute killer feature of DD''2'', it's immensely and significantly improved as well as expanded in way more ways than one in comparison to original game. But there's a huge issue in terms of narrative in regards to pawns but I'll get to that later when i'll get to the story and stuff related to it. But for now, I want to talk about the world and exploration, how much they were improved etc.

The world is one of the aspects of DD"2" which was also significantly improved in terms of how you explore it and the way you look at exploration as a whole. Capcom was clearly inspired and looked at games like Breath of The Wild and Tears of the Kingdom cuz you see the influence almost everywhere. There's a lot of verticality to the world and locations so it is practically never just flat land, there's a lot of canions, high cliffs, mountains, bridges (which can be destroyed both accidentally and on purpose ib combat) a lot of hidden passages, roadways, caves etc. which you simply can't see by just looking at the world from a high vantage point. So it's almost always a welcome surprise to find something cuz what you see from above is just a tiny surface, and points of interest which are in fact full of stuff for you to find and discover. But unlike Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom for that matter, the world in DD"2" even though is vast and has a sense of scale, but at the same time it's more compact and more densely packed with stuff, cuz in BOTW it's mostly just a lot of empty space with goblin camps here and there and occasional chests, so it feels empty in the end. What Capcom did in DD"2" is exactly the way I would've approached fixing BOTW's world problems (or basically any open world game made by Ubisoft). I'll talk about dungeons and stuff in just a bit, but the main takeaway is that exploration in DD"2" is never boring, uninteresting or none eventful, actually quite the opposite and I love it and the fact that the world design is so much better is just the icing on the cake. You want to explore the world, you want to find and discover stuff and with a much better paws and pawn system it's even more compelling and exciting. But... yeah, there's a problem... or actually quite a few of them.

See, Capcom sure made the world and exploration significantly better in DD"2", but they failed to make the majority of ruins, crypts and caves exciting to explore cuz by design they are very bad, boring and repetitive. I mean, maybe there's no 100% identical caves and crypts in the game (at least I don't remember seeing plain and blatant copy & pastes), but it's almost always just straight and boring corridors or a few rooms with enemies here and there. There's a few vast cave complexes for sure and they're much more than just straight corridors and it's cool, there's a lot of verticality to them, there's quite a few floors there and stuff, but the overwhelming majority of caves are very bad. The same pretty much can be said about ruins, so they're nowhere near as good as in Elden Ring even, where pretty much majority of ruins and crypts were different with environmental puzzles for you to solve, tough enemies and bosses (even though the same ones but with a twist sometimes) to fight, exciting stuff to find etc. etc. One other thing I wanted to say about ruins, crypts and caves is that 99% of them don't even have something cool for you to find, be it new and cool gear, weapons, armor etc. it's mostly just crafting materials, potions, magic scrolls and extremely rarely a weapon or some piece of gear, but even then one other problem in regards to all of this is that the absolute and vast majority of weapons, armor and other gear is only available to buy from vendors, so forget about finding anything they're selling in caves, crypt or ruins, unless designers put something there and it'll always be there waiting for you which is 1% out of 100. This is not good at all and bad design. I mean, maybe Capcom thought that getting money and stuff by exploring the world is the way to go here so that we can then go and just buy better gear, but personally I don't think it's good design, cuz it's not exiting to just go and buy stuff (which is insultingly overpriced), cuz you haven't found it yourself and it wasn't given to you as a reward for exploration, you just bought it from the vendor. Interesting thing though, FFXVI also suffers from exactly the same problems, but it's much worse there cuz you can't buy anything but weapons and you only have one great armor set in the whole game which is the very first one. Unfortunately for DD"2" and Capcom, it won't be the last comparison to FFXVI I'll be making.

So yeah, as much as it pains me to say it and even more so to see in the game, Capcom dopped the boll hard when it comes to designing vast majority of caves, crypts and ruins in DD''2'' and outside of what Spynx can offer in terms of riddles, there's not a single environmental puzzle in the game at all be it in open world, during story quests, side quests etc. To be fair though, even dispite all of these major shortcomings the world explorations is still exiting in DD"2", so there's that. But let's talk about how the world (and the game) actually looks and what you can do with it with mods on that front in the second part of the review below

 

[Agent_4Seven]

