*** Offical Dragon's Dogma 2 Thread ***

[lee32uk]

Had an epic battle with a griffon outside of the main town, and just as it nearly died, it flew off

Am I not meant to be able to kill it yet?

You can kill anything even at level 1 if you are good enough. They are weak to fire, so setting the wings alight will do a good job of stopping them flying. For a melee character you can climb on their backs and attack the wings. Just make sure to have plenty of stamina recovery items on you if you do that.

 

[ICDP]

You may encounter the injured beast later on. I have multiple times found a beast later in the game world that was quite low on health.

 

[HungryHippos]

Yep just did, that works

Level 21 now.

 

[ICDP]

At the major rift stone with advanced search function you can filter out by Human / Beastren and then by male / female. Find that works pretty fine to get capable male pawns. Can also add in specific spells they should know to filter easier, seems to work fine even at my level where choice is getting less and less. That said Capcom seem to be feeding into it to some extent, The corset for example you can get pretty easy and use on any class, so chuck on a mage and it has better stats in most areas then any other mage Armor (even inc trousers) bar post game ones.

Good call thanks.

 

[Neil79]

 

[Antony101]

Really enjoying this at the moment, I'm not sure if I've just got better at these types of games or it's just luck but I feel it's much easier than the first game.

 

[ICDP]

Really enjoying this at the moment, I'm not sure if I've just got better at these types of games or it's just luck but I feel it's much easier than the first game.

I never played the first one and bought this on a punt. I am not disappointed at all and find it very enjoyable.

Graphics are OK and sometimes look great and others it looks poor (ghosting TAA even without upscaling). The story so far is typical RPG affair where you are end of world saviour etc.

The AI can be annoying but the exploration and combat as well as the overall AI behaviour from your Pawns is perfectly adequate. They do stupid things one minute and you either laugh or rage at the ineptitude, yet in another moment they impress you with their improvisation. So just like real life friends, family or colleagues

I do love the fact the typical quest pointer is now an AI pawn that guides you to your goal with an almost nonchalant “I know this person, it’s not far, follow me”. They then take you on an epic adventure along half the map that requires two in game nights and multiple Ogre, Griffen, Minotaur and or dragon encounters. Yet another time a borrowed pawn told me “I saw a treasure chest nearby in my rift travels, shall I guide you to it?” I agreed and they took me on a 10 second detour up a hill and round an outcrop and said “It’s been a long trek but we got here in one piece”. I did laugh and wondered if it was just poor AI or a genuinely sarcastic AI moment.

Game of the year so far for me despite its flaws.

 

[Antony101]

I never played the first one and bought this on a punt. I am not disappointed at all and find it very enjoyable.

Graphics are OK and sometimes look great and others it looks poor (ghosting TAA even without upscaling). The story so far is typical RPG affair where you are end of world saviour etc.

The AI can be annoying but the exploration and combat as well as the overall AI behaviour from your Pawns is perfectly adequate. They do stupid things one minute and you either laugh or rage at the ineptitude, yet in another moment they impress you with their improvisation. So just like real life friends, family or colleagues

I do love the fact the typical quest pointer is now an AI pawn that guides you to your goal with an almost nonchalant “I know this person, it’s not far, follow me”. They then take you on an epic adventure along half the map that requires two in game nights and multiple Ogre, Griffen, Minotaur and or dragon encounters. Yet another time a borrowed pawn told me “I saw a treasure chest nearby in my rift travels, shall I guide you to it?” I agreed and they took me on a 10 second detour up a hill and round an outcrop and said “It’s been a long trek but we got here in one piece”. I did laugh and wondered if it was just poor AI or a genuinely sarcastic AI moment.

Game of the year so far for me despite its flaws.

There is a lot about the game that can be annoying at times, the performance and inconsistent AI are the two main things. My 9600KF really struggles in the cities but my 7800XT picks up the slack outside in the wilderness. Overall it's just a fresh experience, it's niche enough to scratch a hidden itch that Elden Ring couldn't die to my ineptitude in that game.

I bought Forbidden West at the same time but haven't touched that yet. We'll see how long Dragon's Dogma 2 will keep me away!

 

[ICDP]

Elden Ring didn’t click with me at first but I went back after about 8 months and put some time into learning the mechanics and got good enough to beat it 4 times with different classes. As an RPG with story and lore it is utterly terrible because the lore means there are almost no NPCs and towns to discover. So Elden Ring was a 6.5 out of 10 for me even though I put hundreds of hours into it. It’s literally a large empty world devoid of character and life, just endless enemies on your way to the next cut and paste boss fight in the next cut and paste dungeon. Some areas look amazing, like the main town with golden rooftops etc but because it is utterly devoid of life other than enemies, it always feels empty.

