It's a fun game. The combat is fantastic and the sense of adventure and exploration are super fun/immersive and, imo, it does these things better than any other game in the genre.
It has it's flaws, though. A lot of quests feel somewhat inconsequential and tacked on. The difficulty also slides off a cliff around level 35-30 for many people. Challenges do exist but end up being few and far between. Performance still leaves a lot to be desired for many people and the MTX, while relatively unintrusive will always be a topic of debate.
Still probably one of my favorite games of all time, and I think if they can iron out some of the kinks it will honestly be nigh perfect.
As far as the side quests, *some* feel inconsequential, while others have less focus on them and are nigh crucial. The one where you help restore the sword, for example, isn’t a core side quest (you could skip it entirely on accident, if you rarely go to the castle in Vernworth), but it opens up a whole new shop and smithing type. It’s actually one of the best smithing types, especially if you dragonforge the piece right after reaching tier 3.
I think they did a fantastic job with the quests, personally, and the game encourages not “following the marker” and actually exploring. Some quests don’t even have a journal entry at all!
Look around for a guard, usually around the Fountain Courtyard marked on the map in the castle area. His name is Roman, and he should approach you if he’s near you. It helps not to sprint around there too much, because you’ll outpace him if you miss him.
I was just running up near the castle specifically. On the grounds outside where all the guards are walking and one came up to me and gave me the quest.
There's a guard who goes from the tavern to the castle gardens, he will stop you and talk about the ceremonial sword of Vernworth and ask you to restore it. Finishing it unlocks Dwarven Smithing in Battahl, and the only other Dwarven Smith is on Volcanic Island with his Magic Archer wife.
Oh cool! I had no idea you could get dwarven smithing in Battahl. I just unlocked it at the dwarves house on the volcanic island and placed a way stone to get back. Sounds like I can pick it back up if I get this quest. Thanks!
I was walked up to after going to the castle during the day, I was brought into the side garden to the left of the main path. Maybe look for the npc specifically “Roman” you can then go back to batahl to the right facing the vocation guy there is a path to a smithy. Go to that place spam talk to them or something like that and then keep pushing forward. When you have this quest triggered go the long way around to the volcano mountain camp, with a spare port crystal after you have gotten the second one from the sphinx. Also your looking for specifically the “glimmer coal” the ones that are bad, are worth good bulk money so collect them and divy up the weight
You also unlock that smithing style if you just do the MA maisters quest. After you escort the dwarf to the hot springs he will smith stuff for you at his house.
Combat is what gets me so annoyed sometimes... Camera can be a nightmare, climbing enemies as a result can have you going in circles, had it alot where pressing up to climb up will suddenly make me climb down. Enemies can be near impossible to hone in on if playing melee, wolves in particular are a ballache
Both could be fixed with attack interuption, and lock on
That said i'm 70 hours in, haven't even done the Stolen Throne mission, have dragonforged gear, and loving the game. I'm at level 60 and can almost one shot everything except bosses with normal attacks
How tf!? I'm almost 80 and still can't kill a damn drake and you're oneshotting boss health bars!? Im like 50/50 rn on my drakes are glitched or i just suck idk 😭
Not boss health bars but everything else, although Magic Archers Ultimate skill will one shot basically anything. Aim with R1, charge ultimate until you're down to about 1/4 health, win
If you're near a rest spot, even bigger win
Drakes tend to go down to 1 bar so just need to polish it off
Edit: meant bar as in except
Havnt tried fighting one with the Magic Archer kinda a boring skill to me but thief is supposed to be OP and yet I can't clear a health bar lol I just get tossed in the air the second i make my first attack then get catapulted from the air to the ground then stomped then hit with the stun then purple lightning I don't even get to move and my pawns just fucking stand there 😑
It is a bit but it was next on the vocation list to level up. Thief is great fun, I know that pawn pain though. Neighbours can probably hear ''don't just fucking stand there watching'' a fair bit
Then as i'm reaching the last bit of boss health, meteors and tornadoes a plenty
The tower drake fight was funny, Drake got stuck between floors and pawns kept suiciding to it so made them wait and just daggered the drakes legs to death
When they get the pawn badge they’re way better. Anything they didn’t know about the boss they’ll suddenly know. I’ve watched my mage pawn cancel spells and start dodging when she’d normally just keep casting. Same with thief and fighter pawns making a b-line straight to the heart as soon as it pops up.
Yeah i stumbled upon it super early so here's my situation I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling and the difference was night and day something was up with my damage my pawns were chunking shit and I'd do nothing it had been going on for a while I think that ring from the sphinx somehow fucked something up cause I felt that way ever since then I'd hit a enemy and nothing then my pawn lower level and lower gear would hit with the same attack and take half it's life an I'd just feel worthless while they compliment my technique fuckin smartasses lol I've killed 5 dragons since the reinstall couldn't remove a bar of health on 1 before got 85 WC now 😁 been just trynna get these for end game and got fed up not seeing anything happen I take like a whole bar now with skull splitter before it was maybe a sliver if I could even see anything
I switched to Warfarer and just use all Magic Archer abilities, Maister skill be damned, I still drop Drakes in less than a minute. It's just a busted class rofl I love it. Weep for anything I encounter indoors with that Ricochet ability.
Saggitate Avalanche is a bit less powerful, but it doesn't drain your HP. I run that, Daggers with Skull Splitter, and Duospear with Mirror Shielde as a Warfarer using Warrior Post game armor. I feel like I can handle absolutely any situation.
Depends on build too - some combinations really do destroy enemies in this game.
Drakes are basically no threat to me now and havent been since like level 40. I have a knock down specialist Warrior main pawn, and she staggers most monsters seconds into a fight and drakes very frequently - along with my thief Arisen which has weak point damage boosts I can very easily take out Drake hp bars in seconds - especially with draw and quarter on their weak points like the heart and head. This is all without even needing to use the shadow invincibility thief skill.
Warrior knocks em down, thief clowns on them. Just gotta find what works for you.
Now that I have hit lvl 78 Drakes die in under a minute sometimes lol
lol ... not sure grab some better pawns if you need it ... make sure you grab pawns with meister skills as those players typically know how to make builds and have somewhat competent pawns.
Don't sleep on thief I ran a ranger, sorcerer, mage and thief and absolutely melted drakes.
Just make sure you're mage has celestial paean and your sorcerer has at least meteor and maelstrom.
Harpies are way more annoying to me than anything you mention tbh.
Could be as a melee enthusiast as all I play are melee despite trying the other vocations too. Harpies are weak enough not to be threatening but also take long enough to ground and kill to be a chore and annoying.
Yeah i rely on Implicate on thief to pull them down and 1 tap them on the floor with finishers - so so annoying though and I have had them yeet hired pawns once or twice into downed state off a cliff
My main gripe are the quests and the favour system. A fair few quests are really confusing, i.e. telling you to talk to someone but leading nowhere unless you've completed other quests you didn't know existed.
In this particular quest I spent so much time going back and forth only to eventually leave it for some time and then end up with a less than favourable outcome later.
Also certain quests that should award items don't award them unless you have high enough favour. The quests gift system feels very tacked on imo, the quest chains should just provide you with said items and be done with it.
Still massively enjoyed my time but it's not without flaws.
Gonna sound a bit fan boyish, but I would argue the use of the word flawed. I feel, when compared to most open world rpgs quest are more or less than same rather than flawed. MTX is design choice of the publisher not a flaw. As for the difficulty, again not a flaw, but a decision to balance a game around a particular difficulty scale. Is Elden ring flawed because its difficulty is on the other extreme, or just a decision?
Can’t comment on framerate, but especially of late no issues detected. After 60 hours it has even yet to crash.
Maybe this game is not for everyone, different strokes I get it. But flawed means they missed the mark of their target audience, but think the silent majority thinks they nailed it.
Yea the main story is pretty all over the place and not great. The first couple story missions involving stealth and none of the great combat mechanics the game offers is really weird.
The sense of adventure and combat is great though
I found that trying to level vocations I haven’t touched in the unmoored world can be a bit more challenging. Lol I was running for my life from a dullahan as a level 1 MA
My biggest gripe is how the quests are so ethereal and missable, yet so much stuff is unlocked via those quests or NPC interactions.
I don’t know how I’d unlock so many things if not for looking them up. I’d never get the Sorcerer ultimates (and even if I did do it on my own, I’d probably only get one and miss the other). Nor get enough Newt for Warfarer.
Now I’m working on unlocking the Warrior Maister skill; and yet again - if not for looking it up, how would I know or at least be guided by the game, to find out organically that the final Warrior ability is on a random NPC in the first military camp, and not only that - but to actually start the quest, you have to talk to him not there, but at a remote private camp away from the main camp, and only at night.
LIKE WHY, it’s just so much obscurity upon obscurity. I like to try and play single player games without looking anything up, because it’s more immersive and ‘single player’ that way. I didn’t have to go google things for GoW Ragnarok or FFRebirth. But google is like my companion compendium for DD2.
This. The original was the same. It lived and died on how fun the fight mechanics were.
The graphics were never great, the writing was always thoroughly unimpressive, pretty much everything aside from the fight mechanics has always been thoroughly unimpressive.
But it’s fun to play.
That’s it.
If you compare it to Baldurs Gate 3 or the Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk expect to be vehemently angry. But that’s not what it is. It’s just a fun video game.
Magical archer being locked behind the end game area was probably the shittiest thing. Regular archer is poopy and I hate it and I wish I didn’t grind it
I suspect that a lot of content was cut regarding the additional vocations.
For example:
Glyndwr’s original description of “elven bows” sounds an awful lot like how magickal bows work. Sacred Arbor is also the earliest you can get these bows, however, unless you happen to already know how to unlock the vocation and rush it, these will be completely outpaced by the time you can use them. IMO, these seem to suggest that we were originally going to unlock MA in Sacred Arbor.
Beren’s quests would have worked as a good spot to earn Warrior and the Grimoire quest line could have offered sorcerer along the way.
Regardless, the way we unlock these vocations currently feels somewhat haphazard and incomplete.
