Dragon's Dogma 2 Review 100+ Hours Played on PC, Playstation 5 & Xbox! NO SPOILERS!

in this Dragon Dogma 2 review I'll be

sharing my experience following my

extensive time with a game after

completing it with over 100 hours of

gameplay time there's a lot of talk

online about the game's performance and

I have played the game on all three

platforms PC Xbox and Playstation so

we'll get into how it plays on all three

a bit later in this review if you want

to know what the game has to offer how

it measures up to its predecessor and

how it holds up against modern RPGs this

is the review that you need as always

I'll begin the review by covering story

and setting because your motivation can

really affect your enjoyment of an RPG a

common question that I get is whether

you must play the first title to enjoy

this one and the answer is no but

knowing some of the wealth of lore of

the Dragon's Dogma Universe certainly

adds to the experience the medieval

setting of the game is always very

appealing and its concept of cyclical

approach is well conceived and will feel

familiar to those of you who enjoy

pillars of Eternity or Wheel of Time the

books of course the show is horrible the

story of Dragon stma 2 seems to be the

typical RPG hero you start in a prison

make your Escape thanks to the help of

of a mysterious figure and set off to

find your place in the world eventually

involving yourself in all the possible

Troubles of the land in this regard I

feel the game is very well done with

over 80 unique quests that are by no

means go fetch 10 healing items and the

game shines in its capacity to adapt

your decisions and actions most quests

seem to have multiple endings or ways to

go about them and their progression

affects other quests NPCs and even store

inventories I found myself enjoying

discovering the characters and their

motivations and exploring the hidden

lore and Nuance of the World At Large

all in all without giving any spoilers

the story is superior to that of its

predecessor and a worthy investment of

your time now your time is something

very valuable and one thing that the

game doesn't always respect which brings

us to

gameplay as a stoic and nuanced action

RPG Dragons Dogma 2 is the kind of game

you must approach armed with

determination and patience this is by

now very familiar to me as I very much

enjoy Discovery and exploration of both

world and mechanics I'm no stranger to

obscure Quest objectives disappearing

NPCs and uncertain checkpoints

but if you are looking for a

straightforward and guided experience

Dragon's Dogma 2 is not the game for you

having completed in love the first game

I thought I was well prepared for

whatever challenge the new mechanics may

give me what I was not prepared for was

the fact that the world is so large that

a simple mistake or a small NPC bug

would mean my second hour of the game

would be spent tediously running a very

long way to a large town because the

intended Ox cart was lost to a bug you

may remember my humorous story about Jim

from the beware pre-launch video well it

was that all over again and that I was

very ill prepared for such a long

journey already feeling the stamina

exhaustion of all my stocked curatives

and of course it became night time and I

was promptly besieged by armies of

skeletons that I was in no way the

appropriate level to tackle welcome to

Dragon's Dogma 2 this set a rather

frustrating tone to the start of my

adventure but I made it to the objec of

determined to get back on track it took

me some time to get used to the new

questing system as there's no Quest

board or markers for quests and they

seem to mostly appear from NPCs

approaching you or when you talk to

someone almost at random this made me

feel like I was missing a lot of quests

but I soon realized the futility of

attempting to hit up a conversation with

over 1,000 NPCs in the game and accepted

that it would just work out if I just

let it happen from here the next step

was readjusting to the lack of

streamlining on travel and weight

mechanics I must report they are not

just like the first game but perhaps

they're even now more tedious as the

world is so much larger adding to this

Quest directions are very vague that I

often got confused or lost on what to do

or where to go and ended up doing

pointless round trips to farway

locations and wasting hours of my time I

felt that some of this was my fault for

not thinking things through but there is

also some blame to be assigned to poor

design choices that do in the end take

your time for granted regardless I

learned my lesson and pressed on until

Dragon Dogma 2 clicked at a point

somewhere around the 20 to 30 hour mark

riding this momentum I started tackling

harder fles venturing to undiscovered

zones found new vendors with exciting

and expensive gear and uncovered more

Insidious plots this is the point where

the game really hooked me and somehow

made me forget that I just spent 20

hours killing goblins harpies and Sans

while out of stamina it would take

another 20 hours or so to reach endgame

and find the true Dragon Dogma 2 the

feeling you get when the credits roll

but you know there's more to discover

