Everything Wrong With DD2 - 100% done.

[Fast]

Before we start lets preface this by saying I think this game is incredibly good. However. It does have some rather glaring flaws and overt problems, so lets look at them. I am at the very end of my second play through now.

1. Questing. For me the quests are deliberate in their intent to get you walking around the map, the problem is they are the vast majority of them don't include playing the game, much of it is fetch quests, and go between messenger. The aim was clearly to have the journey be the content for these quests, however, they don't really hold up over even the first playthrough. But on the second playthrough, smart portcrystal placements early and some finessing in the unmoored world to get a bunch of ferrystones, makes these quests unbelievably tedious, not to mention much of the side quests are essentially redundant and can be ignored, i.e. the maister quests etc. Making the game feel much smaller than it already is.

2. World size. Its small, in fact, its tiny, if you incorporate how much of it is actually corridors and small space, its really poor. Yes they have a lot going on (sort of .we will get to this later) its mostly enourmous amounts of trash spawns to make it feel bigger. The reality is, the the main quest alone is around 10 hours once you have done it first time, and most of that is just running to place portcrystals. When u start ignoring enemies the world becomes so much smaller and feels very gamey.

3. Events. Not enough. Escorts are so so boring, I tend to just pick the person up and ferrystone right there, they are terrible. Culling monsters , okay. Thats it. thats everything.

4. Dynamics world? Not so much, most of the boss monsters are preset spawns that are specifically placed to force interactions. Its not really dynamic at all, I can go to each of the 8-9 dragon locations after waiting in town for 5-6 days after killing them all, and they will all be right back where they were, same as every other enemy.

5. Enemy variety. This has got to be my biggest complaint. It just not enough. End of story. Add more. They defo need more difficult monsters and I dont get why in NG+ they dont put the unmoored world enemies in the main world just because it would be cool, they have made them...anything, please more enemies.

6. Class balance. Whilst i know its a single player game and it dont matter too much. There is one class that just sucks, and that is warrior. It is so weak because of how frequently you come across various enemies that it just outright cant deal etc or just takes 10x longer to do than literally anything else, this guy need some love. Trickster also feels like such a meme i get it, but he could do with some more support role kit stuff instead of stupid walls and fake terrains or whatever, kinda bad. Whoever made thief wanted them to be the best melee class, and whoever made magic archer said, just let them nuke everything for a far with no risk.

7. Difficulty. There is none.

8. Soft Lock On, I play with keyboard and mouse and its pretty good tbh, but sometimes, this soft lock on thing full on spins you away from vitals, or an enemy behind you it just full 180 you when u wanna hit the one in front etc, I noticed that pulling the camera back made this worse, but I cant play on some 5FOV or whatever the base setting is.

9. Dragonsplague. Thankfully, I was not brainded, and chucked em all in the river whenever i see red eyes, but this kind of goes against the idea of selecting pawns for your party that fit the group and it honestly feels like such a bad mechanic that is antithetical to the games premise about using pawns for at least a period of time, especially with the pawn quests. I think its a stupid mechanic and should probably be removed or changed because it ruins the entire pawn concept.

10. Affinity, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH I HAVE WITH AN NPC AND LIST THE DAMN LIKES ON THE GIFT MENU.

11. Performance. KEKW.

12. Pawn competency. Yep.

[Fast]

Originally posted by phadin:

"Escorts are so so boring, I tend to just pick the person up and ferrystone right there, they are terrible."

I'll be the first to admit, I generally hate escort quests in RPGs, but come on... you even made a point earlier in questing that the quests are there for the journey, and yet your complaint on escort events is that you ferrystone to your destination..... completely skipping the journey, and thus the whole point of the event. You call that terrible? That sounds like a 'you' problem.

It's not the game's fault if you choose to skip content. They made fasttravel difficult and expensive to discourage it, and that already got people upset. They tried to make the journey itself more interesting. So maybe take the time to actually make the journey... epxlore... poke your head into places, search out treasure chests. Quit rushing everything. I'm not even done with my first playthrough yet, and you're already finishing your second. You do you, but I'm 60 hours in and still enjoying the journey.

