I've Played 60 Hours of Dragons Dogma 2 - Review

hey I'm still alive welcome back it is time for us to review Dragon's Dogma 2 now there have been plenty of upgrades and modernization that is certainly the case however Dragon's Dogma 2 still Bears many of the quirky features and design choices of its predecessor for better and for worse it's got an action combat system which I have felt to be quite satisfying with chunky hits great sounds and animations and an interesting variety of classes and abilities to pick from no matter which vocation I've played thus far plowing through hordes of enemies and tackling the game's many behemoths has felt great but also combat lacks the variety of contextual attacks that most action games have adopted nowadays as it limits you to just two basic attacks and four skills has no lock on on top of no Universal blocking or dodging as those defensive capabilities are restricted to certain vocations only the game has a fairly large handcrafted and beautifully built open world with tons of winding paths Hidden Treasures points of interest discoveries and enemies around nearly every corner at no point while playing did I ever feel like I was walking through filler content any direction you go you're bound to wind up finding something interesting or worthwhile but no doubt encouraged by exploring this space it also has extremely limited fast travel you are only able to port to a select few locations and doing so requires the use of a very rare consumable that you'll occasionally find while looting or can purchas from certain vendors for a considerable chunk of change the result of which is most of the time you play you're going to be be hoofing it on foot if you are not taking an AUX cart your AI companions the pawns are thoroughly flushed out interesting and much more than just allies in combat they'll help act as guides to your current Quest objective they'll gather resources and craft consumables they'll point out the location of hidden chest and collectibles nearby all while also yes supporting you in combat as you choose from a rotating variety of player built ponds selecting them based on their class vocation but also on their mannerisms their inclinations knowled and the particular active and passive skills that they're using but at the same time while you're on a quest you're bound to hear the same voice line 20 times in route their interactions and capabilities don't always seem to function as intended and while funny at times they also sometimes make decisions in combat that'll leave you scratching your head like it was a great idea to knock that Goblin off of The Edge into a pit but did you have to follow them into the pit as well so as a bit of foreshadowing I'll just say right here I like Dragon's Dogma 2 a lot I've enjoyed my time playing the game but it certainly does have its issues and I expect it to be a fairly divisive title in fact I would say if you liked Dragon's Dogma you'll probably like Dragon's Dogma too but if you didn't like Dragon's Dogma I don't think this sequel will be doing much to change your mind if you have no idea what I'm talking about well let me see if I can paint a clear picture and give you a better idea of what this game is all about so in Dragons Dogma 2 you play as the Arisen a fabled character heart taken by a dragon destined to lead the army of Pawns and the people of its lands problem is that when the game begins an impostor sits on the throne holding your place and you find yourself locked away at a work Camp a prison Warden approaches your cell and demands you reveal yourself which means the usual first order of business in any RPG it is now time to decide how you look Dragon's Dogma 2 gives a ton of Freedom here with one of the better character creators that I've used in a while if you've not seen them yet people have made some pretty impressive lookalikes of characters from various games and other media lots of options here with sliders for fine-tuning things to your exact specification or you can just select from a handful of pre-builts whichever you prefer after making your character you are then put to work moving some rocks around before things quickly go arai Medusa makes an appearance out of nowhere dealing with her and escaping the camp act as a brief tutorial before sending you off to start the adventure at which point you are literally plummeted into the start of the game and sent on a mission to usurp the Arisen explore the world and ward off any of its many threats set in motion from here is a chain of events that have you following one major quest to another uncovering the mystery and revealing more of the game story all the while you will be exploring its vast and vastly interesting open world now when you hear open world game often times this might give the impression of a space that you can freely move around heading in any direction well that is definitely not the case here while there are a fair few large fields and openly explorable areas for the most part Dragon's Dogma 2 is made up of many many narrow and winding paths that are all interconnected with obstacles on every side often times if you are trying to get to a certain location usually there's only one or two ways of actually getting there this is mostly due to the fact that much of the terrain in the game cannot be freely scaled wherever you like so we're talking about things like you might be walking down a path of with tight corridors surrounded by these rock walls and you see a chest up high but the only way to actually get to that chest is by climbing one single Narrow Path that's off to the side and you got to find it first there will be large rivers and bodies of water that you literally can't