and find the developers put a very fun

end game for you to stick around

needless to say much like my original

experience the game won me over with its

end game of course that's a rather High

number of hours for something to click

or reach its full potential and many

people would not want to spend the time

or effort when they are uncertain they

will enjoy that as much as I do so let's

delve into the specifics of gameplay

Dragon's Dogma 2's quests are well done

and I found them very enjoyable due to

the multiple scenarios and approaches

that can happen that said they were also

very confusing at times and you may end

up relying on pawns to tell you where to

go or what to do next fortunately there

is a system for you to select pawns who

have Quest knowledge and direct them to

act as your guide this also applies to

exploration where the pawns you have

hired will mention that they've

discovered something nearby when in

another world and offer to show you this

is a fantastic mechanic because it's

optional for those who rather not use it

but can be a huge timesaver given the

scope of the world vastness can be very

appealing in an open world game but it

does get very tedious when exploration

is interrupted every 2 minutes by yet

another band of goblins that you're

going to face roll anyway and have no

good loot to give you and the lower

levels of the game have honestly four

daytime enemy types goblins Sans harpies

and wolves it got boring very fast and I

was just so glad on the reare occasion a

cyclops would attack me instead

rejoicing while it bashed my brains up

something that really offset some

annoyance and helped make me feel

immersed though was the addition of

camping you'll find many campsites

around the world and they allow you to

set up with your companions and chitchat

around the fire while you grill some

food Provisions that you've gathered

you'll get bonuses to your stats and

regeneration based on the type of steak

that you use just be careful to stay

away from rotted meat or you'll get

blight for the entire party the camp

also allows you to change skills which

is very convenient if you're planning on

tackling a nearby monster and must swap

some Elemental Buffs and of course

camping lets you rest and recover all

your HP and clear all bights with the

assistance of camping I was able to

truly lose myself in Exploration and it

became almost a different game and

allowed me to feel the reward of

exploring I searched around bushes to

find rare items discovered cleverly

hidden Collectibles climbed steep Cliffs

to reach unuk chests and delve deep into

caves filled with monsters While most

gear seems to be bought in shops there

is still a lot to be found including

Rings armor and weapons and some enemies

even dropped me some equipment adding to

the joy of Discovery since so much of

the exploration ends being enemy

encounters combat is a huge part of

Dragon Dogma 2 right away you don't

really have big epic battles for the

first part of the game so you weren't

focused too much on optimizing your

equipment or party this can mislead

people into thinking the combat is too

simple but the reality is that it's

actually very methodical and rewarding

this is not a skill-based game for the

most part it's a preparation and

knowledge game so when you play you'll

spend a lot of time checking shops for

gear for yourself and pawns optimizing

your curatives and spells and checking

hired pawns for desired traits and

skills

this means by the time you enter a

battle you're rolling the dice in a

board game and seeing your efforts

preparing played out sometimes you may

do skillful actions and apply your

strategies as in combat tactics but most

of the time the win or lose of a battle

is decided before it starts by things

like your party Buffs curatives and

damage capabilities it's also noteworthy

that the debilitation and Elemental

damage systems are deep and fun to

Tinker with in a way few games manage to

many players enjoyed using toer to

overwhelm even the hardest enemies in

the first game and I'm very much looking

forward to to seeing what crazy

approaches the community will come up

with in this one adding to the Fantastic

feel of customization Dragon's Dogma 2

has upgrade Styles and each style is

found in a different location so you can

only use the balanced ones first until

you've traveled far and found the rest

to make your life easier I have taken

the time and effort so you'll be able to

find every weapon armor and ring in the

game on the wiki with its full upgrade

paths and material requirements on day

one fortunately there is a good variety

of weapons and very fashionable armor to

be bought and tried out and the basic

upgrades are very affordable so you can

Tinker with your gear and your party as

much as you like leveling up is quite

quick and smooth changing vocations was

simple and ranking up pretty fast I

maxed out two vocations for myself in my

Pawn before I got to endgame but you

could easily do more your level ups are

not tied specifically to one vocation

either so you can freely come and go as

you wish and retake a vocation Midway

later without losing any progress in

this regard combat can remain fresh as

