I'm so glad I got a refund on Steam because it didn't work on my Deck. I still to this day can't afford a PS5 just yet, so I'm just super happy with myself for not rushing into this game. As a huge DD1 fan, learning more about DD2 is really making me so happy that I'm waiting while this comes right down in price before I get it. As I write this I'm redoing DD1 one a new PSN account, just need to grind to 200 and speedrun the game qnd I have the platinum once again. Also I should have seen it coming after Capcoms Resident Evil reimaginings.
I loved the "breaks" in the quests, where the game kind of tells you to go do what *you* want, and continue that story later. I wanted more of those breaks, not less. Fairly often you are thrown from one urgent quest into another, and have difficulty getting away from the quests to enjoy the adventure on your own. That is where the game really shines.
I feel like the biggest problem is that in DD1 you're chosen by the dragon for showing courage, will, and tenacity. In DD2 you're chosen by "the watcher" to face the dragon, and only show willpower by refusing the task. Not to mention how half-baked every single character and how rushed and unfinished the story is.
whats so weird is if you go through the trouble to defy the watcher even successfully saving the world against the 'chaos' they show you, then the watcher states they wont be able to witness the coming world. only to then be 3 seconds in front and center in the new world waiting for you.
@thunderborn3231 Yeah, that's another thing, the repeating cycle for ng+ was already a little goofy in the first game, but in 2, it makes even less sense
I feel for you in this. personally I really liked DD2 but the story was such a huge let down to a point of really holding the game back and this is agreed across the board from anyone who cleared the game. Even people that liked the gameplay would have liked an actual final boss. You'd think they would have learned from the rough launch of the 1st game; Some context a good while before DDDA Dragon's dogma 1 released with a half thought out story, bugs, performance issues and many glitches on ps3 then they fixed it built atop what was there it was good content. So Idk why multibillion dollar capcom can't just release a completed game out the gate, with good will more people will buy dlc etx. this game had so much promise but the last game was the same much promise if it had mor ebudget, and we see with his game that they follow through with nothing and have the same excuse that there was no budget... you claimed this was a tripple a game worth 70+ usd! so much progress has been made over the last 12 years and DD2 took no inspiration from any of it. that's the real shame of it.
an amazingly well articulated video, never did i think I'd see Krieg being used to encapsulate the failings of DD2's story and character building. Loved this video and keep up the good work ^^
Agreed on virtually all points, however the thing that disappointed me the very most was the soundtrack. The first game (vanilla, AND especially Dark Arisen) beautifully brings us along a series of gorgeous musical motifs and themes that remind us of the world we're playing in. Too many dev studios are making the mistake of dropping investment in their musical scores, (I honestly think this peaked in the late 90s-early 2000s), and it's removed a lot emotion from games. This was UNIVERSALLY praised in the first game! How could they deviate so much from what made the game so special? I want to like the game too. But I can't wrap my head around this one point! It's just disappointing.
agreed. Into Free -Dangan- was some of the biggest switch-up to menu music i’d ever heard in my life. they had the perfect opportunity to bring it back for DD2, or at least something similar. but the entire DD2 ost was such a letdown for most of the scores, imo.
I have a huge issue with DD2s Storytelling... namely: Theres not much dragon or dogma in Dragons Dogma 2. The entire world barely reacts to the threat of the dragon.. infact its quite the opposite... one half seems to rejoice cause now they got a king/queen again in the form of an arisen, the other side thinks they can actually control what is literally godzilla with a bit of spoopy magic... thats an umbrella corporation level of scheme that totaly would never backfire on them at all if ive ever seen one.... Now in DD1 (wich had its own storytelling issues mind you) the dragon didnt had that much more screen time either to be honest. But you could feel his presence throughout the entire game because he was what motivated everyones actions in one way or another, good or bad. In DD2 you wouldnt know that there is a giant civilisation ending dragon around if the game, not the world, hadnt told us beforehand. And theres no real dogma either... we are told by the watcher that the cycle is needed for a poorly defined reason of "the world would stagnate and cease to exist without it"... but the conflict of dragon vs arisen seems to have basically no actual effect on the world and those that live in it whatsoever and we are never shown that it does... we spent 99% of the game uncovering this whacky game of thrones/umbrella corporation plotline that has zero conclusion to any of its plotpoints, then fight the dragon that suddenly pops up out of nowhere, kill it, are crowned sovereign... and thats that (if you dont try to break the cycle and ring in the end of the world for what basically amounts to shits and giggles that is) In DD1 the dogma had meaning: The cycle existed to select the next person meant to take over the role of god wich the world suposedly cant go on without (proven false by the player characters final action), and that the position needed allmost inhuman amounts of willpower because immortality and mortal minds dont go so well together, hence the existance of the dragon as this allmost insormountable challange. In DD2 the cycle seems to solely exist to amuse the watcher.... and thats it. For the lulz i guess?
