To answer most of your why's and I think deep down you know.... it's simply money. Capcom hyped it and later rush it despite them having so much time to work on it but it's money or not wanting to spend so much money why game is a bit disappointing. I have 180 hrs in and agree with almost everything you said.
@@purgatoriprytania5382you know you can do cock and ball torture on yourself right? You don’t need to wait for someone else to curate the experience. Edit: realized that sounded hostile. Just jokes. I do mean it in the sense you can make the game harder yourself. Not an ideal solution, I also want hard mode. But the balancing isn’t that bad. It’s no worse than many fromsoft games. Or even DD1. BBI was hard for sure, but that was dlc that also got crushed by fully geared builds. I really enjoyed DD2. Despite its issues.
I had a pretty good time with the game for my first 15 hours. I mainly explored around and fought various big guys. Meaning, I hadn't visited a town in a long time. When I died, I, for whatever reason, maybe due to stick drift that I have, it clicked down to "Load from last inn rest" and I lost maybe 12 hours of progress. Since that happened I haven't picked the game up, completely killed the experience for me.
The game needs a Hard Mode. Hard mode in DD1 made adventuring a dangerous experience that you had to prepare for. You're in one shot territory until level 40 or so. DD2 gets easier too quickly, so venturing out seems more tedious than dangerous.
You said you were confused that your Gaol Key was not used up during that one quest. That is because Brant gives you a "Gaol Key" for this quest, not a "Makeshift Gaol Key". It is infinite use for all jail cells everywhere. At the end of the quest you are required to return the regular "Gaol Key", but you can make a forgery of it if you desire your own infinite Get out of Jail-Card. I have multiple of these in my storage.
SuperRADLemon: "People are dishonestly complaining and criticizing the ethics of this" *shows The Quartering comments* Where there's dishonest grifting, there's The Quartering.
Done now, with the one thing I wanna chime in on being that my overarching theory is that the Great Will's cycle is designed to kill Rothais more than anything else. If left alone we would have just gone through our coronation, fought the Dragon and at some point be sent into the Shrine to become Seneschal. A weirdly easy path for one who's supposed to be strong of will, unless all you're trying to do is unseat a rebel and restore the status quo. For all that, I choose to believe that whatever weak characters or dropped plotlines persist in the main story are literally intentional shortcomings of the Pathfinder scrambling to get an amnesiac Arisen back on track. It doesn't care about the quality of the False Sovran conspiracy because it's end goal is to make you WANT to usurp Rothais. If anything, the story is genuinely pretty solid until you meet Rothais early. From there, the Pathfinder just hands you directions and intervenes constantly trying to get you crowned so it's original plan can play out. Heck, thinking through it right now I was wondering why it willingly sends you back during the Fake Ending until I realized it's trying to stop you from turning out like Rothais. It feels your skepticism when you seek it out and puts you on the path to unmooring the world to try and STOP you from becoming another rebellious Seneschal, either by killing you or convincing you to play along. The one eventuality it didn't seem prepared for was you successfully killing it instead. I still wonder where New Game+ fits into the world being outside the cycle and safe from oblivion but there's an expansion coming and while DD2 is FANTASTIC art, it's not so avant garde to delete itself from your system on completion XD
No sir, I have not played a Dragons Dogma game before. Yes sir, I will be spending the next 3+ hours of my life listening to you talk about Dragons Dogma 💀❤️
FYI regarding the Dragonsplague: forgeries of the Eternal Wakestone are functionally just copies of it and work just the same. Before using it you can make a copy of it in case you'll need one again.
Funnily enough, I always considered the Brine a “friendly” force in DD1. If my Warrior in full plate ever got dropped to a watery grave, those nice Eldritch tentacles safely and conveniently deposited me back on shore. How kind.
Pawns can also learn shortcut routes from players who explore maps without always following the road all the time. Pawns with max boss monster medal will deal tremendous damage and can even solo a boss with ease. A pawn with max medal on certain bosses will also share you their experience traversing other worls wherein they would say that they carried the other arisen on their journey.
Problem is that there are two dungeons/locations with unique creature, 99% of the other locations don’t have anything. You don’t even get good loot as a reward most of the time. If you’re the type that like to explore everything and don’t go early into late game area than you rapidly end up seeing everything the game has to offer minus 2 bosses. So yes it doesn’t feel like there is something new to discover around every corner, it feel like there are two or tree things to discover for the whole game and 99% of the map is filler. It still work cause the combat is strong not cause of the discovery, at least in the way I have played the game (it took me 60hours of exploring vermund to find the first truly unique encounter)
This. Most of the exploration felt completely pointless. And I feel like that part of the review was kinda biased in the video. These "rare" items most of the time are useless. Combat is cool but it also feels weirdly tedious. Like 20 hours I was trying to avoid the fights because they felt monotonous honestly
I mean, It sure has repetitive dungeons, but 99% of the map isn't filler lol. If you do every NPC quest, you will learn that there's a lot of keypoints in the map where some of those quests are related to. Like, the Dullahan quest with Gregor in Misty Marshs. Also, there's at least 10-15 dungeons with "farmpoint-creatures". Lichs, Skeleton Lord, Medusa, Serpent (Lightning Scale), are some that I can think of. You will only find those inside dungeons. Also, there's 2 or 3 "abyssal dungeon caves" in the post-game world where you can find a bit more of "non-usual creatures".
In regards to the Sphinx Quest that asks you to bring the person who loves you most, you can just put a pawn on the pedestal. Idk if that's the case if you actually gift things to npcs but I used a pawn I had just summoned and it worked. Also if you're not able to find the token within 7 days you just fail that riddle and can't open its chest. She'll fly to the next location and you can continue doing riddles.
There has been a lot of talk around this game, and I really appreciate your strong worded opinion on the matter as i found myself resonating with a lot of your points. DD was an old favorite of mine and I really want this series to embrace it's potential.
The section about the vocations hits hard. I miss OG Magick Archer and, in general, the dual bow/dagger classes: the way they move, the options, the way they walk and double jump. I am already super powerful, really really soon, so why did we lose so much :( This game is such a perfect mixed feelings experience in almost every aspect.
I have the answer for the Talos quest AND the same exact issue happened with me as well... Firstly, if you placed a Port Crystal at the Volcano island waaay BEFORE the Talos quest line started, you simply cannot teleport there. That's it. Secondly, INN SAVE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE once you have entered Battahl legitimately. I wont spoil much BUT if you want to go into this game completely blind as I did, that is fine but trust me. You will WANT to know this bit of information at the very least. You can EASILY miss the Talos quest by a mistake. I unfortunately did this on my first playthrough. I had NO idea a creature such as him was even in the game, nor did I know his purpose OR even where he spawned at! The game doesn't tell you AT ALL. You just have to assume he is somewhere relatively close enough to be able to spot him by sight BUT it doesn't matter, because if you arent on the EXACT path you are supposed to be on, it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to catch up in time to properly do the things you supposed to in other to save him and Talos will fall into the lava and die. This deletes his involvement in the end game..
Correction for the unmoored world on the elves not leaving unless you save the tree, you can get them to leave. You just need to talk to the leader with a pawn that can speak elvish 3 days in a row then they'll leave due to your persistence.
If you have high affinity it becomes much easier to convince him, I spoke to him once and he adamantly refused to leave, spoke to him immediately after and he gave up lol
SuperRad's pacing when criticizing each element of the game, pointing out flaws without sounding hateful and praising them while not sounding a paid fanboy is the sole-reason I will never miss this kind of video... Another banger review, Thanks for the content man.
The argument of save scumming for not having multiple save files doesn't make sense. What would you save scum that wouldn't be different than what you would do in new game plus? You're going to be doing the same thing doing new game plus as would be doing having separate save with a different character. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
the talos pawn thing is part of a plan from androsious, make sure you always check the quest text as it has further context on every quest and exposes some missing info such as that, which shows more painfully how there is a bunch of cut content that didnt make it to release 😔
Agreed on your takes about the micro transactions and how ppl exaggerated and made up blatant lies. I remember seeing those "criticisms" and negative comments and I skipped out on playing the game for the first few months it came out. Randomly bought the game a couple weeks ago and I absolutely love it and hate how I almost missed out. It sucks cause there's probably people out there like me but just never tried the game.
Micros aside, performance aside, I have 130 hours in the game, played all vocations except Trickster, other than testing it; that thing is a meme. I heard somewhere: "DD2 is a flawed masterpiece" and I totally agree. The true and biggest problem with the game is that it is too easy. Magic Archer and Sorcs literally one-shot all and every single boss, including endgame bosses. NG+ does not level scale, and it has no new or stronger monsters. Overall, I think later bosses need more complex mechanics. - Combat is S tier. Some vocations are slow and will feel really bad at the beginning but will pick up after level 6 (early levels go super fast, level 5 goes in no time). Some "Core skills" tool tips are garbage. I spent the whole game without knowing how to make the charge attack for the bow because the game never told me to press randomly R3 to start the charge, like, what the heck. - Traveling in the game is great; the limited fast travel in the game is fine. Going around fighting stuff is the game, and it's great. The problems are monster density; you can't walk more than 10 meters without an ambush, and holy crap, is it goblins, bandits, or lizards. There should be more monster variety. - The game needs a way to not gain XP or lower your level. You over level and power creep yourself by just playing the game; you literally get punished by exploring. You get to a point where you one-shot everything. A good thing about this is that gear doesn't matter at all, so you can just focus on fashion and the best-looking sets, which I have spent a lot of time with. The game is pretty. You should be able to forge/dup armor to make it usable for all vocations, remove the stats or whatever, not that there is anything unique about armors in the game anyway. (Gear should have stats like you find in rings) - There should be a way to make an instance of your pawn, lock it at a lower level, and to a vocation. Like this, there can be like 6 instances of my pawn for every vocation so people can choose what they need. Because I can't stop getting XP, I'm almost level 80, and for my friend, it is not worth it to pay a thousand RC to hire my pawn... I feel level 40 is the sweet spot for the game; over that is just power creep. - Coming from BG3... romance is a joke, not that it matters, but it could have mattered more. - I played only like 10 hours of DD1, but I know the lore and the universe. Holy crap, if you are new, there is absolutely no way for you to know what's going on. There should have been more connection and Easter eggs with DD1. SPOILER: - The dragon plague is an amazing idea executed in the absolute worst way. Such a missed opportunity to make a really involved and cool side quest where you don't have your pawn and you play solo with no pawns for a while. They really wanted to make Dragon Plague something important for the story, especially considering the final cinematic where your pawn turns into a black dragon and helps you. Why this dragon is not a fight. This should have been the way to dump a ton of lore and make the story interesting. - The endgame world is so damn cool. I agree that the world gets "ugly," but all the new paths you now have because there is no water are super cool (should have more dungeons in those areas though). The constant "harder" monsters were great. I was fighting a dragon, and a griffin, and a chimera ambushed me; the MH experience, and it was a great moment. That said... You are rushed in this world; I don't have a problem with it, but the game should have told me, and the quest log should have had the hourglass icon on it. I was taking my time exploring and gathering materials to max-enhance my gear. Boom, a city gets destroyed, and I was planning on getting enhancements from it. You can reset the world save by killing yourself again with the sword, but it was 8 hours of progress gone...
