Dragon's Dogma 2: A Critical Review 

Having played the first game, I expected there to have been a lot more improvements to this game in terms of environmental storytelling, writing, and quest design. It mostly feels like the first game with a new coat of paint.

My #1 issue is the dialog... Very first NPC you meet after escaping prison says "Tell me more about this prison you escaped" even though you said nothing. So I have to assume my character told him about the escape, but why would I tell a random soldier I meet that I am an escaped prisoner? This is repeated multiple times. NPCs know things they shouldn't and I have to figure out what my character must have said since I didn't get to pick any dialog options beyond saying "yes" or "no" to a request.

Exploration is great but not really rewarded. Best gear is bought. I hate that I go through an epic cave, only to get a ferrystone at the end.

10:29 pretty spot-on. At first I found the lack of classic fast travel and the Ox Cart system very cool, unique and refreshing. The more I played however, the more it was the same boring loop of Ox Cart ride > get attacked > defend > cart breaks > walk on foot. Especially because it makes a lot of fetch quests that are already boring by default insufferable

I really love this game, but it's so frustrating. I think everything wrong with it, id be willing to completely overlook if it had some sort of endgame like BBI or even the Everfall. The whole base game feels like it's preparing you for an endgame that isn't there.

My biggest issue is enemy variety, really miss they hydra, the cockatrice, evil eyes, the old minotaur... And lack of simple things like hiding the helmet or more types of markers for the map

This game is so frustrating, because almost all aspects of it, conceptually, are bound for greatness. From their quest simulator-style RPG elements, to their insanely fun action RPG combat, to the world itself being a really solid canvas to work from, etc. There's so much to this game that I was impressed with (as a newcomer to Dragon's Dogma). But it was frustrating because of the lack of depth each of these elements has. When they designed it, it's obvious they went for breadth rather than depth, trying to create this very "large" experience with wonderfully minimalistic implementation. But every time you do/experience something amazing, you realize that's the absolute limit to its depth, and those moments will be far and few between. If they had just condensed the game's scope a bit and really polished some of their more unique and interesting features, this could've gone beyond cult hit. But I think this is a game that ultimately can be learned from and iterated on by those it inspires, because this game has so many great ideas that are severely under-cooked. All that being said, I'm still plowing through at about 56 hours just to squeeze everything I can from it.

For me, this game was quite fun for the first couple of hours while discovering the classes and the pawn system (hadn't played the first game so this was new to me), but reality soon hit when I noticed the map is not open world at all, it's just corridors filled with the same monsters over and over again. Combine this with essentially no fast travel points, limited ferry stones and ox carts that get destroyed and you will very soon realize, this game is simply wasting your time. At this point it was too late to refund, so I pressed on hoping it would get better in the southern part of the map. It doesn't, the map still consists of corridors, there are no new enemies (sure, goblins are now gray and wolves red) and the lift carts are an absolute joke, wasting even more of my time. At least ox carts gave me something to do. Combat consists of a gap closer to then spam X or Y most of the time. Tried Trickster for more tactical combat which was a refreshing experience, but then immediately got punched in the face for switching to Trickster by a side quest that had me fight some dude on my own. AI is also absolutely useless most of the time, so Trickster isn' really viable. Camera feels clunky sometimes and I'm really missing the lock-on feature other games have. Story is meh and to me it got progressively more boring the more quests I finished. Performance is bad even on my quite high-end system.

Yes. My only genuine concern is sometimes the amount of enemies is a bit ridiculous, walking down a /main road/ and fight some goblins, the second they're dead you run in to an ogre, who dies, and 30 seconds down the road, more goblins. It's a main road it should be fairly safe to travel it's not a back road ;_;

I had a lot of fun exploring the world but man, the NPCs really don't deserve all the CPU power they hog (according to Capcom themselves who blame the NPCs for the framerate issues). There's barely any reactivity from them and the affinity system feels just as unfinished as it did in the first game. It actually feels like a step down from DD1 because in DD1 NPCs had the decency to post their requests to be escorted on the mission board. In DD2 they just spring the requests on you when you walk past them once you've got enough affinity with them. And I've resurrected guards who were wiped out by harpies and all they do is get up and say "What do you want?" or something ruder.