Explain to me what content there is in escorts except every preset spawn and it takes longer because waiting for incompetent Ai

[Elviz]

I've read all this and much of it is simply attributed to the way you play without acknowledging what the developers intended. You're a metaplayer. You play against the game. No one is forcing you to wait a few days to go out and slay dragons again. You're the one who decides to do it.

You're like the typical mmorpg player who collects 1,000 quests, but doesn't take the time to read a single one. Everything has to be instantaneous. You always play the same way and do the same thing and then you get bored and come cry on the steam forum. Maybe you need a new hobby or just play Call of Duty.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Liz:

I've read all this and much of it is simply attributed to the way you play without acknowledging what the developers intended. You're a metaplayer. You play against the game. No one is forcing you to wait a few days to go out and slay dragons again. You're the one who decides to do it.

You're like the typical mmorpg player who collects 1,000 quests, but doesn't take the time to read a single one. Everything has to be instantaneous. You always play the same way and do the same thing and then you get bored and come cry on the steam forum. Maybe you need a new hobby or just play Call of Duty.

I read all the quests and in fact listened to all the dialogue in my first run. Obviously the runs after that are just skip skip skip.

[Netsa]

Originally posted by Liz:

I've read all this and much of it is simply attributed to the way you play without acknowledging what the developers intended. You're a metaplayer. You play against the game.

To be fair, a good game has to take this into account. The best strategy and the most fun strategy shouldn't be very far from each other. As it stands, the best strategy in DD2 is to run only quests and then, if interested, revisit everything else in NG+. I guess you could tack on grabbing portcrystals, as well. The postgame drops Ferrystones like they're on Steam Sale, unlocks every vocation with less traveling if you talk to everyone during evacuation, and has you fight enemies that give better rewards and exp.

Point being, if exploring and going with the flow was supposed to be the point of the game, then the game should have emphasized that. Compared to other open world games, DD2 locks the player pretty hard and hides a lot of mechanics behind things the player will never find without exploring... but without any obvious pointers to those things so the player doesn't even know they exist unless they had outside information. For instance, I still don't really know how you were supposed to find the Sphinx if it wasn't posted all over the internet. Was there a note?

This is compared to a traditional RPG where you might talk to a random dude in town and he'll say something like "have you heard of the Wicked Witch in the far north? I heard she cooks up a mean caramel apple." This lets you know there's something important in the north side of the map and maybe you should check it out. Turn-based RPGs do this all the time, but older Bethesda games also did this a lot, and so did both of the open world Zelda games.

Vast majority of NPCs in this game say copy-pasted lines that have nothing to do with anything, so finding the pointers to stuff out in the world is a little more obscure. It seems to rely on you just wanting to uncover black space on the map, but understand that that approach is unusual and not universal, especially when traveling is itself such a hassle.

(This post was a lot longer than intended. :P)

[At@At]

Originally posted by Netsa:

Originally posted by Liz:

I've read all this and much of it is simply attributed to the way you play without acknowledging what the developers intended. You're a metaplayer. You play against the game.

To be fair, a good game has to take this into account. The best strategy and the most fun strategy shouldn't be very far from each other. As it stands, the best strategy in DD2 is to run only quests and then, if interested, revisit everything else in NG+. I guess you could tack on grabbing portcrystals, as well. The postgame drops Ferrystones like they're on Steam Sale, unlocks every vocation with less traveling if you talk to everyone during evacuation, and has you fight enemies that give better rewards and exp.

Point being, if exploring and going with the flow was supposed to be the point of the game, then the game should have emphasized that. Compared to other open world games, DD2 locks the player pretty hard and hides a lot of mechanics behind things the player will never find without exploring... but without any obvious pointers to those things so the player doesn't even know they exist unless they had outside information. For instance, I still don't really know how you were supposed to find the Sphinx if it wasn't posted all over the internet. Was there a note?

