According to a different review, DD2 has at least 2 endings and there is a big difference between them. It was compared to Sekiro, where you can choose to betray Owl or not, which can add new areas to the game if you decide to betray him. (at least that how i understood it, i haven't played Sekiro) And one ending is apparently clearly superior. I suspect you ended up getting the worse ending. Maybe your opinion on the story changes a bit if you get the other ending, idk.
the story you told about losing two pawns, not having the camping kit, finding a rift and dying at the end of it all was a great way to sell the rpg experience
I still fondly remember my first time in Bitterblack Isle, all my pawns getting sliced by Death when he popped in in the middle of a big fight, leaving me stranded alone with low health, no curatives, and very far from any way to rest and restock
Unfortunately that was one of the things that made me decide not to buy the game lol but clearly the game has a unique design that a lot of people gel with
In dd1 I spent ages traversing the mountains to devilfire grove. I encountered a Griffin and it carried me up a mountain. My pawns chased me up the mountain while I fought the griffin, when I killed we scaled down the mountain where we were then attacked by a cyclops. The cyclops kicked me off the mountain where I fell and landed on a small platform. My warrior pawn staggered them and then got knocked off the mountain by a goblin which I could see as I was trying to scale the cliff side. The pawn landed on a platform by me as I was walking up, then following them came falling the cyclops. I slowly watched him as he fell all the way down flat on the ground where he died 😂 anyways, short break fighting smaller enemies, made it to devilfire grove where I then had to barely survive to complete the goal of reaching the castle. Shit was really fun. Unfortunately the mission I made the journey to complete was awful and made me fight FOUR cyclops
Dying at your archer aiming a strong shot for a whole minute and ALL the pawns scurrying to stand right in front of you in a straight line blocking the view...
Isn't that realistic though? Why would your frontline fighters know exactly where to stand to allow the archer unimpeded LoS? that's not realistic. It would be up to the Archer to find better angles
Sounds like a perfect "I have a day off and want to hide myself at home and play a game" and terrible "I have some free time, I want to play a game" type of deal.
I love the ideas of DD the combat the, pawn system, and the monster designs but I usually don't have long periods to play. So Souls and MonHun become my go to style of game.
@@WarriorCicada MonHun was exactly what I had in mind and you just made me realize why I can't seem to properly get into new games. They take too much for me to get into and I need a lot of time to get my head into it. At least with MonHun, I can maximize an hour per day if I want to, especially MHW/MHWI
Actually when the original came out my time was split between school and other games me and buddies were playing, but I was playing it while they played Skyrim on and off and I’d like change my hair cut depending on how long it’s been since I played and my time is split now while I play dd2 with work and work. But my point is, i think playing dragons dogma is like watching a tv series like the last kingdom or game of thrones since you’ll never see a damn loading screen in dd2 especially it’s like that. So I treat it as such I can casually sit down 30 minutes to an hour and it for real feels like I’m watching some kind of filler episode lol and if I reach a interesting plot point and I have to get off it makes me want to play that much more or like when I get a new power or armor oh boy it makes me want to get off work so bad and keep watching/playin. I feel like there are 4 main characters with the pawns hot damn I love this game and I’m glad it’s only an experience you can have in dogma. No fast travel really puts you in. No spoilers but i was in like a really cool situation last night. I had fought a monster over my power level the previous night and lost my hired pawns so hired new ones and called it a night after ox carted to where I thought my next quest was going to be my cart took me somewhere completely new and unexpected the journey back is where I realized I really felt like a person in the land of dragons dogma 2. I couldn’t fast travel back (lacked funds used my last couple hundred gold to make gold through my next quest) so I slept in the Oxcart had no stones and I was surrounded by black map and had to legit find my way back to town and encountered a vicious journey and i had such a determination to get back alive because I leveled my vocation up twice and really wanted to see what I unlocked not to mention the loot I found on the way back. I was actually having to be cautious because I was way out of my element and most things would overwhelm me or 1 shot me or too much for me and my party to take on, so I had to camp a lot and take different routes and when the director says he made a world that’s interesting to explore he weren’t kiddin lmao, it took 3 days to get back but when I did I was a badass who was rich and that felt like an adventure and all that because I took the wrong oxcart and I didn’t even do a quest 😂 it was spectacular.
It feels worse to play though, imo. The controls are much more responsive on the original in terms of character movement. They added a lot of heavy momentum to your character in the sequel. It's unfortunately a common problem these days, though I feel like I'm going crazy because I never see anyone else point it out.
Your capacity to review a game thoroughly without spoiling any of the secrets, surprises or story aspects is immaculate and completely unparalleled by any other reviewer, in my opinion.
