Dragon’s Dogma 2 is shaping up to be one of the most interesting games of 2024, in that it’s brilliant in almost every aspect, yet it’s also an extremely tough game to recommend to the average player who might not know what they’re getting themselves into.
Virtually everything about Dragon’s Dogma 2 is tedious. The fast travel system alone can be very off-putting to most players, especially in a world where most modern open-world games allow you to instantaneously teleport from one major location to another. Not so in Dragon’s Dogma 2, where the fast travel consumable items –named Ferrystones– are extremely rare, and are one-use only.
Getting around in Dragon’s Dogma 2 requires you to hoof it, which can take a lot of time depending on where you want to go. It also doesn’t help that enemies are constantly trying to attack you on the road. A simple journey from Vernworth to Harve Village, which is just west of the city for instance, can take 15 minutes depending on whether you’re engaging in combat or stopping to make camp.
While Dragon’s Dogma 2 does have an oxcart service that can take you from the city to various villages, this isn’t ideal either. It costs gold, which is hard to come by in the early hours, and you can still get raided while on the oxcart. And if you’re not careful, you may end up getting the oxcart riders killed, which can result in the oxcart services being rendered unavailable until you spend precious resources reviving them. Oh, and wait till you find out there’s no fast travel point in the game’s second major city.
Then, of course, there’s the food and weight system. Raw food materials will ripen and rot over time, rendering them useless in crafting and cooking. No matter what build you go for, you’re almost always going to find yourself at max carry capacity, which severely impacts your stamina regen rate and your performance in combat.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 also loves being as opaque as humanly possible when it comes to quests, and this is an issue that becomes more pronounced when you run into a timed quest, where you’ve got a deadline to meet or risk completely messing up the outcome of said quest.
Finally, let’s not forget the fact that world bosses love showing up at times when you least expect it. You could literally just be walking through the streets of Vernworth, minding your own business, when a dragon decides to show up and make your entire day hell. You could be fighting a golem in the palace ruins, only for a griffin to swoop down at the last second to completely demolish your party right as you’re about to finally take that golem down.
Put all of these things together, and you’ve got Dragon’s Dogma 2, one of the most stress-inducing games I’ve ever played in my life. It all comes down to the fact that you can’t fast travel, and all of a sudden, you’re forced to contend with all these complications you’d never even be able to conceive of in other open-world games.
And yet, there’s just something about this game that keeps me coming back for more. I should be mad at the game for depriving me of fast travel, but eventually you start memorizing your routes between villages and you reach a zen-like flow state with travel prep, sprinting, and camping, and there’s a weird sort of satisfaction that comes with knowing exactly where you’re going without having to consult your map.
Every now and then, Dragon’s Dogma 2 borrows a page out of FromSoft’s book as well to introduce a truly spectacular shortcut that cuts across the map to link two distant locations together, and that feeling of euphoria is unparalleled.
I should point out that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is only able to get away with such a divisive and polarizing system because its open-world design is so good. A lesser game would be ripped to shreds for attempting this, and Capcom absolutely understood that they needed to create a fun and compelling world in order to convince players that they actually don’t mind, and even enjoy, this fast travel tedium.
Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s open-world is rich with secrets and hidden bosses for you to uncover, and it quickly becomes clear that the developers want you to go everywhere on-foot because there’s just so much to see and do. Just stumbling upon a little village or ruin could uncover an entire questline that sends you on a hunt for a legendary monster — these are things that you’d easily miss if fast travel was available right from the off.
As I mentioned in my review, this isn’t a game that’s going to appeal to everyone. In fact, despite the widespread critical acclaim that Dragon’s Dogma 2 has gotten, I’d expect it to have its fair share of detractors lamenting how tedious and analogue everything feels. Still, if the idea of getting truly lost and immersed in an incredibly well-realized fantasy world sounds appealing to you — and if you can stomach the idea of occasionally having to hike back for 10 minutes because you left that one quest item in your chest back home — then you owe it to yourself to at least check out this gem of a fantasy RPG.
Published: Mar 23, 2024 09:00 am