Agree! Tho Coming from DD1, I do partially not care about story and romance that much. I just like the gameplay and exploration. When I was young, I played a lot of Ragnarok Online. And I always wished some modern game with action combat can give me the same feeling. And DD1 did that. DD2 kinda disappointed me a little. The whole excitement I had was having 6 skills. Not many game do that and now they do the same as other games are doing. 4 skills…but that’s ok. I think main issue is lack of end game content or rewards when our level is high. Unmoored world is not an end game content since you have limited time in that world, and many bosses are not repeatable. Many monsters will eventually be weak when we level up. I’m ok if monsters are easy. That’s kinda a point of a game with leveling system. We will eventually be stronger than monsters. But what other games do right. What I like about RPG like Ragnarok. Monsters are weak so we can farm there material to do a better gears. There are items that drop by chance. You have to keep fighting them. I wouldn’t say RO was good because drop rates are absurdly low for good items. But it’s something to do and it’s ok to feel OP. Then there are pvp system or a boss that we need a better gears. DD2 doesn’t have rewards in going in to weird caves or farming monsters. It’s like there is no point in fighting or exploring. Honestly, if they will just add Ur-Dragon. Just that one thing. The end game will feel a lot better.
@@da_001 nope sadly. I mean the game is still worth playing. I bought at a full price but if you want to wait for sale I would highly recommend. But it could have been better
How are you one shotting bosses with sorcerer? I’ve never seen this before. Magic archer I’ve seen… my thoughts on that skill, or any of the powerful skills, is it’s your own fault if you use them then call the game too easy.
People who try to justify any form of micro transactions will never make sense to me. The idiom “Give an inch & they’ll take a mile” has happened countless times to so many games & franchises over the past decade. It’s like people who are eating literal feces trying tell everyone that theirs still corn in it.
I enjoyed my time with DD2; its amazing fun. But it also made me go back to DD1 again; which solidified that its just not as good of an overall package. I'm cautiously optimistic for any DLC they have planned; but until then, I got DD1 to hold me over.
As someone who played only Archer(only leveling other Vocations for their passives) the entire playthrough, Archer doesnt suck, it's just that its damage isnt frontloaded immediately in one skill. Drenching Shot+Explosive Shot causes you do to massive upfront damage on top of damage over time from setting an enemy on fire, or you can drench an enemy in water and let a mage cast an Ice skill, freezing something solid. They pushed the class hard into be the "debilitation" class, it relies ALOT on causing status effects to do decent damage. Also the Sphinx trick does work, in fact that is her final riddle, and she praises you if you do so, as long as you dont hit any human parts of her, it will count and she will say "hell yea bro that was fun" and drop the key. The Unmanking Arrow is given to you just in case you cant(dont dont feel like) figuring it out Otherwise, top tier goddamn video as per usual from the goat himself.(Also I had your special pawn my whole playthrough lmao)
All of archers damage is in one skill though, you can kill a full health Gore Chimera with just 3 blast arrows. Why would I even bother using anything else if it can do that?
@@earthbound_one Because blast arrows aren’t the end all be all solution to everything, you only used a chimera as an example, I am talking general purpose. If that’s your only argument, then well I have nothing more to add cause you’re missing the entire point of what I’m saying and the vocation.
@@earthbound_oneBalance problem, don’t use the explosive arrow and you still have high damage potential with manually aimed headshot+ all the skill Also you can press L2 or L1 to overcharge a shot
@@ni9274 thank you, I am tired of people saying archer is bad and then immediately admitting they only use explosive arrow. Like no shit it’s gonna seem bad when you ignore 90% of its kit
Late to this because I wanted to actually finish the game first lol but man you hit it on the fucking head how annoying the disinfo about this game was. I had to repeatedly explain to friends that no, the game is not pay to win in single player. No the micro transactions do not break it. Yes, this is just the normal dumb bullshit capcom puts in their games that you don’t even know about because you just ignore them like everyone else on the planet because they’re so stupid and innocuous.
Something that's wild is that I've been anticipating this video ever since I finished my playthrough of DD2, but I never realized you actually posted it until today, I didn't see it on here or Twitter 😢
Okay so actually the more I get through the video the more I see you did point out some of my gripes. Just the whole the story is great part took me for a loop. So I agree with a lot of your points, but I also think as a sequel it should have build on it's predecessor. And honestly that's what disappointed me the most about dragons dogma 2. Feels like the game got dumb down for it to be more appealing to a general public. The combat is still great, the graphics are clearly improved but we lost 2 vocations, we barely gained any new enemies, and we basically got the same story. Also just to point out good lore doesn't equate a good story. The worst part for me personally as someone who played the game 100% blind until I beat it, it's sad to see that some of the new bosses are locked behind some ridiculous secret ending. You could argue that maybe if I had paid more attention that maybe I would have figured out the secret ending but the story lost me half way through. I would point out what happened but I don't want to spoil the lackluster plot twist for anyone that cares. Great video by the way, I am glad you thought it was the best game of the year. I wish I did too.
That's why gatekeeping is okay. Gaming going mainstream means more brain dead npcs that want a interactive movie are starting to play games and are complaining when they actually have to play it
@@rushpatriot2866 I would disagree, that's solely up to the dev team and publisher. If they wanted to make a more complicated game they could have, but they chose mass appeal. Gaming has been mainstream for a while and we have still gotten some good games that appeal to returning and new players alike.
I just so happened to be beginning an NG+ playthrough as I started watching this, and hadn't discovered any seeker's tokens yet. So I went to the Sphinx and heard the riddle of rumination. She goes through the same spiel and then sees that you're confused, she then says that when you find a seeker's token, you'll find something along with it. Lo and behold, I found a seeker's token not far from her and found a finder's token along with it. The developers really mapped almost everything out and accounted for it.
I will not accept trickster slander. It's like the mpst fun vocation. If you just run a party with 3 high dps pawns amd let them shred stuff while you mess with the enemies It's super fun. Plus using tricky terrace to make enemies trip, picking them up, and throwing them at eachother is always fun.
@@SolidSnake24010,000 for a means of fast traveling is mad and even if u max out affinity with a vendor it’s 9500, yes u can find ferrystones in the world and yea u can kinda farm them but it’s so tedious
It was such a pleasure to watch this video! Thank you, took me a few days, by I am here at the end. Despite playing and being familiar with DD1 lore, I was hella confused about the story in DD2. With your review, I understand some things very clearly, and the story doesn't seem to be as cut as I thought. My biggest gripe, and the thing that in the end made me feel disappointed in DD2, was Vocations, I love combat more than anything else, and class systems are very important to me. I'm very saddened, by Itsuon's decisions when it comes to vocations, the first issue from the start was seemingly bait by introducing FOUR new colours to vocation systems, followed up with some strange decisions, like locking vocation via quest, which Magicka Archer suffer the most from, or Mystic Spear Hand being Red/Blue vocation, despite being super mobile, and even from videos about this vocation, it is high DPS low defence Vocation, so where is the Red part in it? It feels like Green/Blue than anything. Then what is the point of splitting Strider to Thief and Archer, Thief is just as broken as Daggers Strider. And finishing with gutting Light/Darkness affinity, and removing additional skills from vocation, I'll truly gonna miss Brontide and killing enemies with my electric whip. Hopefully, DLC will fix some of that issue, because this aspect of the game hit the most.
played DD1 to 100% im not touching DD2 until it gets a dlc and a fix that is per customary for action rpgs. too many things they took out of DD2 that was in DD1. and the story was horrendous.
You can give a your pawn the aphonite specialization to make them speak only when spoken to. Raise affinity with the lost brother Liam in melve to get the scroll. Added bonus, if your pawn starts talking despite having aphonite, they have contracted the rift aids.
I stopped playing this game about a month after purchase and recently looked back at my playtimes not even realizing i put 110+ hours into it. It was truly a breath of fresh air and I think I'll continue my NG+. What a great game, and great work RAD, love the long content format.
You can actually save the elves without doing the tree quest. I accidentally locked myself out when I moved into the final world state. You just talk to the elder over and over after three days “I think” he relents and comes to the safe haven.
Only 20 minutes in but MY GOD is it nice finally hearing from someone who actually understands Dragon's Dogma. The only voices with any volume so far have been people who just don't 'get it' or people who think they do and play nice with the same criticisms.
I've really been looking forward to hearing your opinion on this game. I've been chewing on this over the past few days and just finished. I share a lot of similar opinions, but your take on the class balance was the most refreshing out of all the reviews I've seen. It's given me some clarity on how to describe my enjoyment and gripes with it. Well done overall. I am still awaiting the return of Mr. Balsac. I can only hope for it in a DLC.
So at the hour and 18 minute mark there are actually 4 ways, your main pawn counts as an answer to that riddle just so everyone knows. The phial is best saved for the pot riddle later on due to the pot being hyper fragile, just go to the quest marker without the pot and put the man inside the phial bring the phial back open it up next to the pot and your good
In my NG+ playthrough I turned off all HUD and have been rigidly sticking to the fighter class and having an absolute blast. I recently switched to archer (was my very first class that I maxed out) and am enjoying it as if it's fresh. These classes demand an understanding of the enemies' motions from the player and make the combat unbelievably engaging. I highly recommend playing this game, especially NG+, with the HUD off. The game still gives you hints that you're low on stamina and health, the lack of minimap demands your attention stays on the landscape, and the fact that it's NG+ means you don't have to be spending all your gold on armors and weapons and can instead engage with the item shops in full. Don't be a miser, the money's useless if you don't spend it! This game definitely should have a hard mode that rebalances things. I would love to see no maps in caves until you buy them from a local vendor (and perhaps make the caves procedurally generated and very deep so players genuinely have to reload saves if they are ill prepared for caving and get lost. Perhaps they could also giver armor and weapons a different currency so players are more incentived to purchase consumables/materials rather than saving for better armor/weapons. I like the story and dialogue and how much the scripted scenes feel like a Shakespearean play. It adds to the whimsical fairytale feel that this game bathes in. Voice acting and writing ought to have been much better though. The postgame was fantastic, I cannot think of another time where the whole world changed in nature for an open world game, only ever saw that with metroidvanias. The limited long rests was such a lovely feature and I would absolutely love a game which was even more strict with that. This game is basically my dream game, it's lacking in every regard except combat, but the ideas are all there and presented in a way that shows the devs could and would expand them if they only had the time/budget. I cannot wait for a mod to overhaul this game's balancing to make it more grueling, or even just Dragons Dogma 3 in a decade. I think the fact that pawns' cold dialogue and simple learning are diagetically explained with them having lesser will than NPCs leaves a great opening for pawns to be powered by machine learning in a future Dragons Dogma title. The Rift magic being a in-world way of explaining online features is also awesome and leaves a lot of room for expansion if the online capabilities ever expand. For example, this game has a feature in which certain berries are nearly nonexistent on each playthrough. It's randomly assigned. So for example, I have strawberries and grapes galore in my world. Other people have blueberries, I've personally never seen them. The rare berry in your playthrough is worth 10x the price of the common berries. This is a great way of persuading players to trade berries as a currency/gift between each other, and since the berries rot, the currency never inflates in value.