@MaximilianReyCartwright Yeah, that's my main concern as well. That and enemy variety. I want gameplay to feel engaging and rewarding not repetitive and easy.
@@MaximilianReyCartwrightsee, I worked for my giant dragon/cyclops/griffin melting tornado. I play sorc mainly, so its not like combat was ever "fast" for me. Focused my pawns and on being distractions, stand in the back, and live out my power fantasy with my single favorite magic system in a game.
The game is designed to be enjoyed by anyone, not just tryhards, besides the game isn't just about combat and being challenged, there's more to it, exploration for one, plus who knows how challenging the end game grins will be?
i think if you pre order the deluxe edition you get a DD1 soundtrack so perhaps that changes the poor music selection? although that shouldn't be locked behind a paywall.
@@HPLovesCraftsCat Well, the reason Into Free was removed with Dark Arisen was because of licensing issues. There’s just no way they went out of their way to relicense the song for some bonus content. But as others have said, modders will likely be the saviors we need.
What does this have to do with souls games? Can we please stop ascribing difficulty and dying in video games with this franchise? They aren't even difficult games to begin with, they are just what normies consider to be hard.
@@ghoulishgoober3122 That's what I meant, majority of video games nowadays are made mind-numbingly easy so no wonder when a moderately difficult game like Dark Souls comes around it's the hardest thing majority of people have ever played.
@@ghoulishgoober3122these games are just mindless hack and slashers. if you want actual difficult and skilled combat then go play the far superior game :monster hunter world
@@yaqubebased1961fr, its crazy how it never came even close to mainstream, that game is crazy good. Most "cult classic" games are really rough games with cool Ideas, DD has great ideas and is well executed as well. Wth happened?
@@erickfw197idk, probably because it has major downsides, which can be dealbreakers to most people. I started DD1 5 times, partly bc Ratatoskr is so enthusiastic about it, my longest attempt was like 12 hours and I wouldn't play more even for money. Tried out diffrent classes, but the selling point(combat) never grabbed me and everything else is pretty bad.
its just normies hopping on the bandwagon. sad tbh all the OGs remember like you said how the game was shat on constantly but now that DD2 is out its "OMG BEST GAME EVER GUYS GOTY " Smh.
@@HPLovesCraftsCat and then its going to be shat on for not being what they thought it would be lmao. Every time I see anyone even remotely enthusiastic about DD2 I tell them to go play the first one lol.
Thats disheartening to hear about the combat getting easy quickly and low amount of big monsters. because thats exactly the thing ( outside of the extremely empty open world with no PoIs, just the same enemies spammed every 20 seconds ) that turned me away from finishing Dragon Dogma 1. Water Temple being a primary example. Just spamming lightning at the ogre ( while having no pawns ) made me feel like i was cheesing the game and these footages definitely show the same thing. If i end up picking up this game sure as hell not going to hire any pawns
Looks like a cash-in retread. Which is bizarre, considering how LONG this has taken. People hate on Zelda games for changing their formula over the years, but I think I'd prefer that vs NO change at all.
That's really sad to hear, was hoping there would be a lot of different encounters to test the combat on. Was concerned seeing the same enemies over and over in the previews but chalked it up to them not spoiling stuff
@@mike990 You say "how long this has taken", but remember that it hasn't been in development for the entire 12-year gap between the first game and now. It's had a normal dev cycle from what I understand.
@@mike990capcom should have def made a modern, open world (empty), generic RPG game instead of sticking to what made their cult hit worth playing. retread? sure. cash grab? cmon now
Perfectly elaborated the positive and negative points. Making it clear that no matter how good the game may be, it is impossible to make something perfect. Best Review online. Cheers 🤘🏻
Great review, but something that I wanted to touch on: Rat says DD1 had Hard Mode to help alleviate steamrolling, and this is 100%, concentrated, unadulterated misinformation. Hard Mode in DD1 INARGUABLY makes steamrolling even *worse*, because nothing in the game gains increased HP or defenses, just increased Stagger/Knockdown resist. So if it took you 3 hits to kill a goblin outside of Hard Mode, it will still take 3 in Hard Mode. However, everything in Hard Mode grants *dramatically* more EXP, AND enemies drop absolutely preposterous amounts of gold. The only 2 things Hard Mode does to limit you is: Increase YOUR damage taken (HARD MODE DOES NOT INCREASE ENEMY ATTACK RATINGS, all it does is multiply incoming damage TO THE ARISEN, it has NO EFFECT on pawns) and adds a multiplier to the stamina use of skills. Sure, this means you need to take fewer hits and you can't spam skills as much (without curatives), but otherwise you will kill ALL enemies at EXACTLY the same rate, but receive dramatically more Gold and EXP. This means you literally always have more money than you could possibly know what to do with, and you level up significantly faster than someone playing on Normal. So Hard Mode has a *somewhat* harder first few hours, maybe 3 or 4, but by the same point in playtime you could easily be double the level of other people playing on Normal. You will overlevel WAY faster in Hard Mode, and you will become a steamroller in half the time. It's a long reply because Hard Mode is just kinda strange in DD1, I like this review a lot, but it's worth knowing that Hard Mode does not solve any of the issues Rat brings up here, it makes them all much worse. Once you struggle through the first couple hours, you'll overlevel so quickly that you can be melting big monsters in under 20 seconds before you even reach the mid-game. That being said, I don't care much about this problem: I have over 2000 hours in DD1, and all I wanted from DD2 is more Dragon's Dogma. It looks like that's exactly what I'm getting!