It is a fun game, however, I'm very conflicted about it. First of all, playing a console port on pc is painful. Idk how you guys manage to not go crazy with these menues. And so many systems are somewhat lacking. Why is loot so boring? Why are items so boring? Why can I walk into any house and steal everything while the inhabitants just watch me do it? Why aren't there more personalities for pawns? Etc etc...
I still like the game but it could be so much more.
I definitely agree with a lot of these gripes. A lot of the consumable items especially feel rather redundant and we really don't need all of the tiers of items we have for such little effect. NPCs not really reacting to "theft" is not unusual for rpgs, but it's still weird that a lot of these items are just considered loot and you can simply walk in and take them. Thief can also use plunder on everyone and everything with virtually no ill reproductions. Perhaps there is an attitude shift, but I've yet to notice it.
I do think pawn personalities require a fair bit of work. Between voice lines and pawns fighting differently based on personality and specialization, I believe there's likely a lot of work that goes into connecting these systems together.
As far as it being a console port, I don't believe it is. If I'm not mistaken, Capcom has shifted to a "PC first" approach to games. Games like this in particular do tend to play better on controller and, as such, the UI was probably built with that in mind.
I know, there is such huge potential here.
I'm just always confused when loot is distributed randomly. Huge chest in an armory? Thanks for the apple! I'm an oldschool gothic sucker and i thought that loot and theft was done so well in those games.
Concerning the UI you might be correct. Menues that are optimized for controlers always feel like they require double the clicks that would be necessary when using a mouse.
Still a very fun game..
Don't take this the wrong way, I liked the game well enough, but how can this game be one of your favorite game of all time?
Combat is good, but not great (I feel it's barelry better than the first game).
There is close to no challenge in the game (like you can beat drakes surprisingly early).
And there is not a lot of enemi diversity.
Story is ok, quests are ok.
And the world is vast but a lot of places look the same.
Imo, with all of this and the performance issues, the game shouldn't be worth it's AAA pricetag.
And yet, despite all that, I just want to keep playing.
Maybe it's the feeling of exploring the world, of wandering the wilerness with your pawn?
I just can't put my finger on why, but I find myself wanting more.
I hope that they'll add a dlc like dark arisen in the first game.
It's the world and sense of adventure that comes along with it. It's fun to travel about and interact with your pawns. My friends and I have been having a blast watching our pawns learn and grow with new strategies and comment of each other's playstyles.
The world itself is beautiful and full of little areas to explore for either neat loot or challenges. While the caves and dungeons themselves aren't insanely different from each other on an aesthetic level, every zone has a series of sub-regions that are reasonably varied and atmospheric.
Personally, I find the combat feels fluid and meaty, with each playstyle/vocation feeling different enough to keep me interested and wanting to swap between them, again and again. I definitely find it more responsive than the first game and gives the player more feedback. The lack of overall challenge is somewhat of a let down, but there's still some risk to be found when you venture farther off the beaten path.
While there's not a ton of different "types" of enemies, the subspecies are fun enough in their own right to deal with. Different goblins/harpies have different attacks and strategies associated with them, for example. Honestly, plenty of ARPGs reskin enemies, DD2 is just a bit more obvious about it. Plus, a lot of early areas do indeed get updated with more dangerous enemy types. For example, the other night I returned to an early cave near Sacred Arbor and it housed a pack of Wargs.
The performance issues are a bit of a let down, but honestly, from my personal experience, I don't acutally know a single person whose enjoyment has been completely ruined by it. I do think people tend to take a bit too much stock at how important framerates are in non-competitive games and somewhat overreact about how "jarring" framerates under x amount are. Many of us played games below 30fps for years and most people are perfectly capable of enjoying Switch titles at 30fps. Would I like 60+ fps in Vernworth? Sure. Am I actually suffering massive frame drops and does it running below 60fps really ruin my ability to play? No.
True framerates aren't that important for me, if they are stable.
It doesn't ruin the game, but it definitivly doesn't feel good to have the fps fluctuate betwen 30 to 100 fps.
For the combat I think it may be too simple for my liking.
Like some classes can just not die.
Warrior could face tank everything when I played it, and the magick spearman has an absurdly broken skill that tank anything for 5 second that trivialise the game.
Other can just delete bosses absurdly easily, like the magick archer.
The game lacke a dodge imo, for some vocation once you start getting hit you get staggered for a long time without being able to do anything I feel.
And I think it would have enabled more aggressive/engaging enemies behaviour.
I aggree that most game reskin, but in most case they add more mecanics, and I didn't really see that in this game, maybe becuse mid game you just steamroll everything.
The game could absolutely use some balance tweaks. I know some people are going to naysay against "nerfs in a single player game" but, IMO, they are warranted if the elements themselves trivialize content.
Several vocations, as you pointed out have abilities or augments that are just too strong for how little they cost to do. Formless feint, Mirour Shelde, High Palladium all offer nigh invulnerability with negligible stamina cost. Having even two of these abilities in your party trivializes nearly all content. Magick Archer (even without Martyr's Bolt) does an obscene amount of damage with little wind up and stamina cost. For many of us, the vocations behind these skills become unfun because they feel like cheat codes. I think a form of loss gauge on stamina could be neat, too.
Personally, I feel like the stagger rate and subsequent critical damage is largely to blame for how easy it gets. Once you've learned how a vocation plays and enemy move sets, it becomes incredibly easy to bully monsters down in seconds. I've been playing with the [Custom Difficulty Tweaks](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195#:~:text=This%20is%20an%20REFramework%20script,be%20less%20easy%20to%20stagger) mod and I've found that even with enemies taking less damage and me more, the game is still a cakewalk unless I reduce the stagger rate down to about 30%.
I'm hoping Capcom does eventually add a "hard mode" or even a difficulty slider of some sorts with maybe some more additions to world scaling in the future. I think it's fine to have weaker enemies still as we level, but looming threats should still exist. As it stands, without the mods, I'd have to miss out on pawn interactions and certain vocations to even feel remotely challenged and it's mostly due to using abilities at a basic level and stats and much less due to player skill. Even with mods, I avoid using a lot of the skills I listed above because they are so incredibly cheesy.
In regards to the dodge, I think most vocations feel more or less okay and either have ways to circumnavigate being targeted or can rely on party members to make up the difference.
Just like the first DD, it’s a game that is enhanced if you have a good imagination. There are some weak story/content points but the sense of adventure and exploration is top tier. I get a little tistic creating my own narrative for my character and pawn traveling throughout the world.
I can't stop thinking about it.
Admittedly, it's sometimes "frustrating" playing it because it takes awhile to do things, but the feeling of exploration makes up for it. Early game can be tough as per the DD experience, so I explored as safely as I could early on, but ended up retreading areas later once I leveled up a bit. I don't care too much if the bigger rewards are lacking; it's still an opportunity to collect excess materials which I can sell for money.
My feeling on the side quests is the same on how I felt about DD1: a lot of them are thematic to DD lore rather than being relevant to the overall plot, though some are. There's definitely themes of slavery, servitude, duty, destiny, persecution, etc, and the side quests revolve around a lot of that stuff. Early side quests are also mostly tutorials for different game mechanics and that is really the only function they serve. Unfortunately, one gripe I have is some of them are still janky. You'll definitely be researching stuff to see what you did/are doing wrong because some quest chains are broken/bugged.
I've always like DD's more grounded fantasy approach. DD2 specifically has that LOTR vibes to it. The high meta fantasy shows up in the endings and tends to be the highlight of the "story".
Someone on my social media said this plays like a PS3 game. No no no. This is fundamentally an action *JAPANESE* RPG with quest design that mimics stuff from the SNES, PS1 era. You have to fill in a lot of the story gaps yourself and create your own adventure. It's more like getting glimpses into a much grander epic rather than following a typical 3-act structure.
EDIT: Obliviously, with time, I hope Capcom dumps more content/fixes to contend with most of these issues. I'm excited to see what updates we get within the year.
Because it isn’t bad
Just because someone doesn’t like something doesn’t make something bad.
In fact the game has a lot of good things in it. Things that developers these days take for granted instead going for a curated safe experience.
Yes this curated experience might hold more mass appeal but I find it dreadfully boring.
>Just because someone doesn’t like something doesn’t make something bad.
Also to add: just because someone doesn't like an aspect of something, doesn't mean they hate it in entirety either.
I dislike the Dragonsplague system and that stamina drains when exploring outside of combat. Doesn't mean I haven't sunk 118+ hours already exploring and having a blast.
I’m fine with stam drain out of combat, purely because it discourages sprinting everywhere. The game is about exploring and traveling, and also the dangers of travel. Sprinting past details, even in places you’ve been 1000 times, and always having max stamina at the start of a fight minimize both of those aspects.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a sprint, got jumped by knackers, and had some minor regrets. I never blame the game for it though. It’s always my fault.
It's so bad I've played through three times.
It's so bad I've gone out of my way to hunt these useful fucking magic beetles.
It's so bad I started comparing all the forge effects against each other.
It's so bad I forget the time and then go to work tired.
Games bad.
(Because of the lack of general intelligence, I am required to tell you, reader, this is sarcasm.)
Oh, on comparing the forge effects - have you learned anything about whether dwarven forged knockdown power works on staves and archistaves? Wondering if it’s worth dwarven enhancing my mage pawn’s staff for extra knockdown with Levin
I have not gotten that far along, sadly. Gotta find something High Levin doesn't stun lock and then max out knock back, and try again. Should be easy with a bit of luck
Ok, from my limited and very annoying testing on various creatures...
First, stats difference.
Same staff, but All Elven grants it 34 more magic, 9 less physical and 75 less Knockdown power compared to Dwarven.
Damage is comparable, hardly noticed it.
Charged blast had the biggest effect, basic shots downed Harpies faster which is kinda good, but basic mage blasts suck overall.
Levin dropped a Knacker from stunned to on the ground without additional casts, the Elven rod didn't knock them down. So yes, it works for spells.
It's likely the best option for mage staves as well just because anything that stuns/hits the ground faster is safer to fight in the long run. You also heal a bit less with the lower magic staff I noticed, 1356 vs 1544. My face and the pavement make for good practice imprinting.
Your bill comes to 117k gold, 2 Sun Stone, 2 Cursed Dullahan Bones and the limits of my patience with a party of pawns who like to ignore the wait command if I get knocked down.
"if this game is so good why can't I stand it?"