Good video, but MASIVE disagree with the game having a good reward system, specially the sphynx. The treasure she provide are trash, just as most sidequests and exploration. All good loot is behind vendors, which is a shame since it doesn’t promote exploration.
My anecdotal evidence is the opposite, I've had multiple friends with average PCs who had to refund, they couldn't get it to run smoothly on lowest possible settings (whilst they normally run games on high). This was around release though, so maybe that's changed.
Exploration in this game lived up to developer hype for me. It became a serious problem whenever I was doing quests because I'd genuinely start out delivering a message but then I saw a group of enemies I wanted to fight but next to that group of enemies was a dungeon then that dungeon led out to a new area with a boss battle etc. I'd completely forget what I was even doing in the first place just to see the cool stuff around me. I loved it a lot Only things I'm truly salty about are pawn commands and the mystic knight. When you hold L1 I wish that the pawn commands on the d pad would then correspond to the skills that you assigned to your pawn as well. Would have loved on command elemental buffs/springboards. And this last one is my own personal bias because I absolutely loved spamming full moon slash/great cannon and I'm sad that I couldn't do that with upgraded graphics.
10 minutes in and looking forward to watching this whole thing, but 2 things I immediately cock my head over is the performance question and the "need" for a single save slot. I think most people are complaining about the performance in cities, where npcs materialize 2 feet in front of you (or after you bump into empty space and then they suddenly phase in) while frametimes are all over the place giving a feeling of microstutters and uneasiness. And then this is blamed on everyone having complex AI while the actual AI is just so basic. I really look forward to improvements in this area, because using mods to force the games to render everyone at distance makes the cities look so much better. For saves, I don't follow. What is the problem with multiple save slots so you can play some totally different characters? It's a role playing game, and I want to roleplay different arisen. And it isn't a limitation of the pawn system. Make a new character... you can still hire your old pawn! They are still there in limbo. I just don't know why there couldn't be a few save slots to allow different characters... each slot could still maintain the current save paradigm (one ongoing save per character). OK, back to the video for me, over 3 hours of dd2 review is fantastic! (Edit: god I really want a ring that would zero out xp gain. And maybe one to zero out dcp gain.)
@@thats4thebirdsBecause it’s not an issue at all. It’s ingrained in the lore with the first game on why there is one save slot. Is it dumb? Sure but it’s really not as big of a deal as people make it out to be which they surely are if you look online.
You can in fact rescue the elves without even discovering them before fighting the dragon. I didnt know the elves had a settlement until endgame and instead of planting a new tree sprout you just talk with their leader, he says no to relocating 3 times before just going "fine if we go will you stop bothering me?" Lmao
Thanks for mentioning that DD1 adds context to 2's story, it really is surprising how much is glossed over without it to a degree that it could affect your overall feelings on the story. Warfarer is a tough one, as far as balance goes I don't think they could do much to fix that without making it the de facto class once you get it... and it kinda already is even with the limitations, though I do like your suggestion that weapon abilities could auto swap to the appropriate weapon. One strat that I think is overlooked is to just go with one weapon, but one of each element (and a staff for levitate if you want) if your fine with letting go of the meister skill, you essential just have a better version of whatever class you want.
after 300 hrs, I can say it is a great game. but I completely agree that A LOT of it feels like a downgrade to the original. the end especially feels very rushed, as it is basically a cutscene with minimal player interaction.. compared to the first game, that was completely up to the player's inputs. the dragon fight is a complete joke compared to the first game, which almost made me give up on the game on my first playthrough.
Few things I want to add on as I'm watching this: the blighted dragons are called "lesser dragons" which makes sense when tied to the events at Moonglint Tower 2:17:30 - about here you mention that in English there is no indication that Rothais was a Seneschal until the endgame but actually just before the shrine rises the Rivage Elder talks about how someone who was supposed to act as a god for the world wasn't satisfied with that and came down to found a kingdom which is pretty blatantly stating that Rothais was a Seneschal 2:51:30 - you mention that Rothais calls all previous Arisen to the shrine, he actually calls them and some of the Maisters there whether you interacted with them or not, the Warfarer doesn't come because he doesn't want to listen to anyone else's orders and just chill at the hot spring being drunk, the Magick Archer doesn't come because she just wants to stay with her husband both of which are explored with the Volcanic Island Camp evacuation quest A bit of my own analysis: Whether intended or not I feel like the "endless cycle" and the true ending works as a metaphor for replaying games. I don't think you're supposed to talk to the Pathfinder and complete the true ending on your first time killing the dragon, or at least the potential metaphor is much stronger if that is the case. The world presented within the game will always have a dragon threatening it and an Arisen coming to slay the dragon as long as players start a new playthrough, every character a player encounters has some level of script they're expected to perform in service of the story. After seeing the story multiple times as a player you can't help but want for more or some different more concrete ending and that is what I think the True Ending represents. At the pivotal moment of the story you defy the trappings of how you'd expect a standard fantasy rpg and demand something different of the game by taking your own life instead of fighting the final boss, in response the Pathfinder gives you what you wanted, a version of the world not following the neatly laid out story of rising up to face the dragon but instead one that has no purpose with characters that have have no reason to exist so are being expunged from the world. But still in defiance of this alternate world you go and save the npcs that have nothing more to offer you and halt the destruction anyways and in response the Pathfinder, the one who has laid out the game for you up until this point, manifests himself in the world to settle things while intentionally denying you the catharsis of a new climactic fight while looking like the dragon as if saying "you weren't satisfied with the dragon fight offered to you so I'm not even gonna give you any fight here". In that interpretation I think the game is quite great, but a bit poorly executed since I'm pretty sure most players will experience the True Ending on their first playthrough likely by having simply looked up how to do it.
I understand where you are coming from but the more I play the game the more I love the vocations. It took a a lot of game play to really start to like each vocation. I feel like the lack of spells compared to how each spell works made sorcerer feel absolutely amazing to play. Augral flare is an amazingly fun mechanic. OP when used right but that is the fun of the game. Maelstrom being physical so sorcerer went from useless against golems to the king of golem slaying and meteron being able to focus a single target instead of one hit then random locations really makes the class feel highly improved. I miss spells like high miasma but high hagol is similar in slow steady damage and with freeze it adds insane cc. I am just over level 150 now and my next play through is full trickster. My guess is trickster hasn’t been explored enough by a lot of people to really connect with its vision. We will see if I am wrong on that or not. I personally love the monster density. It feels much better overall than dd1 imo. Dd1 just spread it out into pregame and ever fall post game. I wish dd2 launched with dd1 and dark arisen level of content combined. However base dd2 is miles ahead of base dd1 imo.
Performance update: they still haven't fixed the awful CPU issues and DLSS is still useless. Decreasing graphics has almost no effect on performance since it's CPU related not GPU. There's no excuse for not being able to maintain 60 fps in a town that only has a few NPCs
1:55:00 in my experience of the beggar quest, he didn't go to his wife in the slums, and instead went only to his rich wife, so I had the same problem you did with the "wait why are there 2 people I can tell" question, except in my playthrough I had only seen the rich wife. That's a weird thing about this quest, and imo speaks to a problem with a few quests: lack of polish. The biggest example for me would be "tolled to rest". I'm on ng+2 now and have done the quest twice, but had to resurrect Oskar both times to do it because he died before I reached him. Turns out he starts being attacked when you're a fairly long distance from him. If you fight the unrelated enemies on the way, he WILL die. This led to this quest being left blank, though listed in my quest list, on my first run. I had no idea where the NPC was because he died ages ago.
Simply put, most open world and/or rpgs focus on the end goal, while Dragon's Dogma focuses on the journey to reach said goal. That's it, that's the main difference that divides the target audiences of two different game philosophies on game design. That said, DD2 to me felt as if every single side quest was as engaging as the Griffin chase towards Bluemoon Tower in the original game: it was a standout from the vanilla experience and Capcom managed to create a newer game that captured that same excitement for (almost, some Sphinx riddles be damned) every activity this time around. That's why, to me, a long time fan, DD2 is a triumph at its core, even though I have some issues with it ofc. Anyway, the revelation that this is actually a direct sequel, since it takes place where Gransys once was, now flooded because of the actions of the last Seneschal, Rothais, who supposedly did what we did back in DD1. So, basically, a parallel version of our past Arisen hands us over the same mission, to end the cycle once and for all, while Gran Soren rises again and then the apocalypse takes place and our main pawn finally gains free will and we defeat the Brine!? WTF that's waaaay more than whatever I'd have hoped for, lore-wise. Also also: such vast world with intricate physics interactions and great ray-traced illumination (try playing through Battahl with RT off) with basically NO loading screens? That's crazy in my eyes.
Finding an hour or two night to get LOST in this game when I can is an absolute treat. I adore the little things in this game and am thoroughly enjoying the ride. About 50 hours so far!
the game doesnt tell you that talus is timed because he isnt. once the quest around talus starts the game doesnt want you going to the volcanic island without him triggering. it blocks any portcrystals you have there and if you enter through draubnirs grotto instead of through the gate, it triggers the talus event anyways because otherwise you could just go straight to phaesus while dodging the talus trigger and the game doesnt want that. so as long as you do not do anything that moves you towards volcanic isle, you are still free to do whatever you want
I really loved Dragons Dogma 2, but I also had some mixed feelings about how it handled its story, since this would have been the starting point for a lot of new people, the fact that they never bothered to elaborate on pawns or the nature of the Arisen, or the cycle was a huge misstep. Despite the world being more alive and full of combat encounters, the fact that there really wasn't much enemy variety really made me miss some of the extra monsters from Dragons Dogma 1, like the 2 other types of dragons we could encounter, or gore cyclopses, elder ogres, evil eyes etc. I hope they release a DLC on the same level as Bitter Black Isle with a hard mode option because I'd be so on-board for a more difficult experience.
Character creator not being accessible in dragon's dogma is kinda lame, but nowhere near a big issue. It was a major issue in Cyberpunk though, considering how much in world lore there is about body modification. Clearly not an issue here, but I feel like player freedom is never negative.
