I remember when Dragon’s Dogma launched, I knew nothing about it. I was working at a Game store then, and we had a few copies in our delivery. Without low expectations (because, let’s face it, the original box art was a bit pants), we popped it on the work co♓nsole and took it for a test drive. Within a couple of hours, I bought a copy. It wasn’t a perfect game, but I loved the world and narrative it offered. I enjoyed how tactile battles felt, being able to hold on to great b🗹easts as you fought them, clinging on for dear life when a griffin took to the sky.
Even its more idiosyncratic elements🧸 have become endearing over time. The constant pawn🌳 chatter has become a beloved thing to poke fun at rather than truly annoying. The dragon kidnapping the NPC you spoke to the most—with the aim of it being the one you romanced—was great, made all the more hilarious when most of us were confronted with the dragon holding the old merchant guy hostage because of the sheer number of times we sold all our crap to him.
It almost seems fitting, then, that I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Dragon’s Dogma 2. I wanted a sequel - who doesn’t want more of a game they love - but a wishlist of features? I got nothing. It’s four times bigger in size, and that’s good. There’s a new race, and sure, that’s nice. But neither of꧟ those things gets me excited. So what do I really want?
I normally worry about emba༺rrassing myself in front of PR or other journalists at preview events by failing horrendously in the game. I felt the pressure even more with Dragon’s Dogma 2, as despite having played the original, I knew I would be pretty rusty. Yet I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I fell back into old rhythms. Muscle memory just kicked in, and I was able to tackle larger foes with ease. Even the minotaur the PR guys claimed they had fa⛎iled to conquer fell to my sword. It felt pretty good.
One of the best things about Dragon’s Dogma was being able to grapple large enemies and stab them repeatedly as you clung to their bodies. The sequel has taken this idea one step further, as now you can grab and throw eಌnemies at will, and feels like a natural extension of the first game. The world around you feels more interactive, too -꧙ I threw an explosive barrel at a dam and the river broke free to wash my enemies away.
Much like how the first game let you cl🐬imb just about any big beasty, now you can also grab your pawns and other randomers, too. I found this out the hard way when I accidentally groped my pawns while walking past them. Sorry, not sorry, guys. At one point, one of my pawns stood awkwardly holding a rock because it planned to attack an enemy, but we killed it too quickly. They wouldn’t drop the rock, so I picked them up as if scolding them like a naughty child. It’s little quirky things like this that just highlight what it is about Dragon’s Dogma that I love. Much like the dragon kidnapping the wrong person or your pawns sometimes being absolute muppets, this accidental humour makes the game what it is.
I can tell that pawn𒅌s will again be a source of both endless humour and frustration, and they&rsqꦍuo;ll have to constantly put up with our abuse. They’re smarter than before at least, offering to guide you on quests if they know what you must do or where you must go. I wish I had more time with the game, as it felt like such a vast landscape with so much to explore and so many random little things to discover, like stumbling across the bizarre yet welcome inclusion of some incredible food cutscenes that put Marks & Spencers’ advertising team to shame.
While I only saw a brief part of the narrative, it was all your standard Arisen fare. Hopefully, Capcom manages to pull 💖off another twist ending, something that we don’t see coming and makes us question the last 30-50 hours we pumped into the game all over again. But it can’t be the same deal. We need something new.
I know I’ll appreciate the bigger game area, the new vocation job stuff, and all that jazz at launch. But at the end of the preview, I ꩵrealised I just wanted to explore, have fun discovering all the little details and combat mechanics, and bully my pawns a little. For all the shiny bells and whistles it’s adding, Dragon’s Dogma 2 kept the most important thing from the first game: its signature sense of systems-driven adventure and unintentional humour.