Poll: What Review Score Would You Give Dragon's Dogma 2?

Despite the vitriol around this game I’m enjoying it. I never got into one despite two attempts, but this one I can’t stop thinking about being a dozen hours or so in.

Poor with problems fps drops, glitches and Microtransactions its worst capcom now

I'm not particularly a fan of Dragon's Dogma (I thought the first game was incredibly overrated) but even I've got to say the drama around the microtransactions is strange. Just last year Resident Evil 4 had day one MTX, before that Monster Hunter Rise had day one MTX, and before that DMC5 had them as well. Practically all Capcom games have day one MTX yet for some reason no one seemed to care until now. If you hate MTX then hate them across the board, this selective outrage is just dumb

Honestly, setting aside the scummy mtx aspect, we need to stop pretending away broken releases. Regardless of how good the game is or isn't in terms of art/gameplay design, if its technically a mess it should absolutely be factored into reviews. Any other products with technical malfunctions or shortcomings are reviewed including these considerations. Gaming should be no different. It's important to be real here as well in terms of the actual reason DD2 is getting user pushback. It's primarily because of the technical problems. The back and forth over the MTX gets clicks and views, but its the garbage polish that has many more upset.

The longer we continue to give glowing reviews for games they release and finish later with patches, all the while charging early adopters to be beta testers, the more widespread and prevalent it will become, and the more inconsequential hardware advancements will seem.

First time when I am voting, the Abysmal gang are not here yet.

Really having a lot of fun in Dragon’s Dogma 2. There is a lot of drama about the game, but in case anyone needs to know: you don’t have to spend any money on microtransactions.

The game is a lot of fun, but it’s very much an old school RPG. It may not be for everyone, but it’s really been an amazing experience so far.

Honestly a 9/10. It's a game made for me and the way I play games. I can fight large bosses in cool ways and explore freely without needing to be told to go somewhere. And then quest in a way that I want to, when I want to in a manner that suits me.

If they patched in maybe a 40fps RT mode I'd be sorted. But the occasional big dips in RT mode isn't affecting my enjoyment much at all.

9/10 from me. Its not perfect and performance is bad but its a fantastic sequel.

Like the first one. The things it does right are 10/10 level, the things it does wrong are 5/10 level. Did that keep me away from voting 9/10 overall? No, it didn't.

89 hours deep and still loving it. I've just been scrapping with a giant golem whilst wolves were running amok, then some goblins decided to join the fray before a griffon swooped down on all of us. Finished them all off and dapped all my pawns. Absolute bedlam and utterly fantastic.

It doesn't run at 8K 120 FPS on my $500 console. It's the worst game ever made.

It's a super special game despite its many faults. It scratches the itch for a great open world title that I thought Starfield would address last fall. 9 for me

@KundaliniRising333
Absolutely agree and mentioned this before.
But most seem to dismiss it and think it’s ok to release games in this condition.

Definitely an 8 out of 10 for me. Beside the performance issues the story just falls apart as we get to battahl and the characters are practically never given any time to develop. The gameplay on the other hand is some of the best I have ever played, traveling, fighting bosses, mix and matching your pawns, this game does journeys better than any other game out there. The limiting of fast traveling and the loss gauge really helped with this and I know people will whine about that because, "I hate that I can't fast travel all the time."

I’m playing on series x and for me it’s an 8.5/9. It’s monster hunter with mmo features that I actually can enjoy. DD2 is one of those games where it is less about the story (I love the lore for the series btw) but more about the feel of the game. For me it feels like the ps2 to 360 (sorry sony is my tertiary system so I don’t think of them first) era of game design; games like onimusha, way of the samurai and some of the feel of some JRPGs at the time but of course more refined, but it is looking to a specific style. The game expects you to wander and to stumble but it isn’t out to murder you. So many hidden systems in the gameplay make it feel organic and unique to each player.

