Dragon's Dogma 2 preview
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00:00So Ali has been playing Dragon's Dogma 2 for us and yeah somebody hasn't played the first game you
00:04really fell you love RPGs which helps but you really fell for Dragon's Dogma 2. I don't know
00:08exactly why Dragon's Dogma 1 passed me by I'm genuinely interested in a way that I think I was
00:14only partially interested before. In your preview you mentioned that one of the fights that you had
00:18took a whole in-game day. So we were kind of encouraged like don't pay a huge amount of
00:24attention to the critical path go and have a wander like even if you do try and do a quest
00:28you'll probably get distracted from it anyway so I just I just wandered out they'd set us up with
00:34a like a team of pawns to play with uh so you're just ready to go to your companions basically.
00:40I was wandering around the world and I came across this golem and then turned out it was two golems
00:47and that attracted a third golem in the course of this fight and I was playing this magical
00:51archer build that they'd set up the the golems have weak spots on them but you have to be able
00:57to hit the weak spot like one of them had it on the base of his foot so only when you manage to
01:01topple it can could I actually hit the weak spot right and deal significant damage to it
01:06and then at one point like a griffon turns up I don't know what happened to this one but this
01:10griffon came in swooped and just killed it so immediately I'm down a person. And that pawn as
01:15well that isn't like oh you go back to camp and they're there they're gone they're gone yeah but
01:19you can get them they're like kind of free to get you can pick up another one later whatever but
01:23at least for that fight you're like hold on hold on I'm three golems in I've got a griffon who's
01:27just completely wiped one of them and there's only three of us and I've been going for a while
01:31and I think I was kind of lucky because in playing the archer build what I enjoyed about it was I had
01:36two different elemental attacks I had one kind of charge thing that fired multiple arrows and
01:42like they all homed in on the point you were aiming for but I also had an arrow that was a
01:47it was like a healing arrow that you fire at your allies but you can also if you charge it up
01:53pick your ally up remotely basically which was very convenient for a really long fight
01:58uh but once they're dead weak archer you're just like I'm staying back here not getting it yeah I
02:02wasn't I wasn't very effective I think people were looking this is part of why the fight lasts as
02:06long as it did all right the fire arrows that I had were great and taking down the griffin
02:10but the golems don't take a lot of magic damage so I was completely reliant on the two pawns that
02:15I had that were like physical fighters and then one of them died so I'm down to like me the magical
02:20archer doesn't really do any damage the support mage that was like the main pawn you have a one
02:24main pawn and two uh like support pawns I suppose uh and then yeah the other the other one was dead
02:31and yeah it was because I played the original I did really like it I love the fact that they've
02:36kept that that you will just go across a hillside and then all of a sudden something will just start
02:39attacking you out of nowhere which will then pull in another monster but then there was also that
02:43thing that you said about how it's so it's not easy they're not just sword sponge a lot of the
02:47time in it you are like I don't know how to defeat that I need to run away and get some information
02:51on what their weaknesses are on their foot and all that kind of stuff yeah there was a someone else
02:56playing so it's not entirely my story but they were struggling to kill this golem at the end
03:00because they couldn't find its weak spot and it turned out that the golem had plucked a part of
03:05itself off thrown it at someone what and that's where the weak spot was just sitting somewhere
03:11in the in the course of the battlefield because they'd like just chucked a bit of themselves that
03:15happened to have so of course they couldn't find it wasn't a bug in the game it was just
03:20this is how it's supposed to work um so yeah and then yeah that that fight carried on like into the
03:25night and uh because it was nighttime like wolves and some orc looking things started coming out the
03:31woodwork so they were fighting me and it was genuinely like from noon of the first day to like
03:37dawn of the second day this fight raged on so that I had I had two builds to play with I had this
03:43magical all right okay and I had a spear man how was the spear man was he any better he was a lot
03:49more standard right it was a much more just traditional martial class which I think I gel
03:55with more but isn't necessarily the thing that because I'm just used to it right like you've
04:00like you said you have standardized rpg classes and this felt a bit more like one of those I
04:04looked down this hillside I just wandered out again from a different town looked down this
04:08hillside and saw a dragon with what another party of adventurers like npc adventurers or that's cool
04:15so that was really cool and I was like well it's dragon's dog run like I have to now go and fight
04:19this but the golems each had like three health bars the dragon had eight full health bars I think
04:25I got like three of them down wish before I I don't know to the extent that which I was under
04:32but all of the npcs bar one had died another of my npcs kept just standing in the dragon fire
04:40repeatedly every time I looked at him he was tanking up an entire burst of flame and I was
04:46just there like well I guess I'll go and pick him up in a second not only was the world kind of
04:51reacting to all this stuff that I was doing you can also use your own healing charges on the npcs
04:57so you can pick up a pawn like if a pawn goes down you res them like just in a in a standard
05:03multiplayer game you'd be like I need to res my ally and like I say like eventually you run out
05:07of charges on that like if they die enough times they will be too dead to get back up
05:11but the npcs that were just in the world that were just fighting I could use my own
05:15respawn charges that I don't I can't remember exactly what they were called to pick them up
05:20and I decided not to do that because that felt like less of a good use of my resources but let's
05:25say you go into an area and you're slightly underleveled but there's an npc that happens to
05:28be having fun you're like you're a bit stronger than I am yeah I'll help you the the fight itself
05:33was a lot harder but it was interesting to kind of see the extent I think both of those stories
05:38pull the idea of the open world and how freeform it is and reactive it is yes it's great together
05:45like so effectively you just get a sense if you walk around a corner and who knows what's going
05:49to happen I have no idea what happens in the game or in the story because I did no quest because I
05:53was just in these fights consistently but I think that's great the fact that you didn't do the main
