Feels real good to someone else make a brief comment about the slide animation. It started to drive me insane during exploration. I love jumping around and looking at all the corners of the map, but I would be sent down a slope at random that i can just jump over, which both slogs exploration and trivializes the animation.

I feel like the game needs a hard balance but I'm afraid that wont happen anytime near, in year perhaps with the dlc expasion but that feels like slap for us early buyers 😮

I really wish we could equip 8 skills, 4 is so little

Ngl I chuckled at that harpy comment. I did notice that movement is more stiff this time and all those minor animations when you traverse uneven terrain not only have animation, they also lock out "use/equip" options, which can get very annoying. You're also correct about casters. They do feel very limited, worse even, despite all the improvements. Enemy stats aside, I think another issue is attack cadence. Enemies do feel a bit too passive at times.

The Chimera snake tail never did much for me in dd2 in dd1 it felt like a must to cut the tail now? It drops nothing special and does next to nothing if you are focusing other heads

The stagger system need a change on projection resistance you could have 1300 projection resistance and you still get crashed around for no reason from small gobelins throwing bottles at you or harpies picking your 200kg Warrior with no effort

16:50 I remember when enemies like the drakes and dire Cyclops would do everything they could to get you off of them. If you got behind them they would tail swipe you to the loading screen or swipe at you for hitting them from the side they don't really do that now.

I was getting ready to fight one of those blighted drakes at the endgame with a sick warrior build when suddenly two pawns of mine nuked the bastard into oblivion with Meteorstrom in 10 seconds. It feels like the game actively penalizes you when using good loot/strong abilities by becoming incredibly easy and painfully dull to play, and it feels like you have to go out of your way to make it more difficult on yourself in order to make it more enjoyable. The first game + Dark Arisen nailed the difficulty aspect, but this one becomes very easy very fast, and is a shame since fights in DD2 are so much damn fun and dynamic when they have some level of challenge to them, instead of two-shooting every enemy on your way. I knew something was off with enemy balance from the moment I could pulverize ogres, minotaurs and cyclops instantaneously by sticking several explosives arrows on them and detonating them at the same time.

"When a boss fell down they lost the fight." 100%

Modding the game with True Difficulty and Epic Encounters after starting NG+ really made everything shine for me. I also play with True Warfarer mod for more fun. The strategy needed to survive True Difficulty even against simple armored cyclopes became stellar, they 2 hit you with most of their attacks (understandable since they're fucking huge) the armor is even harder to break so it really adds a lot to depth and party composition since one false move can mean a downed pawn or even death for you.

finally, someone put all my thoughts into a good, well worded video. well done!

Yo I completely agree with everything you had to say. Enemy variety is low on my list for combat issues, it's the absolute steamrolling of every enemy that makes it feel so bad. A hard mode or tightening of the base level scaling in the game/exp earned would help a lot. Also endgame-ish gear is fairly quick to come by, which has way too high stats for the base game. I wish so badly for this game to see a content cycle similar to Monster Hunter's updates and expansion. Some tweaking and rebalancing of game mechanics and combat stuff, some new enemies, new mechanics like switch skills or somthing, an optional hard mode, and a new area would be so sick. Id also love to have 6 skills instead of 4, combat is just too restrictive and spammy with 4. Questing is cooked lol, it needs a lot of improvements. The game lacks developed enough narratives for quests, so they are hard carried by the fun of combat and exploring new places. Either massively improve variety of quest objectives and create unique encounters for them to let gameplay carry, or finish developing the story so it keeps me hooked for more. The premise of the stories and stuff for the main quest and even some side content is like 10/10, but the execution was abysmal, like 0/10 on a lot of them. Nameless village for example had me so excited when I first arrived, it felt like a Dark Brotherhood type thing from Skyrim and I was looking forward to some crazy mysterious evil shit going down, but it was just 2 mid quests and a goofy jumping puzzle.

Do you think having more robust end game content would help with the issue? Dragons Dogma one had dark arisen which really escalated your options for challenge later in the game and the end game in itself created more combat scenarios. I find myself in new game plus thinking I could get other endings, but I kinda wanna fight something else.

Another nitpick is when you raise your shield you are locked in "shield movement" and you have to face the enemy to be locked on the enemy . If you are facing away from the enemy and raise your shield, now you are in "shield movement" but with your back towards the enemy thus not blocking incoming attacks . In chaotic fight moments this happened to me constantly. A dedicated lock on feature would fix this problem

you make some solid points here, im planning to do a new game from scratch zero enhancement run and test out how hard that is lol i feel like that would balance the game quite well

Hoping they add something similar to DD1's Bitterblack Isle in terms of difficulty.

