Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a disgrace at launch but is getting a free pass

The much anticipated action role-playing game Dragon’s Dogma 2 is finally here. Like many others who had played the first one, I had been waiting for a sequel for over a decade. Everything leading up to the release for the sequel seemed good. Previews were positive and so were reviews and then the game released…

All the positivity suddenly went away as players reported the terrible performance issues, particularly on PC. Frequent crashing in-game to atrocious frame rate drops especially in towns. There’s been people reporting frame rate drops to 15-20, which is completely unacceptable for an AAA next gen title.

The archaic save system is also a strange thing. Some fans yell, ‘It was in the first game’ but that doesn’t make it good, just as microtransactions being in other single-player Capcom games don’t justify their inclusion in Dragon’s Dogma 2. The microtransactions are also another source of negatively that surrounded the game.

For me though, the final nail in the coffin was the inability to start a new game naturally and the issues that proceeded with it. So, after rushing into the game with a generic character, skipping cut scenes, tutorials, and practically everything else to get to the open world and see if my PC could run the game smoothly in that setting, I discover there’s no ability start a new game.

There’s a workaround where you can delete your saves in the Steam folder and then disable cloud saves so they don’t get restored and, sure, that worked at first and I started a new save. Everything was going smoothly until I saved and exited. When I later resumed playing, that new save was deleted and my old save had been restored. Apparently, Capcom links saves to their server, so this is an issue others have experienced too, losing hours of progress.

I managed to convince Steam to give me a refund despite the fact I had played past two hours. This combined with the intense frame rate drops I experienced in towns, and occasionally in the open world, was all the convincing I needed to refund and wait for Capcom to patch the game.

Honestly, Dragon’s Dogma 2 deserves the negative user reviews it’s getting so far. The optimisation and performance is unacceptable. Its rival game, Rise Of The Rōnin is being criticised for having poorer graphics or ’PS3 graphics’ as some have said. Meanwhile, Dragon’s Dogma 2 releases in such a terrible state, with subpar PlayStation 3 style performance and unnecessary microtransactions and this doesn’t impact the critic review scores it received.

With all the recent discussions about the cost of AAA game development, I think it’s unfair Rise Of The Rōnin is even criticised for its graphics, when players for the last few months have been saying gameplay and performance matter more and they’ll happily take that over graphics if it leads to cheaper game development.

Dragon’s Dogma 2, meanwhile, is simply another example of the problem with modern AAA gaming: intense focus on graphics with subpar performance that will be patched months later, unnecessary microtransactions thrown in, and strange design decisions that simply do not respect the player.

That’s why I’m happy to see all the negative user reviews for this game, calling it out on these issues, and no amount of senseless arguments, whataboutism or denials from some fans can ever justify these issues that even Capcom have recognised and said they will be fixing (the performance and new game save).

‘Well, I’m enjoying the game’, some reply. Well, that’s good. However, for me and others, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is only good for a bargain bin sale, months down the line, when it’s finally patched. Undoubtedly, some people probably won’t even buy it then, as new games will have come along. The player numbers on Steam are above 200,000 but it should probably be noted that, if not for all the issues, it would probably have been much higher. Capcom has undoubtedly messed up the launch.

By reader Paul

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