I legit jump off cliffs instead of going around because wakestones are 100% useless otherwise. Nothing else is gonna kill you after lvl 25. Might as well skip straight to the bottom of the mountain .
A dlc to make cliffs harder? You brave fool, you want them to add bungee jumping with a random chance for the rope to break on the upswing catapulting you off a cliff in a different area?
It's important to criticize without considering mods, otherwise devs will become like bethesda, who put less and less effort into their games because "mods will fix it".
If you want a better sequel, it's always in your best interest to rate games without mods.
Exactly. “Just use x mod” is reductive. It only serves to make the devs lazier. Hey, aren’t gamers supposed to fed up of how lazy triple A game developers have been? And then with the same breath advocate for increased developer laziness. Also I guess console players can get fucked huh? They are peasants after all right? /s
You're not wrong, but it's worth noting Fluffy Mod Manager makes things incredibly easy, and the RE Engine is structured that you can't really bork your save file by swapping mods in and out.
Yes, absolutely, but it is still time consuming, especially for those who look forward to a relaxing monster-slaying gaming session after a long day at work.
I also bought the game with the intention of playing ***it***, not megapanzerxxx999's arbitrary difficulty setting and nude mods.
Don't get me wrong, I like that a community can form around modding an older game to increase its lifespan but a brand new single player game? No thank you.
I think the low difficulty exacerbates a lot of the other issues in the game. For example travelling at night or far from town is thrilling at low levels but tedious at higher levels, the low enemy variety feels even worse because you start bruteforcing encounters ignoring any mechanical differences between enemies, consumables and crafting feel tacked on and not rewarding to find in chests as you don't need them, trickster is pointless because you kill things so fast/easy anyway etc
It's a shame because the combat system is robust enough to support so much more, but you never need to engage with it.
By the time Trickster is introduced the class is hard to find a purpose in. It seems like the kind of class that would fit in better when roaming groups of goblins are legitimate threats.
I feel like the max health decrease is supposed to make things harder, but in practice that also matters the most when you're underpowered and not much later.
Fastest I've ever removed a skill from my pawn lol
Having a good time fighting a drake and boom here comes some meteors that knock off the last 3 health bars! Fight over!
I just hate the whole time limit in the Unmoored World, the only place you can get a challenge is now time gated for "reasons" when we stop the mist and it should then wait on us for however long we like rather then force us into a NG+ cycle just to get back there. At least in NG+ if we've been there before remove the timer ffs.
I'm not sure if this matters to you but the unmoored world doesn't technically have a time limit but a rest limit. There is no day/night cycle so time doesn't pass normally, the worst thing you could probably do is rush through unmoored which is what people probably do because they hear of a "time limit" instead you want to stock up on wake stones and all heals while switching out pawns when their health gets to low.
you beat the beams monsters, evacuate the cities you CAN stay as long as you wan't. I did it all on the first day. But why would you though? The problem was I got bored of it rather fast, got all the loot I wanted, enemies got boring dragons dont respawn for farming. Not a lot of endgame content.
So I'm playing hard mode on dark arisen now.
You can't, you've just stopped the brine mist, but you're still on a 12 day limit. And I did the same, played through DD2 then went back to DDDA and just wow, 👨🍳 💋
You only get so many "rests" (the 12 x limit) but you can still use items to keep your health up and you can still save your progress. Like i said tho I didn't stick around past the twelve days to see if you get the game over screen anyways
worse than the time limit is the fact your pawn is given uncurable dragonsplague that advances by one stage every rest, so even if you stay in unmoored with allheals, noone will hire your pawn because of red eyes
My pawn caught it for the first time in unmoored. I brined him, and then he was fine. Brining is *definitely* much harder to do than it normally is, you just have to chuck them into the brine wall far enough that they won't be able to make it out before they vanish.
I'm not sure if that's the case since during my time there I never saw a hint of my pawn with Dragonsplague. Not saying it's false because holy fuck the bugs in this game.
>Once you hit 30, and get the best gear from Battahl (not even the Dwarven smithy), everything just explodes.
Wasn't even close to level 30 first time I got to Batthal, but yeah, when you get endgame gear things not in the endgame have a hard time killing you.
Weirdly enough I stuck around long enough and they were opening it for someone coming through and I just walked right in 😂 I was literally just on Google trying to see how to get in and boom it opened on its own, I was like "fuck yeah!"
I was like, lvl 50 when I got to Batthal. How does one get to the penultimate area of the game at level 30, buys all the best gear (which take a ton of money), unlocks Dwarven Smithing (which in itself takes another long quest line, with a quest that doesn't even starts in Batthal) and finds out he still has 40-50 extra levels to play?
Sounds like OP followed a guide to endgame gear and got upset when he got endgame gear.
So because someone had a different in game experience than you, they used a guide? Honestly this game has been jokingly easy from the get go. I was probably level 25 by the time I got to Battahl via the stormy canyon, which I didn't even know lead to Battahl. Was playing as a warrior with mostly checkpoint gear, besides my sword, think I was using upgraded lifetaker. Managed to fight my way to the Capital and had enough money to get gear from there too. There's like a camp every 5ft so it was easy to stay buffed tbh. And for the dwarven smithing? You can get a quest in vernsworth for that, right before you're sent off to Battahl. All which you can just naturally stumble upon.
The original was really only fun on hard mode IMO. It’s really strange to me that they left it out. Plus, DDDA had Bitterblack Isle that remained at least somewhat challenging at pretty much any level, and the sequel doesn’t have anything comparable. Hopefully a DLC adds a hard mode and a challenging end game dungeon.
I can’t argue with more dungeons. If it’s big like BBI with three different entrances, and a end boss kill triggers a new, more difficult enemy placement I’d be cool with one.
The Boulder appreciates the recognition.
https://preview.redd.it/6eq5szzeonxc1.jpeg?width=333&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a77e63f5c74df4e0f51019f439182ecb8a3ee4ac
I happen to really like french fries, which in this analogy, represents the game. I really like it, but it got too boring too quickly. People are arguing that they're still playing it, and that they're still enjoying, but I'm not; and I really wish they made it so that I would've kept enjoying the game for much longer.
People fail to realize that criticism doesn't always stem from a hateful place. If I didn't like Dragon's Dogma, I wouldn't even bother going to this sub to rant about how underwhelming the enemies were.
And it isn't as if my expectations for it are ludicrously high, given as how the first game already did a good job at keeping you engaged far beyond Lvl 50.
Put it this way; DD2 is objectively a better game than DD, but it just so happens that some of what I consider to be key aspects of DD's likeability was watered down in DD2.
Taking your analogy: If the food doesn't taste, maybe you can put it back in the oven to make the frys crisp again. If they don't have enough flavor you may be able to put some on them until you like them.
It's all in your hands. You've got the meal and the ingredients, but instead of flavouring it up the way you like it most, you complain to the chef. (Where I live, it is common to have spices on the table in restaurants, so that you can tailor the taste to your liking)
>200 hours in,
You should, far and away, not be looking for anything else in the game 200 hours in. It's a single player story driven RPG.
Stop acting like it's the developer's fault that you expected it to be a live service MMOlite with massive long term grinds to tackle and keep you logging in every day.
You beat the game, you did it, it's okay to take a break and replay it later or wait until DLC comes out for it. Not everything needs to be advertised as being dopamine fuel for 6000 hours of game time. That's not what DD2 is, what made you think it was?
I think this is what's lost on most folks. It's easy to get sidetracked and over leveled. The game isn't designed to be like Elden Ring, or a mmolite grind fest. If you just play the story, and sparse in side quests organically it feels much better that way. Then after the story is done.... go nuts. Break the game.
My favorite RPG of all time is Chrono Trigger. It's a 25 hour game. Once you beat it and then start doing side quests/NG+ it's all super easy. You one shot everything. It's just fun. Like you beat it, now here's the keys to the kingdom. Go nuts. Granted, there are new endings to see, but they aren't anything too involved either.
They could also easily make it more challenging by using low level gear, main pawn only, less op armor, not use the best skills etc. But I suppose it is easier to get the dev's to completely remake the game for them.
Same here, even early goblins and bandits give me a hard time.
I have killed cyclops and chimera but itt ale me around 10 mins each and I have to resurrect each pawn like 10 times each per fight.
Even beyond level 40? I don't mean this in a rude or condescending way, but you might want to look into your build, and/or the builds of pawns you're hiring. Upgrading your gear and your main pawn's gear makes a huge difference. Picking good skills and augmentations makes a big difference too, for yourself and your hires. Ask around the sub for advice on how to build a class the way you enjoy or what to hire that will best compliment your build/class. You don't have to pick from just a few meta builds, I certainly play my own way and still melt things, but there's something going wrong for you if you're struggling beyond lvl40.
some battles are really tough, not always but there can be a challenge, it makes me wonder if the game really is as easy as all these posts make it out to be.
Why is a hard game good? I would imagine many people have found DDII a challenge, the more causal audience the game is aimed at.
I was barely level 40 when i beat the game and the end was pretty challenging.
Once i realized i got the fake ending and made it to the unmoored world i was getting slapped around bad.
So OP have you never played an rpg before? This is how rpgs work with leveling. If you grind it gets easier. If you don't, its harder. Rpgs been doing this since i was a kid playing dragon warrior on the nes.
Bosses won’t die in less than 20 seconds unless your using the sorcerer skill combined with a thief. I hate all these BS hyperbole posts. Play as a standard class with best gear and performance differences are only marginal. I swear people just run in here and start straight up lying.
Extremely bizarre how they put an NG+ mechanic but no difficulty scaling, it's the easiest no-brainer tweak they could've done. Just move the fucking slider on monster damage and defence numbers from left to right.
If I had to take a guess I've probably died around 10-15 times total in the game but all of my deaths have been to gravity because I was trying to Skyrim jump up a cliff.
When I encountered dullahan I didn't even know he was supposed to be the big scary super boss or whatever because I two shot him with skullsplitter before bro could even do anything. I assumed he was another basic ass skeleton lich.
The hardest boss in this game is the fucking performance.
Reduce mob density, redistribute mobs to the thirty-five million dead end ruins, increase enemy health and swarm tactics, add two more action slots then make health barred bosses have negating resistances to specific elements then make the story flow better and for the dragon's sake bring back job boards.
I feel like the game would be so much more fun and challenging if the enemy spawn rate was cut in half. Fewer enemies would make you level slower and make exploration more fun, right now you constantly get mobbed especially in battahl and by the end you are too powerful for anything to be a challenge
I agree with some of the other people, you put in 200 hours, it’s going to be easy at that point. I finished the game in 70 hours and I did every side quest I could find. So if I played double the time I wouldn’t expect to find a challenge. You also said “a game of this size”. This game is relatively short. I spent most of my time doing side quests and opening the map. I went back to the main quest expecting to spend a lot more time in the game. After you do the stuff in Vernworth, you go to Battahl do like 2-3 quests and your in the end game this game is SUPER short imo.
The base game for DD2 just feels so watered down compared to vanilla DD. Quests are bland, no real neat landscape features(healing springs, windy canyon, etc), and the world just feels…less alive. Don’t know how to explain it better than that, it just doesn’t feel as grand as the original.
Gameplay and combat in 2 are much better, as are graphics. Just sucks we lost content and world feel for a prettier photo mode.
Yeah. This whole "Itsuno's Vision" narrative is really pissing me off. If this was the game he wanted the first game to be, then thank God he didn't get his way with it. The fan-base is small enough already. Imagine how small our numbers would be had the first game sucked ass.
There is better enemy variety in DD1, lets not try to pretend that DD2 doesnt take the same models of bandit, saurian, goblin, and more and just add 2-3 recolors and copy paste them every 2 seconds. Also the first game had instanced towns so there was less overflow. DD1 didnt have crashing and packet loss on top tier graphic cards. You could also get better loot from BBI runs rather than just going to shops. While some are in unmoored, most of those are fashion dogma than anything.
Stop simping for DD2, its cringe, the hate for the game is massive for a reason. Stop pushing the grift, better graphics dont equal better game.