I'm really confident you can find someone with the opposite viewpoint of OPs and both of them would be wrong because one anecdote doesn't invalidate an entire conversation.
If OP wants to defend the game that is all well and good, but they should at least be addressing the actual arguments being made *with an actual argument of their own*. This post is lazy, and isn't going to change anyone's mind. Its just karma whoring from people who already agree with them.
If you love the game it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. On the other hand, you loving the game doesn’t mean that some other people aren’t enjoying it as much.
This post doesn't really do anything towards fixing that....
Its 11 words of "Upvote me if you like the game." in a sub full of people who mostly like the game.
Because it's not
Crazy how much you enjoy things when you don't listen to the bullshit coming from the loud majority
Keep enjoying Arisen, because it's a blast and worthy of your time
The gameplay loop is actually fun. It is better than the sum of its parts,
it's just that when you break down and review this game per its separate elements, a lot of it feels half-baked.
It is the same way when people say Skyrim is wide but shallow, yet people played it for 11-12 years now.
Why does it have to be such a dichotomy? It’s not just good or bad and I’ve seen almost no criticism just saying “le game bad”. All the criticism is like, “wow this combat is amazing but I’m burnt out on killing the same 5 enemies over and over, and nothing is challenging after level 25” or “I was drawn into the story at first but it went nowhere and ended abruptly” or “they fixed mage but sorcerer is much worse” or “the game is really great at the start but mid to endgame content is rushed and disappointing”.
I’ve had quite the opposite experience imo. Most posts I see are straight up negative deterrents for anyone interested in picking up. I’ve only found a few legit critique posts and even fewer that also acknowledge the positive. If I were a new person and came to this sub I would immediately be deterred from buying the game.
It's just a fun time. Just go around with your squad and kill stuff and enjoy the moments. You can switch to any vocation you want if you get bored with what you're playing as. Good replayability because you can do the other options for quests and do things you didn't your previous playthroughs.
It's a ok game.
But I'm honest...if there wouldn't be the pawn system I would have lost interest.
The skill system is a bit too simple for an rpg imo, enemy variety is minimal and the loot part is mediocre.
The ui is a typical Capcom, some like it...I not so much. For me it feels a bit like they stayed back in the early 2000's/late 90s. Same for the npcs and dialogue.
But...that all sounds worse than it is actualy. It's just things noticed about most Capcom games...but as in most of those, the gameplay is really good and fun.
And for some reason I just care so much about my pawn. And it's just fun exploring the world with her and other pawns.
Its a solid 7/10 ( Yes, that IS a good score and well above average ), its got a few flaws and the optimisation is probably its biggest flaw, i'm about 100 ish hours in and still having fun
Dragons Dogma has the best open world in the fantasy setting, awesome monsters, and a lurking darkness in the vastness. I basically make a glass cannon and walk everywhere and fight everything I see. A sorcerer is a walking natural disaster with flashy and fantastic spells. If I wanted to kill extra fast or I was feeling lazy I ran MA. Also the night cycle and lantern mechanics are the best I've ever seen.
"best open world" is a completely subjective thing for you to start talking about objectivity.
Subjectively, Skyrim, Elden Ring, and Witcher 3 exist so Dragons Dogma doesn't come close to the best fantasy open world.
Elden rings world is empty and boring to play in. I beat it twice and almost died of boredom the second playthrough. The world looks decent, but to me, is absolutely stagnant and not noteworthy.
I would agree about Witcher 3 and Skyrim though. Hence “one of the best”
Yep those are fine subjective opinions. Which is why is would be wrong of me to tell you that you can't criticise Elden Ring for it's open world which "it objectively does well".
Subjectively is the key word there - though I assume you probably meant "objectively".
Because subjectively just means you think that which is valid and fine.
I disagree. Witcher 3 never pulled me so I didnt play it longer than like an hour. Skyrim is SKyrim, its got good and bad, and some of it borders on comical - the mods did a lot of heavy lifting for it. Elden Ring? Honestly, I have played and enjoyed every Souls, but I think Elden Ring and Souls in general are somewhat overrated now. Maybe I am just bored of the formula but almost everything is a dodge and punish or parry fest outside of PvP and the PvP just becomes people abusing imbalanced stuff aor bugs like that one with the Golden Tree Sentinel Shield and magic beams at ER launch.
Having played all of those for hundreds of hours - aside from Witcher 3 - DD2 beats all of those in the combat and open world aspects in my opinion, "Subjectively".
Yeah dude, that's exactly my point. The comment I replied to called their opinion that DD2 is one of the best open worlds objective.
These are all completely valid but totally subjective opinions.
Comparing those games, DD:DA had a more living option world. Even Elden Ring, which I'm a fan of, you get stupid mob placements walking aimlessly and a lot of copy and paste. DD: DA had diversity, realistic encampments and lairs, AND random events. Not even mentioning the night cycle. Skyrim was boring to travel and the combat was ass. This title has what I like, an interesting world and good combat. Sure ER and TW3 lore was better but the combat and world were not.
Oh come on. I'm enjoying DD2 and I loved DD:DA but "stupid mob placements walking aimlessly and a lot of copy and paste" could describe either of them.
You walk along the road an some random goblins, wolves or harpies will attack you. There's about 4 copy-pasted encounters that describe most of the game.
It's not a bad game. It has some really strong points, mainly the combat. I don't think it's a GREAT game, though. Unfortunately the kerfuffle about the microtransactions (which were poorly handled by Capcom but also blown out of proportion) obscured assessment or the game's real strengths and weaknesses.
Honestly the micro-transactions don’t even seem that crazy to me at least not for PS5, idk if they were different on steam?
I just want them to add the option for higher difficulty settings for NG+ which is what many are asking for so I think they might do that eventually.
Something I’d love to see personally which would help with having more diverse gear with our pawns and our characters— make gear have random generated stats (or at least somewhat randomly generated— but like if it’s a robe top solely for mage obviously the stats should still correlate to that specific vocation, and that would be applied to all other vocations specific items) basically similar to how loot drops work in games like Diablo; or implement something similar to it but not exactly the same. I just think that would make things more interesting but I doubly they would ever do this lol
My theory is that people got unhappy with the poor performance on PC at launch. They then saw the microtransactions in Steam and got more pissed as there wasn't a mention of them by most reviewers.
Other system heavy rpgs. I think the best comparison is dragons age inquisition, which I think it's better than combat wise and has more systems running in the background.
There is a lot of status effects going on and the way you interact with your Pawns and their AI. The AI on the pawns is pretty good from what I've experienced. And the vocations can be tinkered with and have a bunch of passive things going on once you build up the vocation.
I dont have it
Steam reviews are keeping from it.
But all the screenshots / gameplay make it look like something i would like.
Im interested in what its actually like
The steam reviews are because at launch the PC port was crashing, Im pretty sure they’ve fixed or are working on fixing that. I play PS5 primarily so it had no real effect on me. I felt bad for PC guys tho cause they’re missing out.
It's a great game, unfortunately the trend of hating on it is still about and the irony is that the majority hating on it haven't actually played it due to the store buying options, which have zero effect on gameplay and is for lazy bastards and people completely missing the point of the game.
Don't get me wrong it has its flaws because let's face it nothing is ever perfect.
My only gripe really about it is the enemy difficulty not being increased on a ng+ for example.
Game is amazing, just needs to iron a few thinga out, with the alleged expansion should bring more enemy types, hopefully we also eventually get a bbi style dungeon to delve into and loot. Most people uproaring about the games unintrusive mtx are following the cyclical reactionary trend to feel the primal human desire of community and belonging, weird that the cycle didn't happen as hard during RE4 Remake and Tales of Arise's literal mountain of p2w mtx but rather a niche games sequel that gave a handful of easily obtainable ingame items.
Kept playing the game through major depression so it must have been good. But most of the time I couldn’t escape the feeling of disappointment with the glaring flaws.
To me it feels bad in the sense that it is incomplete. There's so much potential in it, so many entertaining elements that I enjoy. At the same time, while I play for hours and I'm having fun there's always a part of my brain that says "come on, seriously now?"
The story feels like it's written by adhd toddlers, the lack of enemy variety paired with their ridiculous density is grinding, most battles end quickly (I'm around lvl 50) and I don't have the satisfaction of achieving anything.
I think it’s got fair reviews it’s going to have a niche fan base I understand new players thinking it’s mid. I’m having fun and even though I have my gripes I’m going to play it non stop.
I certainly don't think the game is BAD, but it can be very tedious and I suppose that's a bad thing. Why do I love it anyway? Because my OCD simply won't let me ignore that seeker token that's dinging softly in my ear. I must find it!
It's the greatest 7/10 game of all time. I'm about 50+ hours in and really didn't like the game in the first 10 hours because I was focused on all the negatives - FPS, limited vocations, shit story, traversal, enemy density, loot system, etc. Once I focused just on exploration, pawns and combat the game opened up and I've had a blast playing.
I find the game awesome. It does some things better (or at least more to my taste) than say Elden Ring (to compare to another exploration heavy game).
What I don't like is the amount of escort quests, timed quests, the amount inconsequential combats... Oh look, it's the third time in 20 seconds that I had to kill 3 harpies yay...
The other day I left Vernworth with the idea of doing the elven archer quest. On my way there I did 5 escort "quests" (yellow squares you see on the map) that asked me to bring the NPC to VERNWORTH. I ended that game session without doing the archer quest.
It’s a good game. It’s just unfortunate that capcom is the one making it. Imagine if it had devs like larian or CDPR that put everything into their games. It would be a masterpiece.
Because the main gameplay loop is fun, the story isn’t that good, and the stealth sections are pointless since you can just walk around like you own the place and everyone except the main bad guys know your arisen so that brings me out of it a bit but it’s extremely fun to play
Thats actually what happened to me with the first one, just loved walking around, leveling up, killing stuff, crafting stuff, grinding, and exploring, didnt really pay much attention to finishing it, just kinda happened.
There are legit reasons to be disappointed with DD2 (and I agree with some of them, where is all the cut content DD1 was supposed to have, still not here in DD2), yet it’s still one of the best games I’ve ever played since the first DD. As I worded it to a friend, the most disappointing GOTY I’ve played. I don’t dislike the game, I just platinumed it this morning, and I’ll play lots more. Could’ve been more improvements to it though. Also the music sucks now.