cross because if you're submerged in water for more than a second these purple tendrils known as the brine come in to pull you under and you die so you have to walk along the water's edge until you find some sort of a bridge or a narrow Gap that you can jump over in fact just about everywhere you go you will find rocks Hills trees Ravines structures and other things acting as impediments to free movement in any direction now this was quite clearly done on purpose and as intended their goal here is to make a handcrafted play space that's thoroughly thought out and by controlling where the player can and can't go this lets them do things like create sight lines and Vistas to reveal points of interest off in the distance and set up opportunities to let the player stumble into Secrets but of course it is not stumbling it is very much so done by Design they have clearly put much thought into how we move around this world and I'm so glad they did because it's been a joy to explore and I definitely think it is one of this game's major strong suits everywhere you go every move every path is intentionally designed to lead somewhere worthwhile or reveal something worth seeing and what sort of stuff are you going to come across while you are out exploring this world well monsters for one these are absolutely everywhere especially when you venture further away from cities Into the Wilderness you are practically tripping over groups of enemies goblins and bandits soran and zombies skeletons and harpies and a wide array of other fantasy creatures then beyond the normal ones that will come in small packs or groups you're also going to come across many larger boss-like opponents these are giant trolls and ogres Rock Elementals chimeras and Griffins just to name a few the small enemies you will be smashing through with relative ease the bosses take a bit more thought and planning including having to trip them mounting and searching for weak spots or hacking away at body parts as you work through several health s and try to navigate their many many dangerous attacks besides monsters you're going to see a lot of caves and dungeons most of the time these will be inhabited by a number of enemies these locations are also pretty much what you expect you find the entrance you go in you move through some corridors take out the enemies and collect the loot you'll also sometimes encounter puzzles obstacle courses that require jumping and avoiding deadly objects there'll be rooms hidden behind uh hidden doors or stacks of crates you'll find plenty of treasure chests some of the caves and dungeons will be linked to Quest others are simply there for the sake of exploration either way this is an RPG staple that's expected and they've done a nice job of delivering on it pretty much any opportunity I get to be in a dark dungeon and use the lamp on my hip in this game I welcome because I love that experience also while exploring you'll find a lot of loot resources and collectibles As you move through the world on whatever Quest or Mission you happen to be doing you're going to come across all manner of things to pick up these will be items found in piles of rubbish chests that are filled with valuables inside resources like plants sticks ores and herbs all used and combined for crafting you'll find upgrade materials and a wide range of different kinds of consumables there are also special currencies and collectibles such as the Seekers tokens 240 of these in the game in fact hidden all throughout in all sorts of places once collected these can be turned in for valuable rewards at any of the guild halls in the game there are of course plenty of different major points of interest now the real standout ones are actually marked with this Banner icon you'll see it on the map these are are of some significant importance and are definitely always worth checking out this can include things like specific buildings ruins or towns you'll see abandoned camps sacred spots in the wilderness caverns and Coes whatever it is if you see one of these marked locations with this Banner icon you definitely want to give it a look as they are likely to contain valuable loot or even NPCs that might have Quest or something else to offer you there's also these statues scattered all the way around the world these are used to reveal hidden secrets though I don't want to spoil too much much here and while exploring you're also going to come across these abandoned campfires all throughout the Wilderness so long as you have a camping kit in your inventory this will let you set up a spot to rest resting is used to pass the time moving from daytime into nighttime or vice versa it also replenishes all of your health and recovers your maximum HP plus you can cook food here and Grilling meat at a campfire which grants temporary boost to various stats and in fact the campsites are part of this game's uh push and pull the adventuring mechanics in Dragon's Dogma 2 as you need to replenish your max HP that is lost in battle but then also you're going to be often heading back to town whenever your inventory fills up as the game does restrict carrying capacity with these weight limits and the weight of the items in your pack will also impact your sprinting speed and stamina recovery it's definitely one of those games where you are preparing to go out an adventure You Adventure you kill things you collect things but then the different restrictions of your carry capacity and of your reduced maximum HP they force you to retreat and uh fill yourself back up those are some of the highlights of what you can expect to see an encounter while playing the game while out exploring and all of this stuff because of its handcrafted nature