5:40 what you say about that sense of finding somewhere to rest, cause you are in a desperate situation, sadly only last for a few hours. Because once you reach lvl 15 (and you get to lvl 15 really quick) the player will never feel the same sense of dread and desperation than in his first 6-7 hours of gameplay. This is in stark contrast to any SoulsBorne game (and Sekiro), where the feeling of dread persists even in any stages of a game. The game suffers immensely from four things: 1. Enemy Variety is inexistant (if you think that Zelda Tears of the Kingdom was bad, just wait until you try Dragon's Dogma 2: You will fight Wolves, Lizards, Harpies and Goblins for 50+ hours and you will love doing it); 2. Game gets ridiculously easy once you reach lvl 17-20+, and the overall challenge and engagement totally fades away at lvl 30+ ; 3. The quest design is severely lacking, with many quests appearing uninspired and less developed than those found in MMOs. The only quest that stands out involves saving Rodge, which cleverly uses the environment and requires players to follow blue flowers at night. This quest reminded me of "Morrowind's" approach, treating the world as a puzzle. Capcom should consider sending his Dragon's Dogma quest designers at internship at Larian Studios to learn and understand how to write and implement a quest in an RPG. Whoever was in charge of testing and giving the green light for the numerous sthealth missions needs to be demoted or fired. 4. Braindead npc AI. You can kill an NPC in front of everyone. Take 5 steps back and everyone will act like nothing happened. The fact that you can into the Queen's Regeant personal quarter, kidnap her in front of her Royal Guard and throw her into the brine infront of the soldiers and walk out like if it was just another tuesday is simply immersion breaking (I urge everyone to try it for fun, no guards give a shit if you kill the Queen). If they could have just never wasted money and ressources on the main-story and go all-in to create an Open World Sandbox Action-RPG game with a bigger enemy roster like in Monster Hunter, it would have easily been on par with Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring. I'll finish with this: *"Over 1,000 characters inhabit the world [of Dragon's Dogma 2], each with their own unique stories and motivations"* _* - Itsuno *_ Welp, it seems that the story of the NPCs is to fade into existence when you get within 5 feet of them. And their motivation is to vanish when I turn around.

The issue with DD2 is that is wants to be an 'immersive sim' but doesn't go the full way to fully utilise this. All your points are what is holding this game back and takes you out of the experience.

DD2 feels like a large indie development group trying to make a AAA experience, but lacking the talent and budget to make that come true. The first rule of being a game dev is knowing what to cut and what to keep. That is vital and persists throughout the entirety of development. The fact that this experienced, highly-funded studio seemingly failed to know what to cut, what to keep, and what to strengthen, is baffling to me. I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, but for everything I enjoy, there is another thing that pisses me off or just simply disrespects my time as a player.

My overall impression at 40ish hours is that…they didn’t seem to learn a whole lot. The first game is a rough draft for the greatest game ever. Dark Arisen brings the edits. But DD2 is another rough draft. Not a second draft, another rough draft without the edits taken into account. It’s like this, have you ever worked on homework with a kid? They give you an essay to review for them and it’s pretty good, honestly. You’re impressed. So you make your comments and give it back to them. Then they return with the essay mostly the same but with a bunch of added unnecessary shit that doesn’t fix the problems you identified. WHY DO WE NEED PHOTOREALISTIC STEAKS? And why can’t I cook fish, damn

Unpopular opinion but they should have made campsites be able to fast travel to. I don't have as much time as I used to to be walking around getting from point to point anymore. Give me a mount or something.

I like that you're willing to tear this game open and convey the negatives to your viewers, even though your traffic for the past month was heavily dependent on pre release hype.

Definitely waiting for some optimizations before i pick it up. But its a bit sad to hear that they still did not randomize enemy spawns. This was my biggest complaint about DD1, theres always the same goblins off the same road and the same bandits on top of the same hill pushing the same boulder everytime.

just think of this, FS souls games, from demon souls to elden ring, you can still feel all the special design in these games, yet one after another it's more appeal to the mass, DD2 from DD1 changed one thing, that's you can use item in real time, no real improvement in any way...still a nit peaking IP.

The save sysrem is a trash fire. Inn saves are the only way to have a permanent save to fall back on because autosaves overwrite manual saves made via the menu. Inn saves cost in-game money ---- sometimes hilariously absurd prices (2k in Vernworth) ---- and they can fail. Multiple times I've had inn saves fail, and the inn still took my money. So if you use the last of your money to save but the save fails? "Fuck you." I lost 6 hours the other day because of this. I loaded an inn save thinking it would take me back 6 minutes, but instead it took me back 6 hours, then it autosaved immediately after I loaded the inn save. 6 hours gone just like that!

