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i played 40 hours of the game, didnt finish it, and im likely not returning until the wild loot mod get updated(fixes the garbage rewards for exploration), the game is just bad plain and simple, the only good thing about it is the combat and even that goes outside the window because of scaling and bad variety in enemies. writing sucks, from the main quest to the side quests to the characters all are uninteresting and unsatisfying, even more so than the first game which whilst starts of uninteresting it has a satisfying and interesting ending(complete opposite of dd2), exploration is fun until you get bored of the massive amount of fighting the same enemies(literally cant go 12 meters without an enemy) you need to do for little to no reward(in 40 hours i didnt find a single piece of viable vocation gear for me or my pawn). classes are hit or miss, some are better, some are just different, and all magic classes are just worse, class variety is worse all around, i could go on and on, but the content is barely more than the first game without the dlc, but its in a MUCH more diluted package, literally no reason to play this over DDDA, it suffers from every issue the original had and in some cases more, and that is on top of piss poor perfomance. its a disgrace, and some people like to paint this has capcom giving them too little manpower, when if you actually look they had nearly 400 people on the credits, which is still very large, better games were built with less people, ironically ELDEN FUCKING RING, was built by a smaller team. this is just itsuno having no fucking idea what the fans actually wanted, Dragons dogma online flawed as it may have been was ten times better.

"Dragons Dogma 2 caused my depression - A retrospective"

people expected far too much from a game capcom never cared about. it's basically dragon's dogma 1 with better graphics, pawns, combat and environments, the last is highly vertical and densely layered. people are just upset the game is just more of the same.

it also damages my faith in the rest of the capcom franchises, monster hunter in particular

Dragon's Dogma 2 is so bad, that it might as well have not existed. It shows yet again Capcom's complete lack of faith in Itsuno's dream project. Everything about the game feels like they got too little money and too little time to make a better sequel, and what they had feels like it went mostly into the graphics. Reasons the game sucks: - We lost Itsuno (he has left the company over creative restrains) - A worse story, like mentioned in the video - A vast but shallow world that is worse than DD:DA in every way (Name 1 memorable dungeon) - Worse enemy variety - Enemies are completely defanged & you'll quickly outgrow them after the initial levels (A cyclops might throw its club at you, but notice how long it takes before it does ANYTHING again that effects you) - Worse villains - We lost combat variety by only being allowed 1 weapon - Vocations are poorly made and balanced Thief with infinite dodge and self-detonate can kill pretty much anything within 10 seconds or less for almost free, 2 vocations might as well not exist i.e. Warfarer that can equip whatever weapon but can't equip more skills than any other vocation (???) and Trickster is so garbage, it shouldn't even be in the game - not even its augmentations are worth the time. - Zero consequences for anything. Stealth mission? Nope, guards don't care. No access allowed? Guards don't care. Jailed for your crimes and escaped? Guards don't care, you can even toss a guard into the wall immediately upon "escaping" and they won't care. - The UI was and is still worse, like when you change vocation you couldn't immediately go into storage to equip gear that the newly chosen vocation needed (this has been fixed now, but never should have been a problem in the first place) - NPCs falling in love with you, purely because you decided to do the quests they gave you The entire game feels like a bad isekai fever dream game, where everything is effortless and nothing is a real threat. And then to add insult to injury, we get a Casual mode, for what? The dogshit story??? I could probably go on more, but the biggest crime was simply failing to improve on the foundations of the first game.

It was awfully boring and uninspiring with tons of repetitive escort services. Utterly blend sorry and none engaging same monsters was killing half of the fun

It doesn't suck. It's pretty fun.

