The new trailer featured a host of creatures, from a dragon roaring over the ruins of a castle to a medusa. It also featured plenty of combat, suggesting that Dragon's Dogma 2 will bear a greater resemblance to the original game than one might expect. It'll be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
The original was simultaneously one of the most interesting and frustrating games I’ve ever played. I’ve gone back to it a few times since and always really enjoyed it…right up until the moment I suddenly didn’t.
I’ll definitely give the new one a look, hoping that it maybe smooths out some of the rough edges and jank.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
Just playing first game. Generally cool, altough I am not sure how to develop my characters. I am buying all augments, core skills, I improve attack which I am using, but still has big amount of "discipline" i don't what to do with.
Yeah, I'm just going to assume that anything coming from a AAA is going to cost $70 moving forward. And you're right - it probably should have been this way for a long time.
The refusal of customers to pay higher prices for games was one of the key drivers of the microtransaction/games-as-service model. Inflation increased the prices of everything, dev teams increased in size, and development across the board started costing significantly more, but we still wanted to pay the same amount for the result. It looks like the jump from $50 to $60 was in 2005. Inflation alone says that we should already be paying $80, and that's not taking into account the costs of larger teams/longer development. The massive profit-first companies make up for that by pushing post-sales spending.
The biggest pain for me isn't the new game price - I can rarely buy new games (I bought three this year - D4, JA3, and BG3, which is the most in one year in a long, long time.) Rather, the problem for me is that sales for games a year or two old have gone from 75% off a few years ago to 20% off. I used to be able to take $30, hit a Steam sale, and have enough AAA titles from the last two or three years to play for a year. Luckily the semi-indie/small studio market has helped make up for that, now that they're past the 'art project' era of indie design. Many of them have got the quality of AAA games, but without the designed-by-marketing, must-fit-the-formula development approach.
I'm seriously hyped for this one for some reason. The original game has some really fun ideas, and I loved the pawn system, although I'd wish they would allow you to auto-level them. I never got into the expansion though as the difficulty spike was pretty steep.
Capcom released the incredibly intricate character creator for Dragon's Dogma 2 early and, naturally, players are already creating some wonderful and horrific things.
Players can download the character creator now before jumping straight into the action on March 22 when Dragon's Dogma 2 launches proper. It allows the creation of the player character and the first of many pawns, which are the devoted followers of the player and the main mechanic of Dragon's Dogma 2.
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Most of the reviews seem to indicate that it's mostly MOTS but bigger, which keeps me firmly on the fence about starting it right away and at full price. The original was a game I liked but didn't love, and this seems to follow that exact same path.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
I watched a video which said only one save slot (with some kind of go back to last inn sleep thing). Also food requirement, item degradation and fatigue. I was on the fence but those things plus the price have knocked me right off.
Jaymann wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2024 2:38 pm
Also food requirement, item degradation and fatigue.
Those weren't in the original Dragon's Dogma, at least not in any way that felt like an obstacle. Food would spoil after a time, but there was no requirement to eat food - they were just ingredients for potions. Regular items didn't degrade. And the only fatigue was from exhausting your stamina bar, which was an important aspect of combat.
Skinypupy wrote: ↑Thu Mar 21, 2024 3:12 pm
One reviewer referred to it as "janky Elden Ring".
From my 1st few hours I find this accurate. It feels like it needs another 2-3 months in the oven. The main city performance is just utterly dreadful and there's a decent amount of AI jank. It's a great game, but if you are on the fence I'd say wait it out a month or so for a few patches.
Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.
How bad is the microtransaction? So the game doesn't have fast travel except if you pay extra real money to get it? Also pay real money to get item to hire other players?
Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 6:09 am
How bad is the microtransaction? So the game doesn't have fast travel except if you pay extra real money to get it? Also pay real money to get item to hire other players?
All MTX can be earned in game as well, same as all other Capcom recent releases, I dont like it but it's not liek teh rest fo their games don't do the same thing.
Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 6:09 am
How bad is the microtransaction? So the game doesn't have fast travel except if you pay extra real money to get it? Also pay real money to get item to hire other players?
This article says they're mostly "pay for convenience". Still, feels like a weird decision in a game like this.
I should be finishing FF VII Rebirth this weekend, and am trying to decide if I want to play this or Unicorn Overlord next. Leaning towards giving DD2 a shot, knowing that it's going to be janky and weird. Mainly because in the original DD, if you miss out on the initial rush of players you are less likely to have other players hiring your pawn, which would put you at a disadvantage. I remember one of my pawns getting hired and used (from what I could tell) exclusively by another player. She was sent back with a metric shit-ton of RC and items that carried me through a large part of the start of the game. My second time through, my pawn never got hired and it was way more of a struggle.
Might be worth jumping in early for a better chance at pawn utilization.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 12:34 pm
They've released a character creator utility ahead of the launch later this month. It's available as a free download on Steam.
Capcom released the incredibly intricate character creator for Dragon's Dogma 2 early and, naturally, players are already creating some wonderful and horrific things.