This is compared to a traditional RPG where you might talk to a random dude in town and he'll say something like "have you heard of the Wicked Witch in the far north? I heard she cooks up a mean caramel apple." This lets you know there's something important in the north side of the map and maybe you should check it out. Turn-based RPGs do this all the time, but older Bethesda games also did this a lot, and so did both of the open world Zelda games.

Vast majority of NPCs in this game say copy-pasted lines that have nothing to do with anything, so finding the pointers to stuff out in the world is a little more obscure. It seems to rely on you just wanting to uncover black space on the map, but understand that that approach is unusual and not universal, especially when traveling is itself such a hassle.

(This post was a lot longer than intended. :P)

I do agree with your point that they should've had npcs mentioning quests and stuff instead of the nonsense they have. Oddly enough, I haven't had issues finding stuff on the map. The game is pretty small in that way. Lots of roads that eventually lead somewhere. If you just follow paths you'll end up at points of interest one way or another. I actually didn't bother with the main quest for a long time (Monster culling was the quest I think) and made it all the way to the last biome by just following the paths. The game tries to stop you but whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Netsa:

Originally posted by Liz:

I've read all this and much of it is simply attributed to the way you play without acknowledging what the developers intended. You're a metaplayer. You play against the game.

To be fair, a good game has to take this into account. The best strategy and the most fun strategy shouldn't be very far from each other. As it stands, the best strategy in DD2 is to run only quests and then, if interested, revisit everything else in NG+. I guess you could tack on grabbing portcrystals, as well. The postgame drops Ferrystones like they're on Steam Sale, unlocks every vocation with less traveling if you talk to everyone during evacuation, and has you fight enemies that give better rewards and exp.

Point being, if exploring and going with the flow was supposed to be the point of the game, then the game should have emphasized that. Compared to other open world games, DD2 locks the player pretty hard and hides a lot of mechanics behind things the player will never find without exploring... but without any obvious pointers to those things so the player doesn't even know they exist unless they had outside information. For instance, I still don't really know how you were supposed to find the Sphinx if it wasn't posted all over the internet. Was there a note?

This is compared to a traditional RPG where you might talk to a random dude in town and he'll say something like "have you heard of the Wicked Witch in the far north? I heard she cooks up a mean caramel apple." This lets you know there's something important in the north side of the map and maybe you should check it out. Turn-based RPGs do this all the time, but older Bethesda games also did this a lot, and so did both of the open world Zelda games.

Vast majority of NPCs in this game say copy-pasted lines that have nothing to do with anything, so finding the pointers to stuff out in the world is a little more obscure. It seems to rely on you just wanting to uncover black space on the map, but understand that that approach is unusual and not universal, especially when traveling is itself such a hassle.

(This post was a lot longer than intended. :P)

you pretty much nailed it. The game hides a lot of things and unless you just have an idea of how these games work especially unguided experiences. The average player is gonna miss a good 70% of the quests and end up with a running simulator between the main quests.

Personally, I am used to this type of game and managed to do a rather complete first playthrough, but the average player will defo not have the same experience. They will spend more time running through seemingly devoid of content areas simply because how how un-intuitive the quests are and how bad the story lines are explored.
You then have the insanely annoying spawn rates of trash mobs a long any small stretch of road and if you are not used to just skipping this stuff you can easily waste an hour going between two places if you havent played other games where you skip trash for example.

The game shows a lack of depth when it comes to its quest design and making traversal fun.
They just assumed dumping 300 goblins between vernworthe and rest town without any break up was "content" and that would be fun because when you get there "you can forge a jewel no one cares about 5 mins later" everything feels rushed and unfinished.

A lot of quests offer nothing but uneventful anti climactic endings, and terrible rewards.
The best gear is farmed from wyrmcrystals (farming drakes on a 5-7 days spawn cycle) and the few exclusive unmoored items.

Once you got them. There is no real functional end game loop. You can upgrade your stuff, which I did but why, everything is so squishy, I am almost level 100 , and 1 hitting trash is frequent, whilst being able to kill anything with 4 bars or less is usually possible in 10-15 seconds or less.