When you go to Volcano Island early and place down a portcrystal before doing the Talos quest, the game actually perma disables that crystal specifically once you've received the quest....i can't even ferrystone to the location because Capcom wants to railroad players to the finale, but that shouldn't/doesn't even matter bc the game handles Talos for you???....weird decision
Yeah I found it really annoying that I was forced into a romantic scene with no option to say no. I also found that if you run out of stamina while carrying characters you drop them (could be remembering that wrong) which drops affinity. Also yeah, no romance scene with any male from what I tried to find.
Started playing DD2 again this week, man this game is great. It is sad that it's lack of co-op has been a major reason that 2 friends of mine have given it a pass, i've tried talking them into the pawn system because of how unique it is but they just don't want to party up with AI, even if it's AI that we could all pretty much tailor-make to our specifications. Edit: There's 3 paths to Batthal without story progression. The third is to ride the Sphynx over the border after answering her first set of riddles. And the vocation split of Strider into Thief and Archer was done mostly for balance. Strider was objectively the best vocation in DD1, and even now having Warfarer with daggers and a bow is one of the strongest combos even while only having access to 3 usable skills due to Rearmament eating a slot. And it also happened because Warrior sucked. I love Warrior, it's my favorite vocation, but it was objectively ass.
My biggest problem when a quest asked me to go from the starter city to grand Sorin before I unlocked Grand Sorin. Or how many time you have to walk the pass between the encampment to Gran Sorin. I swear half my play time is running between the Grand Sorin, the encampment, and the starter city.
Archer? Weak? If you’re auto firing every shot and skill, sure, but if you’re aiming torrent into an enemy’s weak spot, it is going to melt like butter. It can stunlock and trivialize every encounter.
@@SuperRADLemon either way, a great video. DDII is another best 7/10 game, much like DD. Unfortunately, DDDA was the best 8/10. I really hope the DLC addresses stuff like vocations and enemy variety.
Really like the way you got the Asmongold pawn to use his iconic cockroach ability in your playthrough! Can’t wait for the big mass effect andromeda review -Liam Neeson
One thing that really bothers me is I've beaten the game got best ending and I am now on NG+. Depending on level you finish the game you can be so OP nothing is a challenge for you (me at least) anymore which is the case for me. What do you do to have some challenge while still replaying the game. Istuno didn't think about this when he made this game. Why not add a hard mode like a colleseum/arena where you get to fight tougher monsters with handicap put in the fights. The rewards could be like rarer weapons/armor or items for each class only fought in these fights. Also I have alot RC rift crystal it would be nice to be able to spend somewhere else for valuable/rare things.
The pawn system is a weak defense for not being able to make more than one character at a time. They could have just spent the time in development so you can't summon your own pawns.
With talos on my first playthrough I was a magik archer and I kept using the ultimate draining my health not knowing he still has to keep going before the “fight” ends after hitting all his weak points. I don’t know how many times I quit out after using all my wake stones not understanding what I was supposed to do lol
I hate to say it because I genuinely enjoy most of their content, but that DD2 video from Steph was mega cringe. I have no idea why people can't understand that you can acknowledge that micro transactions are bad on principle while also not making up elaborate narratives to attack the game. The problem is to be that outraged about the micro-transactions in the game, you would have to come up with that elaborate of a narrative. It just screams that Steph went into the game with an angle and spent just enough time to spin a narrative. That's just the hackiest type of journalism I can imagine. If you have that little journalistic integrity, it make you difficult to trust. Then you preemptively just say that anyone who is credible or understands is a childish immature and disingenuous liar who can't take criticism. I'm afraid there was some projection going on there. It's annoying because I expect better from them.
As for talos: I broke most of his weakpints before he got to sure because I used advanced twinsbear movement (teleport and air dash) and all that was left was his right hand weak point and I dropped more damage than I did to the rest of the body into that weak point and it never ever broke until the ballista cutscene that blows the arm off. It may have been because of a patch or earlier version of the game because I no lifed DD2 but the ballistae blowing off.the whole arm was a mandatory part of the quest for me
I play Ranger and I love it. Using the controller to aim makes it easier. And going from controlled aiming to aim shots is really cool. Also having spell books is a must for a trickster class. Your magic damage increases the power of spellbook attacks.
SPOILERS DON’T READ BELOW I’m pretty certain that I read flavour text in game that stated Rothais used to be a senechal but upon discovering that the pathfinder / watching one / oblivion / greater will orchestrated his entire journey he felt robbed of his achievement. He then descended back to the world as a mortal and founded vermund (or gransys which became vermund- I’m not really sure)
So I didn’t play the first game before grabbing the second just a few weeks ago while it was on sale. The story felt like a typical “amnesia” story. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it was fun and interesting to learn more about the character along with them. In fact it made me want to go back and play the first game, just to experience it as well.
1:35 I think the Tree Sentinel near the start of Elden Ring is the perfect example of setting this kind of tone properly. It's a ludicrously strong enemy that you are absolutely *not* expected to be able to defeat when just starting out the game, and it's not only so overpoweringly strong that that's obviously the case, it's also this super fancy enemy that spawns a boss health bar if you engage with it, communicating that this guy is big, bad, and means business. Some players will still try to take it out right away, sure, but players doing so are under no illusion that they're *supposed* to. Compare that to the experience of being jumped by a bunch of bandits. They're....bandits, ordinary roadside thieves that are shorthand for "early game fodder enemy" in pretty much any other fantasy RPG setting, and the game presents them as perfectly ordinary enemies. This does not communicate "There will be difficult fights that you're supposed to avoid," it instead communicates "This is the baseline difficulty to expect from random fodder enemies." It's absolutely a fault of the design rather than a fault of the players who got walled by it.
i wonder if most people watching these kinds of videos are actually people interested in buying the game or just players who want to listen to a friendly voice gushing about their favourite thing.
1:21:12 You can actually kill her without the arrow. If you pay attention to the carvings depicting the Sphinx in Battahl or in the vase you carry the npc to its depicting the creature with weapons pointed to its lower parts of the body meaning you don't attack her human parts. Fighting her is a riddle itself i know :)
Performance, singular safe file, microtransactions. None of these bother me. For one, I grew up playing SNES, and DD2 looks and plays just fine on the Xbox series S. Sure, it's not always smooth and perfect, but I honestly don't care. It's not bad enough for me to complain about it. Safe file isn't a problem for me. Why not? Because it's the exact same approach that the first game took, and I was already used to playing the game like that. Not a problem for me. The MTX issue, I honestly wouldn't have even been aware of if I wasn't watching YT clips. They have a store, you can buy some items, that's it. I don't purchase anything, and I'm not missing out on anything, so it's fine. None of these criticisms are on my radar. I have other criticisms that deal with other aspects of the game that I think effect my experience way more than those three issues. I'm not going to list those here, but I've played Dogma 1 for twelve years (on and off), and I love that game, and so there are things about DD2 that I genuinely dislike, or I think are missing, or should've been different, etc., but at the end of the day I'm still enjoying the game as of now. I don't really see myself playing this game for (many) years to come, unless some things are changed, or added, and I don't think Dogma 2 has a similar kind of impact as the first game had, twelve years ago, but all in all, to me, the game's enjoyable and I'm having fun with it, and that's most important.
So, 2:55:02 just wanted to fully confirm that your theory is 100% right here, as someone who has exited the game any time that I've ever gotten the Dragons Plague pop up, and looking through my tutorial log even in Unmoored, there's still no entry on the Plague, so I know without a shadow of a doubt that my Pawn couldn't have contracted the Plague from any singular Pawn, but I entered the Unmoored World recently and when my friend went to update my Pawn, he got the pop-up from her, so there's no other possible way it could've come from anywhere else other than the Unmoored World. Amazing video btw SuperRAD, so much love was poured into this, and I appreciate your hard work so much, while DD2 did disappoint in some ways, I genuinely still love it so much and think that it will most likely end up being my personal GOTY. I wish the launch went smoother, and I wish the enemy variety was better, but I'm overall hopeful that DLC could completely remedy these issues, and tbh if it does, then I think DD2 will end up being as beloved as DD1 was. 💖
I'm gonna do it, grigori! I'm gonna dogma!!
It's dogma time
He dogma'd all over that dragon
Dogma deez nuts
To answer most of your why's and I think deep down you know.... it's simply money. Capcom hyped it and later rush it despite them having so much time to work on it but it's money or not wanting to spend so much money why game is a bit disappointing. I have 180 hrs in and agree with almost everything you said.
Dragons ill like dogma! Or maybe they love it. Idk?
The irl stock footage of a steak cooking is hilarious to me
Top 5 most “wtf, why?” Moments in the game.
Literally said wtf outloud. Then i realized theres different footage for different meat is a nice detail.
I kind of like it actually. Gives an extra cozy feeling to the camp if you decide to cook.
I love it, never skip it.
I don't know if this is true, but I heard the devs actually ate those steaks after they were cooked. Which just makes it even better.
Using the Thief's formless shadow skill with stamina items makes the game glue eating baby mode.
Man, you could erase field bosses' health with it and Blades of Pyre. Fights that would take 5 minutes then would be down to just 30 seconds.
It's so unbelievably broken, it's like temporal mantle except infinite.
Or you can just wait until level 30 where it becomes glue eating baby mode for every vocation.
I mean, so was the first game and that's one of the appeals, overpowered glue eating horsehite!
Ranger 11 fold flury blast arrows conquerors pariapts!
@@purgatoriprytania5382you know you can do cock and ball torture on yourself right? You don’t need to wait for someone else to curate the experience.
Edit: realized that sounded hostile. Just jokes. I do mean it in the sense you can make the game harder yourself. Not an ideal solution, I also want hard mode. But the balancing isn’t that bad. It’s no worse than many fromsoft games. Or even DD1. BBI was hard for sure, but that was dlc that also got crushed by fully geared builds. I really enjoyed DD2. Despite its issues.
I had a pretty good time with the game for my first 15 hours. I mainly explored around and fought various big guys. Meaning, I hadn't visited a town in a long time. When I died, I, for whatever reason, maybe due to stick drift that I have, it clicked down to "Load from last inn rest" and I lost maybe 12 hours of progress. Since that happened I haven't picked the game up, completely killed the experience for me.
yeah i lost so much time
BRUTAL
Lets see if the dragon really dogmad a second time
The game needs a Hard Mode. Hard mode in DD1 made adventuring a dangerous experience that you had to prepare for. You're in one shot territory until level 40 or so. DD2 gets easier too quickly, so venturing out seems more tedious than dangerous.
Hoping we get it as dlc like DDDA
Hard mode in Dragons Dogma was not released until after a year the game released. Right before Dark Arison DLC was released.
