This is the shortest RPG I've ever played

[Ríck T]

19 hours. That's what it took me to beat the game. Yes, that's not a joke.

I said 19 hours.

1 9 H O U R S.

It took me longer to beat Resident Evil 4 Remake. This game, that is 95% Dragon's Dogma 1 from 2012 by the way, that's doesn't have horses, has a minimal fast travel system to artificially increase the game's duration and is 50% walking is 19 hours long.

It feels like the hole game is the first act from an actual RPG. It builds all these relationships, with Sven, Brant, the plot against the Queen, Phaseus, the owner of Rose Chateau, Ulrika and many others, and as soon as you go to Battahl, the game throws ALL THAT in the garbage. The game just ends and that is it.

Feels like nothing happened. It's a mini-RPG. It's a throw away game for a vacation weekend.

This game is shorter than Limgrave from Elden Ring. It's shorter than Act 1 from Baldur's Gate 3. It's shorter than the tutorial from Persona 5. It's shorter than Blood and Wine from The Witcher 3. It's shorter than Phantom Liberty from Cyberpunk. And I'm not exaggerating or making jokes. It's literal. It's REALLY shorter than all this.

It took me longer to discover the underground from Tears of the Kingdom than complete this game. It's actually pathetic. What a waste of money and time.

[pr1mus]

Originally posted by NegativeZero:

It was just a single example. I knew you defenders would say something stupid like this.

it's not my fault your single example is a nothing burger, complaining about the amount of ring textures in the UI? surely you're able to nitpick something that's actually going to bother people.

Originally posted by NegativeZero:

If you think this kind of laziness and lack of attention to detail doesn't matter

oh, you mean the game with copy pasted boss encounters? and the game with cut content that was released without an epilogue/real ending of any sort? funny how you're complaining about a lack of different ring textures and pretend it was indicative of laziness and then you name Elden Ring and BG3 which both got a lot of way more valid criticism for their own faults.

Originally posted by NegativeZero:

Compare how lazily this game is done to actually GOOD games like Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3, for example.

tell me, did you complain about Elden Ring's copy pasted named boss encounters? (archaic design philosophy from FromSoft whose been doing this since the first Dark Souls) or BG3's cut content in Act 3? even cutting content and dumbing down quests from the Early Access into 1.0 and not having an ending epilogue (cardinal sin in my book as far as RPG's go)? if Capcom devs are lazy then what are FromSoft and Larian?

it's weird cause the above examples of laziness are in fact ostensibly felt by their playerbases which stimulate a lot of discussion in what ways those game fail, while you're the only person throwing a fit about something entirely inconsequential like not having enough ring icons.

Originally posted by Insomec:

But it’s not unique, skyrims main story is fair short but the writing is fantastic and the side quests have depth

anyone who calls Bethesda's writing fantastic is someone whose opinion i can comfortably ignore.

[CadaveR]

BG3 act three was literally butched at the time of the release, the game was unanimously praised until most players found out. ER was good until the mountaintops of the Giants where From gave up and still have a problem with copy paste catacombs, bosses and enemies (i love ER but i'm not blind)

[Insomec]

Originally posted by Insomec:

But it’s not unique, skyrims main story is fair short but the writing is fantastic and the side quests have depth

anyone who calls Bethesda's writing fantastic is someone whose opinion i can comfortably ignore. [/quote]

That’s it mate, take one example from my post rather than the point I was making.
Regardless what you think, it’s better writing than this game.

[pr1mus]

Originally posted by Insomec:

That’s it mate, take one example from my post rather than the point I was making.
Regardless what you think, it’s better writing than this game.

what is your point? that both DD2 and Skyrim are fundamentally short games but that Skyrim had better writing and that the side content has more depth? even though the writing in both is dog water and that nobody plays either games for their narratives? the reason why people play Skyrim and DD2 is exploration (and combat for the latter, because combat in Skyrim blows).

even trying to argue Skyrim is better narratively and propping up to be as good as Cyberpunk 2077 or Witcher 3 (games people explicitly play for the writing) is certainly a take. Bethesda operates on "wide as an ocean deep as a puddle" for all their games.

[Insomec]

Originally posted by pr1mus:

Originally posted by Insomec:

That’s it mate, take one example from my post rather than the point I was making.
Regardless what you think, it’s better writing than this game.

what is your point? that both DD2 and Skyrim are fundamentally short games but that Skyrim had better writing and that the side content has more depth? even though the writing in both is dog water and that nobody plays either games for their narratives? the reason why people play Skyrim and DD2 is exploration (and combat for the latter, because combat in Skyrim blows).

even trying to argue Skyrim is better narratively and propping up to be as good as Cyberpunk 2077 or Witcher 3 (games people explicitly play for the writing) is certainly a take. Bethesda operates on "wide as an ocean deep as a puddle" for all their games.

Obviously that’s my point, it’s in reference to the OP . The game is legit advertised as a narrative driven action RPG so claiming people are not buying Skyrim and DD2 for its narratives is just false.