you can swap to completely different

classes and have medium level gear or

even high-end skills ready for that new

vocation however the most unique classes

are unlocked rather late in the game so

you'll probably cycle through the basic

ones first this is well worth doing as

the passive skills called augments are

unlocked on one vocation that can then

be used on any other so you can use a

fighter passive on your sorcerer after

unlocking it for example anyone who

loves Dragon Dogma knows the payoff was

very late in the game Dragon's Dogma 2

has the same approach with more classes

and Equipment opening up as you reach

the late stages enemy variety difficulty

and drops increase Creeks populate the

landscape and your experience becomes

all in all all a lot more rewarding this

carries on after the credits roll with

multiple endings and postgame content to

explore and complete including new

currencies and shops that feature really

awesome equipment here is where the game

truly grabbed me as I started wanting to

really optimize my party and had set off

to hunt specific and challenging foes to

gather the materials for the gear and

upgrades I wanted there's something very

satisfying about those hunts and about

sending off your pawn and seeing it come

back with gifts and thanks from other

players I became addicted to exploring I

developed a hatred of the dams and I

became a true pro at slang Drakes I

certainly feel like I can stay in the

endgame for a long time and it has

recolored my entire experience much like

high rank of Monster Hunter a big part

of open world RPGs is the experience you

get from the world that experience is

heavily affected by the world design and

graphical Fidelity and musical score

Dragon's Dogma 2 has very good art

Direction with interesting monsters

unique and fashionable armor and weapon

Concepts and a stylized interface that

gives it more of a tabletop RPG feel

there were some you misses in the design

of menus and the lack of front-end

visualization of important mechanics but

overall it's quite well done graphically

the game is pretty but not very

impressive there are some really nice

touches such as light sources like your

lamp and distant torches or enemies with

ghostly effects are very distinguishable

at night and it really adds to the

overall immersion I also found some

ancient ruines and structures that took

me to breathtaking Vistas and found the

density of forest paths to be very well

done I was also very glad to see that

there weren't obvious copy pastes in the

landscape which is which is a very real

problem for most large open world games

that said and while monster models in

some environments are gorgeous there was

no graphical wow factor for me in the

landscape at large if you're looking for

eye candy you are more likely to be

enticed by the flashy effects and

animations for certain vocations and

spellcasting as well as the detailed

move sets and effects from some of the

larger monsters NPC models are okay but

you'll encounter stiff face animations

and awkward movements more often than

not which can be forgivable if you

consider they actually customized a huge

number of those characters you weren't

always looking at the same person in

different clothes but graphical Fidelity

is only a portion of the equation and

there has been a lot of talk about

performance in this point we have had a

lot of discussions amongst ourselves

about how to explain how this works we

played the game on all three platforms

on an Xbox series X PlayStation 5 and a

relatively high-end PC with a 3090

graphics card FPS performance was subpar

on all of them Xbox seems to be the

worst of the lot with some dips under 30

FPS PlayStation looks somewhat smoother

hovering around look to be 40 to 50 FPS

most of the time and PC ran the best

with about 80 FPS at 1440p on Max

settings in most areas with some

slowdown when entering the large towns

that dropped into the 40 FPS range the

game also has some faint Popp in which

means things appear and disappear

translucently rather than just

completely pop into existence so it's

not as noticeable as in other games now

many people will hear about the FPS and

immediately cancel their pre-order and

go leave a review of zero on meta critic

never having played the game I feel like

there are some disclaimers that need to

be brought alongside those low numbers

yes it's unacceptable for a modern game

on nextg consoles to have that low of

FPS and it's really hard to understand

why when the game has been in

development for so long but if the proof

is in the pudding the reality is even

with that low FPS I just kept playing

and I didn't notice it all that much we

shared the game amongst ourselves to

test our reactions and overall we

arrived at the same conclusion well it

sucks but it's not ruining the game so

while this is going to heavily impact

the score of the game it will eventually

be your decision whether this is

something that stops you from playing I

don't know if this is something they can

fix as I don't quite understand why the

performance is so lame but for me

personally if I heard they will never

fix this I would still buy and play the