Yea, at about 100 hours a had to tap out. The gameplay was great. But DD1, not even DA had a better story. Legit do not understand why people liked this one more story wise.
I have absolutely no understanding of the message this game wants to send to me. Perhaps someone can explain to me the meaning of what is happening. Is will a great force? But what is will without the ability to realize one’s desires? I mean that we would not be able to break the cycle if the Great Will did not want it. (If I understand everything correctly and the Great Will is God). The Pathfinder says before dying that everyone in this world has their own role. It follows from this that absolutely everyone in this world, except for the Risen, is a puppet. Therefore, they did everything to ensure that we received this magic sword. (Yes, absolutely everything leads you to this when you complete all the story quests) I don't understand why this is a "secret ending". I understood all this without watching a single video on RU-vid. It turns out that the will of the main character is illusory and the entire philosophical meaning of the story is lost. The plot of the game is extremely dubious. As for other parts of the game. It's too easy. The monsters are boring and monotonous. The music is beautiful. Several cutscenes are beautiful. The whole game is incredibly monotonous and boring. But! This is the perfect relaxation after work. I'm tired, I don't want to think and stress. DD2 I choose you. But the price for this is unreasonably high. Sorry, my English is not perfect. I hope I was able to get my point across.
I haven't beaten the game yet, but 100 hours in I can say that as far as the issues you have with the story, I feel it too. I liked the story of DD1 but the characters and side quests always felt like an afterthought even though the overall message is this cool, foreboding and philosophical depiction of the typical hero's journey. The story largely took a backseat to the gameplay and it did a good job of at least establishing the mechanics of that world and it's endless cycle. Seeing a similar lackluster narrative and characterization didn't really bother me this time around though since my expectations were tempered by the first game, but the game design itself not being improved has been the biggest downside for me. Old problems like lacking enemy variety and encounters being repetitive, the new camping and dragonplague mechanics feeling like wasted opportunities to add something fresh and instead feel like an intended annoyance where they could have reinforced the supposed idea that taking the long road is fun and worth it. Coupled with new issues like much worse inventory management than DD1, scaled back gear options, no name change in character edit and no notice board quests for chances to explore or passively amass funds for gear/items, let alone the technical problems that had to get partially patched, it's hard not to rate this game that has so much potential to be great(like the first did) a 6 or 7/10 at best.Having zero respect for the players time is one thing, but making that journey undeniably more monotonous and uninteresting than it needed to be on the other hand is harder to forgive imo. The Beastren race and Batahl citizens having the same accent as people from Vermund despite having a completely different geographic location and culture while Elves have their own language is dumb and lazy. The new gear upgrade options are mostly useless and arbitrary when there's no real reason to mix and match when you could just get Dwarven for physical and massive knockdown or Elven for magic damage. There is also no reason they couldn't have added an online co-op for either games where you play as your main pawn in another player's world for unique challenges, rewards and gear like Monster Hunter or something. The reason I'm listing all these complaints is because I'm a huge fan believe it or not, and for every cool thing in these games, there is an equally or more stupid thing to make it harder for people to like for no real reason lol. On a positive note, the exploration is still great, the map is huge, the vocations are rebalanced and much better overall, you can now craft items wherever you want and using a resource to dragon forge gear separately from other upgrades is smarter instead of it being random or rushing to post game. TLDR; I wanted to like it too, and I do overall so far. It's just not the sequel I was hoping for and can't help feeling like it could've been MUCH better...
i’ll die on the hill that DD:DA had much more to offer, even with its own flaws. then DD2 being connected to the first game and not only not improving, but worsening those flaws as well as failing in the theme and story. that’s just wild to me.
@@suavespacenoid I'll have to come back to this video once I beat the game and see the ending, but so far that's true. Maybe an expansion like Dark Arisen could fix some of these problems.
A few months after 100% DD2, I found this vid again and definitely get what you meant. Instead of being a nameless slave/prisoner who escapes and rises to become a hero fending off a dragon attack when arriving at a village and dethroning a pretender, then uniting two countries against the dragon, we get this pointless convoluted scheme of memory loss and political "intrigue" that eventually leads to a post game and ending that contradicts the first game's design and philosophy of defying the odds against fate and testing the limits of your conviction so that the boring little npcs can live happily ever after with no more big bad dragons lol. I sincerely hope this isn't the story or full experience Itsuno had in mind for DD2, maybe Capcom had to cut down the dev time by a lot, and maybe that's why he left. At least the vocations and controls were great lol
I suppose i agree with on the choice part, to me the pawns are what i love most about the game. Its to see how they behave and how their characteristics are revealed that i enjoy. As far as the story following onward from the first game, i would say all of the first games endings are canon to this game. The zenechal is not the allmighty god the first game had you believe. The world forge (pathfinder) is. (Rothais is the zenechal in this game.) You get to be the arisen you want, you just dont get to live in the world you want.
the director stated that this is a reimagining/reboot of the original game, so the first game is not canon to the second. either way, it objectively doesn’t work.