I wouldn't usually comment on reviews like this but I feel it's important to share how helpful reviews like this have been in my decision making process of whether or not to buy this game. To make a long story short, I play on a last gen console and have been considering upgrading just to play this game. I'm a Skyrim fan but after almost 5 years of playing that game I am yearning for a more "Robust" RPG experience. Thus Dragon's Dogma. I followed the hype of the sequel and considered investing in a PS5 to play it alongside a myriad of next-gen gaes like Helldivers. But the release fiasco has made determining whether or not Dragon's Dogma 2 is a sound investment tough. But reviews like this have helped the mitigate the noise and help me come to a conclusion. From what I have heard, and from what reviews like this have helped me determine, Dragon's Dogma 2, apart from the Microtransactions and the obscene pricing and the abhorrent optimization, is a simple glow-up/remake of the original game. Now don't get me wrong, the original game IS fun, I should know, I'm playing it right now. The combat system is phenomenal and the upgrade systems are cool. The character creator especially I found impressive. But investing the $600 plus to get a new console, and the game itself, just for a prettier, sputtier version of the game I'm playing right now just doesn't seem viable. Again, I can't overstate how helpful this review and others like it have been.

I really believe Capcom and Itsuno got the wrong idea about the post release reception and cult following to Dragons Dogma. They made DD2 as if 1 was already an unblemished masterpiece in the eyes of fans and that all the archaic jank and undercooked rpg elements like npcs/story were simply part of the games charm and worth preserving in the sequel. Like no motherfucker thats the kind of stuff we wanted you all to improve on top of the excellent foundation Dragons Dogma provides for an RPG. Instead we basically got a reboot with some bosses swapped out and a worse Dragon fight. The more i think about it the more depressing it gets and I need to just stop and try to enjoy what the game does have. I mean its still Dragons Dogma and that statement really encapsulates what I love and hate about DD2 perfectly.

This is the most even and fair review I have seen yet. I refunded the game on release day because of the state it was in. As it sits now, even if they patched it tonight and people were coming out of the woodwork saying "I'm getting 100fps in the wilderness and 85 in town with a 3080!!" I wouldn't buy it again until after April 1st. The Capcom fiscal year ends on March 31st. They pushed the game out before it was done to get the week 1 sales on the books. That means they knew the game was good enough to be popular and be a good seller, but didn't care to give it or the customer any respect. That being said, if I do buy it again, there are still a lot of features that make it a game that I will always consider "just ok, but the combat is fun". The travel woes are one of them. Skyrim had click to travel fast travel, it had carts like DD2, and it had walking. I used to walk everywhere I went, steering myself to uncovered areas of the map to see what I'd find, but only for a while. That 5th trip out to Dawnstar was the same as the last 4 and I had things to do. I also have a serious problem with the inability to have multiple saves/playthroughs at once. Enough of a problem that it's almost a dealbreaker and if there weren't modders solving this, I might not even pick the game back up. Dragon's Dogma has the curse of the auteur developer all over it and a lot of its biggest warts and problems were added deliberately.

IMO The issue with the microtransactions is not that it affects the game or ruins it, it’s the precedent each new popular game with microtransactions set At first, it was just cosmetics, now you can buy items for a single player game… It’ll keep getting worse, until people stop buying these games. Someday, PC gaming will be like mobile gaming, just because so many people are OK with it

Also with the ox cart... I always wonder why they dont wake you up once they see the trolls etc. The troll is literally on top of you if you wake up

So I was a really big fan of the idea behind Dragons Dogma 1. Execution wise it left a lot to be desired but overall I had fun. The open world wasnt massive but that kind of lent itself to the way you travel. I was fine traversing the world on foot because it wasnt massive. Finding out the game is 4x larger but you still have the same traversal is very disappointing. The you have something I kind of find inexcusable and that is the lack of enemy variety. You had a decade to come up with new ideas for enemies and you basically added like 4 mini bosses and thats it. Mug talks about the areas kind of blend into each other and I completely understand what he means. While they are visually distinct they dont really warrant being separate areas. Dragons Dogma and now DD2 are games made by someone who has a very basic understanding of fantasy and never really explores it further. I would have much preferred 4-5 distinct areas that had their own set of unique monsters and mini bosses. And it sucks because this game fixed my main issue with DD1 and that was leveling. You basically never wanted to experiment with different vocations in DD1 because it could mess up your stats. Now they finally fixed it and gave us new vocations but there isnt new things to fight. There is a very good starting point for a game in DD1 and DD2 but it lacks stuff that feel like they should be there. The game is clearly better than DD1 but I dont really know if it warrants getting if you already played DD1 and got your fill. It kind of lacks overall improvement a sequel should have compared to other games like God of War (2018) into GoW Ragnarok. Like the whole point of a sequel is to do stuff you didnt manage to do before. I could see this game coming out instead of DD1 back in 7th gen and while this game is better than DD1 it isnt by a significant margin.

