Dragon's Dogma 2

I just don't understand the love for this game. By the time I reached Battahl, I was Augural Flaring and High Hagoling the fuck out of Drakes, Griffins, Chimeras, etc. This game is retard easy. I got bored somewhere around the quest that sends you to the little islands to get the dragon blood vendor. I couldn't be bothered to finish it and the story is typical Jap bullshit, so wasn't even interesting enough that I wanted to power through to see it finished. Ended up just watching the final scenes on YouTube.

I guess I can understand why this game may have been a "cult classic" back in 2011 or 2012, whenever the first one came out? But in 2024, I just can't fathom why people think this game is anything better than mid as fuck. At $30 or maybe $40, I guess I can see some value here. Especially for boomers who suck at video games and want to seem like they're still at Polk High, because AI is doing all the heavy lifting for them. But at $70, this game is a total rip off IMO.

DD2 is a lot easier than DD1 was. DD1 wasn't too difficult either until you get to the DLC and then you'll get your ish pounded in in a hurry. The level design there is superb too, far better than anything I've found in DD2 so far. Two completely different teams made the games I think. If you skipped DD1 I think it's a much better game for a number of reasons than DD2, at least in it's current state. So far DD2 is a 7/10 game IMO, losing 2 points just for the constant rock cliff terrain and non-stop arcade style trash mobs. They're far more intelligently distributed in the first game which imo is a 10/10 overall.

I've been doing all the side quests I can find and unlocking stuff, like level 55 now and I went back to continue the main story. I tried doing that masquerade ball sequence in the whore house but it wouldn't trigger. Had to look up who the NPC I was supposed to meet there and then pay 5000 gold to lcoate her in the Vernworth morgue which was FULL of dead bodies. Resurrected Wilhelmina and the cutscene triggered.

This game has some interesting turns, apparently the final Sphinx reward is a wakestone that ressurrect everyone at once so I might try for that or just keep researching who I'm missing for story quest and reviving them one at a time, which is silly. They almost have a really cool mechanic with Dragonplague if only they left clues as to which important NPC is required for steps you might get stuck on.

The nice thing about Dragonplague is that performance in town is now as good as outside of it.

Phazael said:

I know you are edge lording, but the core story idea is interesting and the main play loop of exploring while farming up levels/stuff is very satisfying. The difficulty fall off (especially if you main a sorcerer or mystic knight) is probably the biggest issue, with the end game being too brief being a close second.

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I'm actually not edge lording at all. I'm genuinely curious where the appeal is. Maybe it's because I didn't join the hype train 13 years ago, so I don't have just raw nostalgia fueling my fun? Similar to how I can go back and play EverQuest every few years, despite it being a pretty dogshit game in actuality by today's standards - pure nostalgia fuel.

DD2 felt very much like the Bethesda Fallout games to me. Fun and interesting for the first 10-20 hours, enjoying the whole "I wonder what's in that cave?!" or "damn, those ruins probably have some cool shit in them!" aspect for a while. But once I've seen the Cyclops bust through the trees for the 8th time, or the random hidden Cave Minotaur for the 5th time, it all just starts feeling "samey". And then by the time I get to Battahl, I'm just fighting slightly different skins of the same shit. Oh, this Ogre has slightly more pustules on his skin instead of the Vernworth Ogres?! Much gameplay! WOW! And anything "new" they throw out at you is laughably easy because I'd stick a couple Augural Flares to their weakpoints, High Hagol them to the point of uselessness, and then finger pop my asshole while waiting for my pawns to finish the job.

At least in a game like Elden Ring, where there are admittedly a lot of "samey" or copy/pasta dungeons/caves, you always knew that there's a potential boss in there that's going to smoke your ass. Or a unique, interesting item(even if it isn't for your build). There's none of that wonder in DD2. It's all either shit you can buy from a vendor hidden away, or items that are just straight up worse. Most of the time it's just random ore veins and arrows I'll never use.

The game just offers ZERO in the modern gaming space that I haven't already seen or seen done 10x better already. Like I said, I see the appeal this would've had in 2012. But in 2024? Game plays dated as fuck, performs dated as fuck, and the story is laughably average at best.

Compared to one, DD2 world is huge but NPCs are far less interesting, it also has way more enemies so instead of roaming around it is fight to fight to fight making the world less interesting as well. I am about to try a solo run because if they take control of my character to force a high five one more time...

Phazael said:

My advice on the Sphinx quest for casuals is to do the two easy ones that give you a port crystal and allow you to copy it, then just gank the fucking sphinx for the eternal wakestone. The rest of the stuff is in the nice to have but not remotely needed category.

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If your arisen and pawn are both female (or you just don't mind looking like a degen), the best use of sphinx dupe is the corset from collecting medals. Upgraded with dwarven+dragon crafting it's the best armor for all but maybe 3 vocations. Portcrystals are practically useless in the long run, you basically need like 1 for battahl town, 1 for elf village, 1 for melve, and 1 to carry around when you need a temporary port location, like when doing the sphinx stuff. You can easily get five of them without wasting your dupe.