the world of Dragons Dogma 2 has really felt like an actual place they've really done a great job of crafting this world and that has made exploration all the more enjoyable couple this with the game's day night cycle how they use light in the darkness the weather patterns and some generally good audio this has been one of the more immersive games that I've played in a while it feels like I'm actually on a fantasy Adventure going out and exploring this medieval themed world and I absolutely love it also playing into this exploration is how traversal works now as mentioned you're going to be spending most of your time running around on foot uh in general I think movement moving your character around exploring the environment mantling up jumping sliding grappling all of these things feel pretty good and as I said you're going to mostly be walking around that's because fast travel is limited to two forms so there are ox carts found in major towns these common on a schedule and will take you to one specific destination for a small fee once you're aboard an ox cart that's headed to a destination you've got the option of dozing off at which point you'll wake up once you arrive or if you happen to be attacked by monsters in rout you'll have to fend them off before continuing the other form of fast travel are the port crystals so using these things called Fairy Stones you can travel to any port crystal in the game however these locations are few quite limited with Port crystals only found in particular cities and towns usually you are able to place down your own in other locations but the real restriction here isn't the number of Port crystals that you can uh teleport to it's the fact that the Fairy Stones are consumed upon use so these will be found as you play the game you'll loot them but they are quite rare in fact I think I found maybe 10 Fairy Stones in my first 20 hours playing the game these can be purchased as well from specific vendors in various towns but they cost a small fortune as far as I could tell bottom line is that both of the Fast Travel methods are fairly restrictive which resulted in me a majority of the time running around on foot all right now let's talk about combat Dragon's Dogma 2 features action combat but it is Bucking the trend of soulslike rout that most modern-day action games seem to use instead this game follows in the footsteps of its predecessor with more of an old school action combat system so you do have two basic attacks and a class ability each of these will be different depending on your selected vocation but essentially this tends to mean a light and heavy attack as well as some sort of a defensive skill then as you play the game you accumulate the special currency while engaged in combat that you will then use to unlock new core skills weapon skills and these passives that are called augments the culmination of which is six attacks one class skill and the ability to grab and that in a nutshell is all of your combat capabilities so each vocation also comes with its own unique mechanic that adds a little bit of further depths to the class so for example currently I'm playing as a warrior vocation who uses a large slow heavy hitting two-handed weapons which includes many attacks that can be held and charged up for increased damage while charging Warriors become a little tankier letting them withstand hits a little better also the vocation skill is the barge which is the shoulder bash that acts as a quick followup to an attack and can also open up for counters but notably playing as the warrior vocation I do not have access to a Dodge block or Parry because of all of this survival and combat from most most of the game's vocations centers around positioning and avoiding attacks whenever possible everyone also has the ability to grab which allows you to pick up and throw objects like rocks explosive barrels or even smaller enemies or the grab can be used to cling onto larger enemies letting you move to certain weak points or limbs however I did feel like the combat felt really satisfying to use as limited as it might be when compared to other modern-day action combat games another thing that helps out in combat are your companions known as the pawns pawns are companions created and customized by real players so early on you yourself will make a single Pawn who acts as your primary Ally with you throughout the entire Adventure you'll customize their look pick their vocation and also choose their behavior but also you can hire two additional pawns to join your party from a wide array of those created by other real players pawns come in all manner of variety and combination so there are six different vocations that pawns can be these include the fighter the Archer Thief Mage Warrior and sorcerer just like you other players will pick a class for their Pawn then as the Pawn's level you are unlocking and equipping new active and passive skills depending on which four weapon skills you want them to have pawns can also come in different inclinations this will impact their behavior and speech both in and out of combat there are four of these kind-hearted has them prioritizing support holding down foes and buffing allies calm pawns will focus on Survival defense and evasion simple pawns are observant in particular out of combat they're focused on Gathering items and pointing out interesting objects and then there are straightforward pawns who Scout enemies from AAR and tend to be quite aggressive in combat on top of their inclinations you can also have pawns with specializations the forger specialization has a pawn marking the location of enhancement materials seen around the map there are also pawns that can learn various special