This game is BAD ***SPOILERS***

[skullbrandy]

I have to be honest here. As someone who really enjoyed the first, I easily fell for the hype of this game. I wanted to love it so much and I just don't.... From the story to the exploration, even elements of the gameplay are just failing for me. This is going to be long but I'll try to included a TLDR at the end.

1. The Story

This here is the chief of all sins when it comes to this game. The story is absolutely abysmal, boring, disjointed, and wholly unsatisfying. It quite honestly feels unfinished and I'll explain why. The game starts with an extremely vague cutscene that IMO does NOTHING to establish the world, characters, motivations, or events to come. You get this POV which (now that I have beaten the game and know) is supposed to be you, but none of that is made clear, suddenly we cut to a dungeon where you create your character. Like what? If that is me in the cutscene then how and why am I now in a dungeon doing slave labor? Nothing is explained. You escape and one person sees you summon a pawn and now the whole world knows you're the Arisen, everywhere you go people recognize you even though you've never met, it's really silly. I'm getting a bit off track but eventually you are introduced to Cpt Brant who establishes that the Queen Regent Disa is wrongfully sitting on the Vermund throne and that it should be you in the chair. You are told that this Disa character is evil and has wicked schemes, so much so that even her son is willing to betray her in favor of your character, the Arisen. You are told all of this but again, nothing is explained to you why. You know Disa is Evil (because the game wont stop telling you), but you never learn why she is evil, you never see her commit evil, you never learn what her motivations are or what her machinations will lead to. All you ever learn about this supposed "antagonist" is that "she bad, you good" there isn't even ONE confrontation with this character, or at least there wasn't in my playthrough. And that's another thing, so many plot lines were revealed, plot lines which seemed integral to the main story of the game but I was able to beat the game without seeing ANY of these story lines fully realized in my time. You get to a point where it's time to face the Dragon and you beat the dragon and the game ends, story over, and I learnt nothing deeper about the Queen Regent other than "she has wicked schemes" like.... OK. Everything quite literally just rushes to a conclusion. I could go on about the story but in the interest of keeping this as short as possible I'm moving on.

2. Exploration

There is quite literally ZERO reason to explore outside of mayyyyyybe finding a new enemy/boss. There is no rewarding loot for the most part. Treasure chests at the end of dungeon crawls and high and far to reach places only to get a simple consumable item, no special or rare gear to be found that cannot be obtained from the shops in the respective towns. There are cool things to experience in the world to be sure but no reward to be had at the end of it like seriously... what the ♥♥♥♥? This is a STAPLE of rpg games, you struggle through these grueling deep areas and at the end you're usually finding a unique item that cannot be found ANYWHERE else in the game but not here. Instead you beat the monsters, you crawl your way through the deep in the dark and the game in return gives you some fresh herbs and spices. Ridiculous.

3. Characters

All the characters in the game are bland, blank, boring mannequin pieces of ♥♥♥♥. There is no personality to be had, everyone talks and interacts with you in EXACTLY the same manner. Characters aren't even fleshed out in the story, again Cpt Brant is helping you because he says Disa is evil with "wicked schemes" but you never learn why, you don't know his motivation for risking treason by helping you, you don't know why he is so disillusioned with her other than "she bad, you good" even the Queen Regent son who is essentially like "♥♥♥♥ my mom I'm siding with you person I've never met before! (The arisen)" like none of this is fleshed out or explained and leaves a wake of uninteresting robotic characters that do nothing other than to serve you with a new quest marker.

4. The Pawns

By God they're annoying. They never shut the ♥♥♥♥ up. I'm tired of hearing the same repeated dialogue over and over and over and over and over again and never stopping. The first couple hours it was cool, hearing the way the pawns interacted with each other, and the high fives after a battle BUT this ♥♥♥♥ aged like milk FAST. Not to mention their AI is downright atrocious, they never avoid attacks, they're unintuitive, they're dumb. The one thing I will say that is useful is when Pawns can lead you to areas that they've found before that you haven't, that is cool. Aside from that they're annoying as all hell. And please for the love of God can we stop these pawns from stopping us in the middle of the road to give us a sales pitch?!? If I wanted you in my party I'd go to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rift stone!