By default, the game looks fantastic just from the pure art and art design standpoint, there's even RTGI in the game (which works at half rest but you can fix that) so you won't be seeing terrible shadows at all. It's definitely the best looking RE Engine game to date unless we're counting vastly more compact RE remakes. It looks almost as good if not better than Death Stranding cuz there's a lot of very natural environments in the game such as shores, rock formations, rivers, streams, waterfalls with very distinct round rock formations, seaweed etc. and it's much better detailed. It's not as good as in Forbidden West of course, there's no coral and booming life underwater, with waves of small fish and stuff (not to mention you can't even swim in or underwater for stupid or more like budget and scope reasons), but nonetheless DD''2'' definitely very impressive and much more modern looking and next gen game without a doubt. And you can make the game look even better without losing, replacing or destroying any original art cuz there's AI mods which makes all the textures look like they were supposed to look (but Capcome decided to limit textures to only 3GBs). Not only that, but the water can be improved (not SSR though, but PT mod already available - very early stages with a lot of noise and stuff - definitely not worth messing with at this point) and RTGI can be set to work at full res instead of half res. But regardless of whether you'll be using texture and visual mods or not (which I highly encourage anyone with at least 12GB VRAM GPUs to do), the game still looks incredible and I want to especially highlight a few things. Foliage rendering and the fact that it's highly reactive to what you and enemies are doing, DD"2" is also very windy games which for sure helps create a much more believable and alive world, instead of just static decoration for you to pass by. One other thing is the fact that just how much you can see of the world be it various locations, cities, towers, ruins etc. you already explored (or yet to explore) from the birds eye view while flying on the Griffin is mind-blowing and awe-inspiring, even though and obviously the game doesn't render any of these locations with full details etc, but then again, you also can't see all details while flying on the plane / helicopter in real life so... The lighting in the game with RTGI is extremely impressive as well, especially at night during exploration and when mages and sorcerers use spells, man, it's one hell of a thing to behold. I don't think there's a need to talk about character creation (which is one of the best in the industry), cuz we pretty much already covered this aspect of the game before it was even released and after Capcom released character creation and impor tool, but yeah, it's just insane what you can do with character creation and I'm extremely happy with how my created character looks in the game and in cut-scenes (but I also spend 3+ hours creating her and then just as much time when it come to my main pawnso...):

Spoiler: Here's also but a few shots I've made during my playthrough (before discovering that you can do a lot more with RE Framework, which you can see on my thumbnails) and with every texture AI upscaled to 4K and without any sharpness filters:

So yeah, again, extremely impressive looking game and I'm sure that the new Monster Hunter and future RE games will look on par minus the setting, time period etc. But what's also extremely impressive in the game is...

I mean, good god, I haven't seen such astounding and bad ass looking armor sets and armor design in any action RPG period. Almost everything outside of very early basic stuff from fighter sets and all the way down to trickster stuff is INCREDIBLE! The bad part of all this is that everything is locked to classes and you can only wear everything after switching to Warfarer and... I already said how bad it is. It's so stupid and doesn't make any sense. I get it when it comes to weapons cuz Mage can't even hold huge swords or an axes, but he for sure can wear much more protective stuff like medium plated armor or armor sets with minor plate or scale designs (expect one very early armor set which is not good in terms of protection). But nope, if you're a Mage or Sorcerer, you can't do that, same goes for other classes as well if you want to wear Mystic Spearhead stuff as Fighter or a Warrior. As for weapons, there's really cool stuff available, but the most impressive stuff you can find only in mid, late or even late game, the big problem with weapons though is that even though they're unique and very late variants can have some passive stuff like becoming stronger the less you take damage, but there's almost zero very unique and legendary stuff with unique move sets, magical abilities and such, not to mention that only every specific weapons have magical properties as I've said already in the combat section. I honestly don't get why Capcom decided to not give that much attention to weapons and what you can do with them in terms of crafting, stuff you can slot in maybe etc. like in Lords of the Fallen. I mean, it's not a game killing issue by any means, but it is still very disappointing to see cuz the combat could've been so much better you could've had a reason to use all those resources you've gathered during exploration, but instead, you've got tons of resource at the end of the game and you can't do anything with them, cuz upgrade don't cost that much in terms of resources and you don't have a lot of very rare resources as well. This is where the game clearly was not really well thought out, designed and underdeveloped. Unfortunately and as are you about to find out, it is not the only aspect of the game which suffers the same fate. Also not a lot of Capcom's attention was dedicated to shields during development cuz there's really only very few of them in the game and only very late shields are really cool looking. I guess it was because Mystic Knight was cut from the game, but it is still not a valid excuse to offer only small shields to use as a fighter and only very few great looking ones. I really hope that it'll be fixed in the upcoming expansion or DLC and I think Mystic Knight needs to come back as a class.

At this point you may ask, but what about the story, characters, writing, presentation and all of that, Agent? Are they good? Well, unfortunately, from this point forward the rest of the game's aspects take a gigant... well, no, there's no point in walking around the bush, it's almost a catastrophic nosedive in terms of quality, presentation and potential. But let's address each aspect separately shall we? There's a lot to talk about here, so let's start with the story.