unique languages like Elvish are pawns that will use potions and curatives on both you and your allies in combat tons of specializations inclinations and the vocations between all of this there's just so much variety on offer for not only your main Pawn but also the two additional pawns you select to join your party speaking of which you summon pawns at these things called Rift Stones these will be found in most major towns but you'll also see them while out exploring you'll come across these abandoned stones that when repaired let you search for new ponds that are different from those found in towns and even after you've added pawns to your party you are able to dismiss them and summon new ones at any time at any Rift Stone you come across if there are ones who are better suited for your current class makeup or to deal with some sort of an upcoming Challenge and one of the coolest things about the pawn system is the fact that your Pawn can be then hired out by other players and they go out on adventures they learn things they complete Quest and they pull that knowledge and bring it back to you to uh take advantage of in your own game to uh learn how to better deal with certain bosses or learn how to discover the location of certain Quest or search for certain treasure chest in a vicinity that those pawns have already come across it is such a cool system I really think the pawn system is one of this game's many strong suits a couple other things I want to cover here just as a basic overview so there's all sorts of different items you'll come across in the game you've got consumables like curatives for healing and doing various Buffs as well as specialty items like the Fairy Stones and wake stones and other things that can be used as gifts or have much utility to them you're going to find tons of raw resources while out exploring those are used and can be combined to craft the game's various consumables all sorts of upgrade materials used for enhancing your weapons and armor tons of different weapons there's a variety of ranged magical one-handed and two-handed melee armor with various slots for the helm chest legs and Cape slots and you'll also have rings that give various Buffs to offensive defensive and utility capabilities such as carry capacity tons of different vendors you're going to come across in the game's various towns and cities there's Armory and weapon Smiths here you'll buy and upgrade your armor and weapons fendors in the different towns will have their own offerings of items and then you you will use those upgrade materials found while exploring to enhance both your armor and your weapons with up to three upgrades available for each there are General goods and Alchemy vendors that sell potions gear and other materials you'll find pubs and ins sometimes these will be combined other times they're separate ins in particular are where you go to store items as well as sleep to pass the time and recover your max HP there are the vocation guilds here you will learn new active and passive abilities as you level up your class as well as your pawns vocation you can also change vocations here at any time so long as you have learned it there are oracles which offer hints and suggestions for your currently active Quest great to use if you happen to be stumped you'll find salons and barbaries which can be used to change your appearance and a handful of other specialty NPC vendors with things that I don't really want to spoil for you at this time all right so that pretty much does it as the general overview that encompasses most of the major features and systems without spoiling too much of the game for you now let's go ahead and move into what I liked and what I didn't so top of the likes for me is actually the combat believe it or not while it is limited to only six attacks uh less if you have any weapon abilities that are Buffs that you use which was the case for me I still found combat overall to be quite satisfying I think especially the focus on positioning as opposed to relying on spamming Dodge rolls or spamming block or spamming Perry you don't really spam Perry technically but you know in a lot of action games it feels like it devolves into reducing your weight spamming roles and attacking whenever opportunities open up but this game really focuses on paying attention to positioning with the fact that those defensive skills are not baked in with but a select few vocations and I enjoyed that on top of the general satisfying feel of hitting enemies of dealing with these behemoths mounting monsters getting into weak points trying to Grapple onto them and take them down tripping them when they lose their balance all around the combat experience I found quite satisfying this coupled with a large dens of monsters I mean literally you will have fights just rolling from one into the another you might be fighting a small group one of them Ventures off you go to finish him off and then all of a sudden you've agroed one of these larger enemies and you have like a Big 5 to 10 minute fight on your hand all of a sudden and then maybe that monsters running all around and has you aggroing other groups of enemies there's just a lot of enemies to fight in this game as someone who enjoys the combat that ended up being something I really liked I also Lov the pawn system just in general I think this is such a great way to handle Companions and allies I think it is so well done the variety of Pawns to be pulled from as you're trying different things trying different party makeups and compositions it's really really enjoyable there's so many different things to be tailored between the vocations between their inclinations and their Specialties but then not all