- Tested on PC with RTX 4070 TI in 3440 X 1440 ultra wide display HUD fully removed.
- Code provided by Capcom.
- Average fluidity around 80 fps (except in cities).
- Screenshots and home gameplay captures made with photo mode of the game without retouching.
- Warmly recommends playing with the HUD as residual as possible to fully enjoy the panoramas.
- Played 6O hours traveling the campaign rather than the main quests.
True compressor roller, Dragons Dogma 2 sold more than 2.5 million copies in the first 11 days of its release. Resurrection of an intimate license thought to have been condemned to oblivion since the 2013 announcement of his spiritual successor Deep Down, this second opus has finally had a happier destiny. Ode to travel and exploration, Dragons Dogma 2 draws his pin from the game in the very popular circle of the open world. Journal of an insurgent in the midst of rebellion after about sixty hours struck with the seal of anarchy, the true.
Resist, prove you exist
The Dragons Dogma 2 holds on a postage stamp. Precipitated during an expeditious intro from the royal chamber to the shed of stone mines, our heroine does not look proudly with her clothes of forcing. The title is not very talkative and we are invited from the beginning to create our custom avatar thanks to one of the most refined characters of the genre. Just see the creations of other players from around the world to understand that we would never have had our place in the Fine Arts. We remain a pantois of admiration in front of such a chiaded publisher and, most certainly, a new standard meter of the kind with that of Baldurs Gate III and soon the engine Meta Human of the Unreal Engine.
It is only after playing the apprentice demiurges that we take our first steps in short panties and rags. A mysterious story of usurpator and insurgent is told to us during a short kinematic to the first person where it is understood that we have been given our place of first rope. For questions, we'll come back! After an escape on the back of a griffon, finished the servitude and to us the joys of freedom! Like the last Zeldas, nothing prevents us from going bare ass where we see fit, as long as we resist the hordes of enemies who will harass us throughout the game.
At first, Dragons Dogma 2 is rather destabilising as we wander in briefs in the bush and seek to compete with PV bags monsters a lot stronger than us. Attracted by the unknown and a map that will only emerge from its war fog after exploring the regions with the sweat of our forehead, I would have spent the first fifteen hours of the game ignoring the citadel, central hub of Dragons Dogma. From the beginning I flaired the saga of the main campaign (we will come back) and preferred the love of the countryside, no matter how hard it is. It's the « freedom » Like Rimbaud in his poems. It was only a long time later that I returned to Vermund, with his feet crumbled, his air capped, but the spirit full of new promises of travel. I'd come back to decipher the language of those elves I spent the night with after running from a rabid minotaur. What a memorable first expedition to rethink! It is therefore in the capital that one can shop and go to the tavern of the corner glean information in order to « resolve » The case that led us to wandering. Objective: to attract the attention of the Empress.
We will therefore have to follow the main quests of another age: to join people at the other end of the map to deliver them an object, spy on politicians, etc.. No challenge if this is to understand what is expected of us by Capcom as the indications lack on the background as the form. We'd almost be back in the days of Skyrim. Problem and not least, we have rarely seen quests as far-off as insignificant. It is not uncommon to arrive at the time of the indicated day and nothing happens when the time comes. The day-night cycle sometimes seems capricious despite the latest patches. Too bad... Cities are beautiful but without real soul with all these headless NPCs, especially when compared to those of Red Dead Redemption, The Witcher or Cyberpunk Since his mea culpa salvateur. Yet a form of magic operates with a frankly megalo side of architects behind the two queen cities.
Other cross and mechanical executed with feet, the game lurks very coarsely on the side of the franchise Hitman. We find this carnival side that allows us to infiltrate in the parts of the castle reserved for the courtyard with the proper disguise. An idea that would have made sense if it had been exploited seriously. Only heck, the guards are bipolar and if they will let you spend most of the time in uniform, it will happen to them to turn chafouins for no apparent reason and that they immediately base on us like a swarm of avenger to throw us into the dungeon. Look for the error... When setting gameplay rules, they must be applied.
The wind will carry us
Very quickly we understand that the story, the real one, is not the one proposed by the game but the one that we will imagine on the road. « Life is what we do with it. Travel is the travellers themselves » He said Fernando Pessoa. A little cluttered by this welcome, I decide to reject this world of imposture and disparateness which in any case has no meaning. Down the conventions, I would lead my adventure with my buttocks in the air, bare feet, hair in the wind, by mountains and by valour until I found a meaning to my new life insurgent. Undressed and defrocated, I would face without bending those who will get through my way!