​

The story in the original game wasn't something to write home about and quests and such was even worse and plain terrible (especially open world stuff). But tbh, when it comes to story and its overall presentation, I expected big improvements in DD"2", especially after excellent RE remakes and seeing what modern Capcom can do when it comes to story, characters and presentation not only in RE Remakes, but in something much more simple like Monster Hunter Stories 2. You know what guys, I don’t want to pull the cat by the balls and tell you right away how it is - the story and almost everything related to it outside a few cool moments you can even experience (believe it or not) and some you cannot, is an absolute dog shit and gigantic wasted potential of what could've been if the FFXVI dev team was responsible for it. It's so bad, so disjointed, so few and far between and tbh completely nonexistent thing in the game, that it makes you wonder what they even bothered about making some well directed but extremely short sequences. At one point in the game you'll have this absolutely amazing thing happening and you're like looking at the monitor with an awe, dropped jaw and blown-mind and a smile to the ears and such, cuz you can't believe that this game have something such a fuckin' amazing thing in store (I'm really trying really hard not to spoil the whole thing) and then the game says - yeah, well, just stand here and watch... for like 5-6 min and look at what's happening miles away from where you are and you're like... But I want to be there and participate! And how on earth that I didn't even know and the game doesn't even tell you that he or she can do such a bad-ass and mind-blowing thing? Why the fuck it wasn't explored in the game at all in any way? Why can't you do that as well in.... FUCK! What the fuckin' hell, Capcom? What the hell did you or rather didn't do? WHY!? WHY IS THIS THE WAY YOU WANTED TO DO THIS? Why is the story and almost everything related to it so bad and barely even exists in the game? Why there's so little well directed pre-rendered scenes that lead to absolutely nowhere and... What the FUCK HAPPENED?! Is this really the way you wanted to reboot the whole IP? With such a pathetic effort in most of the game related to story? God-fuckin'-damn you!

The Final Fantasy XVI team absolutely destroyed every resemblance of story, writing and presentation in DD2 with what they did with the story in their game, not only that, but both games are more or less in the same medieval time period albeit in a different fantasy world with different rules and such. I'll even go as far as to say that in comparison to FFXVI's story, DD''2'' feels like a toilet paper thin in terms of scope, writing, presentation and potential, it's an absolute travesty in comparison to what it could have been and it became even more obvious as soon as you'll experience the stuff I've mentioned above. Ugh, my god. Words really can't express just how fuckin' bad the story is in DD''2'', but let's look at what FFXVI's team did to make it even more obvious. So, you have this extremely impressive epic and amazing in scope presentation right from the start with excellent writing, memroable characters (oh, I'll get to that soon, don't you worry), mind-fuckin'-blowing set pieces, character development and all that and it continues to be on the same level of quality in story related missions and even during some character related quests. You also have the astounding Icon battles and they're not just cut-scenes and set-pieces, you can play and control the Icon during all of them yourself and it's so epic and exciting to see and experience. I just can't help but to mention fuckin' amazing boss fight with Benedikta especially, but Hugo, Dion (oh my god, fuckin' Dion, daaaaaaamn!!!!), Barnabas and their Icons both in human and Icon forms was also amazing. It's so fuckin' good that it was forever imprinted into my mind and I will always remember all this as one of the greatest gaming moments I've ever experienced and on top of that the story, writing and presentations (outside of most of the open world stuff, but I'll talk about it too when we'll get to the characters, quests and such) are amazing as well. Man, it's such a drastic contrast between DD"2" and FFXVI in story department overal that even though I don't work in Capcom, but I still feel fuckin' ashamed as if I was responsible for the story in the game as well. God fuckn' god, Capcom, why the fuck did you dropped to ball so hard here? Are you really satisfied with what you end up shipping on disk for the whole world to see? REALLY? Is this the best you could've done? JFC, man.

You didn't even explained in any meaningful, memorable or even on basic level the Pawns and stuff, who they are, why are the so important, why beasterns hate them so much, what's up with this whole conflict, why are they following orders of the character you play as, who is Arisen, why Elves are so isolated, what's the meaning behind all this in terms of global narrative and lore etc. What's worse is that there's literally no fuckin' lore about anything in the game related to the world, paws, the cycle, the dragon etc. etc. etc. You won't find any interesting books to read which are covering the lore, what happened in the world, what it even is etc. all you can find is very basic stuff very similar to RE, there's not a lot of it and it's not interesting in any way. I mean, hell, forget about FFXVI and what I just said about its story and presentation, even Elden Ring of all games has much better story and character story arcs than DD''2'', so here, how about that as a food for thought and something for you to think about and brainstorm.

Overall, there's only an empty shell of disjointed abomination of a story with a few bright spots and LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE. But let's talk about characters, NPC's, quests and such, as well as how you actually interact with the characters and how it is presented to you and what your options are to play the role of the Arisen.