05:58quest line yeah they kind of did they told you not to do it but there's also that thing where
06:02it's just like the main quest line is going to be like structured and narratively crafted to
06:06be interesting stuff like that but you still had an absolute whale of a time just running over that
06:10hill and then going over that hill I don't know it's testament to some really good open world
06:14rpgs you're right like the skyrims and the zeldas and to maybe a lesser slight lesser extent the
06:19witcher and stuff like that I think those really famous rpgs are the ones that absolutely just
06:23let you consistently go wherever you want and make something happen and that's what sets them
06:28apart that's that next level stuff isn't it yeah I think so so I don't know whether dragons are
06:32going to live up to those but it certainly feels like it pushes in that same direction one of the
06:36things that I really liked about the first game pawns aren't useless there is an element where
06:41like you can get a pawn of a certain class and you can also just tell it what to do you're like
06:45you are just my healer I just want you to stand there back and like throw some spells up and just
06:49heal and that's what I quite like is there are certain classes that I didn't certainly gel with
06:53but I knew that they made a nice party mechanic and like you know in battles get through you
06:57control your companion directly whereas it's always nice like atreus and god of war where
07:01it's like you have a companion who's actually useful that's always good and that's the thing
07:04like I could not have defeated those golems without the pawns that I had because I was a magic user
07:10and they were martial classes I've pushed this golem over somehow and the weak spot on his foot
07:16is now open so that guy my martial class who's over there he now needs to be here if I'm ever
07:22going to finish this fight yeah like I was 25% of a party and you kind of you talk about boulders
07:27gate you're 25% of the party there but you also control the other 75% of the party if you've got
07:32four people then that's how it works so you kind of rely on the idea that you're going to do some
07:38stuff but the characters that you've chosen to recruit around you are going to do the other stuff
07:43in theory three times the heavy lifting combined as you're going to do and so it comes to things
07:49like okay how am I going to make sure that I'm hitting weak spots where I'm driving this in this
07:53direction or I'm creating fire that affects this character or like in the in the golems like you
07:59can climb up stuff and I think that's an interesting one of those really towering bosses
08:02the golem needs I need to push the golem over before I'm going to be able to do anything to
08:06it and or I need to make sure that this person is safe so that I can do some healing or I just
08:11need to move to high ground so that my tanks are going to stand in this area and I'm going to sit
08:16and shoot at weak spots on this thing's back while stuff's done there like they've revealed in the
08:20past the trickster class which is all about illusion and distraction and in that instance
08:26you're not having the fight you're not sitting there having the fight you need to rely on the
08:30idea that that's that's the the peak of manipulating the battlefield that's like
08:34I'll put a fake little clone of myself over on that cliff edge and make whatever I'm fighting
08:39charge at the clone and disappear through it and fall off I'm not going to be able to directly
08:43influence that so I need to manipulate what's happening around me to make that happen and also
08:47trust that the other three pawns and companions are doing what they should be doing while you can
08:51do that and don't stuff it up yeah and I think broadly the uh with the exception of the man who
08:55kept standing at the dragon fire the AI seemed pretty good like the pathfinding was smart it's
09:00forgivable even if it was slightly frustrating in the moment it does look good but it doesn't
09:04look on the level of some of the PS5 RPGs that we've had recently but you were saying that
09:10looking at the menu and then also looking at to the previous game is actually a aesthetic choice
09:15on purpose that they've made it look like a retro Japanese RPG from maybe the PS3 era
09:20I think it looks good I don't think it necessarily is up there with the absolute peak of the the PS5
09:26and what it can do it's not trying to go toe-to-toe with these like beautiful uh open world games in
09:33the same way but as you say I do think there is an element to which it's harking back to a specific
09:38time uh so on the one hand um the director has said this is his his attempt to deliver on what
09:47he wanted to create the first time around so Dragon's Dogma 1 comes out there are things that
09:52held it back from being the game that he absolutely would have loved to have made this is the attempt
09:56to deliver essentially on the ideas that were set down nice with the original game and I think that
10:02in part that extends to what the world looks like and how the world feels and in other parts it
10:08extends to like the the minute I opened the menu the greatest comparison that I drew from from that
10:14UI was the original Dark Souls and there's no need to do that other than that being an aesthetic
10:18choice this is not doing it the whole way through it's making a an aesthetic choice in one place
10:24that harks that bygone era and I think that's a really interesting way of making it clear that
10:28this is still the same game this isn't just oh we made another Dragon's Dogma game 10-15 years on
10:33this is because this isn't a reboot this is a sequel to the original game this is a direct sequel
10:38yeah so the story does follow on fans of the original game will enjoy that aesthetic through
10:42line the storyline coming through but again I think the main thing that I loved about this is
10:46you would never play the original and you were really enjoying it and you're really excited to
10:50try out other classes because you're only able to try out two of them yeah I think the the tricks
10:54to one that I mentioned is definitely one that I want to look at I'm looking forward to a bunch
10:58of different ways to play I think so it comes out on the 22nd of March which is way closer than I
11:02would have thought actually yeah I think definitely one of these that's like snuck up yeah uh which I
11:08think is just the case of anything that comes out at the start of the year you kind of rock up after
11:11Christmas and go oh oh games hello they exist um but that seems that sounds like a lot of fun I'm
11:16really excited to play it I'm glad that you enjoyed it I'm glad that it wasn't too dense
11:19for somebody who hasn't played the first game because I could have imagined it might have been
11:23yeah I think so it's like it's a cult classic for a reason right like people get invested in a
11:28specific version of it but it definitely does feel like a game that the intention is there to make
11:34this a direct sequel for people who want a direct sequel but a brand new way in for people who
11:39didn't experience the first one and maybe now we'll go back but don't have to in order to get
11:43something out of Dragon's Archetype