My hypothesis is that this game was not properly play tested, it’s unexplainable how is so rough around the edges like this. I bet even itsuno never made a full run with it

yeah, it's incomplete without bitterblack isle. one reason more not to buy it at this point.

Do you know what I really wanted them to carry over from the first game the mystic knight

Hey I just discovered your channel. What a great video, exactly what I was looking for. Confirmed some of my fears. Keep up the great content!

One of the first reviews that isn’t 90% about performance and “micro-transactions” I viewed some points as nitpicking but every point was something that genuinely made sense and I can respect that.

Mortismal gaming nailed the criticism better IMO, the lack of iteration and new additions is disappointing. They took stuff out ffs rather than just add the new vocations they replaced and split old ones...just sad and lame.

I just want it to be more optimized. :(

What I noticed story wise is a lot of missable side quests neatly tie into the main plot and really helps it feel complete. I’m 47 hours in and only just got through the Battahl gates, that’s how busy all the missable quests have had me lol

Yeah, it's unfortunate. But this game for me is not as good as dd1 at all. I am on my second playthrough and actually enjoying a bit more than the first playthrough. But the story definitely needed work too. First half of the story honestly seems like it has some huge gaps in it. Like a lot of the early story quests just seemed rushed.

One of my biggest problems is how punishing the loss gauge system is. There are hardly any items to recover it. Sure they gave us camping but I much prefer the first games system. Even if the original system made the game easier it feels real bad when you have to sleep after every boss encounter or can’t extend an adventure in the wilderness due to your health being to low.

I have a 7800x3d and 7900xtx and every time I try to learn a skill the game completely freezes and won't close. I have to reset my PC and wait for like a hour to try and restart the game. Outside of that I have no issues. So 5 hours in I have learned no new skills. Outside of the starter skills.

hey was this recorded with or without ray tracing?

what are your specs?

It's very interesting to see this review. I have today spent the EXACT same amount of time reviewing this game to my friends and we touched on very similar points, with very similar arguments, but you seemed way less embarassed than I was about enjoying the experience, if that makes any sense. DD2 to me is, unfortunately, one of the biggest "What if's" out there and yet, I loved it. Very weird to explain how I obsessively played a game for 60 hours just for my review being me ranting about it for 15 minutes straight and then stopping and saying "hey, but the game's actually good and I liked it very much".

I agree with some points made on this video. Dragon Dogma 2's combat is insane. It's frantic and so much fun and it looks fantastic. The vocation system is also so simple, but extremely flexible to use to allow players try their hand at everything. The map is... interesting. I've never seen a map that leaves giant fogs in the center (lol), but that aside, because of how fast travel is limited, I wonder if an open-world Metroidvania-style map (a bit like Dark Souls) would have worked better for a game like this? That's essentially a totally new game, but shortcuts are good for games based around non-stop backtracking. Good review.

Yeah, some of the quest solutions/locations/markers are terrible. I never would have figured some things out without looking the solution up. And it just felt more like I needed to do so towards the end since it could possibly ruin your playthrough if you screw up in certain ways.

Yup it needs more variety, better dungeons and most importantly, it needs to respect your time. An eternal travel stone is HIGHLY required. These were issues in the first game and mostly addressed with bitterblack isle. Let's hope itsuno isn't too stubborn and lets dlc address these issue at least to some degree Still an awesome game though

You know what sucks too, those lifts that take you arount in the desert area can break if they get hit too much and i had it happened and my whole team died from fall damage and luckily i landed on a rock that was high enough for me to just take a little bit of fall damage. I eneded up getting killed by the harpys but that sucked

I really hope you guys can enjoy this game even with the flaws because no game is perfect. I just purchased The Rise Of Ronin and the graphics are pretty horrific but the gameplay is incredible, so I guess we all need to compromise sometimes.