Yeah, one of the big cheese strats that most veteran players start DD1 with is to use Hard Mode and throwblasts on BBI mobs to skip the first 50-ish levels of the game, removing most of the early-game pain of playing Hard Mode. If a future Hard Mode in DD2 also includes the massive buff to coin drops, that would also invalidate the money struggles that he mentioned having until the endgame
The stagger and knockdown values being increased really fucks with the balance of certain skills and attacks as well. Sucks the fun out of the game when you really enjoy playing warrior.
Regarding hard mode, that was actually added as a free DLC for Dragon's Dogma 1, it was not in the launch version of the game. We might end up getting the same thing for DD2 at some point in the future (hopefully).
And as the dude before me said, hard mode in the original actually would become easier than normal, wolves would literally drop 10k gold and you could buy easily all the op gear early.
Dude i totally agree with the performance of Grigori in the first game, it was the best dragon concept and execution I've seen in a game. The scene where he says "Now.... choose..." gave me chills, the voice and delivery is absolutely perfect👌 not to mention the final battle with him, that was incredible
i think less sign posting is great, the problem i have is when it goes to the opposite end of the spectrum, where it becomes equally unlogical and annoying. like getting a delivery quest, but no location, no disctrict, no region, no town, just a name of a npc you have never met. This is exatly like sign posting completely immersion breaking, because an interaction like that just wouldn't happen, it's not realistic. That to me is just as bad as yellow paint on random spots on a mountain.
yeah, 100% agreed. Signposting is good, but a lot of people don't like is being treated like an idiot. "just paint everything yellow, even if it makes no sense, because, first, we don't think the players are smart enough. Second, it is easier to implement." I read a tweet once where someone said, signposting is in a similar spot to CGI in movies. bad CGI gets noticed immediately, that's how the "practical vs CGI"-debate started. (side note: This debate was started by the consumers, not the industry professionals, because ideally the practical and CGI team want to work together to get the best of both worlds) But the good CGI? Nobody notices it, because it's meant to blend in perfectly. Signposting has to be obvious enough to be picked up by player, but not too obvious that the players realizes that it is signposting. Portal 2 is a perfect example of this. If you run through the test chambers, you have the very obvious, "hand-holdy" signposting, but it makes sense, since this is a test chamber for controlled experiments. but once you move beyond these chambers and into the ruins and destroyed parts of the facility those more obvious signposting techniques gets replaced with more "natural" ones. such as using lamps or flames to highlight an important area or the direction you should go.
@@mike990 DD1 had a notoriously troubled development cycle and was effectively only 40% finished AT BEST due to lack of funding for the enormous scale of the original design document. The director spent decades pushing for it since the 90s, and then years more after pushing to get the funding to properly finish the game. The fact DD2 happened AT ALL is a miracle. It's not a case of hacks not caring and pushing out slop, but one guy spending his entire career trying to get his dream game made.
It’s not a miracle it happened. It was on itsunos wishlist of games to make. When he was going to quit capcom, they pulled him in and let him make whatever they wanted
Was introduced to the original Dragon’s Dogma from your old videos and got it on your recommendation. Very glad to hear the second has held up to the quality of the first and excited to get into it!
A small detail to get fixated on, but I just LOVE this boss health bar. I love how the design looks and that it's constantly animated. I love how it shakes when you attack it. I love how when you deal a significant chunk of damage you get this effect that makes it look like you're literally beating the colour out of the health bar. This is the kind of health bar I'd expect from a good fighting game, not a 3rd person RPG. I'm not even playing the game, but even just looking at it when you beat the crap out of the monster is so satisfying! I swear, Capcom has THE BEST people when it comes to creating satisfying combat systems (Dragon's Dogma, Monster Hunter, Street Fighter). I would've never even thought you could improve the feeling of combat this much by making an awesome health bar, incredible!
