Dragon’s Dogma 2 – Game Review

Dragon’s Dogma 2

PS5 review

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the sequel to the 2012 original game and is an open world Role Playing Game, where the player character is a new Arisen who travels across the map to restore their reign as monarch with a climatic showdown with the world ending dragon that stole your heart.

Pro:

Vocations.

The main combat styles from the first game make a return but this time with a lot of shake up to the vocation classes since quite a few don’t return.

The game offers 10 vocations in total with 4 being available at the start of the game with the rest being unlocked through side quests or exploration in the open world.

There is a great variety in the vocations from the usual melee classes to the ranged ones either magical or arrow based.

It is also very easy to switch between the classes at any guild in a village or city for the player character or the main pawn. I would recommend having at least a Mage in your party or as your main pawn to allow for in battle healing as this is useful for the harder bosses in the game.

The classes I mainly used were Fighter, Warrior and then Mystic Spearhand. While the Fighter and Warrior were generic RPG classes the Mystic Spearhand vocation is a lot of fun as a blend of melee and magic while having the combat abilities of Darth Maul.

I would highly recommend players to change up their vocations rather than just use one for the whole game, and to experiment with the range class as Mages have the ability to levitate which is very useful for exploring the open world for bonus rewards.

Voice acting.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 does something which a lot of RPGs don’t and that is to have every line of dialogue fully voiced by voice actors.

This was a welcome surprise when travelling far out into the wilderness and stumbling across several side quests with them all being fully voiced even though 90% of players would never find them in the first.

So it’s a great attention to detail that isn’t a standard across the industry that makes all the side quests feel worth doing.

Boss animations.

The bosses in Dragon’s Dogma 2 are easily the highlight of the game with the opening tutorial boss Medusa looking and interacting with multiple characters at once with her animations.

The later game bosses are big standouts from the moving titan of Talos to the large dragon final boss that are all fully climbable to reach weak spots or to reach higher platforms when jumping off the top of them.

Lighting engine.

While the graphical fidelity is nothing special the lighting in the game is very impressive and extremely realistic.

From the diffused shadows in the majority cities or with light bouncing off the stone surfaces to out in the open world exploring caves and through forests the lighting and shadows look and behave with more realism than many other games on the market.

Con:

Frame rate.

The game aims for a capped 30fps through the use of an option in the menu but the majority of the time the game doesn’t get anywhere near 30fps as the game is rife with slowdown, or when the frame rate is uncapped it would bounce wildly between under 30fps and slightly above it.

This makes all gameplay feel like your character is moving through mud and molasses making combat not feel responsive or fun as you constantly fight the controls rather than the enemies.

Limited romances.

Unlike the first game Dragon’s Dogma 2 only allows the romance of 2 female characters and there is no ability to romance male characters or the second race in the game.

I also personally missed out on the first romance as the quest line broke with the NPC despawning and the dragon attack on Melve.

Melee combat.

During my playthrough I mainly used the melee vocations with Fighter, Warrior and Mystic Spearhand.

While the melee combat was fun at times it also became more frustrating due to the ability of enemies to knock you down from off screen leading to quick player deaths and if the player doesn’t have a Wakestone (Either in-game or buying one in micro transactions) then they are forced to load an older auto save.

Another issue that plagued my time as a melee user was the harpies and wolves that can grab the player character and take away control. I had several times when these creatures would run off a cliff with me and dropped me into the Brine or onto the floor from a big height  instantly killing my character with no ability to fight back.

The signature mechanic of climbing on monsters was also broken for me as the majority of the time when I was climbing on a monster I would clip through them and fall to the ground even though I had plenty of stamina left.

Fast travel.

The major issue that bogged down my play through is the sheer amount of backtracking I had to do for the main story and the side quests.

Due to the lack of permanent Portcrystals in the world as only one capital city and one village has them, it is very reliant on their gather the handful of optional ones in game through side quests that can break or by giving Capcom money with microtransactions with an additional fee for a single Portcrystal.

The second capitol city in the game also doesn’t have a fixed Portcrystal meaning that players either have to rely on using a Port crystal if they have one or giving Capcom extra money for the privilege of fast travelling to the major story location for the 2^nd half of the game.

The game has in-game Oxcarts that the player can ride on to travel from the capitol cities to a border town but they don’t go to enough locations needed for side quests, and besides the player will be attacked 9/10 times when travelling by Oxcart. In my experience with the majority of those times being interrupted by mini bosses that instantly destroy the Oxcart making players walk slowly on foot to their original destination after a slow ambush due to the inflated health bars on every boss.

To make fast travel enough more of a chore the player has to use a Ferrystone to initiate travel to a Portcrystal, and these are very rare and cost 10,000 gold every time if you buy them from a merchant.

The original game had a workaround for this with an infinite use Ferrystone and the ability to easily buy Portcrystals using in-game currency from merchants in new game+ cycles.

Side quest breaking.

The side quests in Dragon’s Dogma 2 are extremely prone to breaking and becoming inaccessible.

By the time I finished my play through I had at least a dozen quests that were unable to be finished, these ranged from NPCs not spawning to whole events not triggering which locked me out of further quests and also advanced vocation skill unlocks.

Open world.

The open world design in Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels mostly barren and very generic with the first half being the typical grassland and mountain zone with an abundance of shallow caves with the same reused enemies and later in the game with reskins leading to little variety.

The second half of the game is better with the variety of more interesting dungeon designs and locations with the Beastren in Battahl, but the story takes a complete nose dive from a political thriller at Vermund in the first half to then giving a guy a sword and crystals then suddenly fighting the final boss as the majority of the main story quests are just in Vermund rather than being spread out evenly over both halves of the map.

One save slot.

A baffling decision is the inability to have multiple save slots so if you want to create a new character it will delete your old save file losing all progress.

Player housing.

All 4 houses just feel like a waste of time and money since the majority of them are further away from the shops and other important locations and are only in the two capital cities instead of every village on the map.

The houses also don’t come with built in Portcrystals making fast travel to them not accessible unless the player uses some of their limited Portcrystals for it.

They also have no extra amenities asides from a bed and a storage chest, all of which can be found in the Inns which are closer to the city centres and all the quests making them more convenient than player housing.

Conclusion:

A game that really feels unfinished and in a lot of way inferior to the original Dragon’s Dogma and it’s rerelease that came out well over 10 years ago, and is more of a chore to finish than play.

I would recommend waiting for a heavy discount or until the game has been patched to finish the game and it’s many performance problems.

Score: 5.3