Having over 100 hours in the game at this point, I can easily say, the game leans heavily on its combat, exploration, and hope that the player wants to level up their main character in every vocation. If you pick one or 2 vocations to care about, and bee-line the main quests, it is a MUCH shorter game. It is not the massive narrative of Baldur's Gate. But it is some of the best exploration and combat ever in the action RPG genre. It is a fantastic base begging for storyline and side content additions, as the base is really good, but it doesn't have lengthy amount of storyline to work through. It relies a ton on side exploration and loving combat and leveling up all the vocations, as well as getting all the best in slot gear for each vocation if you are going to get the most out of it. It also doesn't feed the content to players instead relying on them to explore to find it (as without Youtubing it, there are many side questlines that can be missed or locked out, if you progress certain things too fast or take too long in game time to get to them). The funny thing about the criticism for the game being short, is that DD2 actually is a great example of a game not holding your hand, and making exploration and combat key focuses, instead of giving the player a ton of breadcrumbs to go play checklist style, relying on the player to find the adventures and side-quests through exploring. This has long been asked for, but when presented, some players don't actually seem to want that.

One thing I want to complain about is the lack of romance NPC-related quests to get to know said NPCs. I've done three quests for NPCs that you can romance, and all of them just end with an escort quest where you go from point A to point B with little to no explanation apart from "hey, let's go on a journey." In the first game, you would learn about the NPC's backstory. Take Selene from the first game, for example. Throughout her questline, you gradually learn more about her backstory and why she is the way she is. At 56 hours of playtime, beat the game's True Ending, I didn't find anything like that in the game. The game does fall flat in many aspects, but it doesn't stop it from being enjoyable. I don't regret pre-ordering this game one bit, and I'm still excited to go through my second playthrough despite all its flaws.

I played the orignal multiple times on multiple consoles PS3, 4, Switch and PC Although i appreciate the better designed world and quests and I can see where improvements are. However, I am bored a lot compared to the first game. As you said in the video, a bigger world with more repetiveness makes overall for a less engaging game. There isnt enough variety in random things happening, compared to a Skyrim or GTA/RDR And combat as you said become pretty mindless fast. I am really sad,cause DD1 is one of my favorite games and was hoping it would be an improvement everywhere. But sadly isnt, and most baffling where I was sure they would improve on, the enemy variety department/combat variety, coming from DDO, is severly lacking

Everyone keeps mentioning dark arisen, they were 2 completely different games in the same really one an intense dungeon crawler that highlighted the combat. Second a troubled sprawling open world. They def remade this how they originally wanted to do the first so I love the vision here it’s the base game the way they wanted. Who knows what an expansion will look like.

The thing I hoped they would improve with a sequel is the story and it some how feels worse and shorter than the first one. Sucks how poorly this runs on my PC too. A lot of the flaws of the first game are still here.

Is there a Bitterblack kind of content? Or will it be a 50 or 60 dollar dlc next months too

i agree there's nothing awe inspiring with the vista, which is weird since the first game , with it's same more grounded low fantasy settings, have stuffs like bluemoon tower, or the witch house, or the shadow fort, which works as a pay off for getting to those places. i guess ancient battleground is kinda nice but it's nothing compared to that griffin battle in the first dd1

I play on a 3070ti and I've seen the frame drop twice in 12 hours of playthrough inside a big city. I'm playing on high settings on Ultrawide. No problems at all.

Game is too easy and enemies are too same-y. Discovery falls flat 10h into the game.