They took away the Chad Mystic knight and gave us the Virgin mystic spearhand

I got the first game just before Dark Arisen came out & loved it despite it's many flaws. Then I got DDDA & loved it just as much, hoping that eventually we'd get a sequel. When Itsuno announced the sequel I was genuinely hyped & broke my no preorder rule, I wish I didn't. I've spent over 500hrs on DDDA & still enjoyed it, I've spent 230hrs on DD2 & never want to touch it again. This genuinely feels like a game that should've come out 2-4yrs after the first, not 12. Disregarding the microtransactions (because capcom is a greedy company that'd pimp out their own wives & daughters for chump change) & the awful optimisation (I was told this is due to their anti piracy software) the game is simply bad. Not the worst game ever made, nothing so scathing, but for 2024 & as a sequel it's inexcusable. I know it was rushed out due to the fiscal year & the team being smaller than DMC5 & MH but it still feels only 1/3 finished. The few things I can say is this: 1. The combat feels better, and worse. The less available skill slots is annoying but not game breaking, unless you play Mage or Sorcerer. Warrior is much more fun to play this time around especially since if you miss your first attack you aren't reset into default stance & can only chain attack if you connect. Fighter is ok, just ok. Archer is only really useful if a it's a Pawn & not you. Thief is overpowered as hell & the go-to if you want to shread health bars with helmsplitter. Mystic Spearhand is fun at first but quickly makes me miss the parry god that was Mystic Knight. Magick Archer is unchanged but it makes no sense that like the Warfarer it's an late/end game unlock. Warfarer is ok, it let me mix Warrior, Magick Archer & Thief for a broken build. Whoever thought of Trickster needs to be taken behind a shed & shot, because my god it was the most mind-numbing class to play & I hope nobody ever makes it for anything ever again. 2. The enemy variety is disappointing, & after years (as well as many other games from other japanese devs like Fromsoft) there is no excuse to have so few new ones. It's incredibly annoying & tedious to have to face a gang of goblins, bandits, saurians, harpies & wolves Every. Fifty. Goddamn. Meters. The game feels like an MMO that just so happens to be single player. And after you hit Lvl30-45 there is no challenge in anything except the Dullahan (maybe, sometimes). I've also noticed that the basic enemies like goblins & hobgoblins have less personality to them as in the first game they'd fall over an crawl away if fear or do other small animations that gave them more life, now they're just aggressive & maybe point at you and yell once. 3. The world building feels hollow. There's notes scattered around that give it a drop of flavour but it seems the devs didn't put that much thought into it. Why does Vermund & Battahl have a strained relationship? Was there a war between them or what? Why are there so many Bestren in a human nation capital, and why are there so many humans in the bestren nations capital? Why does Battahl feel like a reskinned Vermund with the same language where everyone speaks with the same accents? Why does Battahl allow Pawns to walk around freely if they're supposedly distrusted & why does anybody do business with me if I have them following me around? Why does the Battahl capital look like a crumbling ruin that was just recently moved into? Why does EVERYONE immediately know I'm the Arisen? Why is the elf "village" just a small hub area that nobody with a functional pair of eyes ever call a village? Why am I allowed in it if they're isolationists? What's even the point of giving them their own language? Why are there dwarfs if theres only like 2 in the whole game? And why does the one in Battahl (who owns a smithy but never does any smithing) hate elves? Is it because of the trope of elves & dwarfs not liking each other? Why are Ulrica & Nadinia on the front cover of the game if neither of them have any plot significance whatsoever? Why does Wilhelmina look human 95% human if her mom was bestren when a random NPC I spoke with basically told me that if a human & bestren intermix the child will always come out as bestren? Why anythin is anythin? I've got a bunch more stuff I can say but the more I think about it the angrier I get about this game. Overall I'm massively disappointed with what Itsuno delivered, to the point that I don't feel bad about him leaving capcom & possibly loosing the IP. This game would need a Cyberpunk 2077 ramake just to be good. And the sad thing is I know that will never happen because capcom will most likely just give it another minuscule update & then abandon it.

I think the game didn't have as big of a budget as the first game because they had a small amount of people credited on the game. It seemed like Capcom didn't believe in the game at all. They only started considering Dragon's Dogma as one of their bigger titles like Resident Evil and Monster Hunter after Dragon's Dogma 2 released and after it got all those sales. Capcom then even announced to pay out more money to the shareholders following these unexpected high sales...

I somehow managed to play 40h of this game, and had to go back to Dark Arisen; there's soooo much cut content is insane. - All the fun spells? Gone. - Half the skills slots on almost every vocation, for no reason. - On the hybrid/advanced vocations, you can't swap equipment (think assassin in DA, being able to swap sword+shield for daggers+bow on the fly) - Way less equipment options. - Maybe half the monster variety of DA, and I'm being generous. - Some skills locked after a stupid quest where you have to find unique books. - One of the new vocations is practically useless, the other it's the yankiest so far. - You can't fine-tune your Pawn's AI as you could back in the first game.