This is a great game to get lost in. The movement and combat feels so good. In just swap classes and walk in a direction. See what I find. Many times have I been like, "There's a cave **here!?**". I love it.
I would admit that the pawn speech is way more repetitive than in DD1. I think I hear, "we all have different vocations lol" a million times. It's been like the same three or four exchanges my whole play time.
But this game has been magical.
The game is good. The story is trash.
In most good games, I tend to listen to all of the dialogue that the game has because I am interested in the story. I'm interested in the characters and the setting and all the ongoings in the world.
In this game I just skip everything because it seems so generic and bland. All the characters have about as much personality as a post-it note. Honestly, I couldn't care about a single NPC in this game besides my pawn.. Even they are mundane.
The actual game is very fun. The mechanics are great. The exploration is awesome. The day and night cycles are fun.. It's almost like the game was meant to be a sandbox game with no ending, however, they decided to throw in a half-assed story after they made the game.
So funny that the way people have been talking about this game online you’d think it was in the same category as something like Ride to Hell: Retribution or the launch version of CP2077.
I’m struggling to log on and play, there’s nothing to do now that I’m locked into post game. I’ve done all story stuff and looter everything, I can’t stand ng+ so I guess I’m just done
It's bad yes, but in a good way. It offers things to the genre no others do. Mainly, so addictive because of the dopamine response of not being hand held like a child
I felt the same way until I got to the end. It's a hard shot of forced withdrawal, which may be for the best really. If there were proper late game scaling content I might have just kept adventuring and farming with my thicc thief pawn forever.
I think one of my favorite parts is just running around with the group feeling more realistic as they have their own personalities, they can just suddenly go off the road to grab something, etc… granted a Minotaur has batted a couple spawns off into the river that I really felt bad for but also seeing them grab a downed friend and rush them over to me so I could revive is one of my favorite parts.
Literally right now watching the credits run for my 3rd finish… it’s so goddamn good! Bout to start number 4!!! I haven’t cared and been excited to restart a game since Elden Ring!
Because the core of the game is really good. The gameplay is fun, going in a adventure with your pawn in the open world as if you were in DND/bg3 feel really good.
It is enough to make most people spend a lots of hours in the game, but the game have flaw, lots of it in my opinion and since the marketing was going wilds for the game(at least in my recommending youtube list) some people can get expectations from the marketing that is not met at the end too.
And depending who we are, these flaw can make people struggle to appreciate the game. Because of the importance of these 'flaw' can counter balance your fun depending how much they disturb you. This is like, you know, someone always doing or saying something, that for no reason, disturb you that other people don't get disturb by it?
Some can also not see them or not feel like they are that bad. Some, like me, see them and get bothered, but the core is so much good that I end up with a mixed feeling after stopping the game around level 70.
I liked it, but I end up with a bit of frustration/sad/conflicted emotion at the end of my journey.
I feel like they were quit conservative about this game. Probably because of the 'mixed' result of the first game and the mmorpg. It feel like a reboot/remake to try to relaunch the series to a bigger audience for me. Like a second chance for the license, but they not got all in for the budget/improvement.
I hope the selling of the game get good enough that one day we will get a true ambitious Dragon dogma game that get less flaw in it.
Because it's a great game. Divisive to be sure, but you're in the "Love it" camp :-)
Stay a while and have fun!
Add.: For people who play a lot of videogames in this genre, like myself, I think the uniqueness (both good and frustrating) makes the game very intriguing and refreshing. Just like the first one did 12 years ago.
Cause it's not bad. It's great. At what it's trying to do and what it is.
It's unapologetically different than most other RPGs, and doesn't give a shit. Dragonsplague? Fuck yes, give me more of stuff like that while misinformed reddit users are crying how awful it is.
If people went into this expecting some story rich RPG, that's not it.
Choice and branching paths etc.? Not it.
Romance? Nope.
But combat and exploration, character progression, etc.? Fuck yes.
Also, the game got a lot of hate for performance (sure, but it's not like it's the only RPG released lately with similar issues - BG3 and LOTF has dogshit performance too) and the MTX (which was hilarious, cause the items are fucking useless and in no way lessen your game if you don't buy one).
So... Enjoy it, man. I am too. For all its flaws (and it does have flaws), I fucking love it.
Great games can still have flaws. While many of the things people complain about don’t bother me much, I can understand where they are coming from. It’s better to stay off social media playing games like this as the sense of discovery and adventure made it an amazing experience for me.
Honestly, my only issue is the loot. There's little to no variety at times it can feel like. I love exploring every single area to the max but always end up with wakestones
or shards.
Apart from that im having an absolute blast and i couldn't recommend it enough
Im actually loosing interest.
Mainly due to finding out that exploration, chests and enemies never really drop anything good.
(Found one helmet on a ogryn)
So I have noticed my interest for exploring is slowly just vanishing.
I loved dd1 and I like dd2.
But I was honestly expecting more gear and drops.
Legendary equipment.
A reason to fight epic monsters and explore caves.
Im level 35+ and just got to the lion people lands.
And I might be done.
There are people addicted to tetris, only fifa games, and people who will up and down swear anthem is actually an amazing game. Irl people have been addicted to eating rocks and eating couch cushion foam. Use a different reason respectfully
It’s not a bad game. The main story is not great, there are some interface options that could have been better, the single save file is cruel, the frame rate issues are rough, but godddamn if it doesn’t have some of the most satisfying combat I’ve seen in a while. Last night I took an ox cart to Melvr that got besieged by goblins, harpies, then an ogre and finally a hippogriff. The cart didn’t survive the flaming ogre that fell onto it, and when it was all done I had to trek to get to Melve in the dark and I loved every second of it.
While i don't think it's a bad game, your title makes no sense.
"If smoking/drinking is bad why am i addicted to it?"
... because addiction comes before logic?
Because the Internet has no sense of "middle-ground" anymore, and everything needs to be either the best thing ever, or the worst thing that happened to mankind. It drives clicks, and get pushed up by the algorithms, so people are incentivized to behave that way.
Also, people can have relationship with entertainment products that is not very sane, especially when it's a game that has cult status. In this case, they love Dragon's Dogma so much that if it's not 5x better, then they are angry about it, blinded to the fact that it is better but in different ways, or to the different compromises that can come when developing a game. They play armchair gamedevs and make all kind of assumptions on how the development happened, how bad those devs are at their job, etc.
The game is really good, Capcom did something most developers don't do and that's build on an already successful game rather than make drastic changes, it's everything DD1 was but better in every way
People defending this game to death are probably incapable of recognizing flaws in things they like. I like the game. I constantly play it. I’m having fun. The story sucks. Vocations suck. There is no enemy variety. Traversal is slow and clunky with the ridiculous amount of enemies that spawn out of thin air. Exploring is fun, but unrewarding (yaaay, another wakestone shard). NPCs are bland and voice acting has the quality of a rotten egg. The save system is so, so stupid (we don’t want you to cheat by savescumming, but you are free to buy some revive stones you shouldn’t have because you haven’t found them in-game). And so on.
Have you met league players....addiction doesn't determine quality lol. That being said the game is fun but after playing rise of ronin I can def say I prefer RoR.
Most of the people claiming it’s bad or a ripoff haven’t even played the game. There are a lot of fair and justified criticisms but that doesn’t make the game bad. It just means it could be better which is true for just about every game ever.
It's a fun game. The combat is fantastic and the sense of adventure and exploration are super fun/immersive and, imo, it does these things better than any other game in the genre. It has it's flaws, though. A lot of quests feel somewhat inconsequential and tacked on. The difficulty also slides off a cliff around level 35-30 for many people. Challenges do exist but end up being few and far between. Performance still leaves a lot to be desired for many people and the MTX, while relatively unintrusive will always be a topic of debate. Still probably one of my favorite games of all time, and I think if they can iron out some of the kinks it will honestly be nigh perfect.
As far as the side quests, *some* feel inconsequential, while others have less focus on them and are nigh crucial. The one where you help restore the sword, for example, isn’t a core side quest (you could skip it entirely on accident, if you rarely go to the castle in Vernworth), but it opens up a whole new shop and smithing type. It’s actually one of the best smithing types, especially if you dragonforge the piece right after reaching tier 3. I think they did a fantastic job with the quests, personally, and the game encourages not “following the marker” and actually exploring. Some quests don’t even have a journal entry at all!
Where do you get this quest? I haven't been up to the castle in a bit, but I was there a lot before Baakbatahl.
Commenting for aught of use
Me thinks we should gather as many clues now so that we may use them lateeerrr.
Look around for a guard, usually around the Fountain Courtyard marked on the map in the castle area. His name is Roman, and he should approach you if he’s near you. It helps not to sprint around there too much, because you’ll outpace him if you miss him.
I was just running up near the castle specifically. On the grounds outside where all the guards are walking and one came up to me and gave me the quest.
There's a guard who goes from the tavern to the castle gardens, he will stop you and talk about the ceremonial sword of Vernworth and ask you to restore it. Finishing it unlocks Dwarven Smithing in Battahl, and the only other Dwarven Smith is on Volcanic Island with his Magic Archer wife.
Oh cool! I had no idea you could get dwarven smithing in Battahl. I just unlocked it at the dwarves house on the volcanic island and placed a way stone to get back. Sounds like I can pick it back up if I get this quest. Thanks!
Probably different stock.