One comment: I find it a bit unfair to compare the world dungeons (or caves) with BBI. BBI is a DEDICATED Dungeon-AddOn. No wonder it is good. That's something I certainly EXPECT of a deciated dungeon-AddOn. You need to compare the world-dungeons of DD 2 with those of DD 1. And then, I must say, the dungeons and cvaes in DD 2 are WAY better. (There are realy only 3 dungeons in the open world in DD 1: Catacombs, Watergod-Altar and pre-dragon Everfall. And, except of the catacombs, maybe, they're not THAT big. soulflayer-Canyon , Bluemoon-Tower and Witchwood, although technically dungeons, because you can't set a Portcrystal dirctly there, are all open-world-areas. And I even don't consider The shadow-fortress a dungeon at all. It's just a dedicated story-area, wher some addtional sidequests will occur. But aside from accessable goblin-holes, if you have the according size, doesn't have anything interesting. And the holes are also quite boring. They can give you 2 shortcuts, though. But I find even the trip to bluemoon-tower more interseting than the shadowfortress itself. (including the back-caves.) BTW: BBI was often critizised (not rightful imho, but still) for a repetiv design. It IS a bit repetiv, but, there are several DETAILS, which are different. And because of this fact, it's not rightful to critizise it. I find that quite interesting. And most player aggree, including me, that BBI is one of the best dungeons in games. Despite its flaws, I have over 1400 h in DDDA and only beaten the game once. And not beaten BBI, yet. And I can predict, that I will have someting like that in DD 2 as well, eventually, especially, if there will a similar dungeon as BBI, which Isuno more or less confirmed, that somthing like that might come. regarding Ox-Cars: Yes, it can get annoying. For that, I recommend a thing, though: You need to be trickster and play it to rank 6 (I believe.) You can get an augment, then, wehre the likehood ofr getting attacked on quick-ride by oxcar is significantly lowered. And the Lifts in Bathal? I don't think, they're boring. I think, they're realistic... For example: You can let a pawn call it. And while that is in case, you can man a balista, and try shooting some harpies. My first try to use that thing was a desaster: I saw a griffin on the way. I myself was a trickster. But before I could think, the griffin attacked, onehitted and destroyed the entire lift and we fell to our doom. Thats a scene, you won't forget that fast. The second time, I just castet my illusion and distracted every damn harpy. Meanwhile, my pawn. (which is an archer at the moment.) took the opportunity to do some target-practise. Just using, and being there? (regardless iif calling or riding) THAT's boring imho. That said, It WOULD be boring, if you wouldn't have the joice to not do it yourself. But since you have that, you can do something else instead of just waiting.

They stripped out quality of life aspects like being able to move all materials to storage, being able to change equipment from storage. Just some bizarre choices that shouldn’t have been removed. Besides that enemy variety is lacking, armor system has been simplified, only 4 skills per vocation. NPCs are still brain dead. You’ll break out of jail and the guard right outside won’t react at all.

I love this review. It finally gives me a good idea of its pros and cons. For me, waiting for a sale and some patches is the best choice. Thanks for diving deep into this.

This more I played this game the more I disliked it. There is not enough depth and variety to the combat or the exploration for the size of world they built.

You're exactly right about the world looking a bit boring. It looks realistic and grounded (with Vermund they were inspired by English medieval country side) but we definitely should have gotten some kind of location that feels more otherwordly and high fantasy. The game is just begging for that. It's super sad to see so much potential wasted.

Casting a spell for like 10 sec and doing 10 dmg, is anything but fast and the best ever created in the field.

10:17 Easy fix for this is adding sidequests that task you with clearing out the main roads and destroying monster dens/bandit camps. Obtained by asking the nearby settlement authorities. The former would significantly decrease the amount of combat encounters on main roads, and decrease the % Chance for oxcart ambushes. The latter would completely remove any combat encounters in the main roads and drastically decrease % Chance for oxcart ambushes. This adds more opportunities for worldbuilding and side stories by making these monster dens and bandit camps have unique monsters and humanoid NPCs, respectively. 14:45 Easy fix is make the structures have *two* lifts just like real world ski-lifts. One going away, one coming back. Its a hell of a lot more realistic in-world, too. Someone put in the effort of building this impressive piece of infrastructure, they're going to cover their bases and make the system more efficient.

DD2 with good dungeons, more varied progression, better writing (Bioware pleeease), and another whole kingdom (elf or dwarf) would be marvelous. Perhaps with a separate "dimension", like a void or hell or underdark or magic space opera. The biggest compliment I can give to DD2 is that it feels like a small carving-out of a much larger and detailed world, in the same way that Central Yharnam is a carving-out of a larger city. It takes incredible talent to give me the feeling for a *world* what Bloodborne gave me for just a *city* .

Memes aside... Did you, perhaps, notice anything odd about the title screen? A lot of the complaints about the open world design, apparently, hinge on something... very unusual for a game like this. There's a little surprise buried very deep into it. And if you haven't seen it, I think it changes a lot of the context.

I have a 1070 and 8gb ram and it runs fine on my pc this proformance complaint is blown way out of proportion it runs well only fram drop o get is on occasion in the main city of Vermont in the smaller towns its fine

One thing I don’t really see reviews talk about is just how awesome the physics are in this game. My thief pawn implicated a bandit from a pretty tall rock and they just straight up died. Or when a fighter smacks a goblin and they go flying. Even on sorcerer they way thundermine repels enemies really provides such satisfying feedback. The first had some really spongy enemies and so for the first 20 levels or so the combat had very little feedback. This game does a wonderful job of letting you feel the weight of your attacks even at low levels.

