I remember when the first Dragon’s Dogma was released because the first feature everyone talked about was the main menu music. It was one of the most epic title music I have ever listened to. It was a song called Into Free performed by B’z a Japanese band. Highly suggest giving it a listen. I think the reason I didn’t pick it up to play was because I was still playing Dark Souls, and maybe some other reasons as well but I don’t remember what it was now. A couple years later Dragons Dogma 1 (DD 1) was released on PC. I played it for a couple hours, but it never grabbed hold of me. I always wanted to go back and give it another try but it didn’t happen until Dragons Dogma 2 (DD 2) was two weeks away from release.
I was on a hiatus from playing games. Last game I played was the new league released for Path of Exile which was the Affliction league in December 2023. I also want to write about my experience in Path of Exile so look forward to that. It’s been more than three months and Dragon’s Dogma 2 is right around the corner. Quickly loaded up DD 1 and started playing. Sometimes I get so absorbed into an activity it feels like no time is passing by, I wish I could control that zone in my brain. I Played DD 1 for hours getting immersed in its world, gameplay, and finished the story. I will write about DD1 in the future because I have yet to complete Bitter Black Isle. I jumped into DD 2 as soon as possible and immediately I was fully immersed in a bright lush world filled with various types of trees and grass. It was absolutely mesmerizing to see. There is a twelve-year time gap between DD 1 and DD 2, the world of DD 2 feels like it’s the full realization of the developer teams’ vision with its use of the powerful game engine the RE Engine.
Game Release
As of me writing this, I have a little bit over 135 hours in DD 2 and am around early level 90’s. I will talk about how the release of this game was handled by Capcom and then go into the gameplay and story of this game. As I finished DD 1 my excitement to play DD 2 grew immensely as I had a blast playing the first game. Reviews were painting Dragon’s Dogma 2 in a positive light, and it was getting high scores across the board. Then something happened when the game hit the Steam store, Dragons Dogma 2 was released along with some microtransactions that can be purchased within the Steam store page. This sent wildfires within the Steam reviews and forums, people were angry because DD 2 is a single player game and microtransactions didn’t have a place in it. The game got review bombed on Steam and not much later people’s ire turned towards the media reviewing the game. From the initial reviews I have seen, they failed to mention the fact that the game is going to include microtransactions and some of the audiences of these reviewers got mad and wrote some scathing stuff because they thought they were misled.
In my opinion some of the blowback from this towards the reviewers was a tad too much and was spun out of proportion. Yes, they should have disclosed the fact that there would be items for purchase that can be used in the game, but I don’t think it was malicious intent that they didn’t include it in their reviews. A lot of the reviewers didn’t think it was worth mentioning and it looks like the publication details for this game were different depending on which region you are from. For Europe reviewers they got a packet that didn’t mention the game having microtransactions while the west did, I chalk that up to the regional publication differences in handling this stuff. In my opinion the microtransactions doesn’t affect the game in a negative way, yes just from the fact that the microtransactions exist hurts the games integrity and people will always question weather Capcom took certain liberties with game design to make you buy these items. The items that can be bought are negligible and are available through regular play in game. There is one item that you can buy which lets you put down an object on the ground to fast travel to that location. It’s called a portcrystal and it can be a boon to a player early game if you are tired of running everywhere or taking the OX cart. The game does give the player a protcrystal early in the game when following the story, but the way the quests and the exploration of the world is structured some players will get to that point later than others. For me it took a couple hours because I was off enjoying exploring the world and finally said I should do more story quests. All around though it is an unfortunate situation that a single player game has microtransaction and many realized including myself that a lot of Capcom’s games are riddled with microtransactions. In the case of DD 2 it was out on release day and many old and new Dragons Dogma fans were just looking forward to the sequel.
Sequel
What a sequel this is for Dragon’s Dogma fans, once again Hedeaki Itsuno-San directed the second iteration of the Dragon’s Dogma. From what I have heard when Itsuno-San made the first game there was a lot of budget constraints and a lot had to be cut out of the game. He said that DD 2 was his full vision realized and was able to put a lot of the cut content into Dragon’s Dogma 2. He is also famous for Devil May Cry series, and you can see that action style gameplay in both DD1 and 2. One of Itsuno-Sans design philosophies for the Dragon’s Dogma is having a multiplayer system where you don’t rely on your friend’s time to play. He and his team accomplished this by introducing the pawn system in Dragon’s Dogma 1. Pawns are AI companions that you can hire through the rift to go on adventures with you. The player gets to customize their own pawn and they will travel and level with you on your adventures. In addition, you can hire two additional pawns that are created by other players, in DD 2 there are rift stones scattered throughout the world and pawns walking about in the roads which makes it easier for players to always have access to pawns. In the two major cities there is a bigger Rift Stone located within the Pawn Guild, which allows players greater access to which pawns you want in their party. They can use a filter to maximize the party composition to your liking.
It really is an interesting system he has created because the concept of AI companions is not a new addition to gaming and has existed since the early days of video games. What’s unique about the pawn system is the fact that the pawns you hire are created by other players and are influenced by the quests and adventures they go on and vice versa. Pawns can gain knowledge whether it be about quests, location of treasure or how to fight enemies. They get more advanced the more you play, and it looks like from DD 1 to DD 2 there are a lot of improvements in the AI. There is a twelve-year time gap between the games, so the technology coupled with an advanced game engine with RE Engine propelled the game’s features to new heights.
It is fun and exciting to see every time your pawn returns from being hired by other players in DD 2 because you get a small blurb about what they did in the other world. Plus, you get a currency called rift crystals which you can only use with certain vendors near the major cities. The amount you get seemed to be determined through how long your pawn was hired for, how helpful they were and how many times they got hired. In the rift crystal shop, there are multiple types of items you can buy, majority of them being glasses that you can layer on top of your head armor, some dye colors that gives you a whole bunch of color spectrums you can choose from and a metamorphoses book which lets you edit your character or your pawn. I only used the metamorphosis book and the dyes, so I have a bunch of rift crystals left over. Maybe with future DLC they will add more items to buy.