@@terrycruise-zd5tw I don't think you understood what I was saying at all if that's your conclusion. Reading with comprehension is a useful skill you know?
The only thing that sucks for me is the lack of challenge… I’m a whole ass adult I need a game that’s going to make me think during combat I don’t like being over powered
Excellent profile, very useful, thank you. I had a similar wandering at night situation in DD1 (though mine was largely positive) and I'm glad it's fully possible here.
Wow, this Review was one of the most honest ones i've seen. Sometimes fanboing over certain aspects, but always having a critical view on things and mentioning the negative even in positive aspects. I love that. Thank you for this Review.
Really appreciate your approach to spoilers in this review. I’ve been avoiding most coverage of the game, as I want to go in as blind as possible, but I still really wanted to hear someone’s experience with it. This feels like the perfect review for me/
I enjoyed the first game, my hope is that this sequel will improve and perfect some of the concepts from the original. Also I’m a bit upset to hear that the game quickly loses its difficulty and the lack of new monsters. Edit: As an outward player I’m happy to hear about the resting mechanic.
I really appreciated this review. The only one I’ve seen really point out how this game is a glorified remaster of the original albeit more expansive and polished.
i think the problem with DD2 (and DD1) isn't the game itself per se. It's that the game design is inherently divisive, you'll either love it or hate it. Hence the fluctuating scores across various channels.
@@Macheakoconsole at least doesn't offer an easy way to refund. I swear I heard of playstation giving away refunds for some of the particularly bad games that released in recent times, but it's not the standard
You're right: based on that first 2 minutes, as a fan of the original, I'm basically already sold. Iterate, not innovate, is fine. Thanks, I'll let this review keep running so you get a view, and I'll leave a like, but thats all I needed to know!
hard mode for DDDA was a dlc that came out like a year after the release considering how little innovation there seems to be, I'd totally expect them to do the EXACT same thing this time, even carrying over the stupid ass gold drop bonus thing it had in the first game (which was an awful economy-destroying feature) I'd still be playing on it though, who am I kidding
Thanks for not wasting my time with the intro. just played Dragons Dogma 1 this year and put about 120 hours into it doing everything. Just wanted more of that. (pained to hear about that intro though)
It is true it needs to be made differently like in GTA 6 you take taxis, but you can't speed time up, possibility of encountering car crashes, shoot outs and shi idk i would add random shi that can happen for that can make the game great.
Bad take imo. Some games are designed arround fast travel and unbearable slogs without it. The game has to have major mechanics arround travelling/progression to make not having fast travel mean sth. Games as old as FF6 on the SNES had "Fast Travel" after unlocking the Airship.
I still miss the Into Free main menu to this day. I come back to the song on youtube all the time. Excellent review as expected. I'm very much looking forward to jumping in as soon as I can. I'm glad it seems this was exactly what I and a lot of other DD fans were hoping for, and I appreciate your very detailed and spoiler free take on it. I'm definitely of the same mind that I would love to have further expansions, DD hits such a great and particular niche, I would love for it to grow, so long as it dosent overly do so and kind of spoil the magic.
"Whine a little and gods will give in" im joking ofk, but catched your stream going through poeple's demo impression videos joking around not being given such and about Ratatoskr. Great fun. I have a feeling you knew at the moment :)))) And now i am going to watch the review. Keep it up ;3
The more of this game I experience, the more conflicted I feel. For every improvement from the original, there's a baffling flaw to balance it out. I just don't understand why vocations are limited to four skills each. It makes archer and thief feel like half a vocation each, severely limits your defensive options as a fighter by taking away separate skills for the sword and shield, and pretty much ruins sorcerer (half as many spell slots, on top of fewer and less interesting spells). Want to play as a melee-centric magick archer and focus mostly on magic daggers? You can't, it's bow-only. Oh, and of course mystic knight is just gone. Itsuno said he wanted to see more variety in which armor people wear, but fashion is somehow more restrictive now thanks to the removal of separate clothing slots. Plus, a lot of the (subjectively) cooler helmet designs are locked to fighter, when there's really no reason for warriors to not be able to wear them.
