Idk if this was an event or what but I was fighting a griffin and when I got him to the last health bar, a second griffin showed up is this dark souls wtf

The new upgrade system gives you a lot of build variety per vocation now

Depending where you enhance your gear, you get different bonuses.

I had already took note of this after enhancing once in Vermund, then another time in Battahl and peeped the difference. Didn’t know about Elven and Dwarven enhancements though

From Reddit:

PSA: Be careful who you enhance your weapons with

There are 4 types of enhancements (other than dragonforging):

• Vermund

• Battahli

• Elven

• Dwarven

They all increase stats differently. Their symbols in enhancement screen are different, so you can tell by that where they were enhanced.

Battahli enhancement increases Strength the most.

Elven enhancement increases Magick the most, along with decreasing weight.

Dwarven enhancement increases Knockdown power the most, also slightly increases weight.

Vermund enchancement increases both strength and magick but not as much as either, also decreases weight slightly.

For an endgame weapon, the difference between enhancing a weapon all 3 levels in either of them is pretty significant. For example, Dragon's Bite, endgame Warrior weapon has 421 knockdown power if enhanced anywhere but dwarven, and 720 if enhanced by dwarven along with 530 strength. Has 494 Strength if enhanced by elven and 570 if enhanced by Battahli.

So keep that in mind and enhance weapons accordingly :)

===

Might up grade a bow going the dwarven path to get a nice ranged knock downbuild

jesus the frame rate is terrible in the town

Holy s*** thanks, I was wondering why each upgrade had a different color

I had a cyclops attack the capital in Vermond. I was a Mystic Spearhand and used that shield ability. It shielded all the NPCs that were trying to help fight the cyclops. My game went down to like 15-20 fps or lower for a good 5 seconds

This dragonsplague I keep seeing on my timeline is the funniest s*** ever, I need to get this soon

yeah man like even normal combat is causing it to go so low

this game is really cool and fun but that’s actually embarrassing how bad it is

They saying Battahl is basically endgame i thought there would be at least another 20 hours wtf pacing in the story is horrendous

It sucks

it’s a huge spoiler to explain but there’s a lot more

also battahl is really dense and filled with quests and big dungeons

Exactly what I thought, it was even worse because I had a quest that took me there in my first 10 hours. Felt really underwhelming as a final area, but the endgame has a lot more stuff to do. I finished the story at around 30 hours and I could easily see me getting another 10-15 out of it.

People on Reddit can really be miserable, and never satisfied. People really claiming DD1 had a better implementation of Mage & Sorcerer because they had better spell selection. While I agree, especially for Sorcerer, larger spell variety would be nice, it’s still an upgrade from DD1 Sorcerer. The main playstyle of sorcerer in DD1 was jump + focus bolt. Occasionally you cast them big spells like Maelstrom, and Meteor. Mage was largely considered useless, and not wanted on a pawn at all. It was just a worse version of Sorcerer. DD2 Mage is damn near the most valuable vocation to have in your party.

Having 6 skills vs 4 is another point people bringing up. Sure more skills available to use is better. They could’ve gotten rid of the item shortcut on the D-Pad imo. I don’t use that s*** at all, and instead use it to map more skills. But this is a minor inconvenience because I’m still having fun with the game as are an overwhelming majority of people lol.

I haven’t really reached endgame content so I can’t fully comment on it, but lack of a BBI type endgame dungeon is the main criticism I can agree with for now. They should’ve had that ready from the start.

Enjoying the game but it’s also making me appreciate Elden Ring even more imagine if ER was just Limgrave and Liurnia lol

Game has so much potential though

They give me different vibes. I enjoyed ER for build variety mostly, even though I think the way skills, spells & incantations are cycled through is gravely antiquated, and needs to be scrapped. The lore is well rounded which adds to your immersion and mystery. But I never necessarily felt like I was on an adventure in ER. Like for all the skills you can use and learn in ER, I still felt like a scrub compared to any boss I was fighting. Mostly due to the general move set being so basic. Bosses were really mobile while you’re just moving like a regular peon. Then you see things like Gladiators and their movesets and you can’t do anything they do at all. It was a real let down.

As for each open world, ER is better crafted, the atmosphere in the different biomes sets the tone. Like first time getting inside Raya Lucaria Magic Academy, was a sight. But it’s clear both games set out to accomplish different things in that regard. ER has more variety in the landscapes, but the Lands Between is a dead world or frozen in time it feels like. Lore wise it more or less is. It just feels like you going through the motions from zone to zone.

DD2 world feels alive and reactionary to things I do. If I clear out an area by camp chances are I won’t get jumped by bandits or monsters. If I clear the road from like Melve to Vernworth and then take an ox cart I’ve had it be a clear shot, no interruptions