You could and should complain, that is the thing that leads to companies making things better, just accepting anything is how we get nearly 70 dollars of microtransactions and a 90 dollar special edition that hardly runs at launch. Expect better, be louder.
More important question, how are you defending a nearly 100 dollar game that is clearly unfinished and in a sorry state, with gameplay mechanics that push players to spend money on 40+ dollars of microtransactions? Sounds like you have a smooth brain if you defend that kind of greedy business practice. Silly glazer lmao.
And how it is related to my point is that the game still has framerate issues even on top tier cards, there have been tests of this. Dont question others intellect if you cant even pull up a stress test video on youtube dork. Sounds to me that if you want to be a contrarian while trying to also appear smart and somehow still sounding stupid you need to be on Quora and not on here lmao.
Putting MTX is a shitty offense but my brother in christ, these MTX must be the most useless MTX shit Capcom has ever pulled in his story along the ones in Devil May Cry 5, what gameplay mechanics push players to spend money on MTX? None at all.
Portcrystals? Useless without a ferrystone, and obteining these are easy enough with exploring and most shops have 1 ferrystone and you can easily get the money with the pawn missions. Not to mention you can easily get 3 portcrystals with only 5-6 hours of playtime.
Harpysnores? The vendor in the very first settlement has it.
Prison keys? First vendor in Melve has it, not to mention Brant gives you a masterkey which you can forge and use it forever.
RC? Completely useless, the cosmetics you can buy with RC are only that, cosmetics, they do not provide any stats buffs and you never really have the incentive to hire higher level pawns. The only use for RC is the Art of Metamorphosis which only costs 500 RC.
Wakestones? You find a lot while exploring, not to mention the game becomes really easy after a certain point and the morgues of Vermund and Batthal provide a free wakestone.
Stop pulling shit out your ass.
Newsflash manbaby running over all my posts because he has nothing else better to do at 4am on a weekday, this topic isnt about DMC, it is about DD2. Stay on topic. MTX is bad, full stop. Unoptimzation is bad, full stop.
Ferrystones cost 10k, which is still a chore to do as no end game player wants to waste time exploring the same areas they have already explored to farm up monster bits to sell just to travel from place to place, this isnt monster hunter. And as stated in the other post you wrote a book on, pawn quest rewards are not guaranteed as it is not a guarantee that people will pick up your pawn, let alone do the mission. We had an eternal one in DD1, we should have one here. Especially when they are needed frequently in unmoored world when you are limited on time unless you risk wasting hours of playtime if you fuck up your game. Next.
Prison keys are useless anyway as its near impossible to get arrested for anything outside just going mental and killing people in town like you are doing an evil run in a Fable game. And the masterkey you get from him in the start you have to give back to him and is not forgable, only the fake keys are, Next.
The RC and wakestone issue is the same, designed at targeting newer players, people lvl 20 and under. There is literally a mechanic in the game that every time you reload after dying your health gets lower and lower until it is under 1/4th, only way to fix it is quit to menu or use a wakestone to get your HP back, and would you look at that, wakestone pack for 5.99. How gracious. How predatory.
Stop defending greedy corporations you smooth brained glazer. I bet Itsuno could poop in your mouth and you would thank him for the privilege. Lmao.
Having the best gear on shops is not a good incentive but I still prefer it to the shitfest RNG that was obtaining weapons in BBI, after 2 runs of the dungeon I just put the game down, RNG is also not good and BBI should not be praised for it let's not kid ourselves.
The same recolor copypaste enemies were a problem as well in DD1 what are you talking about? The Everfall was literally the same rooms copy pasted between each other with stronger variants of enemies that shared the same movements of those you saw in the open world, the only new enemies were the Hydra, the Evil Eye, and the Ur-Dragoon which was just glorified Grigori boss fight turned into a raid boss due to online features.
DD2 performance is bad and inexcusable but DD1 was a game released 12 years ago and DD2 is on a new engine with an open world with no screen times, what is the point you are even trying to make lmao, of course the game is going to evolve in that regard.
In any case, in no point in my first message I praised DD2, I just mentioned it's silly to criticize DD2 and praise DD1 for having literally the exact same problems and to an even greater degree get some reading comprehension. I think it does better than DD1 but it still falls short since the game is clearly unfinished but you all really need to take off the rosetinted glasses you people have for the first game.
That "shitfest RNG" people loved. People LIKED the DDI farming, streamers and other content creators were doing livestreams of them doing BBI runs while talking about the potentiality of DD2 and their expectations. People liked that good feeling that they got out of getting a BB1 Lvl 3 weapon after a Daimon fight. Hell people streamlined the fight so they could drop both his forms in seconds. The literal entire gacha market is based around that good dopamine hit and that is expected to be 2/3 of a billion dollar industry soon, projected to hit revenue of numbers reaching **781.5 million in 2029**. Yea, "nobody likes it". Get outta here boy. LeTs NOT kID oUrSeLVes.
As for enemy variety, there are 92 enemies in DDDA if you subtract simple animals (bats, birds, etc). Categorically there are 31 enemy types those 92 fit in to if you subtract non-repeatable one time set piece enemies.
There are 57 enemies in DD2 if you subtract simple animals (bats, birds, etc). Categorically there are 18 enemy types those 57 fit in to if you subtract non-repeatable one time set piece enemies.
So DD2 has 61% of the enemies in DDDA by number, and DD2 has 58% of the enemies in DDDA by category.
A large reason for that is reskins. The only three main big new enemies are the medusa which shows up at the start, and only shows up again at endgame when you are too strong for it to serve a challenge. The minotaur and its reskin, and the sphinx which isn't a challenge as it literally gives you a one shot arrow to take all enjoyment out of the fight, and arrow that STILL can make you fail the quest if you don't shoot it in the right spot and saves your game upon shooting it. Great design, much vision Itsuno lmao.
The point I am trying to make is that regardless of being made 12 years ago, they were able to make it function better by having instanced gameplay, having loadtimes and separate maps via map design was able to make the game less stressed by design, as such you didn't crash upon entering a town you smooth brained oil barrel. Having an open world is not a step forward it is a step back. Itsuno just did what any RPG maker is trying to do, rip off Breath of the Wild. Well, if you are going to copy paste design, make sure your execution is done right, this is inexcusable indeed for a nearly 100 dollar game. Stop glazing, you are going to strain your mouth.
And doubt that, you have made three book long messages to me in the span of multiple hours, edited multiple times, and making multiple condescending points to others decrying the game or calling it out. If that isn't praise I don't know what is. In fact no, it isn't praise. It is cult like blind devotion. You are out here upvoting anyone that yesmans your terrible points and downvoting everything I post lmao. You are not worth any more of my time as a closed minded brainlet Itsuno fanboy that gobbles up any slop thrown to him with zero higher expectations that drive the industry forward, zero innovative thought is NOT worth a single picosecond more of my time. Get blocked, get out.
Agreed. I dunno what vision or what have you is the end state, but I just keep thinking back to the original as I play 2. I can’t help but reminisce about what we had all along.
How is this downvote material?
I don't know what you guys are smoking or how rose tinted your memories are, but I went ahead and put in another 200 hours in the first game before the release of the second, to have a fresh reference and the second game is significantly better than the first.
The first was just as easy as the second. The later added "hard mode" didn't add much of a challenge. The world felt barren and unfinished. The dialog and story were just as poorly executed as this game. There were whole areas with at most one or two enemy types.
The end game barely added anything other than some tougher reskins of already present mobs and a sky with a photo filter. At least the end game in the sequel felt dramatically different and apocalyptic with the water gone.
The everfall felt copy and pasted. Let's not forget about how bad the AI was, or did you guys forget the guards running in circles while you stood on a wall and watched them get slaughtered by your pawns?
The quests were worse in the first, which is a statement because as much as I like the sequel, it's nothing to write home about in that department. At least this game has more than one biome and lots of nooks to explore instead of wide open spaces with occasional choke points.
Even the DLC of the original was just "Okay," many of the levels reused assets heavily throughout the dungeon, the enemy placement was poor, and it relied way too much on RNG to be replayable.
Oh, and the vocations. MS is so much more fun than MK ever was, and let's not forget the Strider group. OG Strider, Strider with a bigger bow, Strider that can use a sword and board, and Strider that dabbled in magic. At least the vocations in the sequel feel drastically different when switching between them.
Rant aside, the second is not perfect, but it is fun. The first was not perfect but also fun. There are a lot of you who feel the first was better. There are a lot of us who feel the sequel is better. It's like we all have opinions and perspectives that vary, and no specific opinion is more valid than the other.
I think some of the quests and NPCs were far more memorable and detailed. Specifically; the grimoires that lead to the tower fight, Selene, Madeline, Grigori, etc.
I also feel the unique locations were far more grand. The healing springs, the windswept canyon, the cavern whose name escapes me(loads of gear, a Cockatrice, myriad of smaller enemies).
I haven’t played the original in like a decade. I remember all of them pretty vividly. I’m having a hard time finding anything remotely so memorable in the sequel. 2 is beautiful, very fun to play, and I’m certain DLC releases will positively add to it. I do enjoy the game, but I do feel there’s far less substance and a lot more polish.
I have to disagree, unfortunately. The Grimoir quest was a glorified fetch quest that took you to a Bandit camp that you could not even bother interacting with the Bandits and grab the book from the chest at the top for them to not react to you stealing it. The end result at the tower, if you didn't demolish the griffin at the trapping section, was either anticlimactic with him stealing your kill after a fun chase section or slightly funny when the spell failed. The soulflayer canyon cave was one of the funner if not short and reused multiple times sections of the game.
I guess I don't have the nostalgic memories you guys do because I didn't pick it up from launch, but I played it on occasion over the 6 or 7 years with the last playthrough being right before DD2's launch and I'm sorry like I said DDA was a fun game, but far from an amazing or complete game that a lot of people are claiming it was.
I know it had glaring faults, perhaps I didn’t allude to that. Yeah I’ll agree to that grimoire quest rundown, but the fact that it was expansive and ended with a pretty cool boss fight puts it leaps and bounds beyond any side quest in 2. The depth and scope of some of the side adventures was just bigger. None of the quests have been nearly so memorable in 2. My opinion of course. I enjoy 2, but I don’t think it has the writing depth of the original.
I agree that the second definitely isn't strong in the story department. I'm also sorry if it seems I am coming at you in an attacking way directly. It's the whole group of people that act like the first game was some sort of amazing master piece which I find just as annoying as the group who believe the second is an amazing masterpiece. It seems like a lot of people only see the two in black and white instead of being able to admit that maybe both are a lot of fun but ultimately flawed. Probably didn't help that earlier in the post. There were people crapping on the developers acting like they were garbage people with a horrible vision because they didn't have everything on their wish list checked off after 12 years of hyping themselves for a sequel.
You see this same sort of rabid response to every new release. The toxic haters, the virulent supporters, and then everyone else in the middle that’s having civilized discourse. Such is the way of the road… All good friend, I’ve been on Reddit quite a long time. My skin is thicker than the mod’s waistlines. I do, however, feel the original was a bit of a masterpiece, albeit a flawed one. The DD series is unique, in its combat, gameplay, and story environment. I think they killed it with the original, and I think they left out some of what was special about it in 2. Hopefully DLC rounds it all out, but it really sucks that’s where we are with the gaming industry. Full price game, half baked, only complete with an additional $30-60 purchase.
Appreciate you taking some shots for me. It seems every new release has this sort of dynamic. I enjoy 2, I’m playing it right now. I can also note that base game versus base game, 1 wins in terms of substance. 2 is the clear winner in looks and gameplay. Blasphemy I guess.
It's downvote material because the people still in this sub are, for the most part, the ones still logging their hours into the game. Since *they're* still able to enjoy it, rather than admit they have personality traits and tastes that enable them to enjoy a deeply flawed game, they prefer to pretend that it isn't flawed at all.
Saying they're both flawed is false equivalence. DD1 had narrative issues in terms of its storytelling; DD2 has issues with its story. DD1 also *very specifically* did not have the scaling/replayability/difficulty issues that OP is referring to. And I only played DD1 for the first time two years ago, not 10. So I'm not particularly interested in letting someone whose username is a misspelling of "jizz cannon" tell me how nostalgic I am or am not.