5. The gameplay

I actually enjoyed the gameplay for the most part, this is the only reason I stuck around long enough to finish the story, the gameplay is really the saving grace but it's not good enough for me to say that the game is good. But even so, I played a lot of vocations and a good amount of them felt clunky until I settled on the Mystic Spearhand. Warrior is the biggest sinner of the ones I tried and it's disappointing because I LOVED the warrior in the first game but here is just feels UNREASONABLY slow, clunky and unsatisfying. Enemies move too fast for the warrior to make a decent contribution in combat, it shines more against big monsters but it relies HEAVILY on support from your party where as other vocations don't. But even where it shines, once you come up against Drakes it feels like a useless vocation at least in my experience. Fighter is decent but straightforward and not as interesting gameplay wise, the sorcerer is pretty cool but a bit passive/slow for my taste, I did think all the magic in the game looks really cool and has a noticeable impact in fights. But like I said, I finally settled on Myatic spearhand for ONE reason. The magic shield ability. I was fighting my first drake and I tried a slew of different vocations/approaches and could barely take the drake to half its health before it party wiped us, I couldn't win with anything until I used the mystic spearhand and just spammed that ability over and over, not only does it make you invulnerable from all damage but also all stagger. Once you get to the later part of the game, there are so many enemies that spawn more often on the road and in larger groups with hyper armor and the mystic spearhand makes this a cakewalk, that ability alone is some S tier ♥♥♥♥ and made the combat more fun than being Staggered to death or constantly ragdolled everywhere. Had it not been for the mystic spearhand I very well may have given up on the game. But I see this as a huge problem, the fact I leveled up my character but got to a point in the game where I had to rely soooooo heavily on one ability to win? It paints an ugly picture for the vocations that don't have an equivalent ability. And the fact there isn't a basic dodge mechanic in this game makes the stagger mechanics a true villain gameplay wise. All that to say, some tweaks can be made here at the very least.

Imma leave it there for now cuz thats a lot. Shout out to you if you read the whole thing. For those who didn't here is the promised tldr....

TLDR:

1. Story is bad, feels unfinished and rushes to a conclusion.

2. There is no point in exploration

3. Characters are bland and boring.

4. Pawns are annoying

5. Gameplay is mediocre and could use tweaks.

[upuaut2]

it looks like he just spend some hours watching youtube videos, then rushed to the forum to leave his review! how original!xp

[Ravagexe]

Hilarious that people are still desperately trying to keep this sinking turd float.

"I USED ONLY ONE CRYSTAL! STORE IS A LIEEH"
"AMD IS FIXED WE ARE HAVING A GREAT TIME!"

Nah thanks man Im not falling for this scam just because you feel miserable about your purchase. At best I will wait for a %80 sale, which will happen sooner than we expect due to terrible reviews and selling charts of this disaster.

[Umbral Knight]

"Because I should be able to experience that interaction by doing the main story, the fact I haven't and am leaving with a poor impression of the game points to terrible game/story design."

Little bro wants the entire puzzle completed without having to piece it all together.

[Blade]

Originally posted by Apokalypt:

I guess you have never played Zelda BotW and TotK. Compared to these games, DD2 chest actually have useful loot lol.

I had so much more fun exploring in DD2 than I did with most other "open world" games like the mentioned Zelda games. And these are a lot better reviewed.

How dare you compare Dragon's Dogma 2 to Tears of the Kingdom. I can tell you haven't played TOTK because that is an insult of the highest dis-respect to it. Tears of the Kingdom actually gave you reasons to explore and made wandering around wondering where to go next actually fun because there was always something to do. Whereas Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't have any of that charm, nor is there any kind of reward for exploration at all aside from a curable here and there that you could just buy from a store. Exploration in this game consists of slowly traveling along the same linear path over and over again until you know it like the back of your hand. Get side-tracked? No big deal! TOTK was meant for that, to explore and have fun. In DD2? You don't have that luxury. This game doesn't deserve to mentioned in the same dimensional plane as TOTK.

[ac]

Stop buying games. You are clueless.

[GamingWithSilvertail]

Originally posted by skullbrandy:

Originally posted by Caveman:

They don't own the game though.

Gaming doesn't only exist on steam my friend

Well if you have it on console, my friend, why isnt your first complaint the performance?....

[Phishfood]

Yeah, every cave I explored, almost every chest I opened it was just some junk. I finished the story and got the true ending at around 40 hours because I didn't feel like exploring anymore for worthless rewards.