I'll always remember the hellish journey through the Bakbatal southern area while underleveled to reach the volcanic area, fighting and crawling my way to the town to unlock the Warfare Vocation. Why did i go through all that hell? Just so i could wear anything id like and get the freedom to have more than one weapon. This game was so limiting in terms of freedom, a Archer cant wear heavy armor, a Warrior cant wear light armor, the thief cant use a bow, magic archer cant have a melee weapon, the Trickster cant fight anything because they don't have damaging abilities, the armor being vocation locked was a major issue. The story was mid as fuck, but then when i get to the end i realize the game will suddenly throw me into a hellish 7 day speedrun and i get to stress myself out to complete everything in time without dying once to a mistake.. or i dont. I opted to not go through hell to experience the rest of the underwhelming story.

I recall that DD2's development was pretty shafted on resources because Monster Hunter Wilds was starting development. Some people think that DD2 was effectively a test bed for features they wanted to put in Wilds, and I can't help but feel a huge amount of betrayal. No hate for the Monster Hunter series, but undercooking a huge game like this for the sake of another shows how greedy or impatient they are. It's gotten to a point where the whole sphere of DD has been poisoned by this. Are we even going to see a 3 if Capcom sees everyone is upset about this game? I have no idea anymore.

Eh...i liked it 😅

Great video, well put together and your points definitely ring true.

It does suck, I am not familiar with the franchise other than buying the first game for a few bucks during a Steam sale and playing it for a few minutes. I gave up after a few hours as its just a tedious slog of the same enemies as you say. Plus the quests and caves are tedious and repetitive, the characters often are clearly a black voice actor even when the character is not and the lack of stamina early on makes it so frustrating for a new player to travel around

It's weird how the "Game of Thrones" plot goes out the window halfway through the game, and not in a way that makes it an intentional story beat. Its like the HBO series served as part of the devs business case for making the game, "Look Capcom, we have dragons we just need thrones and it will be a hit. " Then they likely took way too long to make the game and Capcom got justifiably impatient and forced the devs to wrap it up. I don't blame Capcom- 12 years is a very long time. Given the relative lack of innovation, I suspect the devs are just working on something that is out of their league.

The biggest thing that turned me off about this game is the fact that halfway thru you cant take 3 steps without getting jumped by 20 orcs, a griffin and an ogre at the same time. Its too much ... im all about games being difficult but this is just fucking annoying

the only thing i thought was cool about this game was the unmoored world and the extra bosses, but everything else feels very lacking.

I feel you, I wanted this game to be good so bad ;_; But it feels vastly undercook

im a massive fan of the 1st dragons dogma. and yeah DD2 is dragons dogshit. The combat was its saving grace, BUT WTF ITSUNO GOBLINS AND NEKKERS AND SAURIANS ONLY?! WTF

Hey, fellow philosopher. Are you looking for a partner on your Valheim adventures by any chance?

The person that the dragon took as my beloved was the elf lady who's married to the dwarf and she gives you the mystic archer vocation. But like I only talked to her twice and also she's married?

Saying it sucks seems a bit extreme, I still think it is a good game. But it is a mind-bogglingly massive disappointment considering all they had to do was release a more polished version of the first to have an absolute masterpiece on their hands.

WOW. Man this really hit me. I got a new job recently, and I'm constantly worrying about whether or not my coworkers like me or if they find me annoying or if I've made them upset, and it just PLAGUES me to no end thinking about it. When in reality they probably aren't wasting a second thinking about me. I also shame myself for procrastinating on drawing or improving myself a ton, then I beat myself up about it while I'm at work. It really is so interesting to learn about new ways of thinking based on ancient philosophy when your growing up in an advancing world. The past really does teach us. Philosophy really is interesting. I'm excited to watch the rest of your videos. I'll definitely try to apply this.

Modernity is a disease.

The game is addictive as fuck, BUT it has lots of problems indeed, the worst offender is no endgame for me. I just wanted to play the game more, get more enemies, bosses, items ecc. Got lot of love for this game and I hope they release a DLC to fix the moronic issues it has.

long story short. number 2 wasn't as inspired as the first. 1 feels berserky. 2 doesn't

Dragons dogma 2 has a team of less than 400 people, which is massively less than other capcom titles. Capcom had zero faith in Itsuno which is why the game lacks content. They have to make a Iceborne sized dlc to make this game attractive again.