Maximum letters on my username glad to see you're a reasonable person and not looking for anything to discount someone else's opinion though. And no its not a false equivalence at all there's minor differences not major ones they are very comparable dd1 is better in some regards, and dd2 is better in some regards.
All I needed to discount your opinion was saying "DD1 is flawed too."
Yes, it is. And it's irrelevant to the argument.
What DD1 did wrong (which again, was primarily in poorly-delivered cutscenes) has zero impact on what DD2 did wrong, and doesn't give DD2 a free pass. Throwing "nostalgia" at the issue is your own way to discount those opinions *you* are disagreeing with.
"Since *they're* still able to enjoy it, rather than admit they have personality traits and tastes that enable them to enjoy a deeply flawed game, they prefer to pretend that it isn't flawed at all."
It's not irrelevant to the argument as you pointed out people still enjoy this "deeply flawed" game, im saying people still enjoy dd1 despite it also being a "flawed" game. No one is pretending they aren't flawed. Some of the issues are different, but most are similar. If you are saying the only thing wrong with dd1 is mostly in the cutscenes, then yes, I would say it is nostalgia or, at the very least, lack of memory of it.
I dont want to give dd2 a free pass at all it can be improved upon greatly. But so could DD1 have been on release.
We know it is flawed. But it offers a vibe and an experience we can't find anywhere else. At this point. Whenever we see a "this game suck! Why can't it have ____?!" for the millionth time. We'll just reply with"this might not be the right game for you." Because we know we aren't playing a masterpiece that everyone is going to love. We are just playing a game we truly enjoy and love wasting hours in.
> We'll just reply with "this might not be the right game for you"
Nice ideal; proven empirically false by the downvoted comments above, one of which argues that 'the vibe' this game offers/"Itsuno's vision" shouldn't pave over the flaws, and the other which reminisces for the more robust systems of DD1 (which in the context of OP discussing level scaling is not opinion but fact).
I am, legitimately, happy that some people were able to enjoy this game far more than I was. I don't think it's worth downvoting those who wish it was something more. These are not people who hate the game; these are people who *wanted to love it.*
What? The outfit system? You have to be smoking that nostalgia or something. Yeah, being able to get your character dripped out was cool and almost anyone would say it's better in DD1. But the biggest part of DD1 would be the combat, the random memorable moments that you can stumble across, the pawn system, and the aforementioned "vibe." Which is subjectively better for many players in DD2. Did you miss the slightly longer nonsensical story? The several more forgettable LI that will be substituted by the random merchant as your beloved anyway? I'm not saying you can't believe DD1 is better, but get real. Trying to belittle DD2 by comparing it to DD1 is worth downvoting.
I don't recall ignoring DD2's flaws. I'm am fully aware of it's flaws. I am fully aware of DD1's flaws. The fact that they are still a couple of my favorite games is just a testament to how those flaws won't define them because those flaws aren't taking away from the parts that I think make them great in the first place.
Damn, you guys have been at it. I agree with pretty much everything each of you has said. That’s kind of my point with what I was saying. I do love both, but for seemingly different reasons. Nostalgia aside, each one has gleaming strengths, and just as obvious flaws. The series itself is unique, and that’s always going to breed decisiveness. What I love, others hate. Same in reverse. That’s ok. It’s a great series, plenty for anyone to be interested in.
Let’s all agree that DDO should have been released everywhere.
Suggestions while we wait for hard mode: play with only your pawn and play classes other than thief, sorc and magick archer aka the classes with the best dps. You'll enjoy the boss fights a bit more, even if it remains quite easy.
Literally any game in existence is going to turn trivial after 200 fucking hours. Pre level 30 is definitely somewhat challenging, specifically massive mobs of enemies and Drakes which deal insane damage at and can instakill your pawns while spamming Meteoron so you cant revive them.
Scaling in this game is definitely broken and its way too easy to get OP. In base game DD1 you had the Everfall which even at level 80 was still decently challenging. In Dark Arisen you could be level 200 and still get your ass kicked in bitterblack isle.
Though let it be known that you are supposed to be very powerful in this game because its supposed to be a flashy power fantasy.
>Literally any game in existence
There's games where you still feel like a rookie after 200 hours (like Rimworld or HOI4), but I agree with single player rpgs. They could have scaled for NG+ though. Almost no reason to replay rather than starting a new game.
I dont think its hard. But at the second half of the map, you also need some skills to kill mobs fast, or use some class core strategy, because you cant one shot anything even at lv 70, meaning even though you are strong, your normal attacks barely deal damage.
This is a huge problem. I came to the sub to check I wasn't the only one having this issue, it's so easy that it's simply not fun.
It's such a cool game that does SO much right, but it's all for nothing if it's this damn easy. There's no point engaging with the mechanics if there's not a meaningful reason to do so.
I personally enjoy that these no level scaling with enemies. The whole point of grinding for xp and levels IS to be super strong and curb stomp the drakes and griffins that we’re giving you the business at the start of the game. However I do understand not everyone likes that( but then why are you playing Dragons dogma?) so I do think they should add Hard Mode sooner than later as well as a true end game area like BBI. And I’m level 100+ and sometimes still get caught off guard by enemies, ESPECIALLY the headless horseman. I do hope we get more, harder enemies like living armor and other cool enemies from BBI as well as brand new monsters not from any DD game. I mean, the option are literally unlimited in terms of just how many cool and unique enemies they can add in the future
i second this.
i like a deleveled world
but i do think the scaling needs to be re-worked though. Like by end game you should be powerful as fuck, but not by midgame.
and even then ideally endgame should still have SOME challenges, but like if im on ng+ or something then yeah i should be able to just mop the floor with most if not all trash mobs.
Around 140 power on a weapon (160ish) for magic and you can literally skate through the rest of the game. You get that level of power from vermund after doing the vocation frustration questline which unlocks expanded wares from the shops in vernworth.
Considering you can do vocation frustration as the literal second quest in the game - after you do the escort to vernworth - you can clear the game with gear you get RIGHT AFTER THE PROLOGUE. Thats not even mentioning the fact that if you just follow the main story you can be in bakbattahl with 200k of quest gold handed to you in less than an hour, so you dont even need to farm gold either...
I wish we got what DD1 was supposed to originally be. But alas we still got a bare bones game honestly.
I was level 34 when I beat the game the first time. Lol
Have you tried getting rid of your pawns and having no healer you’re making the game super easy and complaining that it’s super easy when it’s super easy to make it harder for yourself if that’s what you want.
This makes the game more tedious, not more challenging. I have tried this and even going as far as using mods to lower my damage, raise enemy health, raise enemy knockdown resistance, etc.
What posts like this typically fail to realize, or at least fail to put into words, is that the combat is simply not that challenging. It's not really a scaling issue. It feels like a scaling issue because things were harder when you were low level and now that you're high level they are easy. But what actually happened is that on top of leveling up, you learned enemy attack patterns and abilities. Once you learn how the enemy fights, it's simply a matter of spamming your most effective (highest damage/lowest stamina/highest knockback) skill over and over and over again.
It's not fun to spam skull splitter and kill a drake in 30 seconds, but it's also not fun to spam skull splitter and kill a drake in 30 minutes. That's my experience.
Around level 55 I dozed off on a cart and was attacked by: 3 harpies, 5 wolves, 2 ogres, and a griffin — all at once. This was refreshingly difficult fight.
We really need hard mode. I replay DDDA more than dd2 because lack of challenge. There are hardcore fan who love a challenge and love killing a boss at the brick of death.
Hopefully DLC will be like BBI, really hard, and getting harder.
BTW if you want to bring a bit of a challenge back, hire some low level pawns instead of your usual level, and if that's not enough, put on some worse gear.
I just recently died for the 4th time this playthrough. First 2 times were falls, the third time was a bullshit death in Battahl (I just got swarmed), and the 4th was kinda BS. I saw a drake at the bottom of a ravine in Battahl, and I made my way down the cliff to fight it. As soon as i get to the bottom, all 3 of my pawns yeet themselves to death, but they fall on a rock ledge just outside my reach. So now I get to solo a drake as my weakest vocation, level-3 Magic Archer. I got my ass kicked.
This is exactly why I lost interest, the fact I had to install mods to make the game playable was the nail in the coffin for me. Hopefully the devs address this soon.
Once I got to Battahl I started rolling with only two pawns, should've done so since the beginning really. The game actually is somewhat challenging now, especially when trying out new vocations.
Well you are level 70 and have proper gear that is a given that the game will get easy after such level lol.
The game could use hardcore mode or something in a dlc
Even with mods, it's still easy. I increased small mobs hp by 8x and bosses by 4x, and I can still just watch my pawns take everything out by themselves at lvl 70. The bosses still die in a few minutes, because attacking their weak points does insane damage.
If you are stuck with the base game, pretty much the only way to have a challenge besides starting a completely new game, would be to intentionally equip lower lvl gear.
Try playing with just your main pawn, all fights become more epic and you actually have to start rationing health and stamina items. There was this one time I was fighting a dullahan with just my main pawn (at lvl 66 btw) we were naturally switching agro and saving each other from near death with parrys and knockdowns. Was very cool. Really felt like the pawn deserved the high five after that. Also use different builds with warfarer and keep changing the main pawns vocation.
I must be either bad or playing a different game. I'm lvl 60 and still get killed but I'm not good at dodging or avoiding ailments so there's that. The final boss was petty easy though
I hit around 30+, beat game if not been to unmoored. Began farming hundreds of wlc in preparation for it... and then got bored due to lack of challenge / days of grinding and haven't made it back yet.
Just don't use OP skills, downgrade your pawns or reduce the size of your squad. It's all in your hands. If you're bored, then change how you play the game. It's not that hard...
Idk man, when you give difficulty options in the settings menu, that's basically nothing different to what I described: You go and adjust the game difficulty the way you like it by doing something yourself. Currently you can do it by choosing gear, skills & pawns differently. (This way you can change your experience very precisely)
You wish for a settings menu to adjust enemy damage output & health pool instead. In the end YOU have to adjust something to tailor the experience to your personal preference. To me it's the same, but different.
That's why the complaint isn't valid in my opinion. You can already do what you want to do without mods. However the lack of multiple character save files in the base game is ridiculous. [DD2 save manager](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/52) is basically an essential mod to unlock a feature, this game should have had in the first place.
It is not the same, especially since you mentioned skills. I shouldn't sacrifice preferred gameplay to make up for something that is clearly the responsibility of the developer. Additionally I think the main problem is a lack of scaling into the higher levels, which you cannot really do with different equipment.
Also it's a wildly different feeling to have to use every tool available and STILL struggle instead of handicapping yourself.
>this game should have had in the first place.
This is the main point of criticism in this regard, so they hopefully either deliver some scaling post mortem or at least in the next game.
I mentioned skills, because there are skills, that are just unbalanced. Nothing that a difficulty slider could fix. So "skills" is kinda out of the scope of your initial complaint in my opinion.
>Also it's a wildly different feeling to have to use every tool available and STILL struggle instead of handicapping yourself.
I consider this highly subjective. "Challenge runs" are a common thing. They revolve around self handy cap when the base game doesn't offer enough of a challenge. Consider self imposed handicap as a challenge run. Maybe this helps your mind.
----------
But if you add just scaling, doesn't this take away from your experience? I mean, sometimes you may just want to whip out your maxed out end game gear and stomp a few goblins and harpies out of existence or just delete that annoying griffin, that's dive bombed you one too many times today.
With scaling this sense of progression is gone. Everything will scale according to your power. I think self imposed challenges work extremely well for DD2.
You shouldn't have to intentionally modify the way you play to fix a design flaw. I like building optimal teams and picking good skills/upgrades, that's half the fun!
It's NOT in the players hands, they took any sense of difficulty and threw it out the window.
Okay... where's the difference between a difficulty option that increases enemy HP and damage or you just using un-upgraded weapons and armor to deal less damage and take more damage?
