Dragons Dogma 2 Review - Climbing to New Heights

Dragon's Dogma 2 is at its best when well honestly  most of the time but why is it great is the most  

important question because as with all games  its style presentation and gameplay may not be  

for you so sit back and let's discuss what makes  Dragon's Dogma 2o special and thanks to Capcom  

for the code also occasionally random pawns  throughout the community are going to show up  

in this video you get a chance try to guess them  all and I'll throw you into the normal who will  

fur commenters and subscribers for winning the  game while everyone is busy in this world it'd be  

really nice if you were here for the score alone  to maybe just let the video play 80 plus hours  

plus another 10 for editing seems to be worth  20 minutes a time and speaking of time if you  

want to jump in the Discord we will be streaming  this all throughout the week bunch of different  

people coming in as always discussing the game  behind the scenes and I'll be answering anybody's  

questions Dragon's Dogma 2 starts quickly enough  with a small interlude and then you leaping into  

one of the best character generators in gaming so  far regardless if you choose a human or a beastman  

the game has settings and sliders for pretty much  everything in the recent demo it showed just how  

crazy the Creations can be want to make a damned  monster looking human go for it Vin Diesel from  

Pitch Black yep but you can also now make one of  the Beast ran races originally planned for the  

first game they're finally here and surprisingly  look less like humans with kitten heads and  

instead merges the two races well enough to look  natural at least in so much as Dragon Dogma 2 ever  

looking natural hit him out with scars complex  issues make them fat as hell skinny like a rail  

huge small it's all there after that you leap  into the game improper without any real spoilers  

in many ways Dragon's Dogma 2 opens with the same  resonance as the first game but truncated cutting  

out the dirty little Villa location that was so  boring in the first game and starts it actually  

in the same way the first game did at an outpost  battle a larger one here and then a trip that was  

more like Dragon's Dogma one when it really  started to show its systems and its prowess  

it's a better way to start by a good measure in  the game's occasional uses of flashbacks helps  

actually flesh out a story with an alternate  world where two arisens have arised gameplay  

in Dragon's Dogma is also a true reflection of the  focus they expect players to employ and that's the  

simple strategies of technique knowledge and time  while on cursory examination it may sound like a  

trite example that the developers have given the  ideas is that the players will come at the title  

in one of those three ways or of course as they  continue to play a combination of them it's not  

really anything new however Dragon Dogma 2 may  be one of the few games where almost every single  

decision made and the way you set your character  up or that can't be made plays out across those  

three strategies it's a game that entices in the  initial offerings of combat but then interlaces  

that with truly interactive Huds in the form of  the ponds and then adds to that the reward for  

exploration across those other two facets let me  explain them for a second with technique meaning  

heavy skill use and mastering of the combat  tactics and the tighter vocations a player  

focus more on the Marshall prowess than marching  across the world or spending time munching meals  

with pawns and learning about the world through  them while some changes have been made to the  

vocations it's still ultimately a set of classes  then advanced classes and then hybrid classes  

with skills that get unlocked with class points  as well as passive perks upgrading and changing  

these aren't hard at all as you quickly unlock  the ability to do so at any vocation trainer  

after some quests a knowledge based player will  come at this game slightly different hiring pawns  

who know about the world and the quests who  may have explored prior who may be of higher  

level understanding the weaknesses and strengths  of enemies and not pushing into situations that  

the player can't get out of because they entered  into it without any of that information all pawns  

have their own skills and attitudes which can  be adjusted using purchased items as well in  

addition smart understanding of the time of day  and the resources needed for a trip to a quest  

location become vital for this kind of player to  the developers a time-based player is closer to  

the time honored tradition of grinding money and  Times of leveling up the character to the point  

where perfect skill use higher more expensive  pawns are less important than a player that looks  

like they bedazzled themselves with max level  armors and weapons and give off a magical glow  

enemies can see like a second coming over the rise  the expectation here is that almost nobody will be  

able to facilitate all three right away at least  not until an incredible amount of time within the  

game has been put down and the developers have  hit it perfectly for example a combat based  

player it's not about locking or pairing it's  about moving in Magic about sliding between two  

goblins to take down their armored best friend  and then whipping up a storm and Trailer Park in  

an entire enemy camp vocations are indeed tighter  than the original game with more powerful moves as  

you advance but their focuses have shifted a bit  to class specifics and it's also still still a  