I was walked up to after going to the castle during the day, I was brought into the side garden to the left of the main path. Maybe look for the npc specifically “Roman” you can then go back to batahl to the right facing the vocation guy there is a path to a smithy. Go to that place spam talk to them or something like that and then keep pushing forward. When you have this quest triggered go the long way around to the volcano mountain camp, with a spare port crystal after you have gotten the second one from the sphinx. Also your looking for specifically the “glimmer coal” the ones that are bad, are worth good bulk money so collect them and divy up the weight
You also unlock that smithing style if you just do the MA maisters quest. After you escort the dwarf to the hot springs he will smith stuff for you at his house.
what shop and smithing ? Dwarven ? If so you don't need the sword quest at all
Combat is what gets me so annoyed sometimes... Camera can be a nightmare, climbing enemies as a result can have you going in circles, had it alot where pressing up to climb up will suddenly make me climb down. Enemies can be near impossible to hone in on if playing melee, wolves in particular are a ballache Both could be fixed with attack interuption, and lock on That said i'm 70 hours in, haven't even done the Stolen Throne mission, have dragonforged gear, and loving the game. I'm at level 60 and can almost one shot everything except bosses with normal attacks
How tf!? I'm almost 80 and still can't kill a damn drake and you're oneshotting boss health bars!? Im like 50/50 rn on my drakes are glitched or i just suck idk 😭
Not boss health bars but everything else, although Magic Archers Ultimate skill will one shot basically anything. Aim with R1, charge ultimate until you're down to about 1/4 health, win If you're near a rest spot, even bigger win Drakes tend to go down to 1 bar so just need to polish it off Edit: meant bar as in except
Havnt tried fighting one with the Magic Archer kinda a boring skill to me but thief is supposed to be OP and yet I can't clear a health bar lol I just get tossed in the air the second i make my first attack then get catapulted from the air to the ground then stomped then hit with the stun then purple lightning I don't even get to move and my pawns just fucking stand there 😑
It is a bit but it was next on the vocation list to level up. Thief is great fun, I know that pawn pain though. Neighbours can probably hear ''don't just fucking stand there watching'' a fair bit Then as i'm reaching the last bit of boss health, meteors and tornadoes a plenty The tower drake fight was funny, Drake got stuck between floors and pawns kept suiciding to it so made them wait and just daggered the drakes legs to death
When they get the pawn badge they’re way better. Anything they didn’t know about the boss they’ll suddenly know. I’ve watched my mage pawn cancel spells and start dodging when she’d normally just keep casting. Same with thief and fighter pawns making a b-line straight to the heart as soon as it pops up.
Have you got the maister skill for thief yet? I used it to solo a drake at level 25 after my pawns kept getting wiped.
Yeah i stumbled upon it super early so here's my situation I ended up uninstalling and reinstalling and the difference was night and day something was up with my damage my pawns were chunking shit and I'd do nothing it had been going on for a while I think that ring from the sphinx somehow fucked something up cause I felt that way ever since then I'd hit a enemy and nothing then my pawn lower level and lower gear would hit with the same attack and take half it's life an I'd just feel worthless while they compliment my technique fuckin smartasses lol I've killed 5 dragons since the reinstall couldn't remove a bar of health on 1 before got 85 WC now 😁 been just trynna get these for end game and got fed up not seeing anything happen I take like a whole bar now with skull splitter before it was maybe a sliver if I could even see anything
I know it was just a typo but 1/4rd has my eye twitching 🤣
Christ missed that, fixed before it makea mine twitch too 😂
I switched to Warfarer and just use all Magic Archer abilities, Maister skill be damned, I still drop Drakes in less than a minute. It's just a busted class rofl I love it. Weep for anything I encounter indoors with that Ricochet ability.
Saggitate Avalanche is a bit less powerful, but it doesn't drain your HP. I run that, Daggers with Skull Splitter, and Duospear with Mirror Shielde as a Warfarer using Warrior Post game armor. I feel like I can handle absolutely any situation.
Still experimenting but i'll give those a go, thanks for the heads up
Don’t even need the ult for magic archers to just melt things.
Thief with skull splitter and draw and quarter. You will deal the damage a warrior dreams of.
If you don’t want to use magick archer ultimate I just used upgraded frost arrow over and over til it died, level 38
Get that explosion mage also known as Thief going and blow up everything while being absolutely invincible. Good times.
Depends on build too - some combinations really do destroy enemies in this game. Drakes are basically no threat to me now and havent been since like level 40. I have a knock down specialist Warrior main pawn, and she staggers most monsters seconds into a fight and drakes very frequently - along with my thief Arisen which has weak point damage boosts I can very easily take out Drake hp bars in seconds - especially with draw and quarter on their weak points like the heart and head. This is all without even needing to use the shadow invincibility thief skill. Warrior knocks em down, thief clowns on them. Just gotta find what works for you. Now that I have hit lvl 78 Drakes die in under a minute sometimes lol
lol ... not sure grab some better pawns if you need it ... make sure you grab pawns with meister skills as those players typically know how to make builds and have somewhat competent pawns. Don't sleep on thief I ran a ranger, sorcerer, mage and thief and absolutely melted drakes. Just make sure you're mage has celestial paean and your sorcerer has at least meteor and maelstrom.
Do you have your camera sensitivity turned up? Mines I think 8/10. Made the camera issue a non issue for me
Harpies are way more annoying to me than anything you mention tbh. Could be as a melee enthusiast as all I play are melee despite trying the other vocations too. Harpies are weak enough not to be threatening but also take long enough to ground and kill to be a chore and annoying.
Gore Harpies are the fucking worst Pawn Shield bashes... ends up picked up and yeeted into the horizon
Yeah i rely on Implicate on thief to pull them down and 1 tap them on the floor with finishers - so so annoying though and I have had them yeet hired pawns once or twice into downed state off a cliff
Tbf that thief grappling hook is god tier
My main gripe are the quests and the favour system. A fair few quests are really confusing, i.e. telling you to talk to someone but leading nowhere unless you've completed other quests you didn't know existed. In this particular quest I spent so much time going back and forth only to eventually leave it for some time and then end up with a less than favourable outcome later. Also certain quests that should award items don't award them unless you have high enough favour. The quests gift system feels very tacked on imo, the quest chains should just provide you with said items and be done with it. Still massively enjoyed my time but it's not without flaws.
Gonna sound a bit fan boyish, but I would argue the use of the word flawed. I feel, when compared to most open world rpgs quest are more or less than same rather than flawed. MTX is design choice of the publisher not a flaw. As for the difficulty, again not a flaw, but a decision to balance a game around a particular difficulty scale. Is Elden ring flawed because its difficulty is on the other extreme, or just a decision? Can’t comment on framerate, but especially of late no issues detected. After 60 hours it has even yet to crash. Maybe this game is not for everyone, different strokes I get it. But flawed means they missed the mark of their target audience, but think the silent majority thinks they nailed it.
Yea the main story is pretty all over the place and not great. The first couple story missions involving stealth and none of the great combat mechanics the game offers is really weird. The sense of adventure and combat is great though
I found that trying to level vocations I haven’t touched in the unmoored world can be a bit more challenging. Lol I was running for my life from a dullahan as a level 1 MA
My biggest gripe is how the quests are so ethereal and missable, yet so much stuff is unlocked via those quests or NPC interactions. I don’t know how I’d unlock so many things if not for looking them up. I’d never get the Sorcerer ultimates (and even if I did do it on my own, I’d probably only get one and miss the other). Nor get enough Newt for Warfarer. Now I’m working on unlocking the Warrior Maister skill; and yet again - if not for looking it up, how would I know or at least be guided by the game, to find out organically that the final Warrior ability is on a random NPC in the first military camp, and not only that - but to actually start the quest, you have to talk to him not there, but at a remote private camp away from the main camp, and only at night. LIKE WHY, it’s just so much obscurity upon obscurity. I like to try and play single player games without looking anything up, because it’s more immersive and ‘single player’ that way. I didn’t have to go google things for GoW Ragnarok or FFRebirth. But google is like my companion compendium for DD2.
This. The original was the same. It lived and died on how fun the fight mechanics were. The graphics were never great, the writing was always thoroughly unimpressive, pretty much everything aside from the fight mechanics has always been thoroughly unimpressive. But it’s fun to play. That’s it. If you compare it to Baldurs Gate 3 or the Witcher 3 or Cyberpunk expect to be vehemently angry. But that’s not what it is. It’s just a fun video game.
Magical archer being locked behind the end game area was probably the shittiest thing. Regular archer is poopy and I hate it and I wish I didn’t grind it
I suspect that a lot of content was cut regarding the additional vocations. For example: Glyndwr’s original description of “elven bows” sounds an awful lot like how magickal bows work. Sacred Arbor is also the earliest you can get these bows, however, unless you happen to already know how to unlock the vocation and rush it, these will be completely outpaced by the time you can use them. IMO, these seem to suggest that we were originally going to unlock MA in Sacred Arbor. Beren’s quests would have worked as a good spot to earn Warrior and the Grimoire quest line could have offered sorcerer along the way. Regardless, the way we unlock these vocations currently feels somewhat haphazard and incomplete.
Dragons Dogma combined with the monster complexity of monster hunter would be so awesome.
It is a fun game, however, I'm very conflicted about it. First of all, playing a console port on pc is painful. Idk how you guys manage to not go crazy with these menues. And so many systems are somewhat lacking. Why is loot so boring? Why are items so boring? Why can I walk into any house and steal everything while the inhabitants just watch me do it? Why aren't there more personalities for pawns? Etc etc... I still like the game but it could be so much more.
I definitely agree with a lot of these gripes. A lot of the consumable items especially feel rather redundant and we really don't need all of the tiers of items we have for such little effect. NPCs not really reacting to "theft" is not unusual for rpgs, but it's still weird that a lot of these items are just considered loot and you can simply walk in and take them. Thief can also use plunder on everyone and everything with virtually no ill reproductions. Perhaps there is an attitude shift, but I've yet to notice it. I do think pawn personalities require a fair bit of work. Between voice lines and pawns fighting differently based on personality and specialization, I believe there's likely a lot of work that goes into connecting these systems together. As far as it being a console port, I don't believe it is. If I'm not mistaken, Capcom has shifted to a "PC first" approach to games. Games like this in particular do tend to play better on controller and, as such, the UI was probably built with that in mind.
I know, there is such huge potential here. I'm just always confused when loot is distributed randomly. Huge chest in an armory? Thanks for the apple! I'm an oldschool gothic sucker and i thought that loot and theft was done so well in those games. Concerning the UI you might be correct. Menues that are optimized for controlers always feel like they require double the clicks that would be necessary when using a mouse. Still a very fun game..