You said you were confused that your Gaol Key was not used up during that one quest. That is because Brant gives you a "Gaol Key" for this quest, not a "Makeshift Gaol Key". It is infinite use for all jail cells everywhere. At the end of the quest you are required to return the regular "Gaol Key", but you can make a forgery of it if you desire your own infinite Get out of Jail-Card. I have multiple of these in my storage.
No I was confused the makeshift vault key wasn't used up
@@SuperRADLemon Then I misunderstood and I apologize.
All good lol
I am going to play this at 0.25 speed because this video seems kinda short ngl.
The release of this video coinciding with my 4h trip to visit my family is just perfect
What was the mode of travel?
@@chrisj320ac3 Oxcart.
Why
What did you guys eat for dinner?
How are you parents doing?
SuperRADLemon: "People are dishonestly complaining and criticizing the ethics of this"
*shows The Quartering comments*
Where there's dishonest grifting, there's The Quartering.
Done now, with the one thing I wanna chime in on being that my overarching theory is that the Great Will's cycle is designed to kill Rothais more than anything else. If left alone we would have just gone through our coronation, fought the Dragon and at some point be sent into the Shrine to become Seneschal. A weirdly easy path for one who's supposed to be strong of will, unless all you're trying to do is unseat a rebel and restore the status quo. For all that, I choose to believe that whatever weak characters or dropped plotlines persist in the main story are literally intentional shortcomings of the Pathfinder scrambling to get an amnesiac Arisen back on track. It doesn't care about the quality of the False Sovran conspiracy because it's end goal is to make you WANT to usurp Rothais. If anything, the story is genuinely pretty solid until you meet Rothais early. From there, the Pathfinder just hands you directions and intervenes constantly trying to get you crowned so it's original plan can play out. Heck, thinking through it right now I was wondering why it willingly sends you back during the Fake Ending until I realized it's trying to stop you from turning out like Rothais. It feels your skepticism when you seek it out and puts you on the path to unmooring the world to try and STOP you from becoming another rebellious Seneschal, either by killing you or convincing you to play along. The one eventuality it didn't seem prepared for was you successfully killing it instead. I still wonder where New Game+ fits into the world being outside the cycle and safe from oblivion but there's an expansion coming and while DD2 is FANTASTIC art, it's not so avant garde to delete itself from your system on completion XD
I've been having the same thoughts and been struggling to put it into words. Good tidings ser
She drags on my dogma til i... uh... 2
drag on dragoon
@@SuperRADLemon dragoon cave
No sir, I have not played a Dragons Dogma game before. Yes sir, I will be spending the next 3+ hours of my life listening to you talk about Dragons Dogma 💀❤️
A banquet has been laid before me
I love this game. It's a very disappointing sequel, but I love it.
VERY*
Very*
I think that's because it's more like a reboot than a sequel. I think there's a reason it doesn't say DD2 when you boot it up
Best description I’ve seen of this game
I absolutely hate it. But I guess then again, I've played the first part
FYI regarding the Dragonsplague: forgeries of the Eternal Wakestone are functionally just copies of it and work just the same. Before using it you can make a copy of it in case you'll need one again.
Can't believe I actually got my wish fulfilled and they told us more about the brine, I was terrified of it as a concept in DD1
Funnily enough, I always considered the Brine a “friendly” force in DD1. If my Warrior in full plate ever got dropped to a watery grave, those nice Eldritch tentacles safely and conveniently deposited me back on shore. How kind.
What's the timestamp for that? It's unfortunately not listed
Pawns can also learn shortcut routes from players who explore maps without always following the road all the time. Pawns with max boss monster medal will deal tremendous damage and can even solo a boss with ease. A pawn with max medal on certain bosses will also share you their experience traversing other worls wherein they would say that they carried the other arisen on their journey.
Problem is that there are two dungeons/locations with unique creature, 99% of the other locations don’t have anything.
You don’t even get good loot as a reward most of the time.
If you’re the type that like to explore everything and don’t go early into late game area than you rapidly end up seeing everything the game has to offer minus 2 bosses.
So yes it doesn’t feel like there is something new to discover around every corner, it feel like there are two or tree things to discover for the whole game and 99% of the map is filler.
It still work cause the combat is strong not cause of the discovery, at least in the way I have played the game (it took me 60hours of exploring vermund to find the first truly unique encounter)
This. Most of the exploration felt completely pointless. And I feel like that part of the review was kinda biased in the video. These "rare" items most of the time are useless. Combat is cool but it also feels weirdly tedious. Like 20 hours I was trying to avoid the fights because they felt monotonous honestly
I mean, It sure has repetitive dungeons, but 99% of the map isn't filler lol. If you do every NPC quest, you will learn that there's a lot of keypoints in the map where some of those quests are related to. Like, the Dullahan quest with Gregor in Misty Marshs.
Also, there's at least 10-15 dungeons with "farmpoint-creatures". Lichs, Skeleton Lord, Medusa, Serpent (Lightning Scale), are some that I can think of. You will only find those inside dungeons.
Also, there's 2 or 3 "abyssal dungeon caves" in the post-game world where you can find a bit more of "non-usual creatures".
Did you describe DD1 or DD2 here?
@chrisgee8441 both
In regards to the Sphinx Quest that asks you to bring the person who loves you most, you can just put a pawn on the pedestal. Idk if that's the case if you actually gift things to npcs but I used a pawn I had just summoned and it worked.
Also if you're not able to find the token within 7 days you just fail that riddle and can't open its chest. She'll fly to the next location and you can continue doing riddles.
There has been a lot of talk around this game, and I really appreciate your strong worded opinion on the matter as i found myself resonating with a lot of your points. DD was an old favorite of mine and I really want this series to embrace it's potential.
The section about the vocations hits hard.
I miss OG Magick Archer and, in general, the dual bow/dagger classes: the way they move, the options, the way they walk and double jump. I am already super powerful, really really soon, so why did we lose so much :(
This game is such a perfect mixed feelings experience in almost every aspect.
I have the answer for the Talos quest AND the same exact issue happened with me as well... Firstly, if you placed a Port Crystal at the Volcano island waaay BEFORE the Talos quest line started, you simply cannot teleport there. That's it. Secondly, INN SAVE AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE once you have entered Battahl legitimately. I wont spoil much BUT if you want to go into this game completely blind as I did, that is fine but trust me. You will WANT to know this bit of information at the very least. You can EASILY miss the Talos quest by a mistake. I unfortunately did this on my first playthrough. I had NO idea a creature such as him was even in the game, nor did I know his purpose OR even where he spawned at! The game doesn't tell you AT ALL. You just have to assume he is somewhere relatively close enough to be able to spot him by sight BUT it doesn't matter, because if you arent on the EXACT path you are supposed to be on, it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to catch up in time to properly do the things you supposed to in other to save him and Talos will fall into the lava and die. This deletes his involvement in the end game..
Correction for the unmoored world on the elves not leaving unless you save the tree, you can get them to leave. You just need to talk to the leader with a pawn that can speak elvish 3 days in a row then they'll leave due to your persistence.
If you have high affinity it becomes much easier to convince him, I spoke to him once and he adamantly refused to leave, spoke to him immediately after and he gave up lol
SuperRad's pacing when criticizing each element of the game, pointing out flaws without sounding hateful and praising them while not sounding a paid fanboy is the sole-reason I will never miss this kind of video... Another banger review, Thanks for the content man.
The argument of save scumming for not having multiple save files doesn't make sense. What would you save scum that wouldn't be different than what you would do in new game plus? You're going to be doing the same thing doing new game plus as would be doing having separate save with a different character. That argument doesn't make sense to me.
the talos pawn thing is part of a plan from androsious, make sure you always check the quest text as it has further context on every quest and exposes some missing info such as that, which shows more painfully how there is a bunch of cut content that didnt make it to release 😔
Agreed on your takes about the micro transactions and how ppl exaggerated and made up blatant lies.
I remember seeing those "criticisms" and negative comments and I skipped out on playing the game for the first few months it came out. Randomly bought the game a couple weeks ago and I absolutely love it and hate how I almost missed out. It sucks cause there's probably people out there like me but just never tried the game.
Micros aside, performance aside, I have 130 hours in the game, played all vocations except Trickster, other than testing it; that thing is a meme. I heard somewhere: "DD2 is a flawed masterpiece" and I totally agree. The true and biggest problem with the game is that it is too easy. Magic Archer and Sorcs literally one-shot all and every single boss, including endgame bosses. NG+ does not level scale, and it has no new or stronger monsters. Overall, I think later bosses need more complex mechanics.
- Combat is S tier. Some vocations are slow and will feel really bad at the beginning but will pick up after level 6 (early levels go super fast, level 5 goes in no time). Some "Core skills" tool tips are garbage. I spent the whole game without knowing how to make the charge attack for the bow because the game never told me to press randomly R3 to start the charge, like, what the heck.
- Traveling in the game is great; the limited fast travel in the game is fine. Going around fighting stuff is the game, and it's great. The problems are monster density; you can't walk more than 10 meters without an ambush, and holy crap, is it goblins, bandits, or lizards. There should be more monster variety.
- The game needs a way to not gain XP or lower your level. You over level and power creep yourself by just playing the game; you literally get punished by exploring. You get to a point where you one-shot everything. A good thing about this is that gear doesn't matter at all, so you can just focus on fashion and the best-looking sets, which I have spent a lot of time with. The game is pretty. You should be able to forge/dup armor to make it usable for all vocations, remove the stats or whatever, not that there is anything unique about armors in the game anyway. (Gear should have stats like you find in rings)
- There should be a way to make an instance of your pawn, lock it at a lower level, and to a vocation. Like this, there can be like 6 instances of my pawn for every vocation so people can choose what they need. Because I can't stop getting XP, I'm almost level 80, and for my friend, it is not worth it to pay a thousand RC to hire my pawn... I feel level 40 is the sweet spot for the game; over that is just power creep.
- Coming from BG3... romance is a joke, not that it matters, but it could have mattered more.
- I played only like 10 hours of DD1, but I know the lore and the universe. Holy crap, if you are new, there is absolutely no way for you to know what's going on. There should have been more connection and Easter eggs with DD1.
SPOILER:
- The dragon plague is an amazing idea executed in the absolute worst way. Such a missed opportunity to make a really involved and cool side quest where you don't have your pawn and you play solo with no pawns for a while. They really wanted to make Dragon Plague something important for the story, especially considering the final cinematic where your pawn turns into a black dragon and helps you. Why this dragon is not a fight. This should have been the way to dump a ton of lore and make the story interesting.
- The endgame world is so damn cool. I agree that the world gets "ugly," but all the new paths you now have because there is no water are super cool (should have more dungeons in those areas though). The constant "harder" monsters were great. I was fighting a dragon, and a griffin, and a chimera ambushed me; the MH experience, and it was a great moment. That said... You are rushed in this world; I don't have a problem with it, but the game should have told me, and the quest log should have had the hourglass icon on it. I was taking my time exploring and gathering materials to max-enhance my gear. Boom, a city gets destroyed, and I was planning on getting enhancements from it. You can reset the world save by killing yourself again with the sword, but it was 8 hours of progress gone...