Dragons Plague
When pawns are in another world, they have a chance to contract a plague called the dragon’s plague. It is terrifying when it happens because your pawn’s eyes will glow red, and they will start holding their head a bit like they might have a headache. It looks like the dragons’ plague has timer that if you let it be for a couple days your pawn will turn into a dark dragon being and slaughter every NPC in the town. When you notice that your pawn has this and what everyone does to get rid of this plague is to throw your pawn in the water, dismiss the other two pawns and then resummon them on a rift stone. The reason you dismiss the other pawns in your party is because the dragon plage is contagious and jumps from pawn to pawn, that’s how it moves around, so when your pawn gets back from another players world be sure to look at their eyes. All in all, the pawns in DD 2 are very good but sometimes they would do dumb things like jump over a cliff to follow enemies or not do anything when I am in battle. Although when you play as the trickster class your pawns seem to be more aggressive and just keep on the enemy.
Vocations
This is a good chance to talk about the vocations or the class system in Dragons Dogma. There are ten vocations and each of them is unique and diverse. They are Fighter, Archer, Thief, Mage, Sorcerer, Warrior, Mystic Spearhand, Magick Archer, Warfare and Trickster. I will only talk about the vacations I have most time with. I want to start with Trickster because even with every class having different playstyles this one is by far the most unique even compared to other games. Trickster really is a unique class as it can’t do any damage, so they rely on the pawns to do the heavy lifting. The Trickster focuses on tricking the enemies with illusion magic and has spells like conjuring illusionary walls and platforms. You can either trick them to walk off a cliff or deter them from getting near you. Tricksters bread and butter skill is Effigial incense where you conjure a copy of yourself and then use suffocating shroud to get enmity from souring enemies to attack the copy. Which then lets your pawns take advantage and kill the enemies while they are distracted by the copy. Trickster also has the ability to buff your pawns and make them do more damage, it really is unique class and from the sentiments I have seen online you either like it or you don’t.
The vocation I played the most is sorcerer, as in DD 1 I played the assassin vocation I wanted to be a magic class in DD 2. I went from Mage and as soon as I unlocked Sorcerer, I switched over to it playing it to the end of the story. Sorcerer is a really fun class to play as it has some of the flashiest spells in the game and it really feels like you are a powerful force to be reckoned with. Their meister skills, especially the devastating spells Meteoron and Maelstrom, take a while to cast, giving the sense of chanting a powerful spell and when the spell releases it does incredible damage and is a spectacle to see. At the end of the story, you get to the end game area called the unmoored world which you can only access with the special ending. Wanting to play a different class I picked up Archer as I played it to max its vocation and really like the playstyle. The Archer vocation is a really good class fantasy of the Legolas archetype. The bow is so satisfying to use, and the animations of taking your arrows out of our quiver and shooting the bow looks and feels authentic.
Speaking of animations, DD 2 has some of the most realistic looking player movements I have seen. When you are out of combat and when you are in combat the animations feel like this is how an actual human would move. Of course, when you get rag dolled across the screen with a cyclops punch it is hilarious. The combat system in DD 2 is fun to play and really feels each weapon’s uniqueness. Each of the weapon’s abilities act like they belong with that weapon, and I am positive that everyone will find a gameplay style they like. The climbing mechanic has improved and is lot harder to do in my opinion compared to DD 1. I rarely climb monsters in DD 2 but that might be due to playing ranged vocations. The combat is diverse, and the four abilities give you different options to engage in combat. Unlike the story of this game, its gameplay mechanics are fun to interact with.
Story
The story of this game is somewhat disjointed, while the first game had a straightforward and concise plot, DD 2 feels incomplete by comparison. Even though Itsuno-san said they added what was cut during the first game it feels like the story was the last part to be implemented and was rushed to the finish line. At the beginning you do have a cool build up but in the middle and end of the story it becomes a disjointed mess. I think they focused all their attention on the gameplay, the tech, and then made a story because it needed some kind of linear way for your character to progress through the world. The two major stand outs in DD 2 are the gameplay and the world Itsuno-san and his team have made. The reason I have spent so much time in this game is because it is so much fun exploring the world. The only loading screen you will see are when you first load into the game and when or if you fast travel to a protcrystal. If you don’t use the fast travel system after loading to play you will never see a loading screen. That is very impressive considering how beautiful this game is, the game has high fidelity assets and the performance on my PC is good. The only performance slow down I get are in the two major towns. That’s a common situation for everyone PC or console because the NPC simulation iv very CPU dependent and there are a lot of NPC’s walking around in town. I do have a good CPU, a Ryzen 7 5800X3D and I see between 40 and 50 FPS in town. Thankfully that is remedied in the open world where I get 60 to 80 FPS. I have a RTX 3080 10GB, so I do rely on the DLSS quality function to boost my FPS a bit.
Conclusion
Overall the game is really fun and you can become immersed with its combat and beautiful world. It is a unique game, and it is not for everyone because the game forgoes some common gameplay ideas that you mind find in other action RPG’s. The story is not the main focus of this game, and it shows in the quest design. Some quests feel really fetch questy and there are a bunch of them, and of course there are a bunch of fetch quests as well. I enjoyed this game for its beautiful world and fluid combat. I would only recommend this game if you liked Dragon’s Dogma 1, because DD 2 is and feels like a higher fidelity remake. I had fun playing DD 2, but I understand if someone else says they didn’t. This is not for everyone, but I am glad it exists because there is no other game like it.