stamina based game with a number of afflictions  statuses and specials there's almost no one who  

can't find a vocation that's going to fit them  even if everyone wants to take the more advanced  

classes and try to buff pawns or use Illusions to  lure enemies onto spectral Bridges and then watch  

them fall to their deaths while knowledge-based  players in the pond system are truly well thought  

out here offering ponds that are awarded badges  for knowledge exploration and monsters down  

building their own abilities for those elements  above and beyond just sheer battle prowess this  

makes them an integral part of the HUD and map  systems pawns who've completed missions can  

lead you more easily back to them which can be the  difference between stumbling out into a game world  

where many times the map just says something's  happening over here and gives you a massive swath  

of land to investigate it's an elegant system that  quickly becomes second nature even if you're using  

it as a third option and lastly the game's just  chock full of merchants traveling and hold up in  

Ruins or major cities selling wears all kinds for  you to buy then enhance to impact your character's  

main stats mixing and matching herbs in your  inventory then or combining their Buffs with  

special armors and weapons lets players who just  want to grind it out pretty much do so unless  

they find themselves staring down the shorter and  shorter line of a carry weight system that turns  

even the fastest character into a trudging fatty  if he carry too much in my gameplay I've focused  

on one or the other I've mixed and matched  them at different times taking down enemies I  

shouldn't have been able to with a smart mix of  double Pawn spell casting and potions that kept  

me topped off regardless of how hard the enemies  hit I've also ground down areas at enemies and  

taken their parts back and enhanced weapons and  made myself hundreds of thousands of coins just  

based on being a homicidal maniac but regardless  of which of the tactics you take there's simply no  

denying a couple things the first is a shared  lineage between this game and Monster Hunter  

Dragon's Dogma 2 like a cousin who comes to live  with a family after some terrible other event  

familiar but always a bit alien at the same time  these moments aren't just in collecting items from  

dead bodies but in the verticality that pervades  everything in Dragon's Dogma 2 like the first time  

a 25-ft tall Rampage inversion of Black Death  on Two Legs rip snorted through a village and  

my team of trustworthy walking versions of YouTube  comments had to take them down and you also have  

villagers who spend the afternoon trying to kill  it sure it's about as futile as a bunch of wolves  

trying to eat a fraking Iceberg but still looked  really cool and while they were doing that I got  

to circle around and hit them with a special  move and during these times it's hard not to  

see the similarities it becomes this fantastic  ballet of stamina steel and monster teeth if the  

ballet dancers wore middle-aged armor and were  related to Merlin it's also about the tactics  

for those specific enemies or those locations for  instance the lizard men will moonwalk right the  

[ __ ] out of your attack range when you start  doing damage and chasing them becomes its own  

miname as they Lead You past one of their allies  who then turns and spits at you slowing you down  

so you turn to attack that new enemy and now the  one you were just chasing spits poison at your  

back again it's like the part in Empire Strikes  Back when Darth Vader just kept throwing random  

[ __ ] at Luke's back those glorious moments  of strategy and understanding movement in enemy  

patterns plays out across the whole world and in  the open world really shows an increased feature  

of the terrain and location problem props that we  saw in the original game for example Boulders are  

still here but they're much more often if you  spy Cyclops at the bottom of the hill you can  

just sneak past and maybe find a massive Boulder  to roll down onto them or other interactions that  

I'm not going to say now to stop from spoiling  but they just continue to impress and merge the  

worldview the way you play and the atmosphere  together in a way other games don't it doesn't  

just leave you with a character that say takes 15  seconds to cast a freaking fire spell but it also  

offers you the ability to synergize with the other  spell casters casting that same spell faster this  

also means that a party makeup can look really  unique depending on situations and something  

that you can switch out often because pawns are  all over the game world something I want to talk  

about in a second the same goes for choosing the  harder hitting vocations or the more Marshal ones  

for instance switching from fighter to Warrior  isn't just losing the shield and replacing it  

with two-handed weapon the size of a card door  it's adding a ton of Buffs and resistances for  

example a warrior flatly doesn't give a [ __ ]  about being hit when attacking and the ability to  

get staggered and knocked down considerably drops  which means that Chang in weapon isn't just about  

the hit and the ability to soak but the ability  to weade in and just not be affected at all during  

attacks which also means you can command others  more accurately also it's about the atmosphere  

Dragon Dogma 2 might be the game with the best  day night cycle in World atmosphere merging that  