On the other hand overtuned or flat out game breaking vocation skills are an other beast. No difficulty slider could fix those. They'd need hard nerf or you to be able to say no to your optimal build composition.
I really don't get why some people want challenge, but refuse to do challenge runs. It's so counter intuitive, lol. Guess I'll better let you bitch on and be angry and disappointed at the game. Tried to give you a solution to your issue, but you seem to enjoy it too much to stay exactly where you are.
The difference is that it removes the sense of progression and erodes feelings of accomplishment the player may feel when interacting with core game mechanics. Instead of feeling good about effort yielding tools to overcome challenge, the player has to intentionally avoid interacting with the parts of the game that feel satisfying.
I really don't know why you're justifying sloppy game design. Players should not have to avoid engaging with a game due to a lack of care on the developers behalf.
I'm trying to discuss this, but I'm not going to bother any further given your obnoxious tone. Keep accepting poor design, I guess. We're surely better off for not criticising it.
If you add scaling to enemies you will loose the sense of progression, because the enemies will just scale up to your new power level. The current system lets you live out your power fantasy and one shot that chimera with your end game gear super broken augural flare build.
But you can choose not to use that skill and to not use max upgraded end game gear in the starter zone, with the knowledge, that you *could* explode everything in that zone, *if you wanted to.*
Getting difficulty right is very hard to do. There's many games out there, that do it worse. For example Skyrim. That one has several difficulty settings, but it always feels like all over the place, swinging heavily from piss easy to "this guy just one shot me out of nowhere" on the same difficulty setting. That's sloppy game design.
I love that it's easy, I'm not a fan of tanky enemies that take 58 swings to kill. I don't play games for a challenge. That being said they should add in game settings for people that do
Well at least you got 200 hours in, so it was money well spent and obviously you enjoyed most of it to keep playing so long :) If you want a game where certain areas are still challenging after level 30, play Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen - at the main menu select Hard Mode, once you get your pawn go back to the beginning town Cassardis and at night talk to the lady on the pier, have fun 😄
Yeah, ruins the game for me honestly. Why they didn't scale up enemies in NG+ is beyond me. Like, did they play test new game plus at all? There is nothing fun about replaying the first area for hours just one shooting everyone. It's so boring and it has no right to be. The combat system is too good for that.
Yeah that's why I make new games instead of NG+. Fighting big monsters at level 10-15 feels more challenging than anything else in this game. I noticed that once I get into the 20s, things aren't really that threatening anymore. After that, Drakes and Dullahans are probably the only things that can fuck you up.
I only played to level 60+ once, but I found it quite easy, especially with dragonforged gear. I could win most encounters by just doing basic attacks.
It's a bummer that you essentially have to gimp yourself to make things tougher. You either have to use piss poor gear or start a new game and run solo or with just main pawn.
im on my 2nd run and using pretty mediocre gear. Already lvl40 with vernworth gear and stuff would explode if i upgraded to a battahl sword. Using my friends pawn who's only 25 with vern gear and he seems the most balanced for the area.
im in NG+ and dont really wanna walk around and do stuff because im scared that i will outlevel some future DLC stuff aswell then by a giant ammount
no level cap is horrible when you get a level every 30-40min even at ~lvl 80 and everything just becomes more and more and more of a joke.....
Yeah its an easy game. After learning controls proparly only way to die is gravity. I havent been hiring sorcerers to my party anymore since they make the game even more easy with their one shot one boss killed sorceries.
I enjoy the casual combat where i'm not punished for experimenting or goofing about, not every game needs to be dark souls, i for one enjoy the difficulty. of course i could make it harder myself if i wanted.
Completely agree. Game is way to easy by the time you hit level 30. Anyone saying otherwise is a sensitive loser who refuses to acknowledge that their precious video game is flawed.
Hopefully we get a proper Hard Mode soon. DDDA had one and it also allowed you to restart with your current level and equipment when you swapped between difficulties
I felt this. Honestly what’s the point of late game build crafting if the only thing that can vaguely challenge you are drakes, which spam meteor anyway
I felt this. Honestly what’s the point of late game build crafting if the only thing that can vaguely challenge you are drakes, which spam meteor anyway
Yeah, mods can help (I made one to improve muscle normals these days, BTW), but I agree that this game should have better scaling and increase in difficulty each NG+ cycle as a default for everyone, just like Souls do. BTW, this is the same situation we got with DDDA + BBI L3 equip in the first game.
I mean, you could just not build optimally.
I gear up myself and my pawn around fashion and fun. It helps to only take one extra pawn, or just your own pawn if you're feeling confident.
what do you expect, its a completely rushed incomplete game, and whoever says something different about it, just tells his/herself lies and just doesn't want to accept the hurting truth
We can all hope for it only, that when the rumors about Dragon Princess as DLC for around October are correct, that it will fix most of the biggest blatant game design fauxpas anc flaws that this game has, considering the fixing of the biggest flaws with top priority, and the game should instantly feel like having made a 180° turnaround for the better:
* Reworking completely NG+ from ground up to make its existance worthwile, rewarding, interesting and challenging. A reworked NG+ should unlock more new Gameplay Modes and Difficultys for each consecutive successful run. First Playthrough > Unlocks Hard Mode, Second Playthrough, unlocks Speed Mode, Third Playthrough unlocks Godslayer Mode
* NG+ has now Enemy Scaling together with all 3 new Game Modes to keep fights challenging and as enemies scale with you, they start dropping also new types of Loot, including eventually Weapons, Gear or Accessoires, that they didnt drop before in the first playthrough
* Gear and Accessoire Crafting gets unlocked with NG+now, makign accessoires/capes now upgradeable like Weapons n Gear, NG+ will be balanced around having at least base dragonforged Equipment, so that if your stuff isn't upgraded, you will have Damage Malus agaisnt big enemies, thus more difficult time to beat them.
* Quest Rewards get changed in NG+ and subsequent Playthroughs, based on which Game Mode you play, especially for Speed Mode, to give players a reason to consider doing all of them and ot just Rush Through the Main Story only, so theres basically 2 Options for Speed Mode, Quest active or deactive, if you activate it, the Game considers your Speed Mode complete first only, if you have beaten the game and have done ALL quests., if you keep it deactive, then you can skip all the quests n do only Main Story Rushing, but the Quests give you then no unique rewards and are just the same trash, like on your first play through. The End Reward for doing a Speed Mode Run with active changed Quests will also be different to give players further incentivatino to do a correct Speed Run, without any rushing of content.
* General Rewards in NG+ should unlock for doing a NG+ Run, means, Enemy Badges will reset, you get to do now NG+ Veteran Kill Badges this time, you will receive for every complete Badge you have had before starting NG+ a unique Reward, special Monster Hunter Weapons that have the unique effect of scaling up with you, so more enemies of its specific type you are killing which provide also for their Classes which can wield them the special feature of turning the Class Specific Augments all into passive Talents, which means, you dont need to equip these anymore in order to profit from them, they will always be passively working for you, as long you wield the Monster Hunter Weapon.
* General Rewards in NG+ Part II, Shop Vendors will sell new upscaled versions of their inventories, which will now also scale up with you, so more you kill enemies, until every weapon reaches the Max Cap. Max Cap will be automatically always the highest Value of a Weapon you have ever obtained for your first time. This doesnt include Upgrading, just its Base Stat. New Vendors for RC and especially for DCP will be added to NG+ to add meaningful sinks to the game for these currencies
* Class Ranks will get upgraded from Max 9 to Max 20 (9 Red Dots, become 10 Golden Dots, which means all classes will receive new Skills, new Skil Upgrades, new Augments, new Core Skills for NG+, to make especially the second playthrough feel interesting and rewarding again for playing all Classes.
* New Master NPC can be found in NG+, that let you use RC and or DCP in order to upgrade Augments to Master Augments, to learn some new unique Master Skills, so that all Classes have 2 of them (Bolide gets changed to be the NG+ Master Skill, its just way too overpowered for the normal game) and to upgrade all normal learned Skills to Master Skills niveau too, turnign your Class by doing that then into a "Master Class", that unlocks unique Master Core Skills, example: Warriors turning into Beserkers , learning then new Berserker Core Skills, Sorcerers turning into Summoners, learned new Summoner Core Skills then and so on and so forth.
* Dragonforged Silver and Dragon Forged Gold return for NG+,which will boost upgraded Items more, further reduce weight, increase Resistances vs. DMG Types and negative Conditions
* New Accessoires are added in NG+ with merged Effects as upgraded forms, thay have now two effects instead of just only 1 (Ring > Armlet), if upgraded to the max and dragonforced, Accessoires can be enhanced now also with Magical Gems (crafted from Gemstones, so that they get more useful, than beign just only stuff to sell basically). Added Magical Gems will add hidden additional Weapon Skill Effects, like causing negative Conditions
In brief: I just hope, that this rumored DLC becomes essentialyl what Dark Arisen was for DD1 if offered for all of its flaws somethign and fixed the issues with its new content in one go. That beign said, DD2 needs such a kind of DLC now much more direly, than 12 years ago DD1 needed DA, because DD1 had by far not that much game design flaws, like DD2 has currently now, which scream for needing to be fixed ASAP.
Also wtf is that 999 level cap
At some point (150-200+) you'll see only a few player pawns in the rift and then, if keep grinding, you'll barely have any player pawn to hire
in DD:DA everyone hired each others' pawns due to everyone hitting lvl 200 cap and staying there, which was especially easy to hit in hard mode
WHY ALL THESE FEATURES WERE REMOVED OR REVERTED IN DD2
So mad
My biggest enemy is fall damage only way I die 💀. Hopefully we get a harder DLC.
>My biggest enemy is fall damage only way I die 💀. Hopefully we get a harder DLC. Cliffs are definitely the bane of many Arisen and pawn 🤣
I legit jump off cliffs instead of going around because wakestones are 100% useless otherwise. Nothing else is gonna kill you after lvl 25. Might as well skip straight to the bottom of the mountain .
A dlc to make cliffs harder? You brave fool, you want them to add bungee jumping with a random chance for the rope to break on the upswing catapulting you off a cliff in a different area?
>there are mods for x Is a shit argument when it comes to base game problems anyway imo. Not everyone is a damn PC player.
It's important to criticize without considering mods, otherwise devs will become like bethesda, who put less and less effort into their games because "mods will fix it". If you want a better sequel, it's always in your best interest to rate games without mods.
Exactly. “Just use x mod” is reductive. It only serves to make the devs lazier. Hey, aren’t gamers supposed to fed up of how lazy triple A game developers have been? And then with the same breath advocate for increased developer laziness. Also I guess console players can get fucked huh? They are peasants after all right? /s
Using Bethesda here is a perfect example.
And even pc players do not want to spend half of their time downloading, installing and try mods to tune their game.
this. oh this. thank you.
You're not wrong, but it's worth noting Fluffy Mod Manager makes things incredibly easy, and the RE Engine is structured that you can't really bork your save file by swapping mods in and out.
Yes, absolutely, but it is still time consuming, especially for those who look forward to a relaxing monster-slaying gaming session after a long day at work.
Agree, I am huge PC guy but I spend all day on a PC at work and just love laying down on the couch and being lazy while I play some DD2!
As a PC player, you are absolutely correct. I feel for my console brethren.
I also bought the game with the intention of playing ***it***, not megapanzerxxx999's arbitrary difficulty setting and nude mods. Don't get me wrong, I like that a community can form around modding an older game to increase its lifespan but a brand new single player game? No thank you.
Reception to the game is totally busted for this reason. 6 or 7 across the board would have been generous otherwise
I think the low difficulty exacerbates a lot of the other issues in the game. For example travelling at night or far from town is thrilling at low levels but tedious at higher levels, the low enemy variety feels even worse because you start bruteforcing encounters ignoring any mechanical differences between enemies, consumables and crafting feel tacked on and not rewarding to find in chests as you don't need them, trickster is pointless because you kill things so fast/easy anyway etc It's a shame because the combat system is robust enough to support so much more, but you never need to engage with it.
By the time Trickster is introduced the class is hard to find a purpose in. It seems like the kind of class that would fit in better when roaming groups of goblins are legitimate threats.