Back on the run, still in a furious dress, my insurgency would almost forget to tell you about his faithful servant soberly entitled Frosties. This leonin, a feline race with silky hair and humanoid body, I created it from any room with the level editor. The heart of the gameplay of Dragons Dogma based on a system of pawns that can be invoked in faults that are found scattered across the four corners of the map. An original and community idea used with intelligence as we can recruit those created by other players, with more assertive artistry. Some people don't lack imagination to reproduce well-known people of popular culture, whether it's good old Kratos or Daenerys Targaryen. I would have even led the beautiful Khaleesi to a little personal therapy, since she accompanied me to challenge one of the few dragons that we cross on the map. We're not in a fantasy anymore!
The strength and uniqueness of Dragons Dogma, it is his gamedesign that leaves the part beautiful to the initiative. We set our own challenges, whether we beat our first cyclops or shoot down a claw that was thrown on a buffalo a few seconds earlier. Fighting with our three pawns gives rise to a joyful brothel, especially when other PNJs join the battle. Sometimes it's hard to see a monster stabbed on all sides by a small squad of reckless warriors crossed by a grove. The damage is displayed in real time, the blood accumulates on the target points and tufts of hair fly into the air every time you sink your dagger under the flesh of the unfortunate victim. Terrific.
Even the corpses are rotting even if we are still far from the carrion system of Red Dead Rockstar. For the rains that will not dare to brave the dangers that await any good pilgrim who respects himself, it will always be possible to ride in an ox chariot, true praise of the slowness. The aerial camera then lets us enjoy the landscape and it's the perfect time to take the IRL aperitif, even if goblins will come to break our peace in places.
Dragons Dogma is distinguished from the other open world by its relation to time and travel. Contrary to the franchise Killers Creed, model of assistanat, the game invites us to read the maps and refuses any GPS guidance. It is thus very easy to miss a seller NPC and it seems almost impossible to see everything. The game adopts the philosophy of Breath of the Wild : what you can see, you can reach it. Also do not expect to gallop on horseback, the game always remains at the height of Man and avoids as much as possible fast travel by limiting the objects of teleportation to the strict minimum (except to consider the dedicated shop where whales can slam their PEL to buy a sweater).
A choice of gamedesign that can surprise at the beginning but that makes exploration unforgettable while enjoying distances like Death Stranding. Nor can the insurgent swim what makes exploration more complex even if one wonders why the developers chose such a handicap. Was it just a gamedesign issue or a development constraint? Probably a little of both will say the wrong tongues. A large part of the map is occupied by the ocean and promises that it will likely be discovered during a future island DLC.
The class in Dallas
Each character has several classes that can be changed during the game. Four basic classes: warrior, archer, thief, mage, plus five other more original ones that will be unlocked by quests and encounters: champion, archer Mage, knight Mage, illusionist and conqueror. If the warrior is expert at body to body with the possibility to trim and counter the blows to the shield, the thief whom I chose is alive and agile, although exposed by his light outfit. The illusionists generate hallucinations with their censor to lead the enemies to castagate among themselves. The sorcerers are skilled in black magic or for treating our allies. The conqueror is a mix of all classes which allows to create original combos. Each one can be mounted to unlock special attacks that consume endurance. While I focused heavily on the thief, no class seems to have been left out and all offer original gameplay perspectives.
With sumptuous graphics, Dragons Dogma is impressive by its demeasurement as the organic side of its exploration. Very vertical in its approach, endurance gameplay allows classes to access more or less twisted places. When you go into the bush, you never really know where you're going to land. Whether it's a fracture seen on the side of a mountain or a bridge that collapsed after our passage, we leave always longer than we thought. Seizing in its construction, Dragons Dogma is a pleasure of discovery at every moment.
When you enter a cave that then seems inexhaustible, you never really know what you're getting into, or when (and if) you'll ever see the light again. And since the game is very punitive because of its health system and safeguards, it is necessary to weigh the risks before leaving head down. Indeed, every time we cash in major damage or fail, the living bar shrinks, which can very quickly put us in trouble in the image of this passage where it was necessary to flee like a poltron and abandon all my comrades behind me.
To regain the fullness of our life bar, potions and care spells are completely useless; You will have to set up a camp on one of the dedicated sites that will be discovered on the map. Don't be misunderstood, Dragons Dogma is above all a game of survival and the first tens of hours are particularly harsh especially when you refuse mordicus to put on pants to mount its characteristics! During our journey, we glean countless fruits, plants and objects that will be used to generate all kinds of equipment. Perhaps the loot part occupies a slightly too important place as it increases the load borne and therefore the speed of our insurgent.
