Dragon's Dogma II

[Lebowski]

Fighting Cowboy calling this a modern masterpiece and saying he hasn't had this much fun form an action RPG since Elden Ring, colour me excited to play this

[Lebowski]

https://www.eurogamer.net/dragons-dogma-2-review

Reviews coming in strong, only issue I'm seeing is people marking it down on its performance, it's only managing fps in the range of, 80-120 on top end pc's, with console performance being around 30-40 fps. FPS drops are supposed to be considerably worse on Xbox Series X than PS5, not sure if patches will be incoming to sort out performance issues or if it's just a case of too big a game for a solid 60 on current gen consoles.

[hudson]

I've read a lot of mixed and conflicting things in reviews. One reviewer will say "the amount of different enemies you come across is impressive!", then the next two reviews I read "There is literally 4 different enemy types between running into the bigger bossy monsters.

Then, "The game took 40 hours and felt like the enemies were easy to beat". Next review, the game is massive, it'll take over 100 hours. Plus, this game is just brutal! I would kill enemies, move 2 feet and run into another group of trolls. Kill them only to turn corner into more!"

I honestly think this game is gonna be pure marmite. Loads loving it, and loads bouncing hard off it.

I will be getting regardless, as I am a capcom whore.

[Tobal]

Next review, the game is massive, it'll take over 100 hours. Plus, this game is just brutal! I would kill enemies, move 2 feet and run into another group of trolls. Kill them only to turn corner into more!"

this is exactly how the previous game was, area's are essentially level locked (do you have enough attack to damage the bandits or goblins, and enough defence to eat there attacks and magic), and you could easily streamline it to the bosses without even bothering to engage with levelling multiple vocations and relaying on higher level pawns, which would be a really boring way to play not mixing and matching play traits and abilities to make some broken monstrosity.

Not sure what they are on about with the basic enemy types, DD1 had goblins, skelles, lizard men, bandits, assassins, wolves, harpies and ghosts with the humanoids having job classes. Smells of typical game 'journalism', straight line to the end without exploring to give an uniformed review asap for clicks/watches.

[Neon Ignition]

That would make sense, ties in with EG's review where they say it's Capcom doubling down on the original rather than trying to make it a more palatable affair for non-fans. I never got on with DD1 but it's always been impressive as to how persistent and eventually successful Capcom has managed to make a PS3 game so given it's a war of attritition to get a sequel made it feels like they made the wise move to stick to appealing to returning players.

[Lebowski]

Review wise I've seen two trusted sources both heap high praise on it, whereas the negative reviews on metacritic are from places like The Metro newspaper, i love a good exploration RPG with monsters and build crafting, so this is what I'm looking for in a new release. Things like wandering into an area that's kicking your arse is a complaint you could level at Elden Ring, it lets you go where you want but will kick your arse for doing so at certain points.

If you have never watched fighting cowboy on YouTube before, ID highly recommend him, he does some excellent walk through of certain games as well as showing you how to use and build crazy strong characters in games like Elden Ring. He's going to do a walkthrough on this so worth keeping an eye on.

[hudson]

Yeah Fighting Cowboy is ace. I've watched many of his Souls walkthrough and yeah he did say yesterday that DDII might be the next big Elden Ring type of wave maker. I trust him. As I said, I'm getting it either way to make my own mind up.

[Finsbury Girl]

Damn it! I'm trying VERY HARD not to buy and download right now

[hudson]

I've played the first 30 mins and its world looks lovely.

[Lebowski]

Storm kicking off on steam over the frame rate issues and over the microtransactions, you can buy extra fast travel things and camping gear that's lighter for a few quid, in total theirs £40 worth of extra things you can buy via microtransactions none of it essential and none of it is unobtainable in game bar the fee to alter your characters look after you start the game.

It's got mostly negative user reviews because of these two things and is getting review bombed into oblivion, These pc people really don't like it if they're not getting 40,000 fps in their games. Apparently killing all the non-essential NPC's improves the framerate so people have gone on killing sprees in towns and villages to keep their frame rate up when in these areas

insert Monty Python Camelot meme

[hudson]

Playing on PS5, whilst not 60fps, I can't say the frame rate has even crossed my mind yet. Have yet to come across a town or giant monster tho.

Really enjoying it so far. There's treasure chests down nearly every nook and cranny I stray down.

[doodledude]

How easy is it to jump into this if I've not played DD1 much (or at all!)

[hudson]

Easy as pie. No previous game knowledge required.

[Tobal]

PC seemed to run fine for me in the opening hour (i7, 3070), setting to high, RTX on and "4k res" DLSS(plenty of ghosting on spinning the camera fast), blur/depth off giving me a solid 60, will have to see how it handles the city then i get there. I did have a good chuckle at the cooking montage when i used a tent to rest, was not expecting that, make sure to have some meat ready for it.

Having just 1 save file is extremely stupid though and limited hair colours deserves points knocking off for that. Other than that, it plays how i expect it to, which is good.