Add that to a world that always has something around the corner and a fun system of training your AI party it feels both an advancement of traditional JRPGs and its own thing. Love it. Pawn system is so great and the enemy al as well ( I saw some video where a goblin waited until an entire party was on a bridge and the ran up and whacked the bridge, introducing them to the Brine) Also I love the slight changes to the system to increase the risk/reward feel. Things like dragonsplague, adaptive difficulty, and raids make your choices matter without feeling like the game is out to brutalize you (reason I can’t get into souls games). I plan on doing two run throughs but I am camping the mid game right now just wandering and grinding.

i love it, only reason it doesn't get 10 from me is because it isn't 100% perfect, technically.

I'd give it about an 8/10 after 18 hours. Having said that I can't put it down so that score may rise.

8/10 from me. As much as I'm enjoying this game and as much as the frame rate issues don't actually bother me that much I can't ignore that it has performance issues and I hope capcom sort them out. Brilliant game but needs a bit of TLC.

I've given it an 8 despite my frustrations with how poorly it runs, and I'm being generous. I don't see it getting better any time soon and will probably sell it on rather than hold out for further improvements.

Biggest disappointment in a long time for me. Still a respectable 7 for me but I bought into the hype and its massively fell short for me.

Slightly above average so a 6

I love it. Nearly 50 hours in it has been outstanding. Only a few minor technical issues have stopped this from being what I would regard as the perfect game for me. I am enjoying it a lot more than Rise of The Ronin which I picked up the same day.

I end up having play sessions of 5-6 hours each time and the time just flies by. That's why I'd rate it 10/10 for myself.

Scored an 8 for me. There’s a lot it does brilliantly and quite a few issues that prevent it from scoring higher in my opinion:

Combat is up there with the absolute best of the genre and the level of customisation in the character creator is probably the most detailed I’ve seen in video game. The pawns are fun and a different take on a pseudo multiplayer system. You can become quite attached to them and your party during a playthrough. The world is interesting and rewarding to explore in many cases. Some of the side quest stories are genuinely compelling and interesting, often more so than the main questline.

However, some of the questing is quite basic and the single player story relatively short. The enemy variety is awful in terms of repetition, particularly when you get to the late game. Difficulty is also non existent once you get to late game and new game plus, there are no settings to rectify this. New game plus also doesn’t scale difficulty - there are posts on reddit from people in new game plus 2 and 3 describing how random pawns in the world are basically killing mobs and large monsters including drakes before the player can even get to the fight. The storyline is also incredibly weak and full of plot holes, the dragon really seems like an afterthought.

If you could marry up the best of this game with the best of the elder scrolls franchise you’d have the perfect game. Worth playing and I enjoyed my playthrough, a solid 8.

I'm aware of all the bad blood against this game for various reasons.
But it gets a 9/10 from me.
Very immersive game, a real "time warping device", once it gets it's hooks on you, real hours pass as fast as it takes to arrive at the destination while dozing on the oxcart (when you don't get attacked on the road that is).
The gameplay, the combat, and especially the exploration and the secrets are definitely top notch!

It certainly has it's performance issues, especially on PS5, which is why I've bought it on PC after I saw the initial reviews...
My 3090 gets it running at 4k@60fps at high quality settings with DLSS enabled.
It dips at 45 or 40fps in very crowded areas, but it doesn't blow the overall immersion.

Actually, as I understand it, the framerate and stuttering issues are actually caused by the CPU, not the GPU...
The devs got the CPU to calculate all the NPC's, all their movements and surface impacts, weather they are visible or "lurking" behind closed doors. Which is quite a lot of stress on the silicone considering the sheer number of them available in towns...

Many of those NPC's you don't even see or interact with often, as they stay mainly inside, minding their own business until you come barging in to spoil their zen.
Frankly, I would have preferred to have fewer explorable houses in towns, if it meant fewer NPC's and smoother framerates...
Hope the devs manage to find a solution to smooth things out, for consoles and PC alike, and sooner rather than later.

Surprised to see this game getting user scores this high. While I have no problem with the frame rate or the completely optional microtransactions, I just don't feel that this game is up to the level of polish we normally associate with 9's and 10's. With low enemy variety, seemingly random enemy placement, and low quality writing, I didn't even feel that this game is as good as a typical 8.