Agree! Tho Coming from DD1, I do partially not care about story and romance that much. I just like the gameplay and exploration. When I was young, I played a lot of Ragnarok Online. And I always wished some modern game with action combat can give me the same feeling. And DD1 did that.
DD2 kinda disappointed me a little. The whole excitement I had was having 6 skills. Not many game do that and now they do the same as other games are doing. 4 skills…but that’s ok.
I think main issue is lack of end game content or rewards when our level is high. Unmoored world is not an end game content since you have limited time in that world, and many bosses are not repeatable. Many monsters will eventually be weak when we level up. I’m ok if monsters are easy. That’s kinda a point of a game with leveling system. We will eventually be stronger than monsters. But what other games do right. What I like about RPG like Ragnarok. Monsters are weak so we can farm there material to do a better gears. There are items that drop by chance. You have to keep fighting them. I wouldn’t say RO was good because drop rates are absurdly low for good items. But it’s something to do and it’s ok to feel OP. Then there are pvp system or a boss that we need a better gears. DD2 doesn’t have rewards in going in to weird caves or farming monsters. It’s like there is no point in fighting or exploring.
Honestly, if they will just add Ur-Dragon. Just that one thing. The end game will feel a lot better.
i'm really bad at games so being easy is a bonus for me, Dragon's Dogma is wonderful, if i want a challenge I'll play Elden Ring again
@@jungchoothian2039 no ur-dragon? yeah im not touching DD2 at all. what a waste.
@@da_001 nope sadly. I mean the game is still worth playing. I bought at a full price but if you want to wait for sale I would highly recommend. But it could have been better
How are you one shotting bosses with sorcerer? I’ve never seen this before. Magic archer I’ve seen… my thoughts on that skill, or any of the powerful skills, is it’s your own fault if you use them then call the game too easy.
Hey man, you can also use your personal Pawn for the riddle where you bring someone with max affinity
People who try to justify any form of micro transactions will never make sense to me.
The idiom “Give an inch & they’ll take a mile” has happened countless times to so many games & franchises over the past decade.
It’s like people who are eating literal feces trying tell everyone that theirs still corn in it.
I enjoyed my time with DD2; its amazing fun. But it also made me go back to DD1 again; which solidified that its just not as good of an overall package.
I'm cautiously optimistic for any DLC they have planned; but until then, I got DD1 to hold me over.
Wow. A game with several updates and an expansion pack along with a remaster, is a better overall package. That's wild
As someone who played only Archer(only leveling other Vocations for their passives) the entire playthrough, Archer doesnt suck, it's just that its damage isnt frontloaded immediately in one skill. Drenching Shot+Explosive Shot causes you do to massive upfront damage on top of damage over time from setting an enemy on fire, or you can drench an enemy in water and let a mage cast an Ice skill, freezing something solid.
They pushed the class hard into be the "debilitation" class, it relies ALOT on causing status effects to do decent damage.
Also the Sphinx trick does work, in fact that is her final riddle, and she praises you if you do so, as long as you dont hit any human parts of her, it will count and she will say "hell yea bro that was fun" and drop the key. The Unmanking Arrow is given to you just in case you cant(dont dont feel like) figuring it out
Otherwise, top tier goddamn video as per usual from the goat himself.(Also I had your special pawn my whole playthrough lmao)
All of archers damage is in one skill though, you can kill a full health Gore Chimera with just 3 blast arrows. Why would I even bother using anything else if it can do that?
@@earthbound_one Because blast arrows aren’t the end all be all solution to everything, you only used a chimera as an example, I am talking general purpose. If that’s your only argument, then well I have nothing more to add cause you’re missing the entire point of what I’m saying and the vocation.
No even without explosive and drenching shot you can do shit tons of damage if you manual aim and hit the headshot
@@earthbound_oneBalance problem, don’t use the explosive arrow and you still have high damage potential with manually aimed headshot+ all the skill
Also you can press L2 or L1 to overcharge a shot
@@ni9274 thank you, I am tired of people saying archer is bad and then immediately admitting they only use explosive arrow. Like no shit it’s gonna seem bad when you ignore 90% of its kit
Late to this because I wanted to actually finish the game first lol but man you hit it on the fucking head how annoying the disinfo about this game was. I had to repeatedly explain to friends that no, the game is not pay to win in single player. No the micro transactions do not break it. Yes, this is just the normal dumb bullshit capcom puts in their games that you don’t even know about because you just ignore them like everyone else on the planet because they’re so stupid and innocuous.
Dragon's Dogma 2 is fantastic and I'm so happy we got a sequel. I never thought it would happen and it's glorious.
Something that's wild is that I've been anticipating this video ever since I finished my playthrough of DD2, but I never realized you actually posted it until today, I didn't see it on here or Twitter 😢
Okay so actually the more I get through the video the more I see you did point out some of my gripes. Just the whole the story is great part took me for a loop. So I agree with a lot of your points, but I also think as a sequel it should have build on it's predecessor. And honestly that's what disappointed me the most about dragons dogma 2. Feels like the game got dumb down for it to be more appealing to a general public. The combat is still great, the graphics are clearly improved but we lost 2 vocations, we barely gained any new enemies, and we basically got the same story. Also just to point out good lore doesn't equate a good story. The worst part for me personally as someone who played the game 100% blind until I beat it, it's sad to see that some of the new bosses are locked behind some ridiculous secret ending. You could argue that maybe if I had paid more attention that maybe I would have figured out the secret ending but the story lost me half way through. I would point out what happened but I don't want to spoil the lackluster plot twist for anyone that cares. Great video by the way, I am glad you thought it was the best game of the year. I wish I did too.
That's why gatekeeping is okay. Gaming going mainstream means more brain dead npcs that want a interactive movie are starting to play games and are complaining when they actually have to play it
@@rushpatriot2866 I would disagree, that's solely up to the dev team and publisher. If they wanted to make a more complicated game they could have, but they chose mass appeal. Gaming has been mainstream for a while and we have still gotten some good games that appeal to returning and new players alike.
I just so happened to be beginning an NG+ playthrough as I started watching this, and hadn't discovered any seeker's tokens yet. So I went to the Sphinx and heard the riddle of rumination. She goes through the same spiel and then sees that you're confused, she then says that when you find a seeker's token, you'll find something along with it. Lo and behold, I found a seeker's token not far from her and found a finder's token along with it. The developers really mapped almost everything out and accounted for it.
Ooooh, thank you
I will not accept trickster slander. It's like the mpst fun vocation. If you just run a party with 3 high dps pawns amd let them shred stuff while you mess with the enemies It's super fun. Plus using tricky terrace to make enemies trip, picking them up, and throwing them at eachother is always fun.
The ferrystone lies were ridiculous. I have over 36. I rarely use them.
And you get abundant of them in unmoored
Ikr. The game has a alot of issues but the ferrystones weren't one of them.
@@SolidSnake24010,000 for a means of fast traveling is mad and even if u max out affinity with a vendor it’s 9500, yes u can find ferrystones in the world and yea u can kinda farm them but it’s so tedious
Your experiences are not universal.
It was such a pleasure to watch this video! Thank you, took me a few days, by I am here at the end. Despite playing and being familiar with DD1 lore, I was hella confused about the story in DD2. With your review, I understand some things very clearly, and the story doesn't seem to be as cut as I thought.
My biggest gripe, and the thing that in the end made me feel disappointed in DD2, was Vocations, I love combat more than anything else, and class systems are very important to me. I'm very saddened, by Itsuon's decisions when it comes to vocations, the first issue from the start was seemingly bait by introducing FOUR new colours to vocation systems, followed up with some strange decisions, like locking vocation via quest, which Magicka Archer suffer the most from, or Mystic Spear Hand being Red/Blue vocation, despite being super mobile, and even from videos about this vocation, it is high DPS low defence Vocation, so where is the Red part in it? It feels like Green/Blue than anything. Then what is the point of splitting Strider to Thief and Archer, Thief is just as broken as Daggers Strider. And finishing with gutting Light/Darkness affinity, and removing additional skills from vocation, I'll truly gonna miss Brontide and killing enemies with my electric whip. Hopefully, DLC will fix some of that issue, because this aspect of the game hit the most.
played DD1 to 100% im not touching DD2 until it gets a dlc and a fix that is per customary for action rpgs. too many things they took out of DD2 that was in DD1.
and the story was horrendous.
You can give a your pawn the aphonite specialization to make them speak only when spoken to. Raise affinity with the lost brother Liam in melve to get the scroll. Added bonus, if your pawn starts talking despite having aphonite, they have contracted the rift aids.
Eino can also give you one. hes the old guy with mage meister
I stopped playing this game about a month after purchase and recently looked back at my playtimes not even realizing i put 110+ hours into it. It was truly a breath of fresh air and I think I'll continue my NG+. What a great game, and great work RAD, love the long content format.
You can actually save the elves without doing the tree quest. I accidentally locked myself out when I moved into the final world state. You just talk to the elder over and over after three days “I think” he relents and comes to the safe haven.
Only 20 minutes in but MY GOD is it nice finally hearing from someone who actually understands Dragon's Dogma. The only voices with any volume so far have been people who just don't 'get it' or people who think they do and play nice with the same criticisms.
I've really been looking forward to hearing your opinion on this game. I've been chewing on this over the past few days and just finished. I share a lot of similar opinions, but your take on the class balance was the most refreshing out of all the reviews I've seen. It's given me some clarity on how to describe my enjoyment and gripes with it. Well done overall.
I am still awaiting the return of Mr. Balsac. I can only hope for it in a DLC.
So at the hour and 18 minute mark there are actually 4 ways, your main pawn counts as an answer to that riddle just so everyone knows. The phial is best saved for the pot riddle later on due to the pot being hyper fragile, just go to the quest marker without the pot and put the man inside the phial bring the phial back open it up next to the pot and your good
Finally, the long awaited sequel to the BIG DD video that'll be the checkpoint you'll be led to after watching enough DD videos
In my NG+ playthrough I turned off all HUD and have been rigidly sticking to the fighter class and having an absolute blast. I recently switched to archer (was my very first class that I maxed out) and am enjoying it as if it's fresh. These classes demand an understanding of the enemies' motions from the player and make the combat unbelievably engaging.
I highly recommend playing this game, especially NG+, with the HUD off. The game still gives you hints that you're low on stamina and health, the lack of minimap demands your attention stays on the landscape, and the fact that it's NG+ means you don't have to be spending all your gold on armors and weapons and can instead engage with the item shops in full. Don't be a miser, the money's useless if you don't spend it!
