Dragon's Dogma 2

[FakeSympathy]

I am finished with the game. I keep wanting the game to click for me, or become interesting but it never seems to get there. I've gotten archer to the point where the damage is decent feeling against the same shit I've been fighting (minotaurs, ogres, cyclops) and it's simply just not fun. I even went Thief to try the climby hacky stabby combat and that also sucks. It's incredibly jank, grabbing hold of an enemy doesn't seem to be because you pushed the "grab" button, but rather on whether or not the game feels you deserve to hang from an Ogre's pubes. Not to mention stamina runs out extremely quickly making climbing a full on Cyclops or Ogre pointless because you'll be out of stamina and fall by the time you can stab at the goodie bag, so you might as well just nibble at their toes.

The world and the quests are really boring imo, the world itself is a pile of spaghettis roads all weaving about but never seeming to lead to anywhere interesting. All the villages look the fucking same, and there are a lot of cliffs and object that just get in your way of getting anywhere you really wanna go. As @FakeSympathy said the constant loss of max HP is really dumb and only ensures that once you start to lose you will continue to lose and there is nothing you can do about it if you are out in the world somewhere without a campfire or inn to rush back to.

I think the big failing of the questing system is that there is nothing to grab onto narratively. Some imposter sits on the throne in my name? So what, I am apparently the only person in the world the pawns will obey so all I have to do to gather up a ton of pawns and invade the castle myself. Nobody could stop me if I wanted to be a bastard about it. But I also have nothing to make me want the throne in the first place. I can take all my pawns and go make a bigger better castle somewhere else with free beer and hookers. Side quests are also just as flat, oh you need medicine little girl? Sucks to suck i guess. Oh one of the soldiers has been ambushed by Harpies, shouldn't be on patrol alone dumbass. The sheer number of random people out in the world alone getting fucked up by goblins or wolves or whatever is staggering and amazingly stupid. I came across a lady on the side of the road getting harassed by Goblins, and right next to her was a big fucking dragon just chilling. WHAT ARE YOU DOING OUT HERE LADY!?

There is no consistency that makes this world feel like a real place, as a result it's just a playground for the player to fight monsters in, but it's a bad playground covering in rust and half the monkey bars are missing.

I've seen videos and there is no doubt that the combat gets cool later. But in reality it doesn't get that cool, you just become so powerful that you just melt everything that threatens you and that's not exciting or good combat. It's just a game of overpowering the combat rather than engaging in it. And the sheer wall you have to climb is simply not fun to deal with.

Dragons Dogma needed good combat that feels fun and rewarding from the start, or a great world and story. Ideally it should have both. But it has neither.

Honestly, the health guage loss remaing after death is a stupid gimmick. At least in Souls games it kinda made sense as it's tied to the lore of going hollow, but here dying and then reloading from the start of the fight doesn't seem to have any in-game reason on why health loss stays.

I think combat could've been better if all classes had a dedicated dodge button. All of them have some sort of skills to avoid taking hits, except dodging seems to make the most sense half the time. Dodging also feels like it's the only one with an i-frame; You can try to jump or run, but the enemies will stagger you always.

Thank god the recent patch is supposed to make pawns talk less, because I was tired of hearing same dialogs over and over again. There are no interesting banters; it's mostly commenting on the party vocation make up, what they experienced in other worlds, "This looks like a great spot to harvest some ingredients", or commenting how I'm running everywhere. They do sometimes act as a guide for quest if they experienced solving it other worlds, but only give the bare bones directions. Pointing out locations of chests, caverns, and riftstones are cool, but they only say "it's around here" without giving better direction of where to go.

There are in fact some romance in the game, but again they are so insignificant it's hardly worth mentioning.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Honestly, the health guage loss remaing after death is a stupid gimmick. At least in Souls games it kinda made sense as it's tied to the lore of going hollow, but here dying and then reloading from the start of the fight doesn't seem to have any in-game reason on why health loss stays.

It strikes me as a Souls a in a lot of ways, the lack of directions, the health system, the lack of any indication of lootable or harvestable things. Except it's also not designed to be a Soulsy game so it's just like a bunch of shitty game ideas all thrown together into a game that doesn't really make any fucking sense.