Your first mistake was giving DD1's story WAYYYY TOO MUCH credit to begin with. The first game was never some unsung masterpiece. It was an above average RPG with; Great combat.........and no good enemy variety to actually take advantage of the surface level combat. At the end of the day, you're either mounting, bashing or shooting increasingly repetitive damage sponges. DD had one of the worst stories I've ever experienced in a modern RPG. That trash makes Dark Souls sound coherent. Some of the worst quest design in ANY RPG ever. The quest design in DD is a criminal offence in itself.

dragon deez dogma balls across ya face twice This is what I feel Itsuno has done to me with these games.

actually, you suck! hope that helps👍🏻

I had fun with DD2 but i cant recommend it to someone in its current state performance wise. The only thing stopping me from playing again is having to suffer through the framerate drops again lol. This was a good video as i agree that the enemy variety is just not good, i wish they had improved on that in this sequel. Still like the game alot but like i said earlier, cant recommend it to anyone in its current state anyway

Not to mention all the amazing innovations from dragon's dogma online and all of the new vocations and great stuff in general in that game nowhere to be seen

This game is basically a glorified remaster masquerading as a modern sequel.

The story doesn't explain itself well, but I can see a sort of unwritten story being shown here. 1. The brine/void/guide is stuck in a loop, it cannot change itself, only doing what its meant to do, keeping this area of the world in a state of constant repeating cycles. 2. the arisen breaks that cycle, and kills the brine/void/watcher. 3. Much of what the watcher/brine thought to be true was not, the great will maybe set the cycle in motion awaiting a hero that could break the cycle and kill the alien/evil that had infested that part of the world and kept it in a cycle.

I miss mystic knight the worst. I loved that class...it was like cleric/paladin

Well fuck this is diss heartening I had a hell of a time figuring out dragons Dogma 1 as a youngin bc fuck it was easy to fuck up and ruin your save

Worst game of all time play the original

i watched up to 7-8ish minutes of the video thinking it would somehow go back to talking valheim, "ah maybe this deep insightly philosophy has something to do with valheim's game design" I think I might just be dumb

this game messed up the minute they decided mystic knight wasn't going to be in the game.

You guys are too easily duped. Did you guys not see gameplay demos before this came out? Fuckin yuck bro, this game was $100 fuckin dollars! Stop buying bad games! You'll not only save money but save sanity and dignity

They should have did more with the open world, more with the pawns, more with the social system, combat is half assed nerfing every class. story is terrible insanely bad. And hey you already know

DD2 GOTY 2024

I always WAIT for the REAL reviews 2 months after release. In 90% of all cases, the so called "10/10 masterpiece" is more like a 5-6/10 game in most cases. This is true for DD2 also. Glad I saved money AGAIN.

I paid 70€ to buy it on day one, it is the most disappointing game I've spent over a hundred hours on. If I didn't preorder it and bought it on sale later I'd not have spent so much time with it.

You have no idea about how bad the whole Disa situation is : in an attempt to get some other Berserk inspirations for DD2 to continue the trend from DD1(one of the MC default models is pre-eclipse Guts, have Guts and Griffith's armours and swords, have Zodd as the final boss of Dark Arisen DLC, allusions to God Hand and Mercedes who's not-so-subtly Casca and the llittle witch is basically almost Schierke), DD2 copies instead the "Conspiracy Ark" of the Golden Age of Berserk, namely the Queen who tried to assassinate Griffith because previously it was her lover that tried to do so, behind the back of the King. Disa is the queen from berserk, Sven is surprisingly not her surrogate daughter Charlotte but instead the little kid Guts kills by mistake nd the "not-Arisen" could be implied to be her lover and possibly the one she was cucking the King with long before his death. And Brand is just a black Laban and Owen melded together, with the ball in the game meant to mimic the ball Guts and Casca properly fell in love with after the Band of the Hawk got recognised as knights and it's supposed to parallel your ascension as the now-rising star of the land. It's weak. In both story and execution compared to the first one.

Man I am so glad that I stopped playing shortly after reaching Battahl...

Great stuff

god i love this format! can you suggest some books/resources to develop such insights