This game definitely should have a hard mode that rebalances things. I would love to see no maps in caves until you buy them from a local vendor (and perhaps make the caves procedurally generated and very deep so players genuinely have to reload saves if they are ill prepared for caving and get lost. Perhaps they could also giver armor and weapons a different currency so players are more incentived to purchase consumables/materials rather than saving for better armor/weapons.
I like the story and dialogue and how much the scripted scenes feel like a Shakespearean play. It adds to the whimsical fairytale feel that this game bathes in. Voice acting and writing ought to have been much better though.
The postgame was fantastic, I cannot think of another time where the whole world changed in nature for an open world game, only ever saw that with metroidvanias. The limited long rests was such a lovely feature and I would absolutely love a game which was even more strict with that.
This game is basically my dream game, it's lacking in every regard except combat, but the ideas are all there and presented in a way that shows the devs could and would expand them if they only had the time/budget.
I cannot wait for a mod to overhaul this game's balancing to make it more grueling, or even just Dragons Dogma 3 in a decade. I think the fact that pawns' cold dialogue and simple learning are diagetically explained with them having lesser will than NPCs leaves a great opening for pawns to be powered by machine learning in a future Dragons Dogma title.
The Rift magic being a in-world way of explaining online features is also awesome and leaves a lot of room for expansion if the online capabilities ever expand. For example, this game has a feature in which certain berries are nearly nonexistent on each playthrough. It's randomly assigned. So for example, I have strawberries and grapes galore in my world. Other people have blueberries, I've personally never seen them. The rare berry in your playthrough is worth 10x the price of the common berries. This is a great way of persuading players to trade berries as a currency/gift between each other, and since the berries rot, the currency never inflates in value.
Good video, but MASIVE disagree with the game having a good reward system, specially the sphynx. The treasure she provide are trash, just as most sidequests and exploration. All good loot is behind vendors, which is a shame since it doesn’t promote exploration.
My anecdotal evidence is the opposite, I've had multiple friends with average PCs who had to refund, they couldn't get it to run smoothly on lowest possible settings (whilst they normally run games on high). This was around release though, so maybe that's changed.
Exploration in this game lived up to developer hype for me. It became a serious problem whenever I was doing quests because I'd genuinely start out delivering a message but then I saw a group of enemies I wanted to fight but next to that group of enemies was a dungeon then that dungeon led out to a new area with a boss battle etc. I'd completely forget what I was even doing in the first place just to see the cool stuff around me. I loved it a lot
Only things I'm truly salty about are pawn commands and the mystic knight. When you hold L1 I wish that the pawn commands on the d pad would then correspond to the skills that you assigned to your pawn as well. Would have loved on command elemental buffs/springboards. And this last one is my own personal bias because I absolutely loved spamming full moon slash/great cannon and I'm sad that I couldn't do that with upgraded graphics.
no matter how hard the dragon dogmas it can’t survive the GOMCO clamp
10 minutes in and looking forward to watching this whole thing, but 2 things I immediately cock my head over is the performance question and the "need" for a single save slot. I think most people are complaining about the performance in cities, where npcs materialize 2 feet in front of you (or after you bump into empty space and then they suddenly phase in) while frametimes are all over the place giving a feeling of microstutters and uneasiness. And then this is blamed on everyone having complex AI while the actual AI is just so basic. I really look forward to improvements in this area, because using mods to force the games to render everyone at distance makes the cities look so much better.
For saves, I don't follow. What is the problem with multiple save slots so you can play some totally different characters? It's a role playing game, and I want to roleplay different arisen. And it isn't a limitation of the pawn system. Make a new character... you can still hire your old pawn! They are still there in limbo. I just don't know why there couldn't be a few save slots to allow different characters... each slot could still maintain the current save paradigm (one ongoing save per character).
OK, back to the video for me, over 3 hours of dd2 review is fantastic!
(Edit: god I really want a ring that would zero out xp gain. And maybe one to zero out dcp gain.)
I genuinely don’t get how people can defend the save slot thing lol
@@thats4thebirdsBecause it’s not an issue at all. It’s ingrained in the lore with the first game on why there is one save slot.
Is it dumb? Sure but it’s really not as big of a deal as people make it out to be which they surely are if you look online.
18:50
The power of the blue checkmark, make as many lies as possible to cause outrage and make money for it.
You can in fact rescue the elves without even discovering them before fighting the dragon. I didnt know the elves had a settlement until endgame and instead of planting a new tree sprout you just talk with their leader, he says no to relocating 3 times before just going "fine if we go will you stop bothering me?" Lmao
Thanks for mentioning that DD1 adds context to 2's story, it really is surprising how much is glossed over without it to a degree that it could affect your overall feelings on the story.
Warfarer is a tough one, as far as balance goes I don't think they could do much to fix that without making it the de facto class once you get it... and it kinda already is even with the limitations, though I do like your suggestion that weapon abilities could auto swap to the appropriate weapon. One strat that I think is overlooked is to just go with one weapon, but one of each element (and a staff for levitate if you want) if your fine with letting go of the meister skill, you essential just have a better version of whatever class you want.
after 300 hrs, I can say it is a great game.
but I completely agree that A LOT of it feels like a downgrade to the original.
the end especially feels very rushed, as it is basically a cutscene with minimal player interaction..
compared to the first game, that was completely up to the player's inputs.
the dragon fight is a complete joke compared to the first game, which almost made me give up on the game on my first playthrough.
Few things I want to add on as I'm watching this:
the blighted dragons are called "lesser dragons" which makes sense when tied to the events at Moonglint Tower
2:17:30 - about here you mention that in English there is no indication that Rothais was a Seneschal until the endgame but actually just before the shrine rises the Rivage Elder talks about how someone who was supposed to act as a god for the world wasn't satisfied with that and came down to found a kingdom which is pretty blatantly stating that Rothais was a Seneschal
2:51:30 - you mention that Rothais calls all previous Arisen to the shrine, he actually calls them and some of the Maisters there whether you interacted with them or not, the Warfarer doesn't come because he doesn't want to listen to anyone else's orders and just chill at the hot spring being drunk, the Magick Archer doesn't come because she just wants to stay with her husband both of which are explored with the Volcanic Island Camp evacuation quest
A bit of my own analysis:
Whether intended or not I feel like the "endless cycle" and the true ending works as a metaphor for replaying games. I don't think you're supposed to talk to the Pathfinder and complete the true ending on your first time killing the dragon, or at least the potential metaphor is much stronger if that is the case. The world presented within the game will always have a dragon threatening it and an Arisen coming to slay the dragon as long as players start a new playthrough, every character a player encounters has some level of script they're expected to perform in service of the story. After seeing the story multiple times as a player you can't help but want for more or some different more concrete ending and that is what I think the True Ending represents. At the pivotal moment of the story you defy the trappings of how you'd expect a standard fantasy rpg and demand something different of the game by taking your own life instead of fighting the final boss, in response the Pathfinder gives you what you wanted, a version of the world not following the neatly laid out story of rising up to face the dragon but instead one that has no purpose with characters that have have no reason to exist so are being expunged from the world. But still in defiance of this alternate world you go and save the npcs that have nothing more to offer you and halt the destruction anyways and in response the Pathfinder, the one who has laid out the game for you up until this point, manifests himself in the world to settle things while intentionally denying you the catharsis of a new climactic fight while looking like the dragon as if saying "you weren't satisfied with the dragon fight offered to you so I'm not even gonna give you any fight here".
In that interpretation I think the game is quite great, but a bit poorly executed since I'm pretty sure most players will experience the True Ending on their first playthrough likely by having simply looked up how to do it.
I understand where you are coming from but the more I play the game the more I love the vocations. It took a a lot of game play to really start to like each vocation. I feel like the lack of spells compared to how each spell works made sorcerer feel absolutely amazing to play. Augral flare is an amazingly fun mechanic. OP when used right but that is the fun of the game. Maelstrom being physical so sorcerer went from useless against golems to the king of golem slaying and meteron being able to focus a single target instead of one hit then random locations really makes the class feel highly improved. I miss spells like high miasma but high hagol is similar in slow steady damage and with freeze it adds insane cc.
I am just over level 150 now and my next play through is full trickster. My guess is trickster hasn’t been explored enough by a lot of people to really connect with its vision. We will see if I am wrong on that or not.
I personally love the monster density. It feels much better overall than dd1 imo. Dd1 just spread it out into pregame and ever fall post game. I wish dd2 launched with dd1 and dark arisen level of content combined. However base dd2 is miles ahead of base dd1 imo.
My only complaint is that there is no skill switch button so you can utilize 8 skills instead of 4. That would make Warfarer better.
Performance update: they still haven't fixed the awful CPU issues and DLSS is still useless. Decreasing graphics has almost no effect on performance since it's CPU related not GPU. There's no excuse for not being able to maintain 60 fps in a town that only has a few NPCs
Playing this game makes me more excited about Monster Hunter Wilds. Also, Am I the only one who reads the game as "Dragon's Dodogama"?
1:55:00 in my experience of the beggar quest, he didn't go to his wife in the slums, and instead went only to his rich wife, so I had the same problem you did with the "wait why are there 2 people I can tell" question, except in my playthrough I had only seen the rich wife. That's a weird thing about this quest, and imo speaks to a problem with a few quests: lack of polish. The biggest example for me would be "tolled to rest". I'm on ng+2 now and have done the quest twice, but had to resurrect Oskar both times to do it because he died before I reached him. Turns out he starts being attacked when you're a fairly long distance from him. If you fight the unrelated enemies on the way, he WILL die. This led to this quest being left blank, though listed in my quest list, on my first run. I had no idea where the NPC was because he died ages ago.
Simply put, most open world and/or rpgs focus on the end goal, while Dragon's Dogma focuses on the journey to reach said goal. That's it, that's the main difference that divides the target audiences of two different game philosophies on game design.
That said, DD2 to me felt as if every single side quest was as engaging as the Griffin chase towards Bluemoon Tower in the original game: it was a standout from the vanilla experience and Capcom managed to create a newer game that captured that same excitement for (almost, some Sphinx riddles be damned) every activity this time around. That's why, to me, a long time fan, DD2 is a triumph at its core, even though I have some issues with it ofc.
Anyway, the revelation that this is actually a direct sequel, since it takes place where Gransys once was, now flooded because of the actions of the last Seneschal, Rothais, who supposedly did what we did back in DD1. So, basically, a parallel version of our past Arisen hands us over the same mission, to end the cycle once and for all, while Gran Soren rises again and then the apocalypse takes place and our main pawn finally gains free will and we defeat the Brine!? WTF that's waaaay more than whatever I'd have hoped for, lore-wise.
Also also: such vast world with intricate physics interactions and great ray-traced illumination (try playing through Battahl with RT off) with basically NO loading screens? That's crazy in my eyes.