The sad part is, there are cool mechanics and concepts here. Like the pawn system could be a really awesome idea, if it weren't wasted on just being a bunch of stupid NPC's. Maybe if they'd built a story around the pawns, haven't each pawn class or personality type have a quest storyline to complete in exchange for making that class of pawn more powerful. The idea of fighting big things and climbing them is cool, Shadow of the Colossus did it and people loved it, but instead of tying it to a very rapidly depleting stamina bar, make it tied to enemy attack patterns. When climbing on an enemy they will do things to swipe you off, and you have to be able to jump or move around them to avoid those things. Though eventually every enemy will do something that kicks you off no matter what so you can't just stay there forever.

The lack of damage avoidance for all classes is a problem too. Because enemies all have ways to fuck you up no matter where you are or what class your playing. The number of melee enemies that suddenly had full screen leap attacks that one-shot my archer is staggering. And the archer doesn't even have the benefit of any mobilty to run away when an Ogre or Minotaur just charges you. No block, no roll, nothing but standing there and taking it is a problem and it really highlights that the combat itself lacks any real depth.

Does any class ever get the ability to do anything but shoot or stab the monsters? Not really. The archer can apply poisons or explosions but that's just shooting the monster. The warrior can taunt the monster so he can stab them more. The mages are really the only people with any sort of diversity in what they can do between, healing, buffing, or blasting fireballs. In a world where magic exists, there is no reason why the other classes can't also do something magical to grant them utility, to make your party choice actually matter, and making the player pick and choose their party make-up because no matter what there is a sacrifice that party will make. Perhaps there should have been an actual healing class which can't do any DPS and only serves as a buffer/healer for the group. Make the warriors more tanky and better at locking monsters in place, give Rogues the ability to shutdown monster abilities via magic poisons or something where they can slow a monster or prevent a flying monster from being able to fly at all.

But there's not really any of that. Again it just makes the combat feel about the numbers, out level and out gear the monster to win easier and easier, and the tactics and choices you make don't mean shit.

 

[meiam]

The lack of damage avoidance for all classes is a problem too. Because enemies all have ways to fuck you up no matter where you are or what class your playing. The number of melee enemies that suddenly had full screen leap attacks that one-shot my archer is staggering. And the archer doesn't even have the benefit of any mobilty to run away when an Ogre or Minotaur just charges you. No block, no roll, nothing but standing there and taking it is a problem and it really highlights that the combat itself lacks any real depth.

Thief can dash, warrior/fighter can defend, mystic spear/magick archer and mage can apply a team wide barrier, trickster can mind control enemy.

Does any class ever get the ability to do anything but shoot or stab the monsters? Not really. The archer can apply poisons or explosions but that's just shooting the monster. The warrior can taunt the monster so he can stab them more. The mages are really the only people with any sort of diversity in what they can do between, healing, buffing, or blasting fireballs. In a world where magic exists, there is no reason why the other classes can't also do something magical to grant them utility, to make your party choice actually matter, and making the player pick and choose their party make-up because no matter what there is a sacrifice that party will make. Perhaps there should have been an actual healing class which can't do any DPS and only serves as a buffer/healer for the group. Make the warriors more tanky and better at locking monsters in place, give Rogues the ability to shutdown monster abilities via magic poisons or something where they can slow a monster or prevent a flying monster from being able to fly at all.

The point of taunt isn't to stab monster, its to take aggro away from other player who can't take damage. Almost every class have some utility (covering literally every example you ask), the thief can fire enchant their weapon, steal from monster and use their rope to drag flying monster down. Mystic spearhand can force grab object and enemy to throw them (possibly into water/cliff), can punt enemy so far they disappear from the battle and can shoot paralyzing bolt. Magick archer can shoot orb of light to illuminate battlefield, put enemy to sleep and drain enemy health to heal allies. Trickster is almost entirely utility (buff/debuff/platforming). And so on, yeah warrior and archer are pretty straightforward class, but even they have some stuff, like drenching enemy so they can be frozen by allies. Like its not perfect, but it put the vast majority of action RPG to shame as far as ability that aren't just pure damage.