game because it didn't bother me as much

as I thought it would on the music score

side I was a bit disappointed as I have

not been moved by The Game's main Tunes

I was expecting The Banger opening of

Dragon's Dogma 1 it simply never

happened and there was never a crescendo

to tug at my heartstrings not to say

it's bad but it just simply wasn't

memorable voice acting is quite good I

enjoyed the NPC voice actors who I think

did a very good job and really add to

the feel of the game when everything is

properly voiced and given convincing

emotions my only complain in this regard

is that pawn voice selection is quite

limited based on their inclinations for

example a simple Pawn has one feminine

and one masculine voice type with

different levels of bass so you're

listening to the same person just

distorted versions of their voice and

when you have multiple pawns with the

same inclination you really notice this

all in all music affects and voice

acting bounce out to be on par with

expectations you're probably wondering

just how big Dragon Dogma 2 is and what

kind of play time you can expect I can

confidently say that Dragon sagma 2 is a

massive game with a lot of unique

content and exploration options you'll

have vast Landscapes to explore many

caves and sub zones to Adventure in and

many unique quests to do you can easily

expect 50 hours of content and 100 hours

for completionist Content plus Untold

time spent in endgame and doing specific

hunts with pawns to participate in the

asynchronous online I really need to

point out that questing never felt like

a filler and I very much enjoyed doing

even small tasks to see how things would

turn out in terms of replayability you

can get a lot out of the vocations

thanks to the instant Swap and

individually tracked progress so you can

actually experience all the play styles

with one character you can also go to

New Game Plus and discover new Solutions

or outcomes to your previous quests

which means that despite the game's land

mass there's still an incentive to go

over to a new cycle and experience it

all again I also want to highlight that

the pawn system is a really fun

asynchronous feature that has its own

charm it is a rather unique concept that

is often misunderstood or

underappreciated because it's seen as a

poor replacement for actual multiplayer

elements first of all I actually

appreciate not having to gear up four

characters call me lazy but being able

to have an entire Community coming up

with optimization ideas and being able

to invite those into my game is very

welcome and yes this could have been a

person but I like that I have the option

of having online elements in my single

player game I quite enjoy hearing the

stories my pawns bring back to me with

other orisons that they adventure with

including the one time he returned

traumatized from having died so many

times but bearing an equipment gift from

the other player the limited visibility

into the experiences of other players

adds to my own experience in the same

way that the limited communication and

souls made gestures all the more

important and expressive it also helps

that pond mechanics have been

streamlined and improved so managing

your party hiring pawns and even getting

directions and help from them is fun you

also find out that there are some new

and scary mechanics that play with pawns

which will feed into the fun of

community discover and add to the

longevity of Dragon's Dogma 2 final

thoughts Dragon's Dogma 2 is a unique

experience and a roller coaster of

emotions I was incredibly annoyed when

my Ox cart was destroyed and I had to

run 10 minutes to the nearest Village

but was incredibly satisfied when I

prevailed against a drake while

underleveled the small little things

that nag at you from quality of life and

other games eventually become the reason

why the highs feel so high and Dragon

Dogma 2 as you advance past mid game and

have a proper grasp on mechanics and

objectives you'll find yourself addicted

to the entire experience unwilling to

let it go and stuck farming Loot and

trading pawns at endgame offering a very

good amount of content rewarding

exploration and a myriad of secretive

mechanics and lore for the community

discover the game will be another

polarizing entry where the people who

like it love it and those who don't

appreciate those mechanics toide it

despite some streamlining issues and

unfortunate design choices and very much

despite the frame rate I feel the

overall experience is more than the sum

of its unpolished parts and I would

recommend to buy this game now and enjoy

it with everyone one else you can

participate in the communal discovery

that plays such a big part of the player

based bonding particularly via the pawn

system Dragon's Dogma 2 is a fantastic

adventure of exploration Discovery and

learning that truly engages the player

with a rewarding and nuanced combat

system that carries well outside of

combat brought down by small but

impactful design choices and unfortunate

poor performance on all platforms this

is the game of the year that should have

been but will likely never

be

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