I bought the game on release day and enjoyed it for about 15 hours before getting annoyed with it and leaving to play Hollow Knight again. I voted 6/10. ::shrug::

@ErrantRob The vitriol around this game is mostly about building an audience on YouTube & other socials via ragebait

@gipsojo I would say the DD2 writing is mostly solid, but I played through almost all of Starfield so perhaps my bar has been set below the floor

I only got it as I had a voucher gift would have waited for a sale otherwise. I did enjoy the first but I have to say Im loving this. The combat, the world, the lack of fast travel. Its bringing me back to when I first played Skyrim on the ps3 if people remember the performance on that. 8/10 but a 9/10 if they can improve the framerate

This game is less broken at launch than:

Helldivers 2 (my current GOTY nevertheless)
Elden Ring (was god-awful on most PCs)
Baldur's Gate 3 (same issue with framerate in cities but much worse)

This game has more ambitious/better graphics than the 3 titles listed above. The outrage is baffling

Solid 7! Anything more than that for me is looking at the game with rose tinted glasses. It has a ton of problems

Think it's safe to say that the so far 9% that have voted 4 or below are PS4 salters that don't even have a PS5.
Oh, and bleat on about "waiting" for a PS5 pro, or PS6, or that this game "needs" one of said systems 😁.
By the time I pull me finger out and buy it/trade it, for about £45 to £50 next month, the framerate and all other issues will be sorted and all the chatter about this game will cease like it never existed.
Same went for other what I call tentpole games; Elden Ring, Spiderman 2, Cyberpunk.
Been gaming for 40 years and learnt in the PS3/360 era not to buy day one.
I'm not paying top price to be a beta tester.

10 That game is one masterpiece s 😁

I'm personally disappointed in it. I was looking forward to this game for years and LOVED Dragons Dogma 1, but I really hoped this game would keep up with the times:

1. It feels like the weight limit is WAY too low, like a single harpy feather/pinion will put me over, same for stamina.
2. I like the stamina system when casting magic but man, my character needs to do some cardio because it feels like hes stopping to catch his breath every couple of minutes.
3. Forget fast traveling, at the very least in a game with a larger map like this and abysmal stamina and weight limits, at least give me a horse
4. So many mini-boss monsters fling themselves off cliffs or into water and there goes the loot
5. NPCs are so very dumb (not the pawns). I had a couple following me in a cave I was way too weak to take on. I awoke a spirit that was way to powerful for me and my party. So I ordered my pawns to flee and got out of there. After taking forever navigating the caves back to the entrance, I noticed the NPCs didn't follow me out. They stayed behind to fight the monster and I couldn't find them because their quest didn't have any markers. So i wandered the caves trying to find them until i got the message that they died. Which leads me to
6. Quests having no markers is just obnoxious. There are so many times where I just have to guess or hope or pray in terms of what to do for a quest objective.

All of these things and more make the game feel like such a chore. I rated it a 5 because the combat is still very fun, like I remember from the first game, but why are there so many systems in this game that feel like the PS3 era? Why does this game feel like it doesn't value my time at all? I hate that I don't like this game 🫤

I think a solid 8 is fair. I love the exploration and combat - one of the most open-ended games I've played recently. This is a lot of what I wanted out of BotW. That said, the story is (so far) seriously forgettable and I don't think any of the characters are memorable. Very Skyrim-esque in that way.

Gave it a 9 for issues. Pawns walk off cliffs, don’t listen (not infected), talk too much. Some quests get bugged if you mess up a step (phantom oxcart), drakes behave like dragons.

Great game otherwise, exploring and killing to your hearts content.

@Brydontk

1. Eat gold beetles.
2. Sorcerers have galvanize, a stamina recharge
3. No horses exist in this world, use port crystals
4. Yeah, they do that. Ogres like to act like monkeys on bridges, cyclops act like bridges…
5. Escort mission, stay near your client.
6. Some quests you just gotta figure out. The beggar wanders around (waiting quest), some bug out on missed steps, some are time sensitive.

@Brydontk "Why does this game not value my time" Because it's an open world game that is encouraging you to explore? What is this question?