So, what's up with characters? Well, how about we start with the lady you will only see two times in the game and NEVER again at any point in the game. Yeah, you heard that right and it begs the question why is she even in the game cuz everything related to her leads to nowhere. She was just there to look pretty on camera and nothing else for exactly two times. What, Capcom...? What was even the point, really and what about the whole plot with fake Arisen, the royal family, the people who help you to get the throne back and all that? Well, to say that it is boring af complete BS that again leads to nowhere is to say nothing. Not only that but there's literally NOTHING interesting going on with story characters and what you are actually doing story-wise until one thing at the late game and just before the end game. There's zero interesting and memorable story characters to meet, zero drama to be part of, cool, personal stories and story arcs of characters to experience except maybe one related to the dwarven smith apprentice (I like her character and she also can provide best dwarven gear upgrades so you don't have to go to a dwarven smith in the volcanic island at all, it's super easy to get 10% discount from her and she's selling all the best gear as well) and.... yeah, that's about it, I don't think that elf quest is amazing or anything, it's not bad but not particularly memorable. Capcom also could've done a better job with a couple of potential love partners in the game - which also led to nowhere, like so many other things. What's also very bad about story and characters in DD''2'' is that everything related to all of this is AT BEST on the late PS2 level and was practicaly unchanged from original game released 12 years ago, so say hello to idiotic and ancient scenes where camera following very akwardly running character and then watch very basic conversations with almost zero animations, expressions like again, it's very late PS2 stuff but with modern tech, which COMPLETELY KILLING any kind interest in what's going on, characters and stuff cuz if Capcom didn't give a flying fuck, why should you? Or am I wrong? But seriously, they had one job to fix what original game suffered from and sure, they did improve quests and how they work (more on that in just a sec), but the way you interact with the characters, having conversations with them (or rather they do with you, not you with them) everything else is outdated as fuck even buy PS3 / X360 standards, let alone in 2024 FFS. In a year of our lord 2024 it is simply inexcusable to not give a flying fuck about how you present the story and conversations with characters to the player and especially not after FFXVI did just a year ago in basicaly exactly the same genre. So, now, let's talk about quests and how they were changed and improved, cuz believe it or not, they actually way better than anything which was in the original game.

So in the original game, there was no side quest at all, it was mostly just BS fetch stuff and terrible bounty board stuff where the game asks you to kill monsters and get rewards for doing that. I mean, this one thing in particular could work as a side distraction on top of the side quest design in DD"2" to get some money and rare crafting ingredients, but not as the only thing for you to do outside not so good main quests. Thankfuly, there's no bounty boards in DD"2" and thank fuck for that. What we have instead is much more organic quest design and more quests will be available the more you progress the story and if you'll be coming back to previously visited towns and villages, which is one hell of a pain in the butt cuz of how fast travel system work and how long do you have to travel on foot to get to places (only select few places have Portcrystals and it'll be a while before you get enough Portcrystals to place where you want). But if you're playing the game without a mod with infinite stamina outside of combat (if so, you probably hate yourself and have a shit ton of free time and zero real life responsibilities) traveling between locations can and will be a gigantic chore and bore fest with endless fights with the same exact enemies hundreds of times, so save yourself some sanity, nerve cells, install a mod and thank me later. Anyway, the way you get side quest is by going to towns and such and eventually if you progressed the story enough, NPC will approach you at some point and will ask for your help, or... you can talk with an NPC, it'll mention something and then you need to figure out what you need to do to even start the quest (like with the Elf), but it's never clear if you even should do something or not, is it a quest or some random pre-planned event for you to see, but not much else. As you can imagine, cuz of this problem you can miss some really cool shit for mage, sorcerer and magick archer classes and be locked out of getting supers for these classes if you progress too far and go into the endgame. And there's quite a few examples of this in the game which can also somewhat softlock you in the endgame and there's no way for you to know what you should've done before the end game cuz based on my experience, there was no conversation about one particular thing, character which gives you the quest said nothing to me about it even though I gone back to a place multiple times pre endgame. You can make it work without completing the quest but it was definitely not intended to work like that. And there's also an escort quests... My god, what a fuckin' pointless borefest. Not only characters you need to escort are 100% of the time engaged with absolutely every enemy encounter in the game on their path, but you literally forced to participate every time cuz otherwise they'll be trying to kill enemies for AGES and you won't get anything done! And there's no way for you to know beforehand where they're wanted to be for you to place a Portcrystal, you don't have tons of them in your inventory as well as Ferrystones and so... FUCK THIS SHIT! My god...UGH!

Overall though, quests are much better than in the original game, Pawns can help you out as well so you don't need to look at the map and there's no need for markers and such. But yeah, I do think that escorts should get fuck themselves and the game could've done a better job of communicating and tell you that hey, it looks like a quest and you need to figure it out - Pawns can't do that btw, they can only helf you afterwards if they completed the quest on other world, they can guide you to treasure chest, show where Seeker's Token is, but they can't tell you that hey, maybe you should talk to this and this person, it looks like a quest you can do and help the person. FUCK! Why should I even point all this out where there's people in Capcom who are getting paid each month and should be looking into this before the game was even released and still in alpha-beta stage of development. WTF?

Speking of unrealized potential to be something great outside of great looks, design and a few riddles...

Maaaaan, Spinx stuff could've been so much, better, so much verried and memorable, but instead it's just 10 riddles (one of which can fuck itself) and that's it! Like, how about Dark Arisen type of stuff for you to get through, solve puzzles, kill monsters, bosses, go deeper and deeper, with harder and harder stuff down below, with hours of content and stuff to look forward to... sounds cool doesn't it? Or how about tracking down more or her kind in the world, maybe complete some quest, combat challenges etc. and offer a choice whether to kill or not and then have to deal with consequences, based on the choice you've made? Yeah, well, Capcom did the "Lady Vampire Step on Me" thing yet again and absolutely nothing memorable with it in the grand scheme of things, let alone gameplay and lore wise. What a GIANT missed opportunity yet again. This fuckin' game man, the more you play it, the more it starts to ruin all your dreams of what could have been and what you imagined in your head it will be based on what Capcom did sarting and after RE2R. Such a disappointment, goddamnit. But Capcom didn't stop there, cuz we also have endgame stuff to deal with.