There was very little thought about how end game, or NG+ was going to function because quite honestly it doesnt.

Unmoored world being on a timer is absolutely terrible.

Something else to mention is general equipment balance, the lack of transmog, and whats the point in using anything weaker than the best stuff? Knockdown resis is so useful that not using the best stuff just gimps your experience for no reason.

[Mesond]

13: The dragon boss. Grigori was much better. The one in DD2 just shows up at the end and that's that.

It's called DRAGON'S Dogma.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Veldaz:

13: The dragon boss. Grigori was much better. The one in DD2 just shows up at the end and that's that.

It's called DRAGON'S Dogma.

"waiting for dragon spawns cause need wyrmslife crystals" - the game

[AvG]

I am still having a lot of fun...probably because I am not at the high meta level and can enjoy it more.

[Turboman]

Originally posted by Fast:

Originally posted by p00se2:

for curiosity

name a game that is actually difficult without artificial bloating damage you take like elden ring souls sh*t

I think the lack of challenge is poor. There is no punishment for playing poorly, no skill based fights, and no bosses that offer a significant threat.

There is no risk to anything you do, and nothing is punishing enough when it comes to mistakes.

Game is plenty difficult and challenging as warrior. Try a class that isn't fomo or broken by default for once.

[Fast]

Originally posted by Turboman:

Originally posted by Fast:

I think the lack of challenge is poor. There is no punishment for playing poorly, no skill based fights, and no bosses that offer a significant threat.

There is no risk to anything you do, and nothing is punishing enough when it comes to mistakes.

Game is plenty difficult and challenging as warrior. Try a class that isn't fomo or broken by default for once.

palladium + knock down resis augment + knockdown resis upgrades == warrior viable.

Sure its not the best class, it kinda sucks compared to most everything else, but its still viable. From a balance perspective it could do with some work, from a challenge/difficulty perspective you clearly have no idea about anything. Which is fine, but dont pretend like difficulty and challenge are changed by all of a sudden swapping classes. Some are easier than others to play or be successful with, but the games challenge itself is non existent.

You can play anything with no competency whatsoever and find success.

[Damian Ramirez]

these bait post always have a terrible wall of text everytime.

[RedGuy Johnson]

Unfortunately lol
I must agree
As much as I wanna shill for this game, I know damn well I have to take breaks because I know I've pretty much already kicked everything in the games ass, so I'm runnin out of ♥♥♥♥ to do which kinda blows my mind.

I'm normally content to run around and just kill big ass monsters but I keep seeing the same damn 3. Cyclops ogres and griffins, oh my. I know kinda that's the same deal as 1 (not really actually used to run into all kinds of ♥♥♥♥) but was hoping they'd add more large guys you can just random encounter or just more intuitive quests. That and no bounty board so when I leave town it's to walk with some random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ across the country for 20 bucks or wander randomly def sucks.

Why no bounty board capcom pls

[Fast]

Originally posted by RedGuy Johnson:

Unfortunately lol
I must agree
As much as I wanna shill for this game, I know damn well I have to take breaks because I know I've pretty much already kicked everything in the games ass, so I'm runnin out of ♥♥♥♥ to do which kinda blows my mind.

I'm normally content to run around and just kill big ass monsters but I keep seeing the same damn 3. Cyclops ogres and griffins, oh my. I know kinda that's the same deal as 1 (not really actually used to run into all kinds of ♥♥♥♥) but was hoping they'd add more large guys you can just random encounter or just more intuitive quests. That and no bounty board so when I leave town it's to walk with some random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ across the country for 20 bucks or wander randomly def sucks.

Why no bounty board capcom pls

once you saw and killed one of each, youve done em all.

[Ponyeater]

Originally posted by Fast:

Originally posted by Netsa:

To be fair, a good game has to take this into account. The best strategy and the most fun strategy shouldn't be very far from each other. As it stands, the best strategy in DD2 is to run only quests and then, if interested, revisit everything else in NG+. I guess you could tack on grabbing portcrystals, as well. The postgame drops Ferrystones like they're on Steam Sale, unlocks every vocation with less traveling if you talk to everyone during evacuation, and has you fight enemies that give better rewards and exp.