I do so much fighting I actually did not mind the break the lifts gave. A little relaxation and enjoying the environment

I've just maxed out the Archer vocation and I love the game so far. Would love to try out the mage. But hell, those outfits for mages look frickin horrendous compared to the other classes. I was hoping they would get rid of those horrible gandalf outfits in the second game. But of course, they didn't. No way am I going to put those ugly outfits on my hunky Arisen.

Combat is good but severely held back by lack of enemy variety (esp since its mostly recycled) and overall, after finishing both 1 and 2 that's really all DD is for me. Every other system is flawed and annoying/half baked could of been far better, and I find the world bland and generic.

BTW I run the game on a 2060, and it runs fine. No crashes and few graphical bugs (such as the stone texture in one spot of one cave never loading.)

I love the disguise system, such as a simple yet great system

The re start was in the first game. It is my only real complaint.

Love, loving the game so far, my only complaint so far is where are the horses? 😆 Just like Starfield with no ground vehicles, makes no sense. We got domesticated Oxen but no Horses??? 😆

Its janky, its unoptimized for pc and thats unacceptable But god damn is it fun

I really love Dragon Dogma 2 but to me its biggest flaw is that the world doesnt feel lived in. Dont get me wrong, the world looks cool, i like its aesthetic choices and all, but there is so little npc interactions and most characters are empty shells made for you to carry on the story. Quests sure can really be open ended but they lack any good writting to make me feel engaged in them (and im not necessarly talking about bioware/witcher style of dialogue), people really do not react to you doing stuff in the world for the most part. Sure i was arrested when crossing the border illegally, it was great but when i ended up in prison i did not had to sneak my way out, nobody remotely cared, npcs did not even register i was here. I accidentally killed one npc and raised him back, he didnt seem bothered at all either. Ox cart drivers dont give a single fuck about watching 4 dudes fighting a 5m cyclop 3m from their nose. You can litteraly steal everything whithout any sort of consequences. I really feel like the world is a barebone sand box made for you to explore cool areas and fight baddass monsters but in defense of DD2, ive barely seen a game this good at that.

Only level 15 and yes, its a sad great game. Its like they worked on combat first and didnt have timr or have up on enemy variety, level design and quests/npcs. As of the dev team was distracted(moved)to another project or ran our of time. Its clear that their silence before the launch, with the micro transactions, so "unjapanese"and that strive vor perfection that we see in a game like elden ring. This is the sad affair of this game.corpo greed just sucks the life out of creativity

This is the most articulate and point-of-fact critique of this game on youtube

This review was beautifully written. I really enjoyed the first game so I'm excited to give this one a try as well.

Having played the first one I feel very dissapointed in the lack of vocations in dragons dogma two. It honestly feels like they split strider to have one more vocation than the original. I feel like more vocations would've helped with the variety issues the game seems to have.

I ain’t playing until they double mask every character in the game. None of that dragon covid for me.

Mort's review today was pretty damning. First time i've ever heard him disappointed with a game.

The og dragon dogma is small game that make the traveling not that bad

5:41 He basically explained what made RPGs great back in the day that since have been ruined by modern games adding too many quality of life features. This exactly explains the experience of playing EverQuest back in the day and there hasn't been a real modernization of these types of features within a RPG for over 20 years. And this is EXACTLY what a lot of us RPGers want in a game. So I'm glad we finally have a game where adventure, travel, and exploration are major parts of the game and it's not just about combat and doing batch quests.

Getting sub 60fps in the first outpost given my hardware (4k, 4090, 12600, 64gb DDR4) then I think we need to be super super super upfront at the state of this release. I can get better performance in Cyberpunk 2077 with Pathtracing enabled.

I dont think any dungeon of any RPG can measure up to Dark Arisen its so well made despite asset reuse genuinely impressive

4070S here, 100+ FPS in Vernworth with framegen on, no added latency.

We need to defeat the brine in the next game

6:15 that’s a good point and honestly the only other game that has ever done that is BOTW so much freedom in how you approach the quest puzzles

I can't stop playing. One of the best games ever, for me.

Solid fair review, gj.

I love the game but goddamn I wish it had good writing, it could have made it the best rpg ever. I basically did all the available stuff outside of the story before doing any of the main missions, when I started doing the story I liked it well enough. Finally finish the story missions in Vermund genuinely excited to see where the story is going, only for the story to immediately end about 2 hours later with zero lead up. So disappointing that they didn’t put more time into the story and characters.

Id mich rather run through an open world like this than watch almost any cut scene. I love the travel system in this game. Makes port crystals special as well as ferry stones.