I remember the lion would usually be the last one to fall and his roar was formidable. He could knock back all who approached. Ogres are kinda mid now too. They don't fight intelligently any more.

With the traversal animation complaint. Those are the rules of the game which enemy plays by, you bump them into a wall they fall down. It’s the rules, changing it changes the game

I will come back to this game once capcom adds in a hard mode or artificial difficulty scaling

the thing i loved about dd1 was that you needed to know enemies weakness being weakspots or elemental weakness like puting a Cyclops to sleep them following up with a big attack, the movement is cluncky i really miss the arcade vibe, they really wanted the game to feel "realistic" with this cluncky movement, slow animations, hp loss gauge forcing you to rest wich also forces you to have a camping kit wich also forces your weight to be astronomical is almost like having fun was not an option when they designed the game

Great video. I played Dragons Dogma 1 for a long time. I never remember it being this easy. I love the combat in DD2, but the more I play the easier it gets. I don’t see the purpose of starting NG+ if nothing is harder. As it is, there is nothing that can kill me when I’m playing front line classes. Heck, there’s nothing that really concerns me even the slightest. I hope they adjust this soon. Even to this day, when Death shows up in DD1 I immediately pay attention.

I honestly wished you had another button of attack for circle instead of a fking dash macro

I have personally stopped playing until a hard mode because even my pawns can take care of everything I can’t even get a combo off because enemies die so quick

Combat is easy with full squad, play with only main pawn as healer so only u kill stuff. It's fun with good attack variety just not enough enemy variety

The low difficulty and low enemy variety are definitely my biggest problems after playing the game. I liked how brutal the game could be early on. It almost felt like hard mode from the first game, which is the only way I play it now. I hope they fix both of these with an expansion/DLC.

I wished we could have a party of 6, allowing pawns to use all vocations but making the game way more harder.

I was disagreeing at first with terrain stuff, never had that issue but I do agree that dd2 undermines the combat by essentially not being punishing enough to make you respect the challenges it presents.

Don't play BBI before this game if you want more than about 7 total monster types that you see on anything but frequently. Idk how they couldn't get the Hydra's or really any of the tough enemies from BBI. Never challenged, ever. Quite a letdown.

One playthrough is enough for me with this game. Combat was fun the first time but on NG+, it's just a bore. Whoever decided to remove secondary weapons needs to be fired.

Yes, the strong point of this games is the combat and the options that you can use to build up your party and skills (you can also be fashion here with gears in some way, i love it) You will enjoy combat until you max out every vocation, then when you return to your main one you feel empty, no more time spent to see pawn on the rift, no more brainstorming to select your skills, your main pawn will have his final build and you are gonna be mega op and even if combat still is good (if you don't use bullshit shield of spearhand or infinite i.f. of thief or Explosive arrows etc) but you will se the lack of that "Wow" factor But hey, to max out every vocation you need some time so i think this game is solid all around This game is better then the first in the exploration but even worse in story vs the first (The story of Dark Arisen for me was too good for god sake) Sword and shield is the best vocation on the fun side, fight me

The biggest problem is your pawn (never-mind your main character😂) is so OP before the end of the first play through that it’s not worth playing anymore. I don’t want to kill dragons in 12 seconds. Feels like every game now is either a cheap gimmicky souls-borne ripoff “Hard Mode” (which has no meaning anymore🤷🏽‍♂️)“ or easy to allow “accessibility “ for everyone ages 1-30.

Mods have made the combat hard again for me, but that requires to play on pc. Hope they release a hard mode or something because this isn't good.

I agree with this. You and your pawn crew get too powerful too quickly. Enemies need more health, more moves, etc, to make them more engaging. The pawn system should be relied on more. For instance, this boss monster needs to be hit with lightning to knock it out or its going to poison the entire area, making winning very hard. So it forces the player to either be a sorcerer, or hire a pawn with lightning to handle that challenge. That way the player is forced to engage with different vocations and the pawn system all the time. Skills should matter more as well. That way you are constantly looking for different pawns or changing your vocation to solve varying enemy problems. This game absolutely needs a deep dive because its good, can be 100% better and more challenging, because i want to play more of it. Needs a hard mode also. Thanks for the read.