I'm waiting for a sale before I give it a go. It just doesn't seem like a game for me from what I have read from people who have played it. Still, I'm curious enough to see if it would surprise me. Just not curious enough to jump in at full price is all.

I'm almost 20 hours in. Solid 8 for now

@RoninGR
You've been spending too much time in outrage Reddit and not enough time in the game it seems.

@Nepp67 Really? You're telling me you've never heard anyone complain about video games that don't value their time? Like when there were complaints in the Sinnoh generation of Pokemon because the HP bars were extremely slow vs Pokemon Legends Arceus when people celebrated that reactions/battles/actions are instant? I'm not talking about games that encourage you to explore. Witcher 3 is much much bigger but it feels like that game values the gamer's time more than this one does

@Bunchesopuppies 1. Gold beetles give you the tiniest bit of weight per limit
2. I'm a sorceror, it still results in casting Galvanize constantly every few minutes
3. I'm aware no horses exist in this world. What is this comment? And port crystal's rarity is one of the complaints people had about the micro transactions
4. It's still not great game design. There's a reason games like Elden Rings had the mini-bosses in more isolated areas. Were there times where they could fling themselves off cliffs? Yes. But not nearly enough where it's notable.
5. Wouldn't have mattered in this scenario. You remember my complaint is the NPCs are dumb? Staying near them meant dying to an enemy I wasn't ready for (Which I'm not complaining about, I think it's fun to run into overpowered enemies in open world games so you can come back for them later). Also keep in mind, I didn't notice they were gone until I turned around later because I took for granted that in nearly every modern video game, your NPCs follow you wherever you go. It's insane that there are NPCs designed to fight monsters no matter what when not even your pawns do that (the "flee" command). Especially when there's a part of the game where the tutorial pops up that tells you to weigh your options when fighting monsters and that sometimes fleeing is the best option.
6. I get that, doesn't make it any less annoying. Personal tastes or whatever but it's fine if a couple quests do this, but most of them?

Great combat. Really fun to play but way too damn short. It’s like 20-25 hours long if you just do quests as they come to you. By the end of NG+ I was on 40 hours having seen pretty much everything and fully explored the map. Many of those hours were spent backtracking too. All that was left was grinding the vocations but at that point there’s nothing left to really challenge me.

Still I’d give it a 7 or 8 out of 10. I thoroughly enjoyed what I played I just wish there was more than the 10 hours or so of main story and the chunk of tragically mediocre side content. Great sandbox with a lot of unrealised potential.

Until they fix the performance issues... average.

@Brydontk Yeah I get it, played sorcerer and others. Sorcerer issue is getting stun locked (see stars), otherwise, yeah QC sucks stamina like nobody’s business. Some spells fail to work like the flare which sometimes just fades.

I have more issues with my pawns doing dumb things (walk off cliff, charge to battle irregardless of “wait”. NPCs are equally dumb, found they are likely to just crouch in danger or wander away. The first game was a little better with pawn commands.

It’s a walking game, sorry.

@Brydontk Never heard of anyone saying that. All I can is that it's a game that isn't for you. Especially when it comes to quests that needs you to figure it out on your own.

It’s a weird game. I don’t think it lived up to the excitement I felt watching the trailer and reading reviews but I’ve only just reached the second area (bahtaal?) about 28 hours in.

I love the pawn mechanic. It’s such an interesting system and has genuinely surprised me at times.

Combat is quite fun and I enjoy changing up vocations and skills, etc but I do wish it was a bit more skill based (I’m a dark souls guy so I enjoy being more in control of the combat rather than setting everything up in the menu then button bashing).

Exploration is good and the world looks amazing on the whole.

I don’t enjoy the lack of fast travel and having to walk back and forth between locations constantly. I don’t mind the system but I’d like more ferrystones so I could fast travel a little more often.

Enemy variety is definitely lacking. But I guess if the combat strategy doesn’t change that much it’s not that important.

I wanted to love this game, but I think I only like it. I would recommend it but with caveats.