And as you probably could've guessed it's also extremely disappointing. What you're doing in the end game (if you can figure out how to get there even, cuz the game doesn't tell you anything) is basically evacuating all major cities and settlements which survived whatever the fuck happened to the world and why (Did I already said that everything related story is not explained via lor or story itself at all? Nah, why the fuck would you anyway, it's not like the whole IP depends on it after people waited for long 12 years), complete a few basic quests and that's it, of you go to the NG+. I mean, guess you can also vacuum clean the whole map again to try and find new chest, bosses and enemies to kill to get rare ingredients for gear upgrades and buy cool stuff with Wyrmslife Crystals and I did, cuz all rivers dried out and now there's whole canions available for you to explore. Believe it or not, you can actually get endgame gear drops after killing bosses and drakes so you don't need to buy everything with gold even with discounts. But... What's ultimately the point you may ask and what's up with NG+? Well... You'll start the whole game from the beginning completely overpowered cuz enemies are not getting harder, there's no and more powerful enemies and such from the late game and everything is exactly the same as in the NG, except all endgame gear is available from the start from vendors (you still need to complete quests and progress the story to get Dwarven and Wyrmfire upgrades), and of course all your gear levels, class progression is saved so you can level up further. I guess you can do it all over again but does it sound exciting to you, really? At least for me it isn't, not until a big expansion / DLC will be released for sure and even then I'm not sure if I'll be replaying the whole game again although... Since I am already significantly overpowered, I guess I can breeze through the story before the end game and finish some quests I missed in NG to then access expansion stuff.

You probably wondering why I haven't mentioned the timer in the endgame, well, from my experience, it's really not an issue in the endgame as long as you finish all quests, evacuate everyone fast and kill all the bosses after interacting with all but the last red beam in the seafloor shrine. I even slept a few times to restore health for myself and pawns and still managed to find everything with plenty of time to do more rare resource grinding. My pawns and other players' pawns also didn't get infected by dragon plague so I didn't use eternal wakestone during my playthrough at all. But let's wrap this up, shall we, cuz I think I covered petty much everything worth mentionig and if something I missed, then it's probably not so important to even talk about.

So, first of all all, after so much negativity and criticism (which i think is valid and I hope I did a good job of explaining why) I don't want you guys to think that I hate the game or anything like that, I still love it or rather love what it did great and exceptionally well on a level no other studio did in the past 12 years since original game came out. But for fuck's sake, man, we've waited 12 years for this and this is what we ended up getting t in terms of story, it's presentation, writing, dialogue system and all that after what FFXVI did just a year ago... There's just no excuse for all this in DD''2'' to be in this state and there's no argument to be made that these kinds of games are not about the story, characters and all about combat. No, times have changed, Creative Business Unit III did an amazing job with the story stuff in FFXVI and showed to the whole world and video game industry just what they could do with the genre and that it is no longer all about combat and nothing else. Hell, even Nier games changed things, even though in a much less grand, technically impressive way. The worst part about all this is that DD"2" can be the last game in the series after receiving so much well argumented and valid criticism from not just me, but from other people as well, Capcom can just say fuck it to it all and burry this IP after they're done with Expansion / DLC, which is completely wrong way to look at things cuz it is entierly their fault to release the game in such a state and for no realising the game's full potential and making everything right. What they should do instead is gather every criticism there is and try to do better next time (hopefully not after 12 years), cuz burying the IP again and for good this time is not the answer for YOUR problems and YOUR mistakes and bad decisions or lack thereof, you need to learn and get better if you want to continue making games and new IPs especially.

There's a lot to love about DD''2'' and there's still no game like it on the market after 12 years, but it's not finished, it's not feature complete, suverely untercooked when it comes to important aspecst and it needed at least 2-2,5 more years of development AND THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FUCKIN' WRONG WITH THAT, CAPCOM! Why haven't you said that - "Hey you guys, we need more time cuz of this and that, we're sorry but great things need more time". Do you seriously think that people wouldn't understand and didn't get it after what happened with Cyberpunk 2077 and what CDPR managed to do with the game after 3 additional years of development? C'mon, man! People want great games to play and they're willing to wait for great things, just fuckin' learn to communicate and say the right things that needs to be said and continue making the game as best as it can be, JFC, Capcom.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

But yes I know the biggest DD shill on the planet and even he thinks this game is mid as fuck. Disappointing after Capcom finally reached out from a safety net IP.

 

[RoboFu]

You think I've got all day to read that!?




Well I do! . I agree with somethings.

 

[King Dazzar]

Great OP. Lots of time and effort. If you could sum it all up in one sentence though, what would that be?

 

[Lokaum D+]

I ll wait for the movie, thanks

 

[LordBritish]

 

[Tomi]

So better to avoid dragons dogma 2

Thanks for info
And new monster hunter probably gonna suck, so people remember no preorders!!!