Finding an hour or two night to get LOST in this game when I can is an absolute treat. I adore the little things in this game and am thoroughly enjoying the ride. About 50 hours so far!
Woa if you're in contact with punk duck, tell him to make more videos or I'll cry
you are the third rad. there is nitrorad, alpharad & you. you are powerful.
Also RadBrad
the game doesnt tell you that talus is timed because he isnt. once the quest around talus starts the game doesnt want you going to the volcanic island without him triggering. it blocks any portcrystals you have there and if you enter through draubnirs grotto instead of through the gate, it triggers the talus event anyways because otherwise you could just go straight to phaesus while dodging the talus trigger and the game doesnt want that. so as long as you do not do anything that moves you towards volcanic isle, you are still free to do whatever you want
Dragon's Dogma II is just Dragon's Dogma again. And you know what? It's exactly what I wanted!
0:45:00 Outward Mentioned! Its a neat game, i wish there were more vids on it
I really loved Dragons Dogma 2, but I also had some mixed feelings about how it handled its story, since this would have been the starting point for a lot of new people, the fact that they never bothered to elaborate on pawns or the nature of the Arisen, or the cycle was a huge misstep. Despite the world being more alive and full of combat encounters, the fact that there really wasn't much enemy variety really made me miss some of the extra monsters from Dragons Dogma 1, like the 2 other types of dragons we could encounter, or gore cyclopses, elder ogres, evil eyes etc.
I hope they release a DLC on the same level as Bitter Black Isle with a hard mode option because I'd be so on-board for a more difficult experience.
Character creator not being accessible in dragon's dogma is kinda lame, but nowhere near a big issue. It was a major issue in Cyberpunk though, considering how much in world lore there is about body modification. Clearly not an issue here, but I feel like player freedom is never negative.
When you go to Volcano Island early and place down a portcrystal before doing the Talos quest, the game actually perma disables that crystal specifically once you've received the quest....i can't even ferrystone to the location because Capcom wants to railroad players to the finale, but that shouldn't/doesn't even matter bc the game handles Talos for you???....weird decision
I assume the location is re enabled once you get to unmoored
my first character was an old lady named Sophie from Howl’s moving castle and Wihelmina kissed the grandma at the first interaction. Good job 👏
Now that DD2 is out I'm ready for DD2 Online.
Or if Capcom adds co-op to DD2 like how FF15 got multiplayer later on.
Yeah I found it really annoying that I was forced into a romantic scene with no option to say no. I also found that if you run out of stamina while carrying characters you drop them (could be remembering that wrong) which drops affinity. Also yeah, no romance scene with any male from what I tried to find.
Started playing DD2 again this week, man this game is great. It is sad that it's lack of co-op has been a major reason that 2 friends of mine have given it a pass, i've tried talking them into the pawn system because of how unique it is but they just don't want to party up with AI, even if it's AI that we could all pretty much tailor-make to our specifications.
Edit: There's 3 paths to Batthal without story progression. The third is to ride the Sphynx over the border after answering her first set of riddles.
And the vocation split of Strider into Thief and Archer was done mostly for balance. Strider was objectively the best vocation in DD1, and even now having Warfarer with daggers and a bow is one of the strongest combos even while only having access to 3 usable skills due to Rearmament eating a slot. And it also happened because Warrior sucked. I love Warrior, it's my favorite vocation, but it was objectively ass.
My biggest problem when a quest asked me to go from the starter city to grand Sorin before I unlocked Grand Sorin. Or how many time you have to walk the pass between the encampment to Gran Sorin. I swear half my play time is running between the Grand Sorin, the encampment, and the starter city.
Archer? Weak? If you’re auto firing every shot and skill, sure, but if you’re aiming torrent into an enemy’s weak spot, it is going to melt like butter. It can stunlock and trivialize every encounter.
I mention this in the video, that manual aim is stronger, it's still the weakest vocation next to trickster
@@SuperRADLemon either way, a great video. DDII is another best 7/10 game, much like DD. Unfortunately, DDDA was the best 8/10. I really hope the DLC addresses stuff like vocations and enemy variety.
Really like the way you got the Asmongold pawn to use his iconic cockroach ability in your playthrough! Can’t wait for the big mass effect andromeda review
-Liam Neeson
Dude the spyhnx is so cool. I randomly stumbled upon her and I was blown away.
One thing that really bothers me is I've beaten the game got best ending and I am now on NG+. Depending on level you finish the game you can be so OP nothing is a challenge for you (me at least) anymore which is the case for me. What do you do to have some challenge while still replaying the game. Istuno didn't think about this when he made this game. Why not add a hard mode like a colleseum/arena where you get to fight tougher monsters with handicap put in the fights. The rewards could be like rarer weapons/armor or items for each class only fought in these fights. Also I have alot RC rift crystal it would be nice to be able to spend somewhere else for valuable/rare things.
its baffling considering all the time they had to think about it
The pawn system is a weak defense for not being able to make more than one character at a time. They could have just spent the time in development so you can't summon your own pawns.
It’s the best disappointing game I ever played. Tho I spent 150 hours and I am still playing 😂
With talos on my first playthrough I was a magik archer and I kept using the ultimate draining my health not knowing he still has to keep going before the “fight” ends after hitting all his weak points. I don’t know how many times I quit out after using all my wake stones not understanding what I was supposed to do lol
The only review that matters. Thank you for taking your time
I hate to say it because I genuinely enjoy most of their content, but that DD2 video from Steph was mega cringe. I have no idea why people can't understand that you can acknowledge that micro transactions are bad on principle while also not making up elaborate narratives to attack the game. The problem is to be that outraged about the micro-transactions in the game, you would have to come up with that elaborate of a narrative. It just screams that Steph went into the game with an angle and spent just enough time to spin a narrative. That's just the hackiest type of journalism I can imagine. If you have that little journalistic integrity, it make you difficult to trust.
Then you preemptively just say that anyone who is credible or understands is a childish immature and disingenuous liar who can't take criticism. I'm afraid there was some projection going on there. It's annoying because I expect better from them.
As for talos: I broke most of his weakpints before he got to sure because I used advanced twinsbear movement (teleport and air dash) and all that was left was his right hand weak point and I dropped more damage than I did to the rest of the body into that weak point and it never ever broke until the ballista cutscene that blows the arm off.
It may have been because of a patch or earlier version of the game because I no lifed DD2 but the ballistae blowing off.the whole arm was a mandatory part of the quest for me
I play Ranger and I love it. Using the controller to aim makes it easier. And going from controlled aiming to aim shots is really cool. Also having spell books is a must for a trickster class. Your magic damage increases the power of spellbook attacks.
Seems like mods would help the game alot, along with drastically more attack types and character playable types
SPOILERS DON’T READ BELOW
I’m pretty certain that I read flavour text in game that stated Rothais used to be a senechal but upon discovering that the pathfinder / watching one / oblivion / greater will orchestrated his entire journey he felt robbed of his achievement. He then descended back to the world as a mortal and founded vermund (or gransys which became vermund- I’m not really sure)
So I didn’t play the first game before grabbing the second just a few weeks ago while it was on sale. The story felt like a typical “amnesia” story. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it was fun and interesting to learn more about the character along with them. In fact it made me want to go back and play the first game, just to experience it as well.
1:35 I think the Tree Sentinel near the start of Elden Ring is the perfect example of setting this kind of tone properly. It's a ludicrously strong enemy that you are absolutely *not* expected to be able to defeat when just starting out the game, and it's not only so overpoweringly strong that that's obviously the case, it's also this super fancy enemy that spawns a boss health bar if you engage with it, communicating that this guy is big, bad, and means business. Some players will still try to take it out right away, sure, but players doing so are under no illusion that they're *supposed* to.
Compare that to the experience of being jumped by a bunch of bandits. They're....bandits, ordinary roadside thieves that are shorthand for "early game fodder enemy" in pretty much any other fantasy RPG setting, and the game presents them as perfectly ordinary enemies. This does not communicate "There will be difficult fights that you're supposed to avoid," it instead communicates "This is the baseline difficulty to expect from random fodder enemies." It's absolutely a fault of the design rather than a fault of the players who got walled by it.
i wonder if most people watching these kinds of videos are actually people interested in buying the game or just players who want to listen to a friendly voice gushing about their favourite thing.
1:21:12 You can actually kill her without the arrow. If you pay attention to the carvings depicting the Sphinx in Battahl or in the vase you carry the npc to its depicting the creature with weapons pointed to its lower parts of the body meaning you don't attack her human parts. Fighting her is a riddle itself i know :)
Thank you, but I mention this in the video
Performance, singular safe file, microtransactions. None of these bother me. For one, I grew up playing SNES, and DD2 looks and plays just fine on the Xbox series S. Sure, it's not always smooth and perfect, but I honestly don't care. It's not bad enough for me to complain about it. Safe file isn't a problem for me. Why not? Because it's the exact same approach that the first game took, and I was already used to playing the game like that. Not a problem for me. The MTX issue, I honestly wouldn't have even been aware of if I wasn't watching YT clips. They have a store, you can buy some items, that's it. I don't purchase anything, and I'm not missing out on anything, so it's fine.
None of these criticisms are on my radar. I have other criticisms that deal with other aspects of the game that I think effect my experience way more than those three issues. I'm not going to list those here, but I've played Dogma 1 for twelve years (on and off), and I love that game, and so there are things about DD2 that I genuinely dislike, or I think are missing, or should've been different, etc., but at the end of the day I'm still enjoying the game as of now. I don't really see myself playing this game for (many) years to come, unless some things are changed, or added, and I don't think Dogma 2 has a similar kind of impact as the first game had, twelve years ago, but all in all, to me, the game's enjoyable and I'm having fun with it, and that's most important.
You know it's gonna be good when we're 30 minutes in and not even into the story.
So, 2:55:02 just wanted to fully confirm that your theory is 100% right here, as someone who has exited the game any time that I've ever gotten the Dragons Plague pop up, and looking through my tutorial log even in Unmoored, there's still no entry on the Plague, so I know without a shadow of a doubt that my Pawn couldn't have contracted the Plague from any singular Pawn, but I entered the Unmoored World recently and when my friend went to update my Pawn, he got the pop-up from her, so there's no other possible way it could've come from anywhere else other than the Unmoored World. Amazing video btw SuperRAD, so much love was poured into this, and I appreciate your hard work so much, while DD2 did disappoint in some ways, I genuinely still love it so much and think that it will most likely end up being my personal GOTY. I wish the launch went smoother, and I wish the enemy variety was better, but I'm overall hopeful that DLC could completely remedy these issues, and tbh if it does, then I think DD2 will end up being as beloved as DD1 was. 💖
I got it from a friend's pawn before either of us got to that point. But he had fought a lesser dragon. Meaning it can also come from them.
@@samreddig8819 You're absolutely right! Lesser Dragons can also inflict it.