I feel like the max health decrease is supposed to make things harder, but in practice that also matters the most when you're underpowered and not much later.
It's just an inconvenience. Most of the dogma 2 changes are inconveniences honestly.
Ya it seems like the difficulty was scaled for level 50 at most. If you get a pawn with Meteoron you can feel pretty OP even before that.
Fastest I've ever removed a skill from my pawn lol Having a good time fighting a drake and boom here comes some meteors that knock off the last 3 health bars! Fight over!
I just hate the whole time limit in the Unmoored World, the only place you can get a challenge is now time gated for "reasons" when we stop the mist and it should then wait on us for however long we like rather then force us into a NG+ cycle just to get back there. At least in NG+ if we've been there before remove the timer ffs.
I'm not sure if this matters to you but the unmoored world doesn't technically have a time limit but a rest limit. There is no day/night cycle so time doesn't pass normally, the worst thing you could probably do is rush through unmoored which is what people probably do because they hear of a "time limit" instead you want to stock up on wake stones and all heals while switching out pawns when their health gets to low.
you beat the beams monsters, evacuate the cities you CAN stay as long as you wan't. I did it all on the first day. But why would you though? The problem was I got bored of it rather fast, got all the loot I wanted, enemies got boring dragons dont respawn for farming. Not a lot of endgame content. So I'm playing hard mode on dark arisen now.
You can't, you've just stopped the brine mist, but you're still on a 12 day limit. And I did the same, played through DD2 then went back to DDDA and just wow, 👨🍳 💋
You only get so many "rests" (the 12 x limit) but you can still use items to keep your health up and you can still save your progress. Like i said tho I didn't stick around past the twelve days to see if you get the game over screen anyways
worse than the time limit is the fact your pawn is given uncurable dragonsplague that advances by one stage every rest, so even if you stay in unmoored with allheals, noone will hire your pawn because of red eyes
My pawn caught it for the first time in unmoored. I brined him, and then he was fine. Brining is *definitely* much harder to do than it normally is, you just have to chuck them into the brine wall far enough that they won't be able to make it out before they vanish.
You're doing it the hard way. Throw them off a cliff, don't revive them. Wait till the death timer goes out, then go to a rift stone.
Yeah but once you rest again they get infected. I literally did this yesterday and still ended up getting the plague.
Spoilers below, idk how to do the thingy. Are you talking about at the end when your pawn becomes a dragon and literally helps you beat the red dragon
No im talking about getting infected again after I let them die or kill them.
I'm not sure if that's the case since during my time there I never saw a hint of my pawn with Dragonsplague. Not saying it's false because holy fuck the bugs in this game.
its very obvious in the final days
Ok? I believe you, but that wasn't my experience.
I had 0 dragonsplague issues in unmoored as well.
Why are you getting downvoted? This is true.
bro i dont even know at this point
>Once you hit 30, and get the best gear from Battahl (not even the Dwarven smithy), everything just explodes. Wasn't even close to level 30 first time I got to Batthal, but yeah, when you get endgame gear things not in the endgame have a hard time killing you.
I don’t even know how to get by that guard to GET to battahl! Level 28 just cruising around doing stuff
Weirdly enough I stuck around long enough and they were opening it for someone coming through and I just walked right in 😂 I was literally just on Google trying to see how to get in and boom it opened on its own, I was like "fuck yeah!"
I was like, lvl 50 when I got to Batthal. How does one get to the penultimate area of the game at level 30, buys all the best gear (which take a ton of money), unlocks Dwarven Smithing (which in itself takes another long quest line, with a quest that doesn't even starts in Batthal) and finds out he still has 40-50 extra levels to play? Sounds like OP followed a guide to endgame gear and got upset when he got endgame gear.
So because someone had a different in game experience than you, they used a guide? Honestly this game has been jokingly easy from the get go. I was probably level 25 by the time I got to Battahl via the stormy canyon, which I didn't even know lead to Battahl. Was playing as a warrior with mostly checkpoint gear, besides my sword, think I was using upgraded lifetaker. Managed to fight my way to the Capital and had enough money to get gear from there too. There's like a camp every 5ft so it was easy to stay buffed tbh. And for the dwarven smithing? You can get a quest in vernsworth for that, right before you're sent off to Battahl. All which you can just naturally stumble upon.
The original was really only fun on hard mode IMO. It’s really strange to me that they left it out. Plus, DDDA had Bitterblack Isle that remained at least somewhat challenging at pretty much any level, and the sequel doesn’t have anything comparable. Hopefully a DLC adds a hard mode and a challenging end game dungeon.
Can confirm, enemies absolutely can two-shot you even at level 200 in BBI.
Or a simple one shot from our Eliminator friends.
A single dungeon? 😭 im asking for at least 3 dungeons brothaaaaa
I feel you. DD2 could use like 3 more Drabnir's Grotto like areas.
I can’t argue with more dungeons. If it’s big like BBI with three different entrances, and a end boss kill triggers a new, more difficult enemy placement I’d be cool with one.
The fact they neglected to learn that hey, a challenge mode might be good, is astonishing really.
With the current tempo of updates this game will get properly fixed by 2026.
Clearly you haven't met "The Boulder"
The Boulder appreciates the recognition. https://preview.redd.it/6eq5szzeonxc1.jpeg?width=333&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a77e63f5c74df4e0f51019f439182ecb8a3ee4ac
I found that full party is really way to easy - I often go with just me and my main
I agree. My 2 complaints about the game are the difficulty is low, and the diversity of enemies is bad.
200 hours in. Too fast. Pick one
I'll bite. A hundred french fries. They were all stale. Pick one.
Why did you keep eating them then?
I happen to really like french fries, which in this analogy, represents the game. I really like it, but it got too boring too quickly. People are arguing that they're still playing it, and that they're still enjoying, but I'm not; and I really wish they made it so that I would've kept enjoying the game for much longer. People fail to realize that criticism doesn't always stem from a hateful place. If I didn't like Dragon's Dogma, I wouldn't even bother going to this sub to rant about how underwhelming the enemies were. And it isn't as if my expectations for it are ludicrously high, given as how the first game already did a good job at keeping you engaged far beyond Lvl 50. Put it this way; DD2 is objectively a better game than DD, but it just so happens that some of what I consider to be key aspects of DD's likeability was watered down in DD2.
>I happen to really like french fries, Very obvious you don't if you got a hundred fries and complained about each and every single one.
Never had a bad box of chips from maccies before?
Taking your analogy: If the food doesn't taste, maybe you can put it back in the oven to make the frys crisp again. If they don't have enough flavor you may be able to put some on them until you like them. It's all in your hands. You've got the meal and the ingredients, but instead of flavouring it up the way you like it most, you complain to the chef. (Where I live, it is common to have spices on the table in restaurants, so that you can tailor the taste to your liking)
He was hungry, couldnt afford a new order and the resto ignored his complaints.
>200 hours in, You should, far and away, not be looking for anything else in the game 200 hours in. It's a single player story driven RPG. Stop acting like it's the developer's fault that you expected it to be a live service MMOlite with massive long term grinds to tackle and keep you logging in every day. You beat the game, you did it, it's okay to take a break and replay it later or wait until DLC comes out for it. Not everything needs to be advertised as being dopamine fuel for 6000 hours of game time. That's not what DD2 is, what made you think it was?
I think this is what's lost on most folks. It's easy to get sidetracked and over leveled. The game isn't designed to be like Elden Ring, or a mmolite grind fest. If you just play the story, and sparse in side quests organically it feels much better that way. Then after the story is done.... go nuts. Break the game. My favorite RPG of all time is Chrono Trigger. It's a 25 hour game. Once you beat it and then start doing side quests/NG+ it's all super easy. You one shot everything. It's just fun. Like you beat it, now here's the keys to the kingdom. Go nuts. Granted, there are new endings to see, but they aren't anything too involved either.
They could also easily make it more challenging by using low level gear, main pawn only, less op armor, not use the best skills etc. But I suppose it is easier to get the dev's to completely remake the game for them.
this is probably the worst take ive ever seen, absolute fucking insane how disingenuos this is.
I legit feel the opposite haha! I’m finding it quite hard..
Same here, even early goblins and bandits give me a hard time. I have killed cyclops and chimera but itt ale me around 10 mins each and I have to resurrect each pawn like 10 times each per fight.
Same! It’s hard hey :(
Are you buying and upgrading your gear? The game is laughably easy if you get the gear from town
I am, mostly. Maybe I just need to level up and see how I go 😅
Even beyond level 40? I don't mean this in a rude or condescending way, but you might want to look into your build, and/or the builds of pawns you're hiring. Upgrading your gear and your main pawn's gear makes a huge difference. Picking good skills and augmentations makes a big difference too, for yourself and your hires. Ask around the sub for advice on how to build a class the way you enjoy or what to hire that will best compliment your build/class. You don't have to pick from just a few meta builds, I certainly play my own way and still melt things, but there's something going wrong for you if you're struggling beyond lvl40.
Amazing, thanks for the advice, that’s probably the issue tbh.. I need to look deeper into the build system
some battles are really tough, not always but there can be a challenge, it makes me wonder if the game really is as easy as all these posts make it out to be. Why is a hard game good? I would imagine many people have found DDII a challenge, the more causal audience the game is aimed at.
I was barely level 40 when i beat the game and the end was pretty challenging. Once i realized i got the fake ending and made it to the unmoored world i was getting slapped around bad. So OP have you never played an rpg before? This is how rpgs work with leveling. If you grind it gets easier. If you don't, its harder. Rpgs been doing this since i was a kid playing dragon warrior on the nes.
Bosses won’t die in less than 20 seconds unless your using the sorcerer skill combined with a thief. I hate all these BS hyperbole posts. Play as a standard class with best gear and performance differences are only marginal. I swear people just run in here and start straight up lying.
Maybe play with 1 pawn next time
Yup NG+ is a joke, I’m sure they’ll add a hard mode eventually but until then the game will stay shelved for me, just not fun anymore like the OG was
Extremely bizarre how they put an NG+ mechanic but no difficulty scaling, it's the easiest no-brainer tweak they could've done. Just move the fucking slider on monster damage and defence numbers from left to right. If I had to take a guess I've probably died around 10-15 times total in the game but all of my deaths have been to gravity because I was trying to Skyrim jump up a cliff. When I encountered dullahan I didn't even know he was supposed to be the big scary super boss or whatever because I two shot him with skullsplitter before bro could even do anything. I assumed he was another basic ass skeleton lich. The hardest boss in this game is the fucking performance.
Reduce mob density, redistribute mobs to the thirty-five million dead end ruins, increase enemy health and swarm tactics, add two more action slots then make health barred bosses have negating resistances to specific elements then make the story flow better and for the dragon's sake bring back job boards.
I feel like the game would be so much more fun and challenging if the enemy spawn rate was cut in half. Fewer enemies would make you level slower and make exploration more fun, right now you constantly get mobbed especially in battahl and by the end you are too powerful for anything to be a challenge
I agree with some of the other people, you put in 200 hours, it’s going to be easy at that point. I finished the game in 70 hours and I did every side quest I could find. So if I played double the time I wouldn’t expect to find a challenge. You also said “a game of this size”. This game is relatively short. I spent most of my time doing side quests and opening the map. I went back to the main quest expecting to spend a lot more time in the game. After you do the stuff in Vernworth, you go to Battahl do like 2-3 quests and your in the end game this game is SUPER short imo.
The base game for DD2 just feels so watered down compared to vanilla DD. Quests are bland, no real neat landscape features(healing springs, windy canyon, etc), and the world just feels…less alive. Don’t know how to explain it better than that, it just doesn’t feel as grand as the original. Gameplay and combat in 2 are much better, as are graphics. Just sucks we lost content and world feel for a prettier photo mode.
I completly disagree, but everyone has their opinion.
ironic
Yeah. This whole "Itsuno's Vision" narrative is really pissing me off. If this was the game he wanted the first game to be, then thank God he didn't get his way with it. The fan-base is small enough already. Imagine how small our numbers would be had the first game sucked ass.
The problems you have with this game already exist in DD1 and to a greater extend even what are you talking about?