I've seen cresting a hill in the dead of night  with a small circle of thrown off light from that  

Lantern at your waist and seeing the Embers of a  small fire glowing in the distance there's this  

tentative moving towards and consistently at alert  feeling that starts to grow is it a goblin camp  

or is it just the politeness of past travelers  to leave a fire smoldering and for a game like  

Dragon's Dogma which is I would say somewhat  on the unemotional side when it comes to the  

story and almost a detached feeling to everything  especially with the way the pawns react there's a  

great deal of emotion that the game actually ends  up delivering for example four dead tired pawns  

dragon weapons behind him exhausted from three  afternoon battles as in his Darkness descends  

around you the light collapse is nothing more than  that 15t radius of vague enemy location Pockets a  

safe in a world that's absolutely punishing  then two small dots of blue show up in the  

distance rocking back and forth and for a second  you think to yourself oh maybe that's just the two  

blue flower pedals that illuminate at night and  then nope it's two skeletons and trust me too is  

four times too many if you haven't rested in a  while as you can only regain your true ability  

and health back if you end up resting skeletons  just flatly don't give a [ __ ] if you pound it  

into separate pieces because until you find their  head and crush it like a Terminator movies these  

guys are just going to reassemble sentient hate  filled Lego blocks and kick the living [ __ ] out  

you and that's just one example there's an almost  melancholic Brilliance here a sense of a pervading  

loneliness even with the ponds that seeps through  everything as you continue to Adventure and with  

every single Quest and more exploration it flows  out into the world around you movie like almost  

or dare I say a little bit like dark souls in that  feeling of solitude even when other characters are  

there with the pawns replacing some aspects of the  HUD as well as the Lord dumps and the occasional  

characters you might meet each one is a smattering  of onliners about locations creatures and  

otherwise and that means despite the game having a  party system and despite it having cities there's  

still this awesome feeling of solitude that I love  however there's a couple things I don't love and  

that's especially when you're playing with a  controller Dragons Dogma 2's biggest weakness  

continues to be their strict romance with the  B button on consoles I assume these guys are  

just laying out a bed of roses and a bottle  of Arkansas's finest $3 wine for a date night  

with a B button you hold it to talk click it to  pick up stuff hold it again to resurrect Pawns in  

combat it's notoriously fickle when added to the  system that doesn't have any lock on which I like  

but also means that at time you're fighting with a  camera trying to pick up a needed drop while also  

trying to not resurrect your Pawn because that  takes too long that being said Dragon's Dogma  

2 hits where the first one did but is much larger  mostly more polished and continues the tradition  

that started with the original the combat feels  wide open with your own moves the pawns and the  

ability for random monsters to LEAP into already  frenzied engagements means that fights are always  

interesting and the way everything interacts  together is profoundly enjoyable graphically  

the game continues in its humble Origins there's  something very lay andlike about the way Dragon's  

Dogma has always presented itself initially a  lot of Browns mixed with prairies and forests  

but still a lower level magical style despite  the gigantic spells you may be casting later on  

also a larger world so when you start out in the  slave pits there's a really good chance somebody's  

really nice Castle isn't going to be built 3 ft  from it and instead there's initial layering of  

travel between locations in this massive spreading  out changing between rural and urban that grows  

with each location and builds to make travel not  only a true Delight but something that continually  

tantalizes the senses as you look just over one  more Hill and you see some shiny new location or  

possibly some hidden Loot and really deep and most  likely dangerous cave entrance that you want to go  

to the tough to dirt and soil under your feet  or the soft glow of flowers that only bloom at  

night and Spark around their stems means there's  still a magical feel to everything but it's also  

grounded what I wish wasn't so grounded and  lifted a little bit higher was the performance  

what frustrates me so much about Dragon's Dogma  2 is that rate tracing or not the performance of  

the game it was solid enough when exploring and  fighting but I saw some heavy drops in cities  

which is sort of disappointing because really they  aren't that complex and especially on a 4090 and a  

new i7 you should be seeing better fps than this  and certainly shouldn't be seeing the drops in  

some of these spots now on PC the game's options  let you turn rate tracing on or off it also has  

support for FSR as well as DLS and a number  of options also I got to point out right away  

