Dragons Dogma 2 Review
Dragon’s Dogma 2, is the highly anticipated action-RPG successor to the 2012 cult-classic Dragon’s Dogma. In a richly detailed and deeply explorable fantasy world built in Capcom’s RE ENGINE, Dragon’s Dogma 2 revolves around player choice, where selecting your Arisen’s vocation, combat style or desired Pawns is just the start. Dragon’s Dogma 2 will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam on March 22. Will it beat out Rise of the Ronin, Horizon Forbidden West, Alone in the Dark and others for gamers cash this March?
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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 s
ubscribers 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 qu
ickly 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 surp
risingly
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
bor
ing 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 t
o 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 o
ut 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 unti
l 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 mo
nsters 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 u
sing 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 m
aniac 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 Bla
ck 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
balle
t 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 ch
asing 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 hi
ll 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 t
his 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 warrio
r 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 hil
l 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 eve
rything
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 thin
k 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 a
s 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 assum
e 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 Dog
ma 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 op
tions
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
ou
t 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 p
awns 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 alle
y 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 f
un 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 a
lways 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 ide
as 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 a
nd 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
Comments
very immersive, but the performance breaks that immersion
Dragons Dogma 1 was ahead of its time. Such a gem.
Amazing review, but did you know that wolves hunt in packs?
Developers: "We've built an amazing game, just needs another 2-4 months for us to iron out the performance issues and it will be a hit." Capcom Management: "Good job but it's the end of the quarter and we want to make sure we (not you the developers, we the execs/management) get our unearned bonuses. Ship it and slap a s***ton of microtransactions that will turn the entirety of the non-brainwashed playerbase against us and the game." AAA Industry: "Ahhhh, the system works"
Edit be aware Capcom popped some micros when it went live. They are like MH and most everything can be bought in game with no issues, but one, is the new game start. Which Capcom said they will be adding to a game later. Absolutely a classic and like some classic's it has its issues. Some special effects are wonky as hell like bloom, a love for B button on consoles, some tracking and AI issues and some drops in city FPS. Would love for folks to watch to the end, thumbs up, comment, and such All reddit pics should be attributed correctly in the description if I missed one notify me. https://www.patreon.com/AngryCentaurGaming
The more I’ve heard about performance the less excited I’ve been which is a shame as this was the one I was most hyped for.
0:20 - André the Giant 1:05 - Pikachu 2:22 - Aragorn 4:05 - Kratos 5:29 - Mila Kunis 6:40 - Thanos 8:18 - Pennywise 9:17 - Walter White 11:02 - Lae'zel 12:27 - Melina 16:39 - Bully Maguire
Andre the giant, Pikachu, Aragorn, Kratos, Mila Kunis, Thanos, Clown from It... Still haven't finished the video.
Really happy to see Dragon's Dogma letting you climb monsters, much like Shadow of the Colossus. Really wish there are more games like this (Praey for the Gods is dead to me.)
I've been waiting for this one. This is one of the sequels that I've been hoping it gets made for 8 years now (since Dark Arisen came on PC and I 100% it). I'm happy that Itsuno (the director) managed to get Capcom to properly fund DD2 and have his "dream" game fully realized in a sequel / parallel world. I can't wit to dive into it in 2 days...my pawns are already created and ready to be imported (will go with a Geralt fighter and Yennefer mage lookalikes and go from there). Thanks, yet again, for the review Karak!
Excellent review. Non 60 fps game in 2024 is kinda rough, will wait for performance patch
Love how elegant your big character is
The Performance is beyond abysmal. ACG should really make a follow up video to this, along with clarifying the whole MTX situation.
No single-player game with performance issues on launch should be labeled a “buy.” Just wait for the price to drop to $40 in a couple months and the performance will be better then too.
Whatttttt I wasn’t expecting a review drop today!!! Yessss
Cannot wait until Friday, have been looking forward to this game for so long!
I always appreciate the reviews here. It's nice to watch a review who cuts the bull as well as not spoiling the story or even later spells/actions but still keep it a nice enjoyable review. Appreciate all the reviews you've done ACG!
Hits me right square in the nostalgias - can’t wait to play this one
Hey I just wanted to say that your dragon's dogma dark arisen review from 8 years ago was the first video i saw for this channel and the reason i got the game. Thanks for that review and all your reviews since then, cheers!
So glad you touched on the fps issues. a few reviews just didn't bother mentioning it or brushed over it. Awesome review as always!!!