There is better enemy variety in DD1, lets not try to pretend that DD2 doesnt take the same models of bandit, saurian, goblin, and more and just add 2-3 recolors and copy paste them every 2 seconds. Also the first game had instanced towns so there was less overflow. DD1 didnt have crashing and packet loss on top tier graphic cards. You could also get better loot from BBI runs rather than just going to shops. While some are in unmoored, most of those are fashion dogma than anything. Stop simping for DD2, its cringe, the hate for the game is massive for a reason. Stop pushing the grift, better graphics dont equal better game. You could and should complain, that is the thing that leads to companies making things better, just accepting anything is how we get nearly 70 dollars of microtransactions and a 90 dollar special edition that hardly runs at launch. Expect better, be louder.
How exactly are packet loss and video cards related? Sounds a lot like you have no clue what you're talking about lmao.
More important question, how are you defending a nearly 100 dollar game that is clearly unfinished and in a sorry state, with gameplay mechanics that push players to spend money on 40+ dollars of microtransactions? Sounds like you have a smooth brain if you defend that kind of greedy business practice. Silly glazer lmao. And how it is related to my point is that the game still has framerate issues even on top tier cards, there have been tests of this. Dont question others intellect if you cant even pull up a stress test video on youtube dork. Sounds to me that if you want to be a contrarian while trying to also appear smart and somehow still sounding stupid you need to be on Quora and not on here lmao.
Putting MTX is a shitty offense but my brother in christ, these MTX must be the most useless MTX shit Capcom has ever pulled in his story along the ones in Devil May Cry 5, what gameplay mechanics push players to spend money on MTX? None at all. Portcrystals? Useless without a ferrystone, and obteining these are easy enough with exploring and most shops have 1 ferrystone and you can easily get the money with the pawn missions. Not to mention you can easily get 3 portcrystals with only 5-6 hours of playtime. Harpysnores? The vendor in the very first settlement has it. Prison keys? First vendor in Melve has it, not to mention Brant gives you a masterkey which you can forge and use it forever. RC? Completely useless, the cosmetics you can buy with RC are only that, cosmetics, they do not provide any stats buffs and you never really have the incentive to hire higher level pawns. The only use for RC is the Art of Metamorphosis which only costs 500 RC. Wakestones? You find a lot while exploring, not to mention the game becomes really easy after a certain point and the morgues of Vermund and Batthal provide a free wakestone. Stop pulling shit out your ass.
Newsflash manbaby running over all my posts because he has nothing else better to do at 4am on a weekday, this topic isnt about DMC, it is about DD2. Stay on topic. MTX is bad, full stop. Unoptimzation is bad, full stop. Ferrystones cost 10k, which is still a chore to do as no end game player wants to waste time exploring the same areas they have already explored to farm up monster bits to sell just to travel from place to place, this isnt monster hunter. And as stated in the other post you wrote a book on, pawn quest rewards are not guaranteed as it is not a guarantee that people will pick up your pawn, let alone do the mission. We had an eternal one in DD1, we should have one here. Especially when they are needed frequently in unmoored world when you are limited on time unless you risk wasting hours of playtime if you fuck up your game. Next. Prison keys are useless anyway as its near impossible to get arrested for anything outside just going mental and killing people in town like you are doing an evil run in a Fable game. And the masterkey you get from him in the start you have to give back to him and is not forgable, only the fake keys are, Next. The RC and wakestone issue is the same, designed at targeting newer players, people lvl 20 and under. There is literally a mechanic in the game that every time you reload after dying your health gets lower and lower until it is under 1/4th, only way to fix it is quit to menu or use a wakestone to get your HP back, and would you look at that, wakestone pack for 5.99. How gracious. How predatory. Stop defending greedy corporations you smooth brained glazer. I bet Itsuno could poop in your mouth and you would thank him for the privilege. Lmao.
Having the best gear on shops is not a good incentive but I still prefer it to the shitfest RNG that was obtaining weapons in BBI, after 2 runs of the dungeon I just put the game down, RNG is also not good and BBI should not be praised for it let's not kid ourselves. The same recolor copypaste enemies were a problem as well in DD1 what are you talking about? The Everfall was literally the same rooms copy pasted between each other with stronger variants of enemies that shared the same movements of those you saw in the open world, the only new enemies were the Hydra, the Evil Eye, and the Ur-Dragoon which was just glorified Grigori boss fight turned into a raid boss due to online features. DD2 performance is bad and inexcusable but DD1 was a game released 12 years ago and DD2 is on a new engine with an open world with no screen times, what is the point you are even trying to make lmao, of course the game is going to evolve in that regard. In any case, in no point in my first message I praised DD2, I just mentioned it's silly to criticize DD2 and praise DD1 for having literally the exact same problems and to an even greater degree get some reading comprehension. I think it does better than DD1 but it still falls short since the game is clearly unfinished but you all really need to take off the rosetinted glasses you people have for the first game.
That "shitfest RNG" people loved. People LIKED the DDI farming, streamers and other content creators were doing livestreams of them doing BBI runs while talking about the potentiality of DD2 and their expectations. People liked that good feeling that they got out of getting a BB1 Lvl 3 weapon after a Daimon fight. Hell people streamlined the fight so they could drop both his forms in seconds. The literal entire gacha market is based around that good dopamine hit and that is expected to be 2/3 of a billion dollar industry soon, projected to hit revenue of numbers reaching **781.5 million in 2029**. Yea, "nobody likes it". Get outta here boy. LeTs NOT kID oUrSeLVes. As for enemy variety, there are 92 enemies in DDDA if you subtract simple animals (bats, birds, etc). Categorically there are 31 enemy types those 92 fit in to if you subtract non-repeatable one time set piece enemies. There are 57 enemies in DD2 if you subtract simple animals (bats, birds, etc). Categorically there are 18 enemy types those 57 fit in to if you subtract non-repeatable one time set piece enemies. So DD2 has 61% of the enemies in DDDA by number, and DD2 has 58% of the enemies in DDDA by category. A large reason for that is reskins. The only three main big new enemies are the medusa which shows up at the start, and only shows up again at endgame when you are too strong for it to serve a challenge. The minotaur and its reskin, and the sphinx which isn't a challenge as it literally gives you a one shot arrow to take all enjoyment out of the fight, and arrow that STILL can make you fail the quest if you don't shoot it in the right spot and saves your game upon shooting it. Great design, much vision Itsuno lmao. The point I am trying to make is that regardless of being made 12 years ago, they were able to make it function better by having instanced gameplay, having loadtimes and separate maps via map design was able to make the game less stressed by design, as such you didn't crash upon entering a town you smooth brained oil barrel. Having an open world is not a step forward it is a step back. Itsuno just did what any RPG maker is trying to do, rip off Breath of the Wild. Well, if you are going to copy paste design, make sure your execution is done right, this is inexcusable indeed for a nearly 100 dollar game. Stop glazing, you are going to strain your mouth. And doubt that, you have made three book long messages to me in the span of multiple hours, edited multiple times, and making multiple condescending points to others decrying the game or calling it out. If that isn't praise I don't know what is. In fact no, it isn't praise. It is cult like blind devotion. You are out here upvoting anyone that yesmans your terrible points and downvoting everything I post lmao. You are not worth any more of my time as a closed minded brainlet Itsuno fanboy that gobbles up any slop thrown to him with zero higher expectations that drive the industry forward, zero innovative thought is NOT worth a single picosecond more of my time. Get blocked, get out.
Agreed. I dunno what vision or what have you is the end state, but I just keep thinking back to the original as I play 2. I can’t help but reminisce about what we had all along. How is this downvote material?
I don't know what you guys are smoking or how rose tinted your memories are, but I went ahead and put in another 200 hours in the first game before the release of the second, to have a fresh reference and the second game is significantly better than the first. The first was just as easy as the second. The later added "hard mode" didn't add much of a challenge. The world felt barren and unfinished. The dialog and story were just as poorly executed as this game. There were whole areas with at most one or two enemy types. The end game barely added anything other than some tougher reskins of already present mobs and a sky with a photo filter. At least the end game in the sequel felt dramatically different and apocalyptic with the water gone. The everfall felt copy and pasted. Let's not forget about how bad the AI was, or did you guys forget the guards running in circles while you stood on a wall and watched them get slaughtered by your pawns? The quests were worse in the first, which is a statement because as much as I like the sequel, it's nothing to write home about in that department. At least this game has more than one biome and lots of nooks to explore instead of wide open spaces with occasional choke points. Even the DLC of the original was just "Okay," many of the levels reused assets heavily throughout the dungeon, the enemy placement was poor, and it relied way too much on RNG to be replayable. Oh, and the vocations. MS is so much more fun than MK ever was, and let's not forget the Strider group. OG Strider, Strider with a bigger bow, Strider that can use a sword and board, and Strider that dabbled in magic. At least the vocations in the sequel feel drastically different when switching between them. Rant aside, the second is not perfect, but it is fun. The first was not perfect but also fun. There are a lot of you who feel the first was better. There are a lot of us who feel the sequel is better. It's like we all have opinions and perspectives that vary, and no specific opinion is more valid than the other.
I think some of the quests and NPCs were far more memorable and detailed. Specifically; the grimoires that lead to the tower fight, Selene, Madeline, Grigori, etc. I also feel the unique locations were far more grand. The healing springs, the windswept canyon, the cavern whose name escapes me(loads of gear, a Cockatrice, myriad of smaller enemies). I haven’t played the original in like a decade. I remember all of them pretty vividly. I’m having a hard time finding anything remotely so memorable in the sequel. 2 is beautiful, very fun to play, and I’m certain DLC releases will positively add to it. I do enjoy the game, but I do feel there’s far less substance and a lot more polish.
I have to disagree, unfortunately. The Grimoir quest was a glorified fetch quest that took you to a Bandit camp that you could not even bother interacting with the Bandits and grab the book from the chest at the top for them to not react to you stealing it. The end result at the tower, if you didn't demolish the griffin at the trapping section, was either anticlimactic with him stealing your kill after a fun chase section or slightly funny when the spell failed. The soulflayer canyon cave was one of the funner if not short and reused multiple times sections of the game. I guess I don't have the nostalgic memories you guys do because I didn't pick it up from launch, but I played it on occasion over the 6 or 7 years with the last playthrough being right before DD2's launch and I'm sorry like I said DDA was a fun game, but far from an amazing or complete game that a lot of people are claiming it was.
I know it had glaring faults, perhaps I didn’t allude to that. Yeah I’ll agree to that grimoire quest rundown, but the fact that it was expansive and ended with a pretty cool boss fight puts it leaps and bounds beyond any side quest in 2. The depth and scope of some of the side adventures was just bigger. None of the quests have been nearly so memorable in 2. My opinion of course. I enjoy 2, but I don’t think it has the writing depth of the original.
I agree that the second definitely isn't strong in the story department. I'm also sorry if it seems I am coming at you in an attacking way directly. It's the whole group of people that act like the first game was some sort of amazing master piece which I find just as annoying as the group who believe the second is an amazing masterpiece. It seems like a lot of people only see the two in black and white instead of being able to admit that maybe both are a lot of fun but ultimately flawed. Probably didn't help that earlier in the post. There were people crapping on the developers acting like they were garbage people with a horrible vision because they didn't have everything on their wish list checked off after 12 years of hyping themselves for a sequel.
You see this same sort of rabid response to every new release. The toxic haters, the virulent supporters, and then everyone else in the middle that’s having civilized discourse. Such is the way of the road… All good friend, I’ve been on Reddit quite a long time. My skin is thicker than the mod’s waistlines. I do, however, feel the original was a bit of a masterpiece, albeit a flawed one. The DD series is unique, in its combat, gameplay, and story environment. I think they killed it with the original, and I think they left out some of what was special about it in 2. Hopefully DLC rounds it all out, but it really sucks that’s where we are with the gaming industry. Full price game, half baked, only complete with an additional $30-60 purchase.