Players can download the character creator now before jumping straight into the action on March 22 when Dragon's Dogma 2 launches proper. It allows the creation of the player character and the first of many pawns, which are the devoted followers of the player and the main mechanic of Dragon's Dogma 2.
Jaymann wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 10:51 am
Can you re-roll your stats?
I don't think there are any stats in it. It seems to be solely for designing the appearance of player characters and pawns, which can then be loaded into the game.
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
Jaymann wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 10:51 am
Can you re-roll your stats?
I don't think there are any stats in it. It seems to be solely for designing the appearance of player characters and pawns, which can then be loaded into the game.
The Good
A beautiful open world that's full of surprises and ripe for exploration
Full of emergent moments that create a thrilling sense of adventure
Vocations are incredibly varied and combat is impactful and satisfying
Pawns are genuinely helpful in and outside of combat, contributing to a feeling of teamwork and seamless exploration
The Bad
Optimization is poor on PC
The camera is unwieldy at times
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Max Peck wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:03 am
The Steam reviews are not being kind. Who knew that PC gamers hate microtransactions and Denuvo in equal parts?
A couple of good ones:
Don't buy it and stay far far away from this mess. Capcom being Capcom again and making games infinitely worse than they have to be with overly agressive microstransactions and bullshittery. And just to make things worse, make sure it has grand helping of awful performance issues.
Tutorial for new players:
1 - Refund the game immediately
2 - Never buy another Capcom game
3 - If you spent time on the character creator ahead of release, bill Capcom for the time they made you waste
4 - Get back on every youtube review you watched that released prior to launch and dislike it - need to get the content creators to not release reviews ahead of time for games like these!
5 - Use your refunded money to buy the new Horizon game that just came out - full game, one price, good performance!
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:59 am
And Dragon's Dogma 2 cost almost 20% more than Horizon Forbidden West for me. Is it the same in USD or they're the same price?
$69 for DD2 and $59 for Horizon.
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
Victoria Raverna wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 11:59 am
And Dragon's Dogma 2 cost almost 20% more than Horizon Forbidden West for me. Is it the same in USD or they're the same price?
I don't know about US prices, but here in Canada DD2 is $95 while HFW is $80.
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
The performance in the city is bad enough that I think I'm going to wait for a patch. It's just dreadfully choppy in the city and it kills any immersion I have. Bummer, but I'm just not going to fully enjoy it in it's current state. The odd thing is that the framerate isn't totally in the tank it's still around the 60s, but it's all jittery. It's bizarre.
Capitalism tries for a delicate balance: It attempts to work things out so that everyone gets just enough stuff to keep them from getting violent and trying to take other people’s stuff.
As I understand it there's something going on with NPCs that is CPU-limited, so I guess it makes sense that it can happen despite still having reasonably good frame rates if the problem doesn't actually involve the GPU.
Some more on the marketing own goal that is Capcom's microtransaction policy:
Dragon's Dogma 2 has finally arrived, and the reception has been… less than favourable. On Steam it now boasts more than 13,000 user reviews, and the majority of them are negative. Only 39% of players leaving reviews have given it a positive rating. It's not off to a good start.
This "Mostly Negative" rating is down to a couple of things, the most dominant being the presence of microtransactions. As Harvey noted earlier today, the microtransactions are very silly, but they are largely for things that you can acquire very easily with hardly any work. They are entirely unnecessary. This, of course, makes them even more sus, because their existence tricks players into thinking they have to spend money to acquire more rift crystals or the ability to change their appearance, which is nonsense.
The optics are bad, and players are understandably pissed. While I think some of the furore is overblown, and we've been living with microtransactions for a long time, Capcom has done the RPG no favours. This is not a cheap game, and giving players a long list of extra charges for stupid things like camping gear and wakestones (all easily found in-game) was obviously going to piss them off. Dragon's Dogma 2 and its players deserve better.
Another issue players are disappointed with is the poor optimisation, which we noted in our Dragon's Dogma 2 review and the accompanying performance analysis. Capcom itself has acknowledged the issues with CPU load, but there's no word on how long we'll need to wait to see some improvement.
"What? What?What?" -- The 14th Doctor
It's not enough to be a good player... you also have to play well. -- Siegbert Tarrasch
I can understand the bad performance as there are a lot of physics calculations in this game, if the first one is anything to go by. The fighting in the first one relied heavily on physics. That doesn't stop the fact that it's highly disappointing to see it performing so badly when the price is already very high. And of course, Capcom is gonna Capcom with those microtransactions.
I went ahead and grabbed it, against my better judgement.
Weird thing right off the bat, curious if it’s everyone or just me. The title slate just says “Dragon’s Dogma” and not “Dragon’s Dogma II”. Also some jankiness right away in the character creator. Previewing the different voice presets doesn’t work. It just replays whatever the original selection was. Frame rate is very inconsistent already, which is odd as it doesn’t really look that much different than the original.
So far, so…janky as expected.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.