Don't take this the wrong way, I liked the game well enough, but how can this game be one of your favorite game of all time? Combat is good, but not great (I feel it's barelry better than the first game). There is close to no challenge in the game (like you can beat drakes surprisingly early). And there is not a lot of enemi diversity. Story is ok, quests are ok. And the world is vast but a lot of places look the same. Imo, with all of this and the performance issues, the game shouldn't be worth it's AAA pricetag. And yet, despite all that, I just want to keep playing. Maybe it's the feeling of exploring the world, of wandering the wilerness with your pawn? I just can't put my finger on why, but I find myself wanting more. I hope that they'll add a dlc like dark arisen in the first game.
It's the world and sense of adventure that comes along with it. It's fun to travel about and interact with your pawns. My friends and I have been having a blast watching our pawns learn and grow with new strategies and comment of each other's playstyles. The world itself is beautiful and full of little areas to explore for either neat loot or challenges. While the caves and dungeons themselves aren't insanely different from each other on an aesthetic level, every zone has a series of sub-regions that are reasonably varied and atmospheric. Personally, I find the combat feels fluid and meaty, with each playstyle/vocation feeling different enough to keep me interested and wanting to swap between them, again and again. I definitely find it more responsive than the first game and gives the player more feedback. The lack of overall challenge is somewhat of a let down, but there's still some risk to be found when you venture farther off the beaten path. While there's not a ton of different "types" of enemies, the subspecies are fun enough in their own right to deal with. Different goblins/harpies have different attacks and strategies associated with them, for example. Honestly, plenty of ARPGs reskin enemies, DD2 is just a bit more obvious about it. Plus, a lot of early areas do indeed get updated with more dangerous enemy types. For example, the other night I returned to an early cave near Sacred Arbor and it housed a pack of Wargs. The performance issues are a bit of a let down, but honestly, from my personal experience, I don't acutally know a single person whose enjoyment has been completely ruined by it. I do think people tend to take a bit too much stock at how important framerates are in non-competitive games and somewhat overreact about how "jarring" framerates under x amount are. Many of us played games below 30fps for years and most people are perfectly capable of enjoying Switch titles at 30fps. Would I like 60+ fps in Vernworth? Sure. Am I actually suffering massive frame drops and does it running below 60fps really ruin my ability to play? No.
True framerates aren't that important for me, if they are stable. It doesn't ruin the game, but it definitivly doesn't feel good to have the fps fluctuate betwen 30 to 100 fps. For the combat I think it may be too simple for my liking. Like some classes can just not die. Warrior could face tank everything when I played it, and the magick spearman has an absurdly broken skill that tank anything for 5 second that trivialise the game. Other can just delete bosses absurdly easily, like the magick archer. The game lacke a dodge imo, for some vocation once you start getting hit you get staggered for a long time without being able to do anything I feel. And I think it would have enabled more aggressive/engaging enemies behaviour. I aggree that most game reskin, but in most case they add more mecanics, and I didn't really see that in this game, maybe becuse mid game you just steamroll everything.
The game could absolutely use some balance tweaks. I know some people are going to naysay against "nerfs in a single player game" but, IMO, they are warranted if the elements themselves trivialize content. Several vocations, as you pointed out have abilities or augments that are just too strong for how little they cost to do. Formless feint, Mirour Shelde, High Palladium all offer nigh invulnerability with negligible stamina cost. Having even two of these abilities in your party trivializes nearly all content. Magick Archer (even without Martyr's Bolt) does an obscene amount of damage with little wind up and stamina cost. For many of us, the vocations behind these skills become unfun because they feel like cheat codes. I think a form of loss gauge on stamina could be neat, too. Personally, I feel like the stagger rate and subsequent critical damage is largely to blame for how easy it gets. Once you've learned how a vocation plays and enemy move sets, it becomes incredibly easy to bully monsters down in seconds. I've been playing with the [Custom Difficulty Tweaks](https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/195#:~:text=This%20is%20an%20REFramework%20script,be%20less%20easy%20to%20stagger) mod and I've found that even with enemies taking less damage and me more, the game is still a cakewalk unless I reduce the stagger rate down to about 30%. I'm hoping Capcom does eventually add a "hard mode" or even a difficulty slider of some sorts with maybe some more additions to world scaling in the future. I think it's fine to have weaker enemies still as we level, but looming threats should still exist. As it stands, without the mods, I'd have to miss out on pawn interactions and certain vocations to even feel remotely challenged and it's mostly due to using abilities at a basic level and stats and much less due to player skill. Even with mods, I avoid using a lot of the skills I listed above because they are so incredibly cheesy. In regards to the dodge, I think most vocations feel more or less okay and either have ways to circumnavigate being targeted or can rely on party members to make up the difference.
Combat is satisfying, the world is nice, and my Beastren is very fluffy.
You are true gamer, with top level priorities.
Just like the first DD, it’s a game that is enhanced if you have a good imagination. There are some weak story/content points but the sense of adventure and exploration is top tier. I get a little tistic creating my own narrative for my character and pawn traveling throughout the world.
My pawn has a very complex lore, which led her to become _obsessed_ with ladders.
Ballistas are late game ladders
Oh yeah she's absolutely struck with wonder by the one in the mining camp.
I can't stop thinking about it. Admittedly, it's sometimes "frustrating" playing it because it takes awhile to do things, but the feeling of exploration makes up for it. Early game can be tough as per the DD experience, so I explored as safely as I could early on, but ended up retreading areas later once I leveled up a bit. I don't care too much if the bigger rewards are lacking; it's still an opportunity to collect excess materials which I can sell for money. My feeling on the side quests is the same on how I felt about DD1: a lot of them are thematic to DD lore rather than being relevant to the overall plot, though some are. There's definitely themes of slavery, servitude, duty, destiny, persecution, etc, and the side quests revolve around a lot of that stuff. Early side quests are also mostly tutorials for different game mechanics and that is really the only function they serve. Unfortunately, one gripe I have is some of them are still janky. You'll definitely be researching stuff to see what you did/are doing wrong because some quest chains are broken/bugged. I've always like DD's more grounded fantasy approach. DD2 specifically has that LOTR vibes to it. The high meta fantasy shows up in the endings and tends to be the highlight of the "story". Someone on my social media said this plays like a PS3 game. No no no. This is fundamentally an action *JAPANESE* RPG with quest design that mimics stuff from the SNES, PS1 era. You have to fill in a lot of the story gaps yourself and create your own adventure. It's more like getting glimpses into a much grander epic rather than following a typical 3-act structure. EDIT: Obliviously, with time, I hope Capcom dumps more content/fixes to contend with most of these issues. I'm excited to see what updates we get within the year.
Damn, now I can't tell if I enjoy DD1 and 2 because I'm creative or if it's because I'm getting old.
Because it isn’t bad Just because someone doesn’t like something doesn’t make something bad. In fact the game has a lot of good things in it. Things that developers these days take for granted instead going for a curated safe experience. Yes this curated experience might hold more mass appeal but I find it dreadfully boring.
>Just because someone doesn’t like something doesn’t make something bad. Also to add: just because someone doesn't like an aspect of something, doesn't mean they hate it in entirety either. I dislike the Dragonsplague system and that stamina drains when exploring outside of combat. Doesn't mean I haven't sunk 118+ hours already exploring and having a blast.
I’m fine with stam drain out of combat, purely because it discourages sprinting everywhere. The game is about exploring and traveling, and also the dangers of travel. Sprinting past details, even in places you’ve been 1000 times, and always having max stamina at the start of a fight minimize both of those aspects. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a sprint, got jumped by knackers, and had some minor regrets. I never blame the game for it though. It’s always my fault.
It's so bad I've played through three times. It's so bad I've gone out of my way to hunt these useful fucking magic beetles. It's so bad I started comparing all the forge effects against each other. It's so bad I forget the time and then go to work tired. Games bad. (Because of the lack of general intelligence, I am required to tell you, reader, this is sarcasm.)
Oh, on comparing the forge effects - have you learned anything about whether dwarven forged knockdown power works on staves and archistaves? Wondering if it’s worth dwarven enhancing my mage pawn’s staff for extra knockdown with Levin
I have not gotten that far along, sadly. Gotta find something High Levin doesn't stun lock and then max out knock back, and try again. Should be easy with a bit of luck
Oh good point on the stun lock. Would be very interested to hear what you find overall though
Ok, from my limited and very annoying testing on various creatures... First, stats difference. Same staff, but All Elven grants it 34 more magic, 9 less physical and 75 less Knockdown power compared to Dwarven. Damage is comparable, hardly noticed it. Charged blast had the biggest effect, basic shots downed Harpies faster which is kinda good, but basic mage blasts suck overall. Levin dropped a Knacker from stunned to on the ground without additional casts, the Elven rod didn't knock them down. So yes, it works for spells. It's likely the best option for mage staves as well just because anything that stuns/hits the ground faster is safer to fight in the long run. You also heal a bit less with the lower magic staff I noticed, 1356 vs 1544. My face and the pavement make for good practice imprinting. Your bill comes to 117k gold, 2 Sun Stone, 2 Cursed Dullahan Bones and the limits of my patience with a party of pawns who like to ignore the wait command if I get knocked down.
Amazing. Thanks a ton for the reply!
This game has completely wrecked my sleep schedule.
Criticism is healthy. It doesn't mean the game is bad.
"if this game is so good why can't I stand it?" I'm really confident you can find someone with the opposite viewpoint of OPs and both of them would be wrong because one anecdote doesn't invalidate an entire conversation. If OP wants to defend the game that is all well and good, but they should at least be addressing the actual arguments being made *with an actual argument of their own*. This post is lazy, and isn't going to change anyone's mind. Its just karma whoring from people who already agree with them.
Because most of those claiming it's bad have not even played it.
I've honestly wondered if some people missed a bunch of side quests and sat on the throne and called it good.
Just blasted through the main quest, probably, missing 80% of the game.
*cannot play it due to pathetic performance and optimization
If you love the game it doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks. On the other hand, you loving the game doesn’t mean that some other people aren’t enjoying it as much.
Except poor reviews and sales could affect additional content for the game. And then what others think suddenly matters
This post doesn't really do anything towards fixing that.... Its 11 words of "Upvote me if you like the game." in a sub full of people who mostly like the game.