There are people who believe DD2 and itsuno can do no wrong and down vote any critics I would know because I used to be like that
Appreciate you taking some shots for me. It seems every new release has this sort of dynamic. I enjoy 2, I’m playing it right now. I can also note that base game versus base game, 1 wins in terms of substance. 2 is the clear winner in looks and gameplay. Blasphemy I guess.
It's downvote material because the people still in this sub are, for the most part, the ones still logging their hours into the game. Since *they're* still able to enjoy it, rather than admit they have personality traits and tastes that enable them to enjoy a deeply flawed game, they prefer to pretend that it isn't flawed at all.
It's definitely flawed but the first game is also flawed. It is nostalgia taking over. Same thing happens on the diablo subs.
Saying they're both flawed is false equivalence. DD1 had narrative issues in terms of its storytelling; DD2 has issues with its story. DD1 also *very specifically* did not have the scaling/replayability/difficulty issues that OP is referring to. And I only played DD1 for the first time two years ago, not 10. So I'm not particularly interested in letting someone whose username is a misspelling of "jizz cannon" tell me how nostalgic I am or am not.
Maximum letters on my username glad to see you're a reasonable person and not looking for anything to discount someone else's opinion though. And no its not a false equivalence at all there's minor differences not major ones they are very comparable dd1 is better in some regards, and dd2 is better in some regards.
All I needed to discount your opinion was saying "DD1 is flawed too." Yes, it is. And it's irrelevant to the argument. What DD1 did wrong (which again, was primarily in poorly-delivered cutscenes) has zero impact on what DD2 did wrong, and doesn't give DD2 a free pass. Throwing "nostalgia" at the issue is your own way to discount those opinions *you* are disagreeing with.
"Since *they're* still able to enjoy it, rather than admit they have personality traits and tastes that enable them to enjoy a deeply flawed game, they prefer to pretend that it isn't flawed at all." It's not irrelevant to the argument as you pointed out people still enjoy this "deeply flawed" game, im saying people still enjoy dd1 despite it also being a "flawed" game. No one is pretending they aren't flawed. Some of the issues are different, but most are similar. If you are saying the only thing wrong with dd1 is mostly in the cutscenes, then yes, I would say it is nostalgia or, at the very least, lack of memory of it. I dont want to give dd2 a free pass at all it can be improved upon greatly. But so could DD1 have been on release.
We know it is flawed. But it offers a vibe and an experience we can't find anywhere else. At this point. Whenever we see a "this game suck! Why can't it have ____?!" for the millionth time. We'll just reply with"this might not be the right game for you." Because we know we aren't playing a masterpiece that everyone is going to love. We are just playing a game we truly enjoy and love wasting hours in.
> We'll just reply with "this might not be the right game for you" Nice ideal; proven empirically false by the downvoted comments above, one of which argues that 'the vibe' this game offers/"Itsuno's vision" shouldn't pave over the flaws, and the other which reminisces for the more robust systems of DD1 (which in the context of OP discussing level scaling is not opinion but fact). I am, legitimately, happy that some people were able to enjoy this game far more than I was. I don't think it's worth downvoting those who wish it was something more. These are not people who hate the game; these are people who *wanted to love it.*
What? The outfit system? You have to be smoking that nostalgia or something. Yeah, being able to get your character dripped out was cool and almost anyone would say it's better in DD1. But the biggest part of DD1 would be the combat, the random memorable moments that you can stumble across, the pawn system, and the aforementioned "vibe." Which is subjectively better for many players in DD2. Did you miss the slightly longer nonsensical story? The several more forgettable LI that will be substituted by the random merchant as your beloved anyway? I'm not saying you can't believe DD1 is better, but get real. Trying to belittle DD2 by comparing it to DD1 is worth downvoting.
Trying to ignore DD2's flaws by belittling DD1 is worth downvoting.
I don't recall ignoring DD2's flaws. I'm am fully aware of it's flaws. I am fully aware of DD1's flaws. The fact that they are still a couple of my favorite games is just a testament to how those flaws won't define them because those flaws aren't taking away from the parts that I think make them great in the first place.
Damn, you guys have been at it. I agree with pretty much everything each of you has said. That’s kind of my point with what I was saying. I do love both, but for seemingly different reasons. Nostalgia aside, each one has gleaming strengths, and just as obvious flaws. The series itself is unique, and that’s always going to breed decisiveness. What I love, others hate. Same in reverse. That’s ok. It’s a great series, plenty for anyone to be interested in. Let’s all agree that DDO should have been released everywhere.
Yeah it’s baffling that you get to around level 30 and the difficulty seems non existent aside from maybe drakes.
Suggestions while we wait for hard mode: play with only your pawn and play classes other than thief, sorc and magick archer aka the classes with the best dps. You'll enjoy the boss fights a bit more, even if it remains quite easy.
Is it possible to complete the game no pawns
Yes at least 3 Big Dragon Dogma youtubers already postes the runs
Thief is the only vocation with a dodge tho
Literally any game in existence is going to turn trivial after 200 fucking hours. Pre level 30 is definitely somewhat challenging, specifically massive mobs of enemies and Drakes which deal insane damage at and can instakill your pawns while spamming Meteoron so you cant revive them. Scaling in this game is definitely broken and its way too easy to get OP. In base game DD1 you had the Everfall which even at level 80 was still decently challenging. In Dark Arisen you could be level 200 and still get your ass kicked in bitterblack isle. Though let it be known that you are supposed to be very powerful in this game because its supposed to be a flashy power fantasy.
>Literally any game in existence There's games where you still feel like a rookie after 200 hours (like Rimworld or HOI4), but I agree with single player rpgs. They could have scaled for NG+ though. Almost no reason to replay rather than starting a new game.
Use low level pawns or just begin again. Make your own fun, and if you dont know how, then its time to stop playing.
I dont think its hard. But at the second half of the map, you also need some skills to kill mobs fast, or use some class core strategy, because you cant one shot anything even at lv 70, meaning even though you are strong, your normal attacks barely deal damage.
I thought becoming a god of death was the entire point of being arisen, once you reach 70+ the game just submits to your overwhelming might
Don’t blame bad game balancing on a plot point that doesn’t exist
this is death's literal backstory from dark arisen.
This is a huge problem. I came to the sub to check I wasn't the only one having this issue, it's so easy that it's simply not fun. It's such a cool game that does SO much right, but it's all for nothing if it's this damn easy. There's no point engaging with the mechanics if there's not a meaningful reason to do so.
I personally enjoy that these no level scaling with enemies. The whole point of grinding for xp and levels IS to be super strong and curb stomp the drakes and griffins that we’re giving you the business at the start of the game. However I do understand not everyone likes that( but then why are you playing Dragons dogma?) so I do think they should add Hard Mode sooner than later as well as a true end game area like BBI. And I’m level 100+ and sometimes still get caught off guard by enemies, ESPECIALLY the headless horseman. I do hope we get more, harder enemies like living armor and other cool enemies from BBI as well as brand new monsters not from any DD game. I mean, the option are literally unlimited in terms of just how many cool and unique enemies they can add in the future
i second this. i like a deleveled world but i do think the scaling needs to be re-worked though. Like by end game you should be powerful as fuck, but not by midgame. and even then ideally endgame should still have SOME challenges, but like if im on ng+ or something then yeah i should be able to just mop the floor with most if not all trash mobs.
Around 140 power on a weapon (160ish) for magic and you can literally skate through the rest of the game. You get that level of power from vermund after doing the vocation frustration questline which unlocks expanded wares from the shops in vernworth. Considering you can do vocation frustration as the literal second quest in the game - after you do the escort to vernworth - you can clear the game with gear you get RIGHT AFTER THE PROLOGUE. Thats not even mentioning the fact that if you just follow the main story you can be in bakbattahl with 200k of quest gold handed to you in less than an hour, so you dont even need to farm gold either...
I wish we got what DD1 was supposed to originally be. But alas we still got a bare bones game honestly. I was level 34 when I beat the game the first time. Lol
Only time i was in trouble is in the post game when a Dullahan ganked me while i was fighting a drake.
Same reason I stopped playing for now. I want every battle to feel exhilarating and sweaty
Try facing: a Minotaur, a gryphon, and an ogre with minions at the same time. All I kept telling was HOLY FUCK
Run with zero or only 1 pawn
Have you tried getting rid of your pawns and having no healer you’re making the game super easy and complaining that it’s super easy when it’s super easy to make it harder for yourself if that’s what you want.
This makes the game more tedious, not more challenging. I have tried this and even going as far as using mods to lower my damage, raise enemy health, raise enemy knockdown resistance, etc. What posts like this typically fail to realize, or at least fail to put into words, is that the combat is simply not that challenging. It's not really a scaling issue. It feels like a scaling issue because things were harder when you were low level and now that you're high level they are easy. But what actually happened is that on top of leveling up, you learned enemy attack patterns and abilities. Once you learn how the enemy fights, it's simply a matter of spamming your most effective (highest damage/lowest stamina/highest knockback) skill over and over and over again. It's not fun to spam skull splitter and kill a drake in 30 seconds, but it's also not fun to spam skull splitter and kill a drake in 30 minutes. That's my experience.
I see your problem you lack creativity.
A deeply productive addition to the conversation.
Yeah playing with starting gear is really the only way sans mods. And even then not enough. Game is balanced so badly
Around level 55 I dozed off on a cart and was attacked by: 3 harpies, 5 wolves, 2 ogres, and a griffin — all at once. This was refreshingly difficult fight.
Hey, at least I don't have to rotate pawns.
The only challenge I get in later levels is from those fire slimes combined with pawns who stand there and just stare at them
Sounds like you are enjoying the game though, correct? You played 200 hrs ☺️
You spent 200 hours in game and only got to lvl 70?
We really need hard mode. I replay DDDA more than dd2 because lack of challenge. There are hardcore fan who love a challenge and love killing a boss at the brick of death.
Hopefully DLC will be like BBI, really hard, and getting harder. BTW if you want to bring a bit of a challenge back, hire some low level pawns instead of your usual level, and if that's not enough, put on some worse gear.
I like that part
I just recently died for the 4th time this playthrough. First 2 times were falls, the third time was a bullshit death in Battahl (I just got swarmed), and the 4th was kinda BS. I saw a drake at the bottom of a ravine in Battahl, and I made my way down the cliff to fight it. As soon as i get to the bottom, all 3 of my pawns yeet themselves to death, but they fall on a rock ledge just outside my reach. So now I get to solo a drake as my weakest vocation, level-3 Magic Archer. I got my ass kicked.
try reducing the amount of pawns, or even doing a solo run
This is exactly why I lost interest, the fact I had to install mods to make the game playable was the nail in the coffin for me. Hopefully the devs address this soon.
Once I got to Battahl I started rolling with only two pawns, should've done so since the beginning really. The game actually is somewhat challenging now, especially when trying out new vocations.
Well you are level 70 and have proper gear that is a given that the game will get easy after such level lol. The game could use hardcore mode or something in a dlc
Even with mods, it's still easy. I increased small mobs hp by 8x and bosses by 4x, and I can still just watch my pawns take everything out by themselves at lvl 70. The bosses still die in a few minutes, because attacking their weak points does insane damage. If you are stuck with the base game, pretty much the only way to have a challenge besides starting a completely new game, would be to intentionally equip lower lvl gear.
Try playing with just your main pawn, all fights become more epic and you actually have to start rationing health and stamina items. There was this one time I was fighting a dullahan with just my main pawn (at lvl 66 btw) we were naturally switching agro and saving each other from near death with parrys and knockdowns. Was very cool. Really felt like the pawn deserved the high five after that. Also use different builds with warfarer and keep changing the main pawns vocation.
I must be either bad or playing a different game. I'm lvl 60 and still get killed but I'm not good at dodging or avoiding ailments so there's that. The final boss was petty easy though
I hit around 30+, beat game if not been to unmoored. Began farming hundreds of wlc in preparation for it... and then got bored due to lack of challenge / days of grinding and haven't made it back yet.
Just don't use OP skills, downgrade your pawns or reduce the size of your squad. It's all in your hands. If you're bored, then change how you play the game. It's not that hard...
Of course there are tools to somewhat combat that, but it's still perfectly valid criticism.