I agree with you mostly. I have played DD1 for 600 hours some years ago. When I started playing the game. I didn't do well because I was too accustomed to souls like combat controls. I died because I forgotten that I cannot dodge and just have to take the hits or block them. Once I have gotten used to the combat. I realized it was too easy. After fully exploring the world before fighting Greg, I was so burnt out and bored with the combat. I just couldn't finish the game. I decide to put the game on hold and move on to other games. Combat feels unsatisfying, the game is, in my opinion, just an improved version of the 1st game to me. Nothing special nothing new.

Balancing is definitely a bit wonky. Pretty sure enemies do scale up with you. I stopped using sorc pawns at around lvl 30 haha. Also beat my whole NG+ run solo. You def have some good points and I mostly agree with all of em. Think a hard mode would be a major help. But a nerf to magic, would also be healthy.

There’s less skills

When my main pawn nearly one shotted a Griffin, i stopped playing.

This game is not for people who lack imagination.

DD2 is the perfect game to play without UI because it's that easy but cool looking. I also expect an expansion like Iceborne to fix this game,MHW was pretty stale on release but became far better after the free updates and the expansion was 10/10

I'm worried that Capcom won't listen too a damn word we say about this game. Other studios are some times more engaging with their community. These guys are almost as bad as rockstar

The entire combat system always feels like im waiting for an animation to finish instead of actually controlling my character.

For me the fighting mechanics are better in Dark Arisen. There was a big difference and fighting mechanics were the reason I played DDDA so much.

The lack of difficulty and lack of content scaling to player level is a game breaker. The same exact problem from DD1 and Dark Arisen. We level up way to fast and as a result almost all combat becomes trivial and all to easy by mid game. You’d think CAPCOM would have remembered the OVERWHELMING player feedback from DD1, players were begging for difficulty options.

I don't know. The combat is pretty good. What is wrong is the game flow. Chaos.

Valid points. Love the game. But I, too, hate how easy the fights get so early. They could have at least capped the level to around 50.

The complaint about the traversal animations is crazy to me. I laughed out loud when i heard it. I think DD2's combat is ultimately held back mostly by the enemies. After level 30 or so, enemy health pools are too small. Also, the movesets are super simple and non-agressive. Most enemies only have 2-3 attacks, and they use them very sparingly. They just let you beat on them with minimal resistance. It reminds me of a character action games like DMC, where most of the enemies are no threat, and just exist for you to style on. But in DMC, you have so much depth and so many options, the draw of the combat is to style. Dd2 has 4 skill slots and a very limited basic moveset. It needs difficulty to remain engaging, but its not there.

the combat is fun. It doesn't need to be better

This game is carried hard by the combat. If you want deep rich world building and interesting characters this isn't it. I don't think i had a single back and forth conversation with anyone in this game. Just people explaining the plot to you. Even the exploration is a complete disappointment when the best gear is bought from a merchant not found in some deep cave or dropped from a hard boss. Not that there could be a hard boss since there's only like 5 enemy skeletons. Truly this is what dragon's dogma fan were hyping up? The mtx controversy pulled away from how empty and shallow the game actually is. Oh look the same exact goblin pack in the exact same spot again! Definitely one of the games that has been made.

This review was great but imo you’re deep diving into a game that doesn’t need to be deep dived. As soon as you reach lvl 35 (which is easy btw) you and your crew tank every thing. The skill set of the enemy are basic so it doesn’t push you to do kool things in the game. They have all these moves for your character but what’s the need for them? After I hit lvl 45 nothing scared me at all I beat the final Boss in like 5 min give or take. I get they wanted the game to be casual and I get they didn’t want the game to be ER but they should have worked on a middle ground. I guess I could have challenged myself and went solo but this game is based on pawns. I beat the game and that’s it for me until the DLC I guess. There no way this game should be considered for game of the year imo.

Do you think the game would be more fun if you died every time you made a mistake and were forced to memorize attack patterns just to make it through the story? Would that be more *entertaining* for you? I don't think the game is supposed to be "hard" you're just supposed to vibe with it.

Then stick to Skyrim then ?

Let me save you time he doesn't know how to play lol

The Problem With Dragon's Dogma 2's Combat WARRIOR CLASS is to slow darksouls and elden ring the class swing faster so do not feel you just standing there same go's for monster hunter world WARRIOR CLASS