The only problem to me is the ox-cart. Once you start using abilities to move up and down hills and mountains the game sort of "unlocks" a new open world where everything is connected and you have almost no limits (this things are intended going very high you can find treasures, griffin nests and things like that). At first i thought it was a hallway based game, but i found out it isn't at all, and i continue finding new areas and caves were i least expect them. Ox interruptions are terrible after 3 times and there should be more enemy variety, even thou I did never find myself bored by combat. Also the fact that ealking down a mountain feels LIKE walking down a fucking mountain is insane to me, never felt anything like that. Also, am i the only one who felt the open world opened three times? The first one out of the prison, the second one around vernworth adn the third one around Battahl. Every time I was like "oh, so that's how big the open world is", but then it opened more and more.

I could not agree more with your review. Dragon´s Dogma 2 has amazing "first times" and absurdly annoying "28th times". I also understand that they wanted to stay true to their grounded medieval fantasy world building but would it hurt to have few jawdropping places? I am not asking for Elden Ring 2, we don´t need those intimidating epic insanely huge buildings and towers, caves and what not everywhere but.. some? 3 maybe? This game is definitely one of those love-hate relationships.

I gotta say I'm a little disappointed in this game but enjoying it.mainly disappointed that it doesn't seem to improve on the first it just seems like a better skin and just as patheticly buggy as the first.this should be a refined experience but instead it's exactly the same as the first.

This is the best take on this game I’ve seen. It nails both points: a game with so much potential and such baffling decisions made.

I accidentally cast Meteoron on a Cyclops after killing it with Maelstrom. I didn't get to loot it because the meteors literally just blasted it into nothing but a shattered spinal cord and an ash shadow on the wall. 10/10. GOTY.

For the first 10 hours this game was 10/10 After playing for 20 hours i can say this, it’s very undercooked Combat is very fun but there is no challenge at all After i leveled up i feel like I’m playing some diablo where I don’t think about enemies anymore Quests are super boring Enemies are all the same Open world doesn’t feel like an open world and more like a bit level It’s a good 7/10 game but not more than that

I played just fine 1440p with rtx 3070 and I7 13700 kf

I am impressed, this is the first “review” that really sounds like it came from some on who really played the game. Not someone with a rushed play through taking notes to confirm for a check list review.

I don't really like this review because reviewer concentrated so much of the video on "problems" with fast travel and ox carts and so on, which should be mentioned, but for other players, like me it is not problem at all. What is missed - 1. Explanation about variety of vocations, their differences and how they completely can change gameplay experience. Like it changes gameplay and strategy so much, that going for the same road 10th time and killing the same group of goblins still fun. 2. Cool additions to some cllasses - like archer can slide and shoot at the same time or kick and flip in the air in order to avoid enemy attacks. 3. You can assign missions for your pawn and people when hire your pawn can complete them. You can use the feature to trade with friends. 4. Pawns dialogs was improved so much comparing to the firs DD. Pawns can help you reach some locations. Pawn's AI in general is very good in terms of pathfinding and verticality. 5. You can still find cool gear in chests. Even early on. 6. Camp mechanics, that you can cook different meat and it gives you some bonuses. 7. At least to mention about new types of enemies and mini bosses, that you can find in simple caves. 8. Night time is much more dungerous, you can meet new mini bosses only at night. On the other hand at night easier to spot some treasures . 9. World design is so good, it can lead you to secret places and locations without yellow ladders if you watchful. 10. Sphinx is like a game gem. Not mandatory boss, but people who find it, would be really surprised. 11. Pawns now can learn speciall skills like - elven language, healing other pawns and player with herbs and potions, crafting items on the go and so on.. 12. There is a photo mode) it is not really good, but still. Like without all these details, the whole review can be described: The combat is best in RPG genre, fast travel is limited to ox carts and port crystals, you have to run a lot on your foot and along the way kill a lot of monsters, it is repetitive. There is no check list to do like in Ubisoft games. Story is not impressive. Game didn't make a huge improvement compare to the first DD. BTW - Performance is not a problem on consoles. Even on my mid PC it runs smoothly on medium settings and looks good. City performance was improved after patch. Conclusion - if you like to explore, to go on real adventures, not afraid of fast travel limitations then try this game out. On top of that it is almost bugs free (only performance issues).

So they didn't fix the worst part of the first game :/ is the inventory management still a nightmare? Because it was in DD1, terrible design to make weight matter in an action game but then fill the game with trash items