In good despot that respects itself, do not hesitate to load like mules your pawns which one might very well have called slaves. Luckily we can fill our trunk with all that loot we don't really know what to do after a while. And since we only change classes at the guild, we can soon end up with armor that is useless to us if they are not suitable for our team. However, there is always something pleasant to find precious ores hidden at the cliff front or to open a safe perched in an altitude temple. The squirrel syndrome has always proved its worth from the sacred vaults of Resident Evil.
Cryptic, it is certainly the most appropriate word to evoke the universe of Dragons Dogma. Since the map is huge, we often find ourselves facing unexpected discoveries. At the other end of the continent, for example, I found a key that allowed me to go and open the hall to Vermund's treasures, although nothing indicated his presence so far from the capital. NPCs also challenge us during our journey and sometimes the quests and objectives seem to be televised quite naturally even if these kinematics of another age are imposed on us with a scepticism in view of contemporary standards. Among the incongruous, the NPCs say absolutely anything when they are called as if everyone was under valium « I'm walking around. » throws me a fatty kid sitting in front of a wall in one of the empty buildings of a charming hamlet. « I don't have much to tell you. » throws me another in a spirit of vision. Um... I feel like I'd have more in-depth discussions with a goblin than a Vermund resident! « Is this world serious? ? » Like Cabrel would say!
In search of meaning?
Despite a major quest for inconsistency and limiting bugs, exploration married to survival flies. The graphics are very high flying with a respectable display distance that lets you enjoy the horizon and shipping possibilities. Remarkably, the game is subjected to no loading time on the map and rotates without vrombing with a muscular configuration, regardless of the number of enemies displayed on the screen. Only the passages in the city divide the FPS by two or we will still regret that the spectra cause the framerate on night trips. Enemies and PNGs equipped with lanterns then appear as fireflies in the night.
Overall, the game remains a technical success, especially in terms of its environmental modelling reinforced by a truly vanguard photogrammetry. The budding geologists will enjoy such beautiful stones of realism. The ochre rocks recall the Jordanian desert of Wadi Rum; other cliff-flowered getaways immediately revive distant memories of Icelandic hikes, where the raw light filtered with difficulty clouds that were guessed loaded with water. As for the lunar green soil and its pioneering plants, they indicate strong volcanic activity. Massures on the heights refer to an imaginary desolate of finisters, a end of the world that we would have finally reached after a long homeric journey. Like a canvas by Caspard David Friedrich, the ocean as far as we can see turns our heads. Dragons Dogma 2 has something romantic about his approach to nature.
It is necessary to see the landscapes slowly transform from bucolic forests to a desert of unfathomable sand. At the heart of the western dunes lies the town of Bathal, a stunning fortress perched in the heart of a canyon that can only evoke Petra and the Nabatean cities. The whole is sublimated by sumptuous lighting that contrasts with these brightly coloured sandstones that will inevitably make the most beautiful Oled slabs blush. The set is carried by a discreet but sensitive OST in the vein of a certain Zelda. Some piano notes color the experience of a nostalgic fiber to the image of Breath Of the Wild (He again!) The sound of the wind, the silence of the night: the sound experience is a success that is more equipped with a correct helmet.
We really feel like we're traveling if we ignore the many skirmishes that will strike (a little too much) our journey. Here too the animations of the enemies are very good with a variety of shots and techniques that make each fight different. We always feel like we are taking part in a singular battle, discovering new animations, if only with the different approaches of our pawns that we borrow from other players in the flaw and who learn to recognize the weak points of the enemies, the topography of the regions, their legends and their secrets. If the bad buggers too often repeat the same insignificant punchlines, the whole remains digested and gives the impression that the world is full of secrets. Only wildlife sometimes seems a little lost in the middle of this Capernaum. In the middle of the rivers, it is not uncommon to see a suede pour into the Kraken's crocs that hatch into the rivers. This is also natural selection.