Not sure what second best choice would be for people who don't want their dude wearing a corset. The XP ring would be an obvious choice, but you can't get it until the second set of riddles. Maybe the +cast speed/-hp ring so you can have one for you and one for your pawn without having to wait for NG+.

Finally managed to undo the dragonplague.

You can also just wait 7 days and it'll undo itself. That's what I've read anyway, since I haven't actually had it myself. Dragonsplague is super easy to avoid once you know what to look for, doubly so if you revert your savegame every time you get the popup after hiring a pawn. The popup resets and will show again the next time you get one that isn't diseased enough to show red eyes.

Which one of you did this?

Finally got around to beating this. I loved pretty much all of it until i became a Magick Archer. After i finally unlocked the shit everything changed. I think i would need to put the game in the hardest mode to have anymore challenge. Not to mention as soon as you get your meister ability its like youre a bow god and everything falls over. All in all im pleased and i hope they do at least 2 expansions to this since its essentially DD1 the remake and a few new classes. I still havent bed the top chick in the brothel, but ill figure out how.

Eh, the MA maister ability is strong but it's also completely useless if resting is inconvenient/impossible. There's plenty of other ways to do similar damage without the massive downside.

Kirun said:

I just don't understand the love for this game. By the time I reached Battahl, I was Augural Flaring and High Hagoling the fuck out of Drakes, Griffins, Chimeras, etc. This game is retard easy. I got bored somewhere around the quest that sends you to the little islands to get the dragon blood vendor. I couldn't be bothered to finish it and the story is typical Jap bullshit, so wasn't even interesting enough that I wanted to power through to see it finished. Ended up just watching the final scenes on YouTube.

I guess I can understand why this game may have been a "cult classic" back in 2011 or 2012, whenever the first one came out? But in 2024, I just can't fathom why people think this game is anything better than mid as fuck. At $30 or maybe $40, I guess I can see some value here. Especially for boomers who suck at video games and want to seem like they're still at Polk High, because AI is doing all the heavy lifting for them. But at $70, this game is a total rip off IMO.

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DD1 with the dlc had a very decent endgame. DD1 wo dlc wasnt that great, probably the same for DD2

Pyros said:

Na DD1 without DLC was still better than DD2 endgame.

DD2 postgame is really weirdly designed, there's not that much new stuff(there's 2 new bosses but you only fight them once, twice if you fucked up some stuff lategame before postgame), you do get to fight some rare enemies more often too(Dulahan and such) but it's not that much, there's little new to explore even with a good portion of land added because of how it's designed but more importantly it's limited. You can only sleep 12(14? I forgot) times before you're locked out of sleeping until NG+. That's fine since you can just not sleep as time is frozen during it, but bosses won't respawn without passing time, so eventually there's just nothing left alive. There's not too much to do in there and there's no replayability to it.

It's just a continuation of the story until the game really ends. Realistically you'll be done in a couple of days, on my 2nd playthrough it took me about 2hours to clear out all the postgame quests and I already had the best armor and best weapon at the very start of it so there was little incentive to keep farming other than getting more weapons(which is fine but ironically is best done before postgame since you can just reset drakes over and over).

DD1 had Everfall, which while uninventive and simple(largely just a bunch of rooms with bosses, sometimes multiple at the same time) it still had the Ur-Dragon as a kind of final fight you can farm repeatedly to get the best gear, and the rest of the rooms were nice to farm stuff in and check out vocations in them. It didn't have that much replayability, but you could easily spend a few weeks just grinding Everfall stuff until you were done, which is a reasonable amount of time.

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This, DD2 endgame is more disappointing than not being able to bang the head mistress. I loved the everfall and i was confused at why its not in this. I went around and slayed everything, and maxed out the endgame gear on my MA except for the helm because it looks dumb and you cant turn off display on it(another dumb idea). Honestly the MA endgame gear looks like utter shit compared to the Elven gear i had earlier. Furthermore the endgame MA bow looks worse than ALL the other MA weapons. I dont know who the fuck was in charge of endgame gear appearance but they fuckin suck since all the sets looked like turds.

Anyway i cant see a reason to do NG+ unless its masssssssssssssssively harder since i will just 1 shot the world.

I'm at the last fight/choice with the dragon but I have no will to finish it. 6/10 is probably my final rating in it's current state, basically no chance I ever replay it. Mods might fix the annoying trash mobs/balance issues late game but I don't see them fixing the tedious and boring rock cliff terrain that makes up 95% of the world design, and the main story is pretty short and not great. The rocky terrain makes the world feel small too, which I suspect is why they added so many annoying enemies to slow down movement. Was really fun till mid game though, I'll probably buy the DLC sight unseen like a sucker.

I was annoyed by the terrain as well. Its obviously intentionally done like this to make you take the long way everywhere. Fuck the misty area also because that shit was annoying af. The game needed 5x more dragons, 10x more chimera's and 50% less trash mobs. I did enjoy the Elven area and healing the Arbor, but not many quest were actually enjoyable. They honestly fucked this game over with design choices and lack of an Everfall.