@Bunchesopuppies I agree, I'm not ranting or raving about it, was just giving reasons for why i didnt care for it.Those are just my pov on the matter. The games not for me, I'm glad people are enjoying it, but I'm over here playing Star Ocean.

Easiest 10/10 I've ever given. The Dragons Dogma series is completely unique-feeling for an RPG. I applaud them for being unflinching in expanding their vision - no over-simplifying or removal of systems like in Elder Scrolls/ Fallout.

There's a reason the original was described as a "cult" game. If you enjoy these games you will really enjoy them. I find it kinda funny that people are complaining of the same things that made people fans of the first game as if they're new problems 😂

I've been trying out the Trickster vocation and it really gets you thinking differently. Especially when mix n matching the augments of different vocations. All of the classes I've tried so far have been sublime to experiment with.

Now 60hrs and I've only just reached Battahl. Most of that has been spent wandering the roads, exploring. Nothing comes quite close to the feel. Like with the first, DD2 is gonna earn a lot of money for Capcom down the line.

7/10 it’s a decent game but nothing special and also have a lot of performance problems.

@ApostateMage that random chaos is for me one the best things about the game. Makes it feel alive. And to come out victorious amongst all that bedlam makes it so satisfying. Also great stories to share with friends and fellow gamers.

Absolutely love this. What other game can you hang on the back of a flying griffin, continuing to attack it while your pawns fight from the ground? The combat is glorious - the best and most immersive fantasy experience I’ve found in gaming. This and Unicorn Overlord are my GoTY candidates so far and DD2 is inching towards pulling away with it.

They clearly made this for the fans. Its a solid 9. If it had more stable performance and less MBA decreed microtransactions it would be a 10. Haven't had this much fun since Dragon Age: Origins.

I'm very much enjoying it on the whole (I've just got the final boss to beat now I think) but a few things hold it back from greatness for me: very stingy stamina bar, annoying inventory system, too many enemies when you're exploring (relentless battle after battle can actually deter you from exploring the map) and the depleting health bar every time you die seems harshly punitive. I would like a better save and load system as well. Lots to love though. Pawn system is great. Vocations are great. Some really well designed quests. 8/10.

All things considered, I would give it an 8: it might seem high but this actually went a lot below my (admittedly lofty) expectations - I thought this would realize the incredible raw potential of the first game and really blow us all away and become this generation’s TW3.

It’s still VERY absorbing though: If you liked the first one, buy this without minding the discourse about it…the MXT are completely not necessary and the technical problems, while actually serious here, tend to become white noise as you progress. Or at least until you play the Stellar Blade demo for hours and then come back and feel like you are playing a slideshow 😅 then it takes another couple of hours to adjust again

It's a 10 for me personally. I recognize it's flaws but DD scratches an itch that literally no other game can. There's just no other game like Dragon's Dogma.

A 9 out of 10.dragon dogma 2 is amazing.word up son

Great game so far. I find the game to be playable just like most games from older console generations at launch that were ambitious titles. Perhaps the remasters of old games have made gamers accustomed to high frames and high resolution over the past few years. Of course older stuff can run with ease on new hardware. The Witcher 3 when it first came out had challenges because the title was ambitious. Despite the technical problems by current standards I enjoyed it. People need to remember that ambitious titles made for any present console hardware will have challenges. Especially if the artists get their way to push their vision. This game is playable. I hope more people enjoy this current generation new game. Or folks can wait until PS6 or the rumored beast of an Xbox come out to run this.

To me if you loved the first game, you'll love this. If you didn't "get" DD1, you won't "get" this. Despite the frustrations at times, I am having a blast

Just fought a Cyclops, then a Minotaur then a chimera on the way to the sphinx, then leaving her domain I immediately fight another minotaur.

Next step medusa then some drakes.

I am thoroughly enjoying this.

Easily a 10 for me and will take some beating for GOTY.

@playstation1995 Never ceases to amaze me how you're able to dish out scores for games you haven't played a second of, lol. word up son.

@Tchunga in relative terms the first game is severely underrated compared to more commercial titles

@neillaw Well agree to disagree then I guess. I know its a fairly unpopular opinion to have, but every ones gotta have at least one of those, right?