 

[Arsic]

Even your TLDR needs a TLDR.

 

[Lux R7]

So better to avoid dragons dogma 2

it's an amazing game, the sense of adventure in unmatched for me. Combat is amazing, pawns are fantastic. Also 87 open critic if you care about scores.
it's not better to avoid it, not in the slightest.

 

[Punished Miku]

I cant read it yet since I plan on playing it post-expansion release but will try to come back to this later.

 

[FunkMiller]

I ain't gonna read all that, but I'm gonna assume you fucking loved everything about Dragon's Dogma 2.

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Bruh….put this shit on Audible


*edit*
Your screen shots are fantastic, I really like all the header/section choices. Also Mystic Spearhead is legit esp. stacked with 3 sorc pawns. Don't fret over the Spynx, more of that stuff in DLC. Down with infected pawns for I AM THE CHOSEN!!!!

 

[Topher]

going to read later, but overall the game has been incredibly frustrating. I keep getting roadblocked by this dragons plague bullshit and I'm really sick of it. Not sure I'm going to finish at this point.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Drunk atm, will read later.

Anyway, many kudos for you for writting so much shit about actual videogame stuff, will read and comment later.

My experience was having a lot of fun, but also feeling like the game could have been so much more than what it actually is. Probably the most bittersweet game I've played.

 

[adamsapple]

Jesus christ that is a tremendous write-up.

-

Without having read a lot, I can safely say that DD2 is my current GoTY. I had a blast with the game, foibles and all.

going to read later, but overall the game has been incredibly frustrating. I keep getting roadblocked by this dragons plague bullshit and I'm really sick of it. Not sure I'm going to finish at this point.

If your pawn's eyes start glowing like the Terminator, time to chuck them in the brine.

 

[King Dazzar]

going to read later, but overall the game has been incredibly frustrating. I keep getting roadblocked by this dragons plague bullshit and I'm really sick of it. Not sure I'm going to finish at this point.

That's a shame as initially I think you really liked it.

 

[Field]

Enjoyed it for the most part but story, characters and the ending sucks.

 

[adamsapple]

Enjoyed it for the most part but story, characters and the ending sucks.

Did you get the True ending? There's a whole massive epilogue.

 

[Comandr]

TL;DR. Caught the highlights. Agree with some things but mostly disagree. DD2 was fantastic. Does it need work? Yes. Could there be more enemy types, sure, but I don't think the variety they have now is bad. I mean, this is a fairly grounded fantasy world. Save the weird shit for Bitterblack Isle 2.

For someone that claims to have spent 140 hours with the game, it sounds like, regardless of the proclaimed good, the bad, and the ugly, you thoroughly enjoyed your time with it. Or.. else you wouldn't have played it that long. Unless you were just hate playing it for some reason I guess. By my estimation, that makes it a good game and reduces some of your complaints to nitpicks.

going to read later, but overall the game has been incredibly frustrating. I keep getting roadblocked by this dragons plague bullshit and I'm really sick of it. Not sure I'm going to finish at this point.

Can you go into more detail about your issues with the dragonsplague? I only have half the time that OP has, but even on my third playthough I have never experienced any issues with dragonsplague. I've noticed my pawns acting quite differently and getting mouthy, at which point I check their eyes and if they had it, just dunk the bastards. The latest patch also 1) reduces the frequency of dragonsplague and 2) makes it much more obvious.

I'm not trying to belittle your experience, I just - from my own experience - don't see how it's a show stopper; hence wanting to know more about your situation.

 

[IFireflyl]

Agent_4Seven , kudos for the write-up. It's hella long, but I like that you didn't say, "This gam3 sux b4llz," and leave it at that. I haven't played it yet as I never played the first and didn't want to jump in partway, but even just reading through the good, mixed, bad, and ugly section I can see there are things that would annoy the piss out of me.

This sounds like one of those games where mods are essentially a requirement to fix QoL options (which is also something you addressed), and I won't be doing that until I can take a day to go through mods to figure out what I need to my experience enjoyable.

 

[kruis]

Enjoyed it for the most part but story, characters and the ending sucks.

That's a shame ... I was looking forward to reading the OP's long piece about Dragon's Dogma, but now I'm not sure if it's worth it if the ending sucks.

BTW I don't get your comment about story and characters. I thought the OP posted a long form review, but he managed to stick a short story in it, too ...?

 

[Draugoth]

This game being almost a carbon copy of the original, with the almost same issues is almost meta with the very heavy theme of cycles that repeat itself.

What is left is to wait for a substantial DLC by Idago (the director of DDAA and DDO)

 

[poodaddy]

 

[Topher]

If your pawn's eyes start glowing like the Terminator, time to chuck them in the brine.

Yeah, but that is hard to notice. I thought the idea was kind of interesting at first, but then after I revived a couple of people in the morgue in order to continue on the quests I was actively playing, they just disappeared completely. So I have a couple of orphaned side quests right now. Pretty much sucked all the interest I had in completely the game.

Waiting on a patch to see if this is addressed. If it is, I'll continue on. Otherwise, I'm just done.