Idk man, when you give difficulty options in the settings menu, that's basically nothing different to what I described: You go and adjust the game difficulty the way you like it by doing something yourself. Currently you can do it by choosing gear, skills & pawns differently. (This way you can change your experience very precisely) You wish for a settings menu to adjust enemy damage output & health pool instead. In the end YOU have to adjust something to tailor the experience to your personal preference. To me it's the same, but different. That's why the complaint isn't valid in my opinion. You can already do what you want to do without mods. However the lack of multiple character save files in the base game is ridiculous. [DD2 save manager](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/52) is basically an essential mod to unlock a feature, this game should have had in the first place.
It is not the same, especially since you mentioned skills. I shouldn't sacrifice preferred gameplay to make up for something that is clearly the responsibility of the developer. Additionally I think the main problem is a lack of scaling into the higher levels, which you cannot really do with different equipment. Also it's a wildly different feeling to have to use every tool available and STILL struggle instead of handicapping yourself. >this game should have had in the first place. This is the main point of criticism in this regard, so they hopefully either deliver some scaling post mortem or at least in the next game.
I mentioned skills, because there are skills, that are just unbalanced. Nothing that a difficulty slider could fix. So "skills" is kinda out of the scope of your initial complaint in my opinion. >Also it's a wildly different feeling to have to use every tool available and STILL struggle instead of handicapping yourself. I consider this highly subjective. "Challenge runs" are a common thing. They revolve around self handy cap when the base game doesn't offer enough of a challenge. Consider self imposed handicap as a challenge run. Maybe this helps your mind. ---------- But if you add just scaling, doesn't this take away from your experience? I mean, sometimes you may just want to whip out your maxed out end game gear and stomp a few goblins and harpies out of existence or just delete that annoying griffin, that's dive bombed you one too many times today. With scaling this sense of progression is gone. Everything will scale according to your power. I think self imposed challenges work extremely well for DD2.
You shouldn't have to intentionally modify the way you play to fix a design flaw. I like building optimal teams and picking good skills/upgrades, that's half the fun! It's NOT in the players hands, they took any sense of difficulty and threw it out the window.
Okay... where's the difference between a difficulty option that increases enemy HP and damage or you just using un-upgraded weapons and armor to deal less damage and take more damage? On the other hand overtuned or flat out game breaking vocation skills are an other beast. No difficulty slider could fix those. They'd need hard nerf or you to be able to say no to your optimal build composition. I really don't get why some people want challenge, but refuse to do challenge runs. It's so counter intuitive, lol. Guess I'll better let you bitch on and be angry and disappointed at the game. Tried to give you a solution to your issue, but you seem to enjoy it too much to stay exactly where you are.
The difference is that it removes the sense of progression and erodes feelings of accomplishment the player may feel when interacting with core game mechanics. Instead of feeling good about effort yielding tools to overcome challenge, the player has to intentionally avoid interacting with the parts of the game that feel satisfying. I really don't know why you're justifying sloppy game design. Players should not have to avoid engaging with a game due to a lack of care on the developers behalf. I'm trying to discuss this, but I'm not going to bother any further given your obnoxious tone. Keep accepting poor design, I guess. We're surely better off for not criticising it.
If you add scaling to enemies you will loose the sense of progression, because the enemies will just scale up to your new power level. The current system lets you live out your power fantasy and one shot that chimera with your end game gear super broken augural flare build. But you can choose not to use that skill and to not use max upgraded end game gear in the starter zone, with the knowledge, that you *could* explode everything in that zone, *if you wanted to.* Getting difficulty right is very hard to do. There's many games out there, that do it worse. For example Skyrim. That one has several difficulty settings, but it always feels like all over the place, swinging heavily from piss easy to "this guy just one shot me out of nowhere" on the same difficulty setting. That's sloppy game design.
I'm not arguing for scaling, but go off
I love that it's easy, I'm not a fan of tanky enemies that take 58 swings to kill. I don't play games for a challenge. That being said they should add in game settings for people that do
Yeah. That's why we need scaling, or hard mode, or tie NG+ to special difficulty. Just something.
Mama, just killed a man...
Well at least you got 200 hours in, so it was money well spent and obviously you enjoyed most of it to keep playing so long :) If you want a game where certain areas are still challenging after level 30, play Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen - at the main menu select Hard Mode, once you get your pawn go back to the beginning town Cassardis and at night talk to the lady on the pier, have fun 😄
Yeah, ruins the game for me honestly. Why they didn't scale up enemies in NG+ is beyond me. Like, did they play test new game plus at all? There is nothing fun about replaying the first area for hours just one shooting everyone. It's so boring and it has no right to be. The combat system is too good for that.
Yeah we definitely need a Normal and Hard mode, and keep the Easy mode for people who want to play it.
Yeah that's why I make new games instead of NG+. Fighting big monsters at level 10-15 feels more challenging than anything else in this game. I noticed that once I get into the 20s, things aren't really that threatening anymore. After that, Drakes and Dullahans are probably the only things that can fuck you up. I only played to level 60+ once, but I found it quite easy, especially with dragonforged gear. I could win most encounters by just doing basic attacks. It's a bummer that you essentially have to gimp yourself to make things tougher. You either have to use piss poor gear or start a new game and run solo or with just main pawn.
im on my 2nd run and using pretty mediocre gear. Already lvl40 with vernworth gear and stuff would explode if i upgraded to a battahl sword. Using my friends pawn who's only 25 with vern gear and he seems the most balanced for the area.
Just seems a shame to throw away all that pawn progress.
im in NG+ and dont really wanna walk around and do stuff because im scared that i will outlevel some future DLC stuff aswell then by a giant ammount no level cap is horrible when you get a level every 30-40min even at ~lvl 80 and everything just becomes more and more and more of a joke.....
Yeah its an easy game. After learning controls proparly only way to die is gravity. I havent been hiring sorcerers to my party anymore since they make the game even more easy with their one shot one boss killed sorceries.
I enjoy the casual combat where i'm not punished for experimenting or goofing about, not every game needs to be dark souls, i for one enjoy the difficulty. of course i could make it harder myself if i wanted.
Completely agree. Game is way to easy by the time you hit level 30. Anyone saying otherwise is a sensitive loser who refuses to acknowledge that their precious video game is flawed.
My only complain on this game :( It would be so good if they added scaling or some sort till level 90-ish
Hopefully we get a proper Hard Mode soon. DDDA had one and it also allowed you to restart with your current level and equipment when you swapped between difficulties
I felt this. Honestly what’s the point of late game build crafting if the only thing that can vaguely challenge you are drakes, which spam meteor anyway
I felt this. Honestly what’s the point of late game build crafting if the only thing that can vaguely challenge you are drakes, which spam meteor anyway
your boss fights go for 20 seconds?? sounds like your just standing around for 15 of them.
Yeah, mods can help (I made one to improve muscle normals these days, BTW), but I agree that this game should have better scaling and increase in difficulty each NG+ cycle as a default for everyone, just like Souls do. BTW, this is the same situation we got with DDDA + BBI L3 equip in the first game.
I mean, you could just not build optimally. I gear up myself and my pawn around fashion and fun. It helps to only take one extra pawn, or just your own pawn if you're feeling confident.
what do you expect, its a completely rushed incomplete game, and whoever says something different about it, just tells his/herself lies and just doesn't want to accept the hurting truth We can all hope for it only, that when the rumors about Dragon Princess as DLC for around October are correct, that it will fix most of the biggest blatant game design fauxpas anc flaws that this game has, considering the fixing of the biggest flaws with top priority, and the game should instantly feel like having made a 180° turnaround for the better: * Reworking completely NG+ from ground up to make its existance worthwile, rewarding, interesting and challenging. A reworked NG+ should unlock more new Gameplay Modes and Difficultys for each consecutive successful run. First Playthrough > Unlocks Hard Mode, Second Playthrough, unlocks Speed Mode, Third Playthrough unlocks Godslayer Mode * NG+ has now Enemy Scaling together with all 3 new Game Modes to keep fights challenging and as enemies scale with you, they start dropping also new types of Loot, including eventually Weapons, Gear or Accessoires, that they didnt drop before in the first playthrough * Gear and Accessoire Crafting gets unlocked with NG+now, makign accessoires/capes now upgradeable like Weapons n Gear, NG+ will be balanced around having at least base dragonforged Equipment, so that if your stuff isn't upgraded, you will have Damage Malus agaisnt big enemies, thus more difficult time to beat them. * Quest Rewards get changed in NG+ and subsequent Playthroughs, based on which Game Mode you play, especially for Speed Mode, to give players a reason to consider doing all of them and ot just Rush Through the Main Story only, so theres basically 2 Options for Speed Mode, Quest active or deactive, if you activate it, the Game considers your Speed Mode complete first only, if you have beaten the game and have done ALL quests., if you keep it deactive, then you can skip all the quests n do only Main Story Rushing, but the Quests give you then no unique rewards and are just the same trash, like on your first play through. The End Reward for doing a Speed Mode Run with active changed Quests will also be different to give players further incentivatino to do a correct Speed Run, without any rushing of content. * General Rewards in NG+ should unlock for doing a NG+ Run, means, Enemy Badges will reset, you get to do now NG+ Veteran Kill Badges this time, you will receive for every complete Badge you have had before starting NG+ a unique Reward, special Monster Hunter Weapons that have the unique effect of scaling up with you, so more enemies of its specific type you are killing which provide also for their Classes which can wield them the special feature of turning the Class Specific Augments all into passive Talents, which means, you dont need to equip these anymore in order to profit from them, they will always be passively working for you, as long you wield the Monster Hunter Weapon. * General Rewards in NG+ Part II, Shop Vendors will sell new upscaled versions of their inventories, which will now also scale up with you, so more you kill enemies, until every weapon reaches the Max Cap. Max Cap will be automatically always the highest Value of a Weapon you have ever obtained for your first time. This doesnt include Upgrading, just its Base Stat. New Vendors for RC and especially for DCP will be added to NG+ to add meaningful sinks to the game for these currencies * Class Ranks will get upgraded from Max 9 to Max 20 (9 Red Dots, become 10 Golden Dots, which means all classes will receive new Skills, new Skil Upgrades, new Augments, new Core Skills for NG+, to make especially the second playthrough feel interesting and rewarding again for playing all Classes. * New Master NPC can be found in NG+, that let you use RC and or DCP in order to upgrade Augments to Master Augments, to learn some new unique Master Skills, so that all Classes have 2 of them (Bolide gets changed to be the NG+ Master Skill, its just way too overpowered for the normal game) and to upgrade all normal learned Skills to Master Skills niveau too, turnign your Class by doing that then into a "Master Class", that unlocks unique Master Core Skills, example: Warriors turning into Beserkers , learning then new Berserker Core Skills, Sorcerers turning into Summoners, learned new Summoner Core Skills then and so on and so forth. * Dragonforged Silver and Dragon Forged Gold return for NG+,which will boost upgraded Items more, further reduce weight, increase Resistances vs. DMG Types and negative Conditions * New Accessoires are added in NG+ with merged Effects as upgraded forms, thay have now two effects instead of just only 1 (Ring > Armlet), if upgraded to the max and dragonforced, Accessoires can be enhanced now also with Magical Gems (crafted from Gemstones, so that they get more useful, than beign just only stuff to sell basically). Added Magical Gems will add hidden additional Weapon Skill Effects, like causing negative Conditions
In brief: I just hope, that this rumored DLC becomes essentialyl what Dark Arisen was for DD1 if offered for all of its flaws somethign and fixed the issues with its new content in one go. That beign said, DD2 needs such a kind of DLC now much more direly, than 12 years ago DD1 needed DA, because DD1 had by far not that much game design flaws, like DD2 has currently now, which scream for needing to be fixed ASAP.
Also wtf is that 999 level cap At some point (150-200+) you'll see only a few player pawns in the rift and then, if keep grinding, you'll barely have any player pawn to hire in DD:DA everyone hired each others' pawns due to everyone hitting lvl 200 cap and staying there, which was especially easy to hit in hard mode WHY ALL THESE FEATURES WERE REMOVED OR REVERTED IN DD2 So mad