DD2 already scores higher for me because of the richer and more compelling RPG nature of the world. There are towns and NPCs and little touches that just give the game a much more “lived in” experience. It’s also obvious the devs made a hand crafted map with very little in the way of generic layout dungeons or towns. It makes the world far mire immersive IMHO.

 

[strumpusplunket]

Really looking forward to playing this, but need to be strategic about when I start it as I am concerned it could hoover up my life!

I loved the first Dragon's Dogma, and ran through a few NG+ cycles and the Bitterblack Isle expansion.

Even enjoyed the inane pawn chatter. It's got it's own kind of charm, I think, if you just roll with the idea that pawns are, well, pawns and not fully free-willed humans.

"Take care not to be poisoned.... argh, I've been poisoned!"

<Nine out of ten enemies are lying dead and the final one has a sliver of health> "Ugh, they have the upper hand!"

"'Tis a port crystal" - (I know, I put it there myself like five minutes ago...)

And of course, for the 874th time - "wolves hunt in packs."

Kind of hoping they haven't streamlined it too much, really.

 

[Coolasmoo]

I am 36hrs in and have probably done very little quests.

Just keep going off exploring and looting.

Met my first red eyed wandering Pawn yesterday, was 0 Gold and a level 29 Archer with great stats.
Only just noticed the eyes, could have been fun that one

Made my way to the Checkpoint rest town and done a couple of quests so far in here.

 

[ICDP]

I think this is where DD2 shines. The world just has so much detail and stuff going on you can explore and not run out of interesting things to do.

 

[HungryHippos]

I'll be honest I didn't really fully get invested into ER myself, I completed it once but I wasn't really left with any desire to have another go at it afterwards.

I found the open world stuff a bit too open ended, I prefer a middle ground I think where it's open enough to explore bits, without feeling like it's so massive and directionless.

DD2 adds some interesting mechanics, the pawn system is pretty unique and I like how they mix the pawns into the lore as well as the actual gameplay. Graphics can indeed look amazing sometimes, other times not so much, but the performance isn't that well optimised, which is a shame.

The banter with the pawns can be fun but they do often repeat stuff!

I've just finished maxing out my initial vocations (Fighter on MC and Mage on pawn). I've done a role swap for now because I can just trade all gear between the characters, and I don't need to worry about re-arming or upgrading stuff again.

Regarding the golden beetle things, are they limited spawns? the extra carry weight they give is incredibly useful, as I didn't want to make my characters be giants for RP reasons, just to have some more carry capacity.

 

[ICDP]

The beetles are one time spawns. By mid or end game you can upgrade the final equipment enchantments and it halves their weight. It becomes less of an issue then. It also gives a big sense of progression rather than being able to just carry everything you find from the start.

Modding out these weight limits and the dragon’s plague as well as the fast travel limitations would utterly kill the game for me. These are not detrimental mechanics, they add to the way you have to play. Each to their own of course but modding these out and then giving the game a poor review says a lot about these complaints.

 

[HungryHippos]

Yeah I haven't modded the carry weights, inventory management isn't the most fun though, especially as some stuff you can safely send to the deposit box and some stuff you kind of need to keep.

I do think fast travel should be easier, so far I don't have many ferrystones, and because of this I'm not using them at all. Even without those, the oxcart is OK, but it's not really clear which routes the ox-carts can take, there isn't really a central hub for ox-cart trips either.

I think I'd prefer a more traditional fast travel system in general, because I will generally want to get to a main city and then go exploring from there. Maybe only let me fast travel from main hubs/cities rather than to them from anywhere, means I still need to think about stuff like provisions, but also allows me to get about a bit easier if I want to. Either that or increase the frequency of the ferrystones a bit so you can get away with burning them occasionally.

 

[ICDP]

Ferrystones can be bought for 10,000 gold at vendors and they restock every few days. You more than make that money doing most quests and a bit of exploration.

 

[HungryHippos]

Ferrystones can be bought for 10,000 gold at vendors and they restock every few days. You more than make that money doing most quests and a bit of exploration.

I will consider buying some when I have too much money, not yet true at least!

 

[TonTom]

This peaked my interest after seeing the thread earlier watched a review and found out it wasn’t co op so it’s not for me. I really can’t be bothered playing single player games like this any more.

 

[HungryHippos]

Conversely I prefer this as a single player game, certainly being an MMO would ruin it. Co-op could be fun if they allowed you to do some in short bursts with friends.

The co-op part probably adds too much complexity though to quest lines, at best I think they would have you co-op as the other persons main pawn, so it didn't break continuity.

 

[Noxia]

My friend just gifted me this. "I know you didn't like it from the 2h, trial but now you'll play it for at least two and a half because I've gifted it to you and you'll feel obliged to"

Clearly forgot how stubborn I am lol. TBF I will try again, just not anytime soon.