Contrary to your belief and opinion I like skyrims writing and I’ll take your point about wide as an ocean deep as a puddle for Starfield and maybe FO4 but I’ll not take it for oblivion and new vegas I’d argue against that but again, it doesn’t really matter what rpg we using as an example simply swap Skyrim with another game in this category and we get the same outcome . Short story, mid writing.

Tbh mate we are in agreement with DD2 and this isn’t a Skyrim discussion so I’ll leave it at this

[Supernova]

19 hours? lol. For me it took around 95 hours just to get in unmoored world and about 4 hours in there

[pr1mus]

Originally posted by Insomec:

but I’ll not take it for oblivion and new vegas I’d argue against that but again

makes sense because Bethesda didn't make New Vegas.

[Netsa]

I don't think it's debatable that Skyrim has better writing. The story is more generic, but it's better told.

I think it's hilarious that the DD2 community is even trying to make a distinction. Simultaneously "yeah, our story sucks", "you don't play this for the story anyway", "how dare you say our story is worse than Skyrim's!"

[qawal]

Originally posted by Elon Musk:

you not supposed to rush the main story in games like these
show me how you explored the whole map and beat every cave, got all the seeker tokens, all the side quests, all classes max rank? thats the point of the game, enjoy to explore, how long does skyrim take to finish if you only rush the main story?
its a game about exploring,not to speedrun

That's what I thought too
The appeal of this game is mostly to experience it's multitude of systems colliding with each other.

19 hour blind playthrough probably means they killed the dragon to get the "easy NG+"
and didn't think that the ending was "off" (as a DD:DA player, I surely did)
to try and approach the Dragon... "differently" by thinking out of the box to enter the last 30% of the game. (without the help of google)

19 hour blind playthrough can also mean they didn't play the game long enough to figure out the game's trickiest Riddle involving the Pawn System. (without the help of google)

19 hour blind playthrough also means they didn't experiment with how the quest system works. A lot of the quests have different outcomes when giving them counterfeit versions or grabbing specific loot drops from specific enemy types. (without the help of google)

19 hours also means they probably didn't explore each vocation enough to discover hidden mechanics that can be applied in both combat and exploration. (Mystic Spearhand air-canceling, Magic Archer Pawn Revive trampoline, Thief body bomb throwing and dash+attack canceling for no stamina sprinting, etc.)

Though with all that said...

I do agree that the base story ends too abruptly unlike the first game.
I thought Gigantus was the equivalent of Grigori literally squishing the main quest drama to give us the actual run down of the whole Arisen vs. Dragon ordeal. But Gigantus just leads to the Dragon fight for no reason.

Gigantus was treated as if it's just another thing that's gonna kill everything
but it's been established multiple times that it exists to "keep the dragon in check"
So it would have been cool if it was a diverging path moment to enter Act 2.

The Dragon could have been indirectly helping us throughout the game and later revealed to be actively fighting against the "greater will"

and because of this we find out that this mutiny from the Dragon triggers the Gigantus conditions.

We're given an option to either fight WITH Gigantus to kill the Dragon, and complete our role in the traditional Hero's Journey.

OR, we trust the Dragon and fight with it to kill Gigantus to unlock the endgame content.

This would make sense of why Everfall didn't trigger and instead we have this new Unmoored world added into the canon.

This scenario also means the Dragon didn't die.
IMAGINE, if the Gran Soren Evacuation Site was safe BECAUSE The Dragon is watching over it's evacuees. That would be amazing.

[Vangrath]

Overall I agree with the difficulty is a bit too easy, especially on the second playthrough... but 19 hours, man... you really don't like games or why you are rushing?

[Hyperseg]

Don't understand fast gamers. My first playthrough of Elden Ring was 330 hours and I loved every bit of it.

[[PC]Roco45]

Originally posted by Hyperseg:

Don't understand fast gamers. My first playthrough of Elden Ring was 330 hours and I loved every bit of it.

Elden Ring has 100000x more content and depth than this game and is 100000x more challenging. I spent a good 4-5hrs just on getting a new character that defeated the tutorial grafted scion off the bat, because I liked the challenge.

DD2 can't hold even a half melted candle to Elden Ring.

[Darmine]

If you speed ran it, its your own fault you lost money vs time. I did all main quest until last transition quest. Then I went and did all side quests and explored. Once I was done there I did the last quest with Brant and moved to the next area. Did the same thing in the next area as best i could. First play-through I was at about 65hrs. So, I got my moneys worth. I enjoyed the game even though its performance can be bad at times.

[omegazeda]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3225839567
I agree, it's very very short and also very very difficult, i died many many times

[CadaveR]

Originally posted by PCRoco45:

Originally posted by Hyperseg:

Don't understand fast gamers. My first playthrough of Elden Ring was 330 hours and I loved every bit of it.

Elden Ring has 100000x more content and depth than this game and is 100000x more challenging. I spent a good 4-5hrs just on getting a new character that defeated the tutorial grafted scion off the bat, because I liked the challenge.

DD2 can't hold even a half melted candle to Elden Ring.

Honestly i love ER but apart some really good ideas and locations is just a waste of space.