Why did I get the most intense deja vu when you started talking about the chimera? When have you talked about the chimera before?! Driving me crazy lol
You touched on difficulty briefly - monsters getting too easy too quickly, lack of hard mode or ng+ scaling, as well as the long journeys without resting and poor planning really putting you in a tight spot. You paint a picture that the difficulty of individual combat encounters is fairly tame, and you could win without interacting with the systems much, just hacking away. But the nighttime story tells me difficulty comes from clearing these encounters well, losing as little health as possible, to actually reach your destination. Would you say that using the mechanics of your vocation well, using elemental exploits, party composition, etc etc is required not for individual fights, but for a longer journey?
Man, your story about getting caught in the wild at night has fully convinced me to buy this game day 1. That sounds like a wonderful time. I love situations like those and I also love walking or riding a mount to destinations. I rarely use fast travel, unless I’m at the end of the game and cleaning up a few lingering quests. Can’t wait to sink my teeth into this game!
I was going to buy this based on your review but removed it from my wishlist upon finding out that the game has microtransactions. Was this apparent in the review copy you received and did it influence the score at all?
@@rikiponcho Yes, I've since learned that the mtx are mostly useless (except for the fast travel I imagine). After Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 I had come to expect that DD2 would also be mtx-free, which might have been a bit of wishful thinking on my part. Still, it did put a damper on a game release that I was looking forward to. Now I'll wait a week and see how/if reports of performance on pc improves.
Man I am so HYPED. Honestly glad to hear it's more of the same because DD1 was such a great experience. Can't wait to hire your guys' waifu pawns! (Mines an archer hope she gets picked)
I would probably be more excited about "Dragon's Dogma but better" if I hadn't replayed the original so many times since it came out. And there's no way the game comes out with only one save file and no way to ever restart, that would be preposterous.
I really think they needed to allow you to equip more skills. It really neutered the versatility of the magic classes. Being a sorcerer who only knows 4 spells kinda misses the point.
Huh. Rather disappointing to hear about the lack of enemy variety which has been echoed in multiple reviews. And the lack of difficulty. I wonder if the devs or mods could fix that. More difficulty, enemy variety, and some kind of scaling threat. As of now I don't feel like buying yet. This sounds like a $40 deal instead of $70.
A few weeks ago, in preparation for DD2's launch, I started my 3rd attempt at playing Dragon's Dogma and finally got hooked! Level 30 strider and exploring other vocations. Now wondering if I should finish my playthrough now or switch to DD2 at launch.
I'd like a little more clarity on the extent of play. From the 80 hours you mentioned, what level of completion would you assume? And was that the combination of trying different vocations and completing the game with them?
So like DD1 you intentionally have to use starting gear/use less paws to make the game a chalenge past midpoint I was really hoping that wasn't the case but eh, it'll do
Hearing you talk about the quest reminds me a lot of the side quests in Octopath Traveler 2. Not so much the "trying to get you to fail" bit so much as OT2 gives you a big tool box and, after some introductory easier side quests, really takes the guard rails off. Someone gives you a quest and it is up to you to figure out who, what, when, where, how, and which abilities you'll need to make use of to achieve a result.
17:53 love to see that even in a game with such a focus on your allies as dragons dogma the npcs will still do their best to not get out of the damn way
Mmmmmm. Sounds like it just has all the problems i had with dd1 and didn’t really add anything. Low monster variety is a huge blow since that was already one of my major complaints and honestly was the thing i was expecting them to nail most. In a lot of ways it sounds like i didnt get any of the improvements i was hoping for, and instead lost stuff. Ill need more convincing at this point.
If they add a Hard Mode, they need to be careful about how they execute it. I don't know if anyone else shares this opinion, but DD1's Hard Mode was really an Easy Mode in disguise. Sure, enemies pretty much killed you in one hit in the first few hours, but on the flip side, EVERY enemy now had a chance to drop a 10,000G sac. So by the time you reach Gran Soren you'd have hundreds of thousands of Gold. So you were never strapped for cash in Hard Mode, and had easy and cheap access to the best equipment and could hoard many healing items for your pawn to carry. Also, I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed when they confirmed that character growth would be the same as the first game. I would've much preferred if they took a page out of Monster Hunter's book, and just make the character stats revolve around the weapons and equipment exclusively. Open world action games like this don't lend themselves well to a traditional leveling system in my opinion.
Just play them all I had fun exploring all the vocations. Hard mode is hard the gear wasn't gon change anything too. Game was mixed and they put a lot to the dragon fight and scene lol. Dragons dogma 2 will be perfected ish
Let's gooo!!! When I woke up today I just knew these would be dropping. All I did today was vaguely float in the youtube space, not really being all too productive knowing that these would drop any instant. Let's goooo!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥 Appreciate you keeping all footage spoiler free