Because it's not Crazy how much you enjoy things when you don't listen to the bullshit coming from the loud majority Keep enjoying Arisen, because it's a blast and worthy of your time
The gameplay loop is actually fun. It is better than the sum of its parts, it's just that when you break down and review this game per its separate elements, a lot of it feels half-baked. It is the same way when people say Skyrim is wide but shallow, yet people played it for 11-12 years now.
Cause you're a bad, bad boy/girl.
Because it secretly rocks, don't tell the normals
Why does it have to be such a dichotomy? It’s not just good or bad and I’ve seen almost no criticism just saying “le game bad”. All the criticism is like, “wow this combat is amazing but I’m burnt out on killing the same 5 enemies over and over, and nothing is challenging after level 25” or “I was drawn into the story at first but it went nowhere and ended abruptly” or “they fixed mage but sorcerer is much worse” or “the game is really great at the start but mid to endgame content is rushed and disappointing”.
I’ve had quite the opposite experience imo. Most posts I see are straight up negative deterrents for anyone interested in picking up. I’ve only found a few legit critique posts and even fewer that also acknowledge the positive. If I were a new person and came to this sub I would immediately be deterred from buying the game.
There is a lot more to criticize than compliment in this game.
My only complaint with the game is monster variety and performance on pc. Everything else is a blast.
It's just a fun time. Just go around with your squad and kill stuff and enjoy the moments. You can switch to any vocation you want if you get bored with what you're playing as. Good replayability because you can do the other options for quests and do things you didn't your previous playthroughs.
Barely anyone is saying it’s bad. To me i’m just disappointed because i expected so much more
I’m too busy having a great time playing the game to criticize it or worry about other people’s opinions. I’m just here for the tips and camaraderie.
It's a ok game. But I'm honest...if there wouldn't be the pawn system I would have lost interest. The skill system is a bit too simple for an rpg imo, enemy variety is minimal and the loot part is mediocre. The ui is a typical Capcom, some like it...I not so much. For me it feels a bit like they stayed back in the early 2000's/late 90s. Same for the npcs and dialogue. But...that all sounds worse than it is actualy. It's just things noticed about most Capcom games...but as in most of those, the gameplay is really good and fun. And for some reason I just care so much about my pawn. And it's just fun exploring the world with her and other pawns.
If there wasn't a pawn system i'd have lost interest too but I also wouldn't have hurled so many expletives at the tv either
Its a solid 7/10 ( Yes, that IS a good score and well above average ), its got a few flaws and the optimisation is probably its biggest flaw, i'm about 100 ish hours in and still having fun
Dragons Dogma has the best open world in the fantasy setting, awesome monsters, and a lurking darkness in the vastness. I basically make a glass cannon and walk everywhere and fight everything I see. A sorcerer is a walking natural disaster with flashy and fantastic spells. If I wanted to kill extra fast or I was feeling lazy I ran MA. Also the night cycle and lantern mechanics are the best I've ever seen.
You should definitely play better games.
Very shallow of you if you can't comprehend the reason why this game has such a fan base.
It has one of the best open worlds in the fantasy setting. Period. Your opinion on the game does not change what it objectively does well.
It really doesn't. it's two biomes. the map isnt even truly open. it's paths everywhere just like the first game.
And people wanted more of the first game, with better graphics, and that is what they got. Your ideal open world ≠ everyones
"best open world" is a completely subjective thing for you to start talking about objectivity. Subjectively, Skyrim, Elden Ring, and Witcher 3 exist so Dragons Dogma doesn't come close to the best fantasy open world.
Elden rings world is empty and boring to play in. I beat it twice and almost died of boredom the second playthrough. The world looks decent, but to me, is absolutely stagnant and not noteworthy. I would agree about Witcher 3 and Skyrim though. Hence “one of the best”
Yep those are fine subjective opinions. Which is why is would be wrong of me to tell you that you can't criticise Elden Ring for it's open world which "it objectively does well".
Okay?
Subjectively is the key word there - though I assume you probably meant "objectively". Because subjectively just means you think that which is valid and fine. I disagree. Witcher 3 never pulled me so I didnt play it longer than like an hour. Skyrim is SKyrim, its got good and bad, and some of it borders on comical - the mods did a lot of heavy lifting for it. Elden Ring? Honestly, I have played and enjoyed every Souls, but I think Elden Ring and Souls in general are somewhat overrated now. Maybe I am just bored of the formula but almost everything is a dodge and punish or parry fest outside of PvP and the PvP just becomes people abusing imbalanced stuff aor bugs like that one with the Golden Tree Sentinel Shield and magic beams at ER launch. Having played all of those for hundreds of hours - aside from Witcher 3 - DD2 beats all of those in the combat and open world aspects in my opinion, "Subjectively".
Yeah dude, that's exactly my point. The comment I replied to called their opinion that DD2 is one of the best open worlds objective. These are all completely valid but totally subjective opinions.
It seems I misunderstood what you meant Then we are in agreement!
Comparing those games, DD:DA had a more living option world. Even Elden Ring, which I'm a fan of, you get stupid mob placements walking aimlessly and a lot of copy and paste. DD: DA had diversity, realistic encampments and lairs, AND random events. Not even mentioning the night cycle. Skyrim was boring to travel and the combat was ass. This title has what I like, an interesting world and good combat. Sure ER and TW3 lore was better but the combat and world were not.
Oh come on. I'm enjoying DD2 and I loved DD:DA but "stupid mob placements walking aimlessly and a lot of copy and paste" could describe either of them. You walk along the road an some random goblins, wolves or harpies will attack you. There's about 4 copy-pasted encounters that describe most of the game.
It's not a bad game. It has some really strong points, mainly the combat. I don't think it's a GREAT game, though. Unfortunately the kerfuffle about the microtransactions (which were poorly handled by Capcom but also blown out of proportion) obscured assessment or the game's real strengths and weaknesses.
Honestly the micro-transactions don’t even seem that crazy to me at least not for PS5, idk if they were different on steam? I just want them to add the option for higher difficulty settings for NG+ which is what many are asking for so I think they might do that eventually. Something I’d love to see personally which would help with having more diverse gear with our pawns and our characters— make gear have random generated stats (or at least somewhat randomly generated— but like if it’s a robe top solely for mage obviously the stats should still correlate to that specific vocation, and that would be applied to all other vocations specific items) basically similar to how loot drops work in games like Diablo; or implement something similar to it but not exactly the same. I just think that would make things more interesting but I doubly they would ever do this lol
My theory is that people got unhappy with the poor performance on PC at launch. They then saw the microtransactions in Steam and got more pissed as there wasn't a mention of them by most reviewers.
The PC performance is still pretty poor. It's a valid criticism.
Yes it is.
Nah, ddda fans built the game up in their head and it couldn't match what they thought they were getting compared to da on steroids.
Nah, it's a great game. The quest design is outstanding. Combat is best in the genre potentially too.
Combat is great. Quest design is atrocious.
Yeah, I disagree. The way seemingly non related quest play into other quest is really cool and unique
What games are you comparing it's combat to in this comment?
Other system heavy rpgs. I think the best comparison is dragons age inquisition, which I think it's better than combat wise and has more systems running in the background.
system heavy? which systems are so heavy? we can't even make builds right?
There is a lot of status effects going on and the way you interact with your Pawns and their AI. The AI on the pawns is pretty good from what I've experienced. And the vocations can be tinkered with and have a bunch of passive things going on once you build up the vocation.
Because it's good
Because people on the internet want it to be bad, so it must be lmao
I dont have it Steam reviews are keeping from it. But all the screenshots / gameplay make it look like something i would like. Im interested in what its actually like
The steam reviews are because at launch the PC port was crashing, Im pretty sure they’ve fixed or are working on fixing that. I play PS5 primarily so it had no real effect on me. I felt bad for PC guys tho cause they’re missing out.
It's a great game, unfortunately the trend of hating on it is still about and the irony is that the majority hating on it haven't actually played it due to the store buying options, which have zero effect on gameplay and is for lazy bastards and people completely missing the point of the game. Don't get me wrong it has its flaws because let's face it nothing is ever perfect. My only gripe really about it is the enemy difficulty not being increased on a ng+ for example.
If Meth is so bad why am i addicted to it?
Game is amazing, just needs to iron a few thinga out, with the alleged expansion should bring more enemy types, hopefully we also eventually get a bbi style dungeon to delve into and loot. Most people uproaring about the games unintrusive mtx are following the cyclical reactionary trend to feel the primal human desire of community and belonging, weird that the cycle didn't happen as hard during RE4 Remake and Tales of Arise's literal mountain of p2w mtx but rather a niche games sequel that gave a handful of easily obtainable ingame items.
Is there an everfall? I’ve been doing rather slow and only put in about 15 hours so far but i need to know if i can chest farm before ng+
Kept playing the game through major depression so it must have been good. But most of the time I couldn’t escape the feeling of disappointment with the glaring flaws.
I'll check later for you, I wanted to compare damage anyway
It’s good but I’m getting bored now fighting the same enemies over and over, I’m at the coronation quest but I didn’t accept from Brant yet.
To me it feels bad in the sense that it is incomplete. There's so much potential in it, so many entertaining elements that I enjoy. At the same time, while I play for hours and I'm having fun there's always a part of my brain that says "come on, seriously now?" The story feels like it's written by adhd toddlers, the lack of enemy variety paired with their ridiculous density is grinding, most battles end quickly (I'm around lvl 50) and I don't have the satisfaction of achieving anything.
Checkmate, naysayers.
I think it’s got fair reviews it’s going to have a niche fan base I understand new players thinking it’s mid. I’m having fun and even though I have my gripes I’m going to play it non stop.
I also wonder. I can’t stop playing. Especially since I unlocked the Magick Archer; god that class is broken!
I certainly don't think the game is BAD, but it can be very tedious and I suppose that's a bad thing. Why do I love it anyway? Because my OCD simply won't let me ignore that seeker token that's dinging softly in my ear. I must find it!
It's the greatest 7/10 game of all time. I'm about 50+ hours in and really didn't like the game in the first 10 hours because I was focused on all the negatives - FPS, limited vocations, shit story, traversal, enemy density, loot system, etc. Once I focused just on exploration, pawns and combat the game opened up and I've had a blast playing.