Can you go into more detail about your issues with the dragonsplague? I only have half the time that OP has, but even on my third playthough I have never experienced any issues with dragonsplague. I've noticed my pawns acting quite differently and getting mouthy, at which point I check their eyes and if they had it, just dunk the bastards. The latest patch also 1) reduces the frequency of dragonsplague and 2) makes it much more obvious.

I'm not trying to belittle your experience, I just - from my own experience - don't see how it's a show stopper; hence wanting to know more about your situation.

Pretty much said it above. NPCs that were killed because of dragons plague disappeared completely after being revived in the morgue. I needed those NPCs to compete the quests.

 

[MagiusNecros]

DD2 is a good game. It just is nowhere as great as DDDA. In many cases DD2 feels shallow as a whole. From a lore perspective it makes total sense but as a game it leaves much to be desired. I enjoyed my time with it but it just made me start a new playthrough in Dark Arisen.

DD1 Sorcerer > DD2 Sorcerer.

So pissed they gutted my class. They kind of gutted Magick Archer too but it's at least servicable.

 

[Zheph]

going to read later, but overall the game has been incredibly frustrating. I keep getting roadblocked by this dragons plague bullshit and I'm really sick of it. Not sure I'm going to finish at this point.

This got reduce in a recent patch btw

Also the eyes are glowing even brighter, hard to miss imo

 

[Zheph]

I just saw the quick summary and the nitpicking is wild af OP alto I would admit the game is far from perfect. Kudos on the effort tho and the banners are well done too

 

[Topher]

This got reduce in a recent patch btw

Also the eyes are glowing even brighter, hard to miss imo

That's good. But this should not break the game. It is like an intentional bug that can ruin the experience for many.

Sucks because otherwise I have really enjoyed the game.

That's a shame as initially I think you really liked it.

Was having a blast.

Pawn parenting tip for all: Check your pawn's eyes before resting.......every time.

 

[Clear]

I liked it.

 

[Zheph]

That's good. But this should not break the game. It is like an intentional bug that can ruin the experience for many.

Sucks because otherwise I have really enjoyed the game.

Yeah I enjoyed it too and I understand there is a lot of frustration that can come out from very various sources of the game but the whole package was quite good and I doubt there will be major changes in a possible DLC. Some stuff like traveling isn't as bad as many people make it out, just way too used to fast travel or having the game holding you all the time imo.

 

[Denton]

I read about half. Basically, exploration and combat is good, story, quests and characters are dogshit. Is that an accurate tldr?

 

[Meicyn]

I’m going to be frank. Itsuno pulled a Peter Molyneux. He hyped up NPC interactions as if they were akin to what was in Red Dead Redemption 2, but it’s a big fat nothing. The statement about how with enough affinity, they might even get in a fist fight with each other in front of your home was the rotten cherry on the bullshit sundae.

The game’s performance is trash tier due to NPCs, and the NPCs are as interesting as the randomized ones in any town or city in Witcher 3. They shout their boring one liners with absolutely nothing impressionable to say.

There is somehow less variety in this game than there was in base Dragon’s Dogma. The world is significantly larger, but managed to be less interesting. The story themes are similar, but the execution is far worse. The soundtrack is shockingly inferior. The dragonsplague mechanic is wholly uninteresting and pointless. Having an entire town die doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have any attachment to the NPCs, and most of them just respawn back in a few in-game days later anyway, so there are no meaningful consequences.

Combat is the only saving grace, and it is simultaneously better in some ways, and worse in others. You had way more spell variety and more slots to equip them in the original. I miss being able to fire with a bow and use daggers on one vocation.

Such a disappointment.

 

[SlimySnake]

The OP is the perfect encapsulation of Dragons Dogma 2 and the current state of RPGs. Bloated as fuck.

If it's taking you 50-100 hours to tell a story or 9,923 words to write a review then you have failed as a writer and should probably stick to your day job.

There is probably a great 15-20 hour game in there, and there is probably a great 500-1000 word critique in there. Even the TLDR is too long.

Here is a simple but concise breakdown of everything wrong with the game. Poor fast travel mechanics, lack of variety in both mob or bosses, exceptionally poor storytelling and even worse plot. No setpieces. Poor pacing in general. Repetitive dungeons. That's it. The rest is nitpicking and doesnt need to be mentioned.

I thought FF7 Rebirth having a 120 hour campaign was bad. But this post is much much worse even though I agree with the OP. Jesus christ dude.

 

[Švejk]

I will have to come back and read this when I put my time in and avoid spoilers.. But from what little I've played, and being a massive fan of the original, there were already several wtf moments in all the previews.

The 2 big glaring issues for me, were the lack of feminine stance and walks for the posture sliders. Everyone walks like they have something shoved up their ass. Why was this neutered to unisex shit??

2nd, the biggest head scratcher to me, was the lack of layered armor... Serious fucking downgrade... Let alone, being limited to vocations. The excuse Itsuno had for this,... wasn't buying it. Sure, you can dump content on us, but this feature alone allowed infinite fashion looks. Not sure what he was talking about.

