Would never take Sterlings 'advice' on any game tbh.
This looks great imo the framerate being fixed means I'll probably get it in a sale, Diablo 4 hits Gamepass on Thursday so I'm all set for fantasy RPG shenanigans for a while.
Photek wrote:Would never take Sterlings 'advice' on any game tbh.
This looks great imo the framerate being fixed means I'll probably get it in a sale, Diablo 4 hits Gamepass on Thursday so I'm all set for fantasy RPG shenanigans for a while.
I started this over Easter and I'm absolutely loving it. I had a slow start as I was taking my time being methodical with working everything out (and even character creation is a time sink), but once I hit the city it's really all clicking! Combat and exploration both feel great (climbing enemies never gets old, nor do the jump attacks and pinning them down) but it's the characters and quests that make the world just feel so alive. Everyone being named, with their own likes and dislikes, all on a daily schedule, with people approaching me as the days go on to make new requests or to react to something I've done previously, gifts being left by my door with little notes... and then the obfuscated mechanics! Are disguises explained? You bet they aren't, but of course when I had to sneak into the prison putting on a full set of guard's armour let me walk right in. Quests on unknown timers or hidden behind seemingly superfluous little interactions like donating money on the street or stopping to listen to a story, not only turning into quests but turning into important quests (which I'm sure would have other ways of becoming active, but it feels like I discovered them and ties everything together). It's very important to set aside any completionist tendencies and accept you're going to miss things, and make bad choices, but the magic that has carried over from the first game is in that all making for a dynamic, living world.
I've already been exploring all the nooks and crannies and finding the hidden platforming routes across rooftops to chests, and ladders down to secret gathering points, but the last thing I did was unlock the wall jump core skill (playing as a thief, naturally). I'm excited to start abusing skills-as-platforming, it was one of my favourite things in the original where double jump of all things was a class-specific optional skill yet incredibly useful for reaching hard to reach places!
I also feel I need to mention the pawns, even though I've got not much to say other than - it's still a brilliant system!
All sounds good, have noticed a few of those myself.
This is easily my GOTY right now. Think I'm about 40 hours in, levelling my third vocation, and loving it. It puts the likes of Skyrim to absolute shame.
OrangeRKN wrote:All sounds good, have noticed a few of those myself.
This is easily my GOTY right now. Think I'm about 40 hours in, levelling my third vocation, and loving it. It puts the likes of Skyrim to absolute shame.
As someone who has never played 1 but was very interested in this pre release, what do you make of the criticisms leveled toward it, particularly around being, say "an ocean wide and an inch deep", with regards to things like low enemy variety, repeated dialogue lines etc?
Will still pick this up when it's cheaper just wondering someone I trust (ish) 's take on some reddit opinions I've read!
That's not a phrase I'd have ever expected to be used to describe Dragon's Dogma. It's a game of complex, obfuscated mechanics and it's been full of fun discoveries for me. Recently for example a bridge was out (you can cut them down to drop enemies at the expensive of cutting off a path for a few days until it is repaired) but I staggered and knocked down a cyclops next to it and he reached across to stop himself falling, making a temporary bridge I could use. The last thing I did was return to a cave at night so a skeleton spawned the other side of a barred door and broke it open to get to me, which opened up a big shortcut around the map via that cave. It's definitely not an inch deep!
With respect to enemy variety specifically, it's like Monster Hunter - you'll be fighting the same things, but the large enemies have complex behaviours. Also like Monster Hunter the different vocations all play very differently so switching those up (which you're encouraged to do as you unlock bonuses you can carry over between classes) introduces variety.
The repeated pawn dialogue is part of the charm honestly.
The thing is there is actually so much pawn dialogue and it's always contextually relevant. It's not that the same lines keep repeating because there's only a handful to pick from (like say "arrow to the knee"), it's that some contexts come up a lot (passing that ladder in vermund being a great example).
What I think works is pawns being established in universe as having this weird npc-like otherness, so them repeating themselves isn't as immersion breaking as it otherwise could be. Instead it's very mechanical and mechanics-informing, by which I mean the pawn knowledge system is obtuse but you can better understand it through their dialogue cues.
