Dragon’s Dogma 2 Review – Is it Good Now?
Like some of you, I didn’t play the first Dragon’s Dogma, but early buzz meant that Dragon’s Dogma 2 was very much on my radar.
And you know what? I really like it, but before you run off to play it there are a few things you should know about, and I’m sure you’ve heard about those greedy microtransactions by now, so you’ll want to hear everything I have to say.
But first, what the hell is Dragon’s Dogma 2 even?
WATCH THE VIDEO REVIEW INSTEAD – or keep reading below:
What’s The Deal?
Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t a direct sequel of the 2012 original, nor is it a reboot or a remake. It’s just another Dragon’s Dogma, an open-world, Medieval Fantasy Role Playing Game where you, The Arisen (this generation’s chosen one) must level you ass up to defeat a Dragon and take your place as the rightful ruler of all the land and its people.
You use a mightily impressive character creator to get started, and then also create a non-player party member called a pawn. Once you get going, you then fill up the last 2 slots of your party by constantly rotating out other real players’ pawns to suit your group.
Before you know it, you’re out in the world, buying things, doing quests, and talking to people who all use a very annoying version of Medieval English. If I hear the word “Mayhap” one more time…
A Bunch of Tossers
Naturally, you level up, upgrade equipment and learn new amazing skills, gleefully tossing enemies smaller than you, as well as getting tossed by the ones that are much bigger. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be – and there’s always a bigger fish.
The combat really does flow well, especially when your pawns work well together. Trees and grass sway in the wind, cities and towns look great and the wilderness looks even better, especially thanks to ray-traced global illumination and some great looking particle effects and visual tricks.
It’s also very important to note that this game is fun in the daytime, and a bit terrifying at night, which adds a great element of planning to the experience because you try and do your main activities in the day. Getting caught out in the forest in the middle of the night can go very, very badly.
Somebody Save Me
There’s a lot more to it, but that’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 in a nutshell. It sounds pretty great – and to be honest, it is – but just like the world’s day and night cycles, there are times of sunshine, and then there are times of darkness.
The most important issue I have with Dragon’s Dogma 2 right now, is that the scariest thing in the game isn’t a giant monster that you might run into in the middle of the night, but instead it’s the unacceptable saving system.
While sleeping in an inn or house gives a permanent save spot to go back to, you only have one normal save slot for both manual and automatic saves. This means that you may manually save not long before something disastrous, only to realise that the game has randomly overwritten your save with an autosave, and I really do mean it when I say it’s very random.
This issue can get you into a lot of trouble – especially when you’re in a game where your pawns might randomly decide to just… you know, kill themselves at the exact moment that the game decides to autosave for no reason once more – and the only way back may be to lose a ton of playtime by loading all the way back to your last “inn” save.
Heck, there isn’t even a menu option to load a save game, you have to die or quit back to the main menu, and saves don’t even have info or images to let you know what you’re loading back to. I really hope they overhaul this in the near future.
Heroes of Mishaps and Microtransactions
About those microtransactions you’ve been hearing about. I’m sorry to disappoint anyone hoping for a rant, but they aren’t really a thing. I managed to find most of the items in the game without too much hassle by just playing, although a few things like changing your hair are currently overpriced in the game and need adjusting.
Performance can also get really rough on all platforms right now, the photo mode is terrible, the user interface and inventory management aren’t great, and there are a few things that still need some tweaking. A few of these issues are already getting updated in upcoming patches – which brings me to the point of this entire video.
Conclusion
I’ve really loved the 20-odd hours I’ve spent in Dragon’s Dogma 2 so far – I love the spontaneity of the gameplay and many things about the world, but I’ve decided to stop playing it for now – and it’s for the same reason that I’m going to tell you that you shouldn’t play it right now either.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 will likely be on a few Game of the Year lists at the end of 2024, but I can’t recommend that anyone buys or plays it right now.