vocations are the same because you're selecting four of those weapon skills from a long list of skills that you unlock as you level up it means that many different ponds of the same vocations uh inclinations and specializations aside they can be and play quite different and then on top of that you're adding in the fact that they've got different weapons and different equipment and different different rings that provide different Buffs there's just so much variety here and then just also the pawns and their personalities I enjoy with regular quips here and there post battle celebrations like your pawns are putting out their hand to get have a high five after an intense fight pawns also do a lot of silly stuff that made me laugh like at one point I had a a ranger Pawn who was just randomly started picking off barrels as he was shouting I can't wait to see what's inside these barrels like it's just the pawns are really really interesting it's a really fun system to play with I also came across plenty of really funny and interesting moments uh so for example the game uses ragd doll physics when you get taken out and this created some hilarious uh moments in fighting at one point I was fighting one of the minotaurs and they just yeed me way up high in the sky slamming me into the side of the mountain I just I literally burst out laughing I thought it was so funny we had the Cyclops attack one of the major towns and you had to fight it with the help of a bunch of guards it was actually interesting it kind of ragged all and all over the place we also found a cyclops next to a ravine at some point and then as it was dangling there you can knock it down it would fall into the Ravine and then there were Boulders set up on a hill that you could break the uh the barrier holding it and dropping the boulders down into the Cyclops or into the enemies beyond the Cyclops just the game sets up a lot of interesting cool things coupled with the physics coupled with the pawns and sort of all the quirkiness around all of that a lot of funny and interesting moments that I came across I would say the quest while there are some downside to the system I do like that it feels more Dynamic and involved than a lot of other RPG games it isn't simply kill Quest or fetch Quest or talk to an NPC Quest there's a lot of interesting things and a lot of you having to figure stuff out and into it what it is you need to do next as the game doesn't straight up tell you where to do and what to go I like the environmental traversal as I mentioned the game has a lot of set paths and this creates a great sense of exploration as you're trying to discover how to get from from one place to the other I also just think character movement in general feels good walking around your character grabbing and pulling themselves up shimmying down inclines uh scrambling up obstacles moving your character around the world feels really great the visuals and atmosphere really grew on me at first I wasn't sure how I felt about the graphical presentation of this game but a engine is something that I've really grown to appreciate especially its use of light and darkness hands down I love the nighttime in this game when you are basically forced to use your lamp because it's so dark you can barely see but then at the same time you're able to spot enemies in the distance based on the light source they emit we're talking like glowing eyes from skeletons zombies and ghosts or torches that are carried by Bandits and goblins it's just night time in this game exploring dark Dungeons and caves it all looks really great that also with a weather system and the day night cycle um it's just all super immersive which brings me to my final like I I the sense of immersion and adventure in this game is topnotch like really really one of my my favorite and most immersive games that I've played in some time I think they nail it now let's move on to the dislikes starting with performance this is a big one and it seems like it might end up affecting a lot of people uh allaround performance wasn't particularly great I never found it to be very steady I tried a lot of different settings but just in general not a great time with performance even if it stayed somewhat steady while out in the wilderness it always without fail just tanked and got super bad whenever I was in town which mind you because of how the main quest line Works in this this game you spend a lot of time in these large towns and when in the large Towns at least in my experience and in Liam's experience performance just was abysmal it was not great I've also heard performance is particularly bad on the consoles although I've not tried it yet myself and we'll wait for final reviews early Impressions say that the game isn't running terribly well across the board another dislike is the lack of NPC reactions so here's what I'm talking about you can walk into someone's home and just start looting stuff without any reaction whatsoever like not even a voice line which all seems really odd I would be pulling valuables from a shopkeeper storage or gold from someone's house as they are sitting right next to me staring right at me and they don't mutter a word now I know this is like a design choice and I'm not saying they have to have like a theft system but the fact that there's no reaction to what I'm doing by NPCs is very very odd in fact at one point Liam told me he accidentally killed an NPC and no one around seemed to care they didn't even say anything they were like oh why did you do that they no reaction whatsoever I don't need there necessarily to be like a thievery system a a bounty system or whatever but to have some sort of uh reaction to the fact that I'm like pulling someone's