Point being, if exploring and going with the flow was supposed to be the point of the game, then the game should have emphasized that. Compared to other open world games, DD2 locks the player pretty hard and hides a lot of mechanics behind things the player will never find without exploring... but without any obvious pointers to those things so the player doesn't even know they exist unless they had outside information. For instance, I still don't really know how you were supposed to find the Sphinx if it wasn't posted all over the internet. Was there a note?

This is compared to a traditional RPG where you might talk to a random dude in town and he'll say something like "have you heard of the Wicked Witch in the far north? I heard she cooks up a mean caramel apple." This lets you know there's something important in the north side of the map and maybe you should check it out. Turn-based RPGs do this all the time, but older Bethesda games also did this a lot, and so did both of the open world Zelda games.

Vast majority of NPCs in this game say copy-pasted lines that have nothing to do with anything, so finding the pointers to stuff out in the world is a little more obscure. It seems to rely on you just wanting to uncover black space on the map, but understand that that approach is unusual and not universal, especially when traveling is itself such a hassle.

(This post was a lot longer than intended. :P)

you pretty much nailed it. The game hides a lot of things and unless you just have an idea of how these games work especially unguided experiences. The average player is gonna miss a good 70% of the quests and end up with a running simulator between the main quests.

Personally, I am used to this type of game and managed to do a rather complete first playthrough, but the average player will defo not have the same experience. They will spend more time running through seemingly devoid of content areas simply because how how un-intuitive the quests are and how bad the story lines are explored.
You then have the insanely annoying spawn rates of trash mobs a long any small stretch of road and if you are not used to just skipping this stuff you can easily waste an hour going between two places if you havent played other games where you skip trash for example.

The game shows a lack of depth when it comes to its quest design and making traversal fun.
They just assumed dumping 300 goblins between vernworthe and rest town without any break up was "content" and that would be fun because when you get there "you can forge a jewel no one cares about 5 mins later" everything feels rushed and unfinished.

A lot of quests offer nothing but uneventful anti climactic endings, and terrible rewards.
The best gear is farmed from wyrmcrystals (farming drakes on a 5-7 days spawn cycle) and the few exclusive unmoored items.

Once you got them. There is no real functional end game loop. You can upgrade your stuff, which I did but why, everything is so squishy, I am almost level 100 , and 1 hitting trash is frequent, whilst being able to kill anything with 4 bars or less is usually possible in 10-15 seconds or less.

There was very little thought about how end game, or NG+ was going to function because quite honestly it doesnt.

Unmoored world being on a timer is absolutely terrible.

Something else to mention is general equipment balance, the lack of transmog, and whats the point in using anything weaker than the best stuff? Knockdown resis is so useful that not using the best stuff just gimps your experience for no reason.

Oh yes, you are most correct.

Just running back to the very first town, the borderwatch, revealed so many new questlines.

They literally hid a quest to get one of the most powerful spells in the game right at the start, north of borderwatch with a chain quest for a destitute little girl that wants to learn magic.

It's absolutely hilarious and you can tell how many missed it by the online "sorcerer is useless" complaints. No, sorcerer isn't useless. But if you want to cast devastating meteors from the sky, you better help lil Trysha get her books and not die afterwards.


As for endgame / unmoored being on a timer, you're correct too. DD1 / DD:DA did not do this. You could walk and play anywhere in the post-calamity world without constraints.

It's bizarre how they'd go through lengths to change the world for the last chapter and then fast forward you through it. Sometimes Japanese devs just make me scratch my head. So many weird design decisions that make Dragon's Dogma 2 less enjoyable than it could be.

Bonus points: Using mods you can fix all of that up. There is one for extra difficulty, so you can turn the earlierst level 1 goblins into dangerous enemies again. There are mods for better levitation, better optimization, chests spawning better loot, pawns behaving more intelligent and so much more.