Again, I'm still way too early in the game (I only get 7-8 hours a week), and it's no doubt my GOTY easy... But it will always bother me why such unique features were omitted.

Still glad Capcom allowed this game to exist. With recent sales, there may be a chance they greenlight DD3.

 

[Topher]

Yeah I enjoyed it too and I understand there is a lot of frustration that can come out from very various sources of the game but the whole package was quite good and I doubt there will be major changes in a possible DLC. Some stuff like traveling isn't as bad as many people make it out, just way too used to fast travel or having the game holding you all the time imo.

I think ferrystones should be easier to obtain, but that's the only real complaint I have about fast travel. And that isn't really much of a complaint on PC where I modded it so ferrystones never go away when used. I actually like that I can pop down a port crystal and jump back and forth to it.

So much good stuff in this game though. I know my main issue is specific to me so I'm not going to go on and on about it. I may just give it some time and start a new game at some point. That's a testament to how much I've enjoyed playing it because most games I would have uninstalled and never looked back.

 

[FeralEcho]

I was scrolling so long I thought my phone glitched...

 

[Danjin44]

 

[March Climber]

You think I've got all day to read that!?

Great OP. Lots of time and effort. If you could sum it all up in one sentence though, what would that be?

I ll wait for the movie, thanks

Even your TLDR needs a TLDR.

Jesus christ that is a tremendous write-up.
.

I read about half. Basically, exploration and combat is good, story, quests and characters are dogshit. Is that an accurate tldr?

I was scrolling so long I thought my phone glitched...

Search for a text to speech app, preferably an AI one that will read it in any celeb voice you like. There are plenty.

Thank me later.

 

[Topher]

Search for a text to speech app, preferably an AI one that will read it in any celeb voice you like. There are plenty.

Thank me later.

I asked ChatGPT to summarize, but......

 

[Terenty]

One of the better games of the last few years easily and the new gold standard for open worlds imho.

 

[systemr123]

You think I've got all day to read that!?




Well I do! . I agree with somethings.

You are obliged to read the whole thing. It cost this guy at least 2 weeks of work, and 2 weeks of lost income just to write this piece.

 

[March Climber]

By the way OP you should have waited until the DLC release before making such definitive claims. They might make large improvements to the game when it releases.

 

[Meicyn]

By the way OP you should have waited until the DLC release before making such definitive claims. They might make large improvements to the game when it releases.

Christ, I hope they add something akin to the Everfall or Bitterblack Isle in the DLC. And a hard mode. There’s so much squandered here as it currently stands. It genuinely feels like we’re playing an early access version of Dragon’s Dogma 2.

 

[MagiusNecros]

Christ, I hope they add something akin to the Everfall or Bitterblack Isle in the DLC. And a hard mode. There’s so much squandered here as it currently stands. It genuinely feels like we’re playing an early access version of Dragon’s Dogma 2.

Kinda feels that way with how abrupt the game just ends.

 

[Sgt.Asher]

Going to hard disagree with you about warrior, it's one of the most engaging vocations due to the timing based gameplay(pressing buttons at the right time for more damage/quicker combos). I found mystic spearhand to be pretty lame.

Otherwise yes, the game is rather mid. Though it's the best average game.

 

[Arsic]

One of the better games of the last few years easily and the new gold standard for open worlds imho.

This is the gold standard open world over a Witcher 3, red dead 2, or Zelda ToTK?

Fuck me. I’m out of this is the new standard.

 

[bbeach123]

This game being almost a carbon copy of the original, with the almost same issues is almost meta with the very heavy theme of cycles that repeat itself.

What is left is to wait for a substantial DLC by Idago (the director of DDAA and DDO)

The build , the rpg+ element even more shallow than DD1 .

Apart from better graphics , better(bigger) world map and maybe 2h feel better to play than DD1 its a inferior RPG compared to DD1 .

 

[Meicyn]

This is the gold standard open world over a Witcher 3, red dead 2, or Zelda ToTK?

Fuck me. I’m out of this is the new standard.

Hell, Red Dead 2’s open world is not only infinitely more interesting than DD2’s, it flat out looks better and has more variety to boot. You basically have grassland, forest, and desert in DD2. Meanwhile RDR2 has deserts, grasslands, forest, snowy mountains, and swamp. Valentine alone has more character than Vermund and Bakktahl combined, and St. Denis makes Vermund look like a joke. Seriously, I can walk through St. Denis which has a far larger NPC population that have full schedules, have more interactions with the player character, and they aren’t constantly phasing in and out of existence as you walk around.

Edit: That reminds me, even the weather in DD2 is a disappointment. Compare the rain in RDR2 vs DD2 and it’s a night and day difference. Especially when a thunderstorm rolls through in RDR2, it still looks impressive even now. Sometimes you could get a dust storm in RDR2, I saw nothing similar in DD2.

 

[IAmRei]

given how development cost today, i believe dlc will solve it, it might goes DDDA route, the first game without DA is not great much some said. but i'm glad at least there is new game with DD vein route already. well just wait and see for some news later on