Bloom really does do something strange so you may  notice that sometimes in the footage when I was  

testing everything it's really not that good and  probably something you should turn off right away  

it's because Dragon's Dogma loves to lace fog and  smoke and particle effects everywhere and Bloom in  

this game has a tendency to just blow the picture  out where in the nighttime it delivers a nice soft  

ethereal glow at campsites that ands to the air  of mystery and fantasy during the day it's just  

much less attractive on the consoles the frame  rate can also be all over the place those with  

variable refresh rate systems can turn that on but  be aware it is noticeable The View distances size  

of the world in general activity level in the  game is grander than the original by far many  

times larger but still would have been nice to  see a locked 30 versus something this variable  

so if you're a pixel peeper be prepared to see  some stuff I also had a couple bugs I had pawns  

especially stuck in walls and stalls luckily  they teleport right to you as you continue to  

move on I had monsters ass hammering the side of  a wall to get to the villagers on the other side  

blissfully unaware of the solid structure in front  of them for a good deal of time when it comes to  

audio the presentation is a good deal better than  the original especially with pawns having a huge  

number of comments about the world quest party  makeup and more sometimes they'll discuss their  

last Master choice of all beastmen party members  or how Everyone likes to smash the crap out of  

everything regardless if they're being attacked  other times calling to attention what they're  

doing or what they can do and a quick button  press from you tells them to go do it it's a  

nice little combo system there musically it's a  subdued Affair like the original and right up my  

alley with a soundtrack that sits well back from  the action many times just a soft backdrop and  

an otherwise harsh world soundwise it's also  excellent with very easy tracking of enemies  

far and wide during battle completely offscreen  you can still usually hear an enemy attacking as  

well as excellent directional sound when trying  to identify where a pawn is or who's calling for  

you or who wants to use levitate to get up to a  chest somewhere when it comes to everything coming  

together and is it fun for all the highlights and  the Praises I can sing let me just say this sure  

there are other games that have made some of the  same choices but it's rare outside of say just  

Dark Soul style titles to see it working so well  yeah sure football was invented by some random guy  

but it takes an amazing quarterback to turn it  into an efficient tool and for the second time  

dragons dogma's creators are those quarterbacks  and without hesitation I can say this is worth  

buying Dragons Dogma team has always been about  fun between locations about that experience across  

the breath of a landscape here massively larger  it's a busier world than the original in many  

places but the world that is filled with nooks  and crannies that always reward exploration but  

it's also that darker world view and the fact  that while some options have their weaknesses  

it's how they drive the world itself that matters  a worldview again reflected in the restricted fast  

travel system with for Stones returning from  the original game rare items that make it very  

difficult to Just Bounce Around The Game World  unless you want to pay for it so if you're like  

me who hates the repetitive location sprawling  runs like Lord of the Rings If The Hobbit just  

kept running back to hington that's reduced and  then somewhat even more because you can now Do  

ox carts that transport you between the big cities  they have their own risks like being attacked and  

left for dead also the game does have some really  annoying ideas that pop up the more you play pawns  

and switching them out is the name of the game  here as they don't progress in levels aside from  

the main one I'm fine with that finding Stones  across the game world's pretty easy and that's  

where you switch them out however pawns are also  around the game World walking and they're some  

needy [ __ ] and consistently interrupt you to  sell their services even at the worst of times  

and even when you aren't focused on them at all or  haven't clicked on them and this can happen on a  

trail in the middle of a battle but the best parts  of this game destroy any of those problems a game  

where a 30 minute fight with a minitar results in  a pawn muttering the Beast is dead and the world's  

laziest high five it's worksman like in its  atmosphere even when you have others with you sure  

you're there risen and someone rumbles great dude  but what have you done for me lately and send you  

on a quest but strangely makes a celebration of an  enemy's defeat all the sweeter because instead of  

a cut scene or even a dark souls-like return to  a bonfire Dragon's Dogma 2 is like a subtle nod  

from a football coach at a job well done it's an  appealing mix of sweaty moments punctuated by pure  

Discovery isn't perfect far from it not everyone  is going to love this kind of high stakes gameplay  

decision that the series makes which is an odd  Meandering between multiple systems and multiple  

Styles but what it is is one of the most fun games  I've played in 2024 full stop subscribe check out  

the patron peace out our packs are heavier and our  purses far lighter these were necessary expenses  

mind no use clinging to every last coin it seems  sir rodick is the one to talk to shall we go and  

speak with him I know where that person can be  found Master this way a guide is most welcome  

now we sh lose our way my Cur of magics are at  your disposal wait right there one of us is being

TR

there would I be without you arisen