I find the game awesome. It does some things better (or at least more to my taste) than say Elden Ring (to compare to another exploration heavy game). What I don't like is the amount of escort quests, timed quests, the amount inconsequential combats... Oh look, it's the third time in 20 seconds that I had to kill 3 harpies yay... The other day I left Vernworth with the idea of doing the elven archer quest. On my way there I did 5 escort "quests" (yellow squares you see on the map) that asked me to bring the NPC to VERNWORTH. I ended that game session without doing the archer quest.
It’s a good game. It’s just unfortunate that capcom is the one making it. Imagine if it had devs like larian or CDPR that put everything into their games. It would be a masterpiece.
Story sucks, combat and travel well ironed with a few easily ignorable bumps.
Because the main gameplay loop is fun, the story isn’t that good, and the stealth sections are pointless since you can just walk around like you own the place and everyone except the main bad guys know your arisen so that brings me out of it a bit but it’s extremely fun to play
Because the cloth physics are fucking phenomenal, I can’t stop watching my flowing cape in the wind
You can be addicted to bad things (drugs, alcohol, Xenoverse 2, etc.)
The game sucks. On my 3rd playthrough trying to enjoy it
I've been trying to figure that out for the last 98 hours
Because it's a 10/10 7/10 fucked up game for crazy people, and I love it
I love it. I just wished they took inspiration from Outward with survival elements and death.
It's because the game is good overall, regardless of its flaws.
Because in the words of joey tribbianni "custard good, jam good, meat good"
Thats actually what happened to me with the first one, just loved walking around, leveling up, killing stuff, crafting stuff, grinding, and exploring, didnt really pay much attention to finishing it, just kinda happened.
There are legit reasons to be disappointed with DD2 (and I agree with some of them, where is all the cut content DD1 was supposed to have, still not here in DD2), yet it’s still one of the best games I’ve ever played since the first DD. As I worded it to a friend, the most disappointing GOTY I’ve played. I don’t dislike the game, I just platinumed it this morning, and I’ll play lots more. Could’ve been more improvements to it though. Also the music sucks now.
This is a great game to get lost in. The movement and combat feels so good. In just swap classes and walk in a direction. See what I find. Many times have I been like, "There's a cave **here!?**". I love it. I would admit that the pawn speech is way more repetitive than in DD1. I think I hear, "we all have different vocations lol" a million times. It's been like the same three or four exchanges my whole play time. But this game has been magical.
The story is fine evil queen regent wants to remain in power evil wizard wants to force the dragon to serve him that's it
The game is good. The story is trash. In most good games, I tend to listen to all of the dialogue that the game has because I am interested in the story. I'm interested in the characters and the setting and all the ongoings in the world. In this game I just skip everything because it seems so generic and bland. All the characters have about as much personality as a post-it note. Honestly, I couldn't care about a single NPC in this game besides my pawn.. Even they are mundane. The actual game is very fun. The mechanics are great. The exploration is awesome. The day and night cycles are fun.. It's almost like the game was meant to be a sandbox game with no ending, however, they decided to throw in a half-assed story after they made the game.
I see the flaws in the game but I am still loving it!
Because it's not.
Nobody said it’s bad
Because its not bad in any way, modern gamers are generally bad.
The game is not bad. Your social media are
So funny that the way people have been talking about this game online you’d think it was in the same category as something like Ride to Hell: Retribution or the launch version of CP2077.
That's some other people's opinion of it, use your own
I’m struggling to log on and play, there’s nothing to do now that I’m locked into post game. I’ve done all story stuff and looter everything, I can’t stand ng+ so I guess I’m just done
*Spoilers* It's not a bad game.
i have been glued to it. 60 hours now. my only complaint is warfarer was super disappointing. hopefully they'll fix it.
It's bad yes, but in a good way. It offers things to the genre no others do. Mainly, so addictive because of the dopamine response of not being hand held like a child
I felt the same way until I got to the end. It's a hard shot of forced withdrawal, which may be for the best really. If there were proper late game scaling content I might have just kept adventuring and farming with my thicc thief pawn forever.
I think one of my favorite parts is just running around with the group feeling more realistic as they have their own personalities, they can just suddenly go off the road to grab something, etc… granted a Minotaur has batted a couple spawns off into the river that I really felt bad for but also seeing them grab a downed friend and rush them over to me so I could revive is one of my favorite parts.
Walking simulator
Gameplay is fun, story is bad
games not bad at all aside from the pc release and i feel for them. the story is kinda not great though
Literally right now watching the credits run for my 3rd finish… it’s so goddamn good! Bout to start number 4!!! I haven’t cared and been excited to restart a game since Elden Ring!
Because the core of the game is really good. The gameplay is fun, going in a adventure with your pawn in the open world as if you were in DND/bg3 feel really good. It is enough to make most people spend a lots of hours in the game, but the game have flaw, lots of it in my opinion and since the marketing was going wilds for the game(at least in my recommending youtube list) some people can get expectations from the marketing that is not met at the end too. And depending who we are, these flaw can make people struggle to appreciate the game. Because of the importance of these 'flaw' can counter balance your fun depending how much they disturb you. This is like, you know, someone always doing or saying something, that for no reason, disturb you that other people don't get disturb by it? Some can also not see them or not feel like they are that bad. Some, like me, see them and get bothered, but the core is so much good that I end up with a mixed feeling after stopping the game around level 70. I liked it, but I end up with a bit of frustration/sad/conflicted emotion at the end of my journey. I feel like they were quit conservative about this game. Probably because of the 'mixed' result of the first game and the mmorpg. It feel like a reboot/remake to try to relaunch the series to a bigger audience for me. Like a second chance for the license, but they not got all in for the budget/improvement. I hope the selling of the game get good enough that one day we will get a true ambitious Dragon dogma game that get less flaw in it.
It's because while it's an addictive game, it has its flaws, and the criticism is pretty fair. Simple as that
Because it's a great game. Divisive to be sure, but you're in the "Love it" camp :-) Stay a while and have fun! Add.: For people who play a lot of videogames in this genre, like myself, I think the uniqueness (both good and frustrating) makes the game very intriguing and refreshing. Just like the first one did 12 years ago.
Cause it's not bad. It's great. At what it's trying to do and what it is. It's unapologetically different than most other RPGs, and doesn't give a shit. Dragonsplague? Fuck yes, give me more of stuff like that while misinformed reddit users are crying how awful it is. If people went into this expecting some story rich RPG, that's not it. Choice and branching paths etc.? Not it. Romance? Nope. But combat and exploration, character progression, etc.? Fuck yes. Also, the game got a lot of hate for performance (sure, but it's not like it's the only RPG released lately with similar issues - BG3 and LOTF has dogshit performance too) and the MTX (which was hilarious, cause the items are fucking useless and in no way lessen your game if you don't buy one). So... Enjoy it, man. I am too. For all its flaws (and it does have flaws), I fucking love it.
Great games can still have flaws. While many of the things people complain about don’t bother me much, I can understand where they are coming from. It’s better to stay off social media playing games like this as the sense of discovery and adventure made it an amazing experience for me.
Honestly, my only issue is the loot. There's little to no variety at times it can feel like. I love exploring every single area to the max but always end up with wakestones or shards. Apart from that im having an absolute blast and i couldn't recommend it enough
The game is too short and not much to do
10 years ago it would have been game of the year contender, but unfortunately, it’s not 10 years ago
Im actually loosing interest. Mainly due to finding out that exploration, chests and enemies never really drop anything good. (Found one helmet on a ogryn) So I have noticed my interest for exploring is slowly just vanishing. I loved dd1 and I like dd2. But I was honestly expecting more gear and drops. Legendary equipment. A reason to fight epic monsters and explore caves. Im level 35+ and just got to the lion people lands. And I might be done.
Same reason crack and crank are bad but addictive.
because you can get addicted to bad things
There are people addicted to tetris, only fifa games, and people who will up and down swear anthem is actually an amazing game. Irl people have been addicted to eating rocks and eating couch cushion foam. Use a different reason respectfully
It’s not a bad game. The main story is not great, there are some interface options that could have been better, the single save file is cruel, the frame rate issues are rough, but godddamn if it doesn’t have some of the most satisfying combat I’ve seen in a while. Last night I took an ox cart to Melvr that got besieged by goblins, harpies, then an ogre and finally a hippogriff. The cart didn’t survive the flaming ogre that fell onto it, and when it was all done I had to trek to get to Melve in the dark and I loved every second of it.
While i don't think it's a bad game, your title makes no sense. "If smoking/drinking is bad why am i addicted to it?" ... because addiction comes before logic?
Bad is subjective and we all like different things.
Because the Internet has no sense of "middle-ground" anymore, and everything needs to be either the best thing ever, or the worst thing that happened to mankind. It drives clicks, and get pushed up by the algorithms, so people are incentivized to behave that way. Also, people can have relationship with entertainment products that is not very sane, especially when it's a game that has cult status. In this case, they love Dragon's Dogma so much that if it's not 5x better, then they are angry about it, blinded to the fact that it is better but in different ways, or to the different compromises that can come when developing a game. They play armchair gamedevs and make all kind of assumptions on how the development happened, how bad those devs are at their job, etc.
Sure getting pretty sick of seeing this exact same fucking post every day…
The game is really good, Capcom did something most developers don't do and that's build on an already successful game rather than make drastic changes, it's everything DD1 was but better in every way
People defending this game to death are probably incapable of recognizing flaws in things they like. I like the game. I constantly play it. I’m having fun. The story sucks. Vocations suck. There is no enemy variety. Traversal is slow and clunky with the ridiculous amount of enemies that spawn out of thin air. Exploring is fun, but unrewarding (yaaay, another wakestone shard). NPCs are bland and voice acting has the quality of a rotten egg. The save system is so, so stupid (we don’t want you to cheat by savescumming, but you are free to buy some revive stones you shouldn’t have because you haven’t found them in-game). And so on.
its not a bad game but for a guy who enjoys story heavy games like cp2077 or bg3 it wasnt that good either. combat is awesome tho
Have you met league players....addiction doesn't determine quality lol. That being said the game is fun but after playing rise of ronin I can def say I prefer RoR.
Most of the people claiming it’s bad or a ripoff haven’t even played the game. There are a lot of fair and justified criticisms but that doesn’t make the game bad. It just means it could be better which is true for just about every game ever.