valuables out of their storage chest while they're sitting on a chair staring at me and for them to say nothing just feels a little odd is is what I'm saying while the pawns make me laugh and I have enjoyed a lot of their quips and lines uh they really lack a variety here and tend to repeat the same things over and over again this is especially true when you're on a quest so as you go out questing you have an objective right in the process you'll come across enemies and you'll fight now while you're fighting you're going to be toggling between the pawn commands which are go or be aggressive help assist me or wait right those are the four Pawn commands you can issue so as the fight ensues you're going to be swapping between them you'll say go for them to attack the enemies you'll say help if you need to heal or for them to pick you up when you get down and you'll say uh assist me or come to me if you want them to kind of fight in a cluster directly near you but when the fight is done you're going to issue that go command again and what that does is it tells your main Pond or your quest guide Pond to start leading you towards your next Quest objective and when they do that they literally repeat the same line over and over again so you're on a quest and when you say go your Pawn's going to say a couple of things like oh I happen to know where this thing is follow me hither or whatever right and then you'll get in a fight all the fight will happens and then when the fight's over the Pawn's going to say that exact same follow me to this Quest objective line every single time you are done with a fight it's just gets very repetitive and quite obnoxious to be honest then there's the inventory management so you're going to be dealing with this quite often as you are bound to hit your max weight even after a short time adventuring even though it's spread across your four party members your Max Capacity is going to fill up fast in fact the closer you get to encumbered the slower your Sprint speed and your stamina regen so most of the time you're you're actually wanting to empty your inventory as soon as possible because the closer you get to capping out the slower your you're running and your stamina regen gets worse so you don't want to cap out and this means you were going back to town to sell items to put stuff in storage very very frequently and that coupled with the fact that fast travel is quite restrictive is going to mean you're doing a lot of running just to empty your bags some people are going to be really bothered by that I'd also say that the dungeon variety seems limited mostly consisting of similar looking Caverns caves and ruins although the actual layouts are differ and these are unique locations a lot of them feel similar and lack any strong distinct characteristics which I was disappointed by and while some quests are straightforward many of them can be quite cryptic and convoluted giving you no real sense of direction or objective uh this was especially true from any of the main story Quest revolving around one of the major cities that you'll spend several hours in throughout your playthrough uh figuring the quest out and what you need to do can be really annoying now you do have the pawn assistance you do have the Oracle but many times not even that is enough and it can just take quite a while to even figure out what you're supped to do this is a feature not a bug but there are also bugs and that leads me to my final dislike uh we came across a few of these nothing necessarily gamebreaking but a few annoyances like items being taken for a quest but then the quest not completing or Quest just not progressing or working as intended until you happen to reload or leave and come back I wouldn't say I've experienced a ton of these but enough that I think it's worth noting so to wrap it up I I will say that overall I have really enjoyed my time with Dragon's Dogma 2 I like how it plays play the combat and movement are satisfying I love exploring the world it's so immersive with the day night cycle the use of lighting and the attention to detail they've definitely crafted a space that feels authentic like a real living breathing place I think the ponds are interesting and fun companions it's a cool system to engage with and while obscure at times I've also appreciated that many of the game's quests are more than just the typical kill or fetch variety at the same time I am quite aware that some things that I've run up against while playing uh some of these quirky features and design choices may very well well end up being deal breakers for certain people not to mention the game's relatively poor performance and I have heard it's even capped at 30 frames per second on consoles rip uh for those reasons along with what I would consider some pacing issues and some of the other dislikes that I mentioned much like the original I expect Dragon's Dogma 2 to be fairly divisive I like the game I found it to be quite a fun adventure and satisfying to play but it definitely will not be for everyone it's not going to be everybody's cup of in fact I think some people may very well outright hate it but I like it so take that for what it's worth uh that does it for our review of Dragons Dogma 2 thank you as always for watching hope you enjoyed I'll see you guys in the next one

Channel: Force Gaming

Views: 276,097

Keywords: dragon's dogma 2 review, Dragon's Dogma 2 preview, Dragon's Dogma 2 gameplay, Dragon's Dogma 2 overview, Dragon's Dogma 2 details, Dragon's Dogma 2 everything you need to know, dragon's dogma 2 why I'm excited, dragon's dogma 2 features

Id: SQQO4C1veeI

Length: 29min 42sec (1782 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 20 2024