@@suavespacenoidI wasn't aware of the director stating that. That's interesting 🤔. I disagree with or rather challenge your 'either way objective truth' but I still sympathize with your feelings on the lack of choice/player agency part.
This game was severely disheartening what with how they diminished the potential of every vocation, how the combat has devolved into spamming a select few skills, how there is so much emphasis on traveling but so little agency for the player to forge their own path. Especially dislike how many spells and core skills they took away from sorcerer and mage. Game didn’t even offer a month of enjoyment.
I don't feel they giving vlasses additional restrictions is a bad thing. In DDDA effective late game always followed more or less the same general strategy, which you'd play throigh just by sweeping the skills that get you where you need to be when changing vocations. In DD2 they at least all play differently and have their own niche.
Isnt the lack of choice in the story connected to both the quote at the beginning and their 3rd act? Specifically having the conviction to push through the preordained norm into throwing away the stranglehold of destiny/god being the highest reach of human will. To be it's own chooser? If it is the above and that was their point behind the game, kinda cool, for most people probably something to watch a 2hr long youtube video about and go "omg". But never actually play it themselves. It definately doesnt make the game better/more enjoyable and isnt really ment as a defense of the game. But I found it quite interesting that, the stuff the game talks about in the bridge between act 2 and 3 is almost exactly what you are talking about here. It's a preordained story, and act 3 is about breaking away from it. I kind of rushed act 3, so story-wise I didn't actually get to see if you really got to break away from the preordained story and got your choice back. Outside of choosing which of the cities/races to save from the apocolypse, that is technically a choice?
that really would have only made sense if it were made clear we were being forced into a role that our character didn’t want. except the first 2/3 of the game is spent telling our amnesiac protagonist who they are supposed to be, without any indication that we had a choice against it, that the rug pull of ‘oh, you actually do have a choice!’ so late into the game was just so jarring to me.
@@suavespacenoid I don't think its a rug pull if many of the videos I see are disliking that very exact part of the story. Outside of some mildly generic options for an open world RPG. We don't really have any choices in the game outside of do/dont do the content. If I'm not mistaken, the dragon does slowly over the game speak to us about choice and thats even the only point of the environmental flyover before the first dragon fight. I did find it quite jarring, but that kinda seems like the point of it. To try and pull you out of the generic fantasy world curated experience and show you how grim-dark it would be without an author to guide the story. As I said before, dont think it makes the 2/3 of the story any better, but the story is pretty light anyway.
@@suavespacenoid except they did, you just didn't pay attention. You probably were too bored to pay attention. It's just not your type of game. I'm surprised you like DDDA
most youtubers disliked the game not sure what's brave about it... LOL! Like I said most youtuber played the game to play it, and review or make a video, wish that was more transparant. They got bored and didn't even pay attention to the story, so they hated the story and overall message and theme... It's like someone playing Bloodborne, and at the end, saying wtf is a baby crying at the end of the game...
Damn... sounds like I won't enjoy dd2 as much as the 1st one and that one had plenty of flaws despite my enjoyment of it... sigh. Sucks they seemingly didn't improve any elements from the 1st aside from graphics
you do find ferrystones throughout the world often enough that this argument is almost invalid imho, but i appreciate that they implemented the Oxcart for more immersive fast traveling anyway.
@@suavespacenoid I don’t thinks it’s invalid and the fact there was a unlimited farrystone in the first helped fix the problems the first game had. Also you can buy farrystone from a vender, but they are so expensive that you might as well not. Good armor cost like 5000 gold or more. It doesn’t matter how fun the combat has after level 40 you pretty much become so powerful that nobody can challenge you. Enemy encounters that once felt challenging or amazing feel trivial. Considering how bad the first game sold that should of told the developers to fix the tedious aspects of the franchise, and just expand on the game. They did none of these things in this sequel. Dark arisen fixed so many problems of the first base game and dragons dogma 2 should of done the same.
i wouldn’t say it fixed any problems; it just changed/streamlined the way the game could be played. and in DD2 you make plenty of money that as long as you’re being thoughtful about your upgrades and using your ferrystones wisely, you could comfortably drop the 10k whenever a vendor has one if you even needed another one.