The most massive monsters lead to sumptuous battles. As the game rests above all on grabbing our prey, one sometimes flies away as one can at the plumage of a griffon or one seeks not to lose catch, the hands cramped with the fur of a werewolf, which suddenly simmers fifteen meters higher towards a shelter where to retreat. Other enemies blend remarkably in vegetation like giant lizards, camouflage masters. The hopgobelins are protected by reinforced armor and can call for reinforcements in case of trouble. Even when the colossus makes their last breath, the game physics follows the fall of the body by adapting to the destructible vegetation or slope of a hill. Clearly, it is difficult to take the game technically failing as the developers have treated the exploration and sandbox side of the fighting. You can create explosive arrows, play magic to freeze or crush an enemy, or throw a flammable barrel on a group of recalcitrant enemies and then kill them. The word's a little messy, but, yeah, Dragons Dogma to something « next gen » graphically.
Veni vidi vici
After such praise, how can we explain that the author of these tedious lines was able to suspend his adventure so early? After tens of hours exploring the smallest corners of the map and finding new tasty secret passages, I still returned to the driving thread of Dragons Dogma. So I took over the tavern's quests on the advice of my faithful pawn who had reminded me of my duty as a player, while I had set myself my own goal in front of the campaign's playful failure: to shoot down the most massive and strong dragon of the game, an imposing creature that I had identified to the northwest of Vermund, at the border of Bathal. Well determined to triumph over the beast who had corrected more than once in the past sixty hours of play, I had even put on pants to celebrate the event! After a hard fight, I could finally enjoy my victory.
secretly hoping that the death of the reptile could change the course of the story that was skating because of the blocked quests, I had to resign myself to the sad reality: my main quest is not moving forward and I can't do anything about it. Whether it is the mission of a magistrate who had to be released and brought into a library, a masked ball that never starts or the minister's offices to search but where nothing happens once the yellow indicator has been reached, the quests are tired of the nonsense that carries them and the bugs that condemn them. For example, I infiltrated a dungeon without having to change clothes (which I had sold a long time ago anyway) And when I used the key to open the cell, the guards started to attack for no reason which led me back to the prison cell. When I wanted to start the mission again, my key had disappeared and there was no indication where I could find another one like the clothes recommended to carry out the mission.
Tired by so many elementary inconsistencies, I have recharged my backup... forgetting that it was before my fight with the dragon... And at this very moment, I can tell you that I was divided between anger and frustration tinted with incomprehension. I could continue at length the examples of the quests that have begun that cut each other and refuse to let us enjoy history. The operation of the main quests is simply lamentable. There's something deeply ungrateful about not being able to finish the adventure for a frozen fedex quest when we explored the smallest corners of one of the most beautiful open world that it was given to play to date. How the developers were able to complete such a large gap and thus blow the hot and cold?
Despite the fiasco of the quests blocked during the main campaign, it would be dishonest not to recommend the game. This is what will be called Dragons Dogma Syndrome, a game that fails lamentably on what is easier and excels on what is usually very hard to achieve. Even though Capcom hasn't been tired of solving (for the moment) the gamedesign problems that are looming, I took a crazy pleasure exploring this wild nature, so close to feeling the emotions of a catapulted walker in the middle of the desert. So let's take Dragons Dogma as it is: an introspective journey, a flamboyant wild ride, a challenge against oneself carried by the sole force of will of the traveller. I set myself one goal: to shoot down the dragon who had challenged me. It's now done. The last born of Capcom is a resolutely anarchic but Ô how whole experience. A game that slices into the so consensual landscape of open world teleguided. If you're willing to forgive him for his real flaws and allow yourself to free yourself from his rules, Dragons Dogma 2 is in his way a step game for the open world to Japanese.
For
- Sumptuous graphics
- Hair animations
- Literally a real trip
- Simple but efficient gameplay
- Variety of classes and approaches
- The feeling of exploration
- Not an ingame loading time
- The verticality of the map
- Successful Bestiary
- Permanent gigantism
- The map in the fog
- Crazy Freedom
- The pawn system
- Successful personal editor
- To hell with the Fedex quests
Against
- Strawberry narration
- Laminate quests
- The main campaign
- Beast NPCs eating hay
- Poverty in dialogue
- Too much loot kills the loot
[...] Dragons Dogma, Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess, Resident Evil Requiem, Pragmata and now Onimusha... That's what we call a quintet more! Capcom once again succeeds its bet, multiplying the successes with an irreproachable consistency and finish. This winning strategy contrasts with the inconclusiveness of competing teams, which send old licences to the slaughterhouse that were once successful or torpedo studios newly acquired to conduct cascade layoffs plans the following year. A sad shipwreck that has become common at Microsoft and Sony, when they don't come out of mediocre titles like Wolverine that insult our intelligence. Capcom has accomplished what other publishers have forgotten: making games that don't take players for prunes. [...]