[Slippin Jimmy]

eh eh its so so, dont think its worth 50 quid, ive put about 60-70 hours into it and now ive kinda plateaued, I'll probably finish the main story line but not really that interested in exploring much else, the mobs arent much of a challenge except drakes, but their more like a HP sponge slog. I dunno, I had fun with it anyway but theres nothing really keeping me playing past this point, would probably advise waiting for a sale in a year or two.

[Sekhmet]

I wouldn't say that the pawns-ai is bad. At least not for all of the time. I for example saw few times pawns successfully avoiding gettnig hit my dragons and other bosses. They would dodge the attacks as long as they aren't spells (for example they get totally destroyed by the meteor-spell). So yea its a 50:50 situation I guess. This game doesn't have a worse or better ai compared to other similar games.

Yes, I do agree that character building is pretty bad in this game. Compared to other similar rpg-games the charakters here are so lifeless and without any depth. Also the dialogues are terrible imo. Sometimes I don't see my character at all while an npc is talking to me. For most of the times my character will look in a total different direction. They should've just removed the cutscenes for dialoges totally because right now it just looks horrible and it kills the immersion for me. I don't and I can't identify with my character at all.

However... I guess DD2 just wants to be a combat-based game. You run around, you explore the world and you find stuff. And this is what makes DD2 very good. The world is beautiful, the combat is super-good and the character animations are wonderful.

It's a big shame they didn't manage or didn't care to give us good dialogue-scenes and make characters appear more interesting. However it is what it is and DD2 is still a good game.

[CadaveR]

Didn't read any of this

[Ponyeater]

This game is quite good, but I will give you this - It is different in a number of subtle ways to the first, including the pacing. And it is fully possible to like one or the other.

Me personally, I like both. The first and this one. They're both great games, not total masterpieces, but they secure their spot in the limelight and are deserving of it.

Dragon's Dogma 1 had more versatile combat, more unique dungeons and smoother movement. It had more enemy variety and more content (but that's with addon).
Dragon's Dogma 2 has more specialized combat, slower movement, more caves and open world activities and more random encounters.

The story is meh in both, but Dragon's Dogma 1 forces you to get involved more whereas Dragon's Dogma 2 has the guts to go out of the way and hide most of the cool stuff. Entire questlines missable. You can complete the game without even unlocking some smithing styles I am told.

This is also why you say exploration ain't worth it - The dungeons and caves are mixed bags. Some hold very little like a panacea at the end. Others have unique weaponry or at least good items for their point in the story progression, that'd be very expensive at the shops.
You saying exploration is crap means you have probably ventured into 3 or so early game caves, have found mediocre loot (as is to be expected at that level) and then moved on from that not bothering further... Which would be understandable, but it's not the full truth of exploration.

[skullbrandy]

Originally posted by Umbral Knight:

"Because I should be able to experience that interaction by doing the main story, the fact I haven't and am leaving with a poor impression of the game points to terrible game/story design."

Little bro wants the entire puzzle completed without having to piece it all together.

No? This is just standard story telling practice. When you introduce a plot lines through the main story, it goes to follow that said plotline is fulfilled by completing the main story, not resolved in an obscure side objective. Get real.

[skullbrandy]

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

Originally posted by skullbrandy:

Gaming doesn't only exist on steam my friend

Well if you have it on console, my friend, why isnt your first complaint the performance?....

Performance isn't terrible on console so far. Could use some optimization no doubt but is far from the top of my list when it comes to my issues with the game. But frankly less than ideal performance doesn't really bother me much in RPG games. I guess I just have more of a tolerance for it.

[Falko-]

I willl say its a very akward game, got it from a promo for free but i cant get into it so far.. I was mildly optimistic going in , but the weird camera/movement, buttonsmash/roflpile combat and the overall barren look of the game is turning me off and keeping from getting into the groove. Feels like a abandoned project from 5-6 years ago that got rebooted.

[Lathanx]

Originally posted by skullbrandy:

Originally posted by GamingWithSilvertail:

Well if you have it on console, my friend, why isnt your first complaint the performance?....

Performance isn't terrible on console so far. Could use some optimization no doubt but is far from the top of my list when it comes to my issues with the game. But frankly less than ideal performance doesn't really bother me much in RPG games. I guess I just have more of a tolerance for it.

33fps uncapped and 23 fps in the capital no matter how you slice it is festering manure. YOU personally might be fine with it, doesn't make it acceptable.

Feel bad for people who are sensitive to motion sickness plaything this tripe on a ps5.