what are you saying? most of the problems that you said where a problem in the first game too you just skipped a lot of the extra quests, not to mention that you also didn't play the quests as they are supposed to be played, for example the going across the map to do every quests ( by the way in the first game you did that a lot more) but you don't have to go there the moment you get the quests, you just go whenever you pass by, the game is more about "exploration" that is what you don't understand, not to mention that there are port 5 total crystals that you can get in your first playthrough, you just simply just put one in the elf village. also another thing is that dd2 is a sequel, i mean the seneschal is also sealed in the everfall and not to mention that you actually uncover gran soren in the unmoored world and use it as a base. also even tough people around you help you to get the throne back, does not mean that your character wants to, you just try to uncover the plot, you try to find out what happen to you. though i do agree that the story before the guardian gigantus quest is a bit boring at some points, also it's clear that you understood nothing about the dragons dogma, and the actual story, in the first scene that you see when you play the game is the dragon talking to you through a dream to tell you that if you want to see the world at it's true aspect you need to abandon your hart and your life, that first scene shows you that the true story is told by the small details, the grate will created the cycle just to give a purpose to oblivion so it can stop the distraction that it saw in countless worlds so oblivion or else known as watching one, brine, pathfinder, could now just "watch" the it's an "alternative universe" thing is a lie, but not technically a lie, i mean every player is a deferent universe, it's obvious that it was just a way for hideaki itsouno to hide it so players will notice in the unmoored world that, wow this is gran soren (i noticed when i talked to the mad sovereign "the seneschal" when i looked up and saw that it was the everfall) and then to notice that a few other things also are from the previews map you probably also didn't understand that in the first game you didn't end the cycle that by the way, in the second game proved that that is the case. in the first game you also would of noticed it if you payed attention in the dialogues an other things, that the cycle was probably not broken, not to mention that if you play new game plus offline, your previews arisen is the new seneschal (that was proof enough for me). now for the quote thing in the second game that you mentioned, it was not really what you think it was, remember what the dragon said at that scene, if what you said was the case then the very words that you where told right after the quote by the dragon would be in opposition, also the mad sovereign said that he destroyed everything just because what he wanted was to rule the world, you clearly didn't understand the philosophy of the game. in a way you did the very end by destroying oblivion it is the exact opposite of what the mad sovereign did, and the exact opposite of what you thought your character was doing, this is not a story about power, it's a story of will and purpose. well sorry for the grammar mistakes i made, English is not my local language.
Buddy pal sat and wrote a five paragraph comment on a youtube video 💀 dude, were you in her living room as she played?? Do you know which quests she did and didn't do, what order she did them in? Your entire rant is invalid because you're arguing against a concept you created, not rooted in actual fact. Trying to attack someone with vague claims based on what you perceive to be their knowledge on a subject is absurd and entirely baseless, and in your particular case is coming across as toxic and rigid. You're allowed to enjoy a game, little buddy, and other people are allowed *not* to.
@@onikai369 @123kaelee123 did you watch the video? she said she played 30 hours she also said she didn't like that she had to go back and forward across the map to complete most quests, this 2 things prove that she didn't do most quests and just followed the main story line just doing the quests she happened to come across without doing any exploring (in my first playthrough it took me about 60 hours and i completed most quests and explored most areas the only big quest i didn't complete was with the bandit boy because i told him about his family being killed by the bandit leader) if you only played 30 hours there is no way you didn't miss a lot of quests. also when was i toxic? i didn't attack her i just said that she didn't understand the game, i didn't assume what she knows i just answered to what she said on the video...
I wonder why everyone looks for the answers, about this game, in the wrong direction. Just like a big jucy carrot... you as player are being shoved a big red dragon in your face... mambo jumbo words and you have been made an Arisen ... then all you do as a player is chase the red dragon (one way or another). How about after finishing the game (entirely) you stop and ask some questions. Today question is "Why the pawn eyes go glowing red, right before if you sleep, the entire town will be dead, except you as Arisen and what else is glowing red while devours anything but you, the Arisen?". If I get decent answers, meaning real brain power invested before you troll the que, I will post the next question that will lead you to the deeper understanding of this new DD2 universe.
you spent 30 hours... I spent 30 hours exploring the game before I even started the quest... I think you might of played the game to review or just beat the game... I put in 200+ hours, and at that point I was tired of running around but I had tons of stones to teleport me around... You hate the story, but makes me wonder if you even listened to the exposition at the end... seems like many people have tiktok brains, not saying you do, but it seemed you didn't understand the story at all.
well, considering howlongtobeat has DD2 listed at 28 hours for main story, by saying '30 more hours' in my vid, i meant fulfilling the additional sidequests, a few of which (the Elvish questlines) I did complete. not to mention the other playthroughs and cutscenes of other creators/streamers that i watched in research for this vid. so... what's the point of your comment other than to brag about playtime?
Can't imagine spending 30 hours staring at a blank screen 💀 The story shouldn't have to rely on an exposition at the end to reveal the "point" of it. "Show don't tell" is the very first rule of story writing; an exposition is lazy, unimagined, railroady, and if anything proves the point of the video further that the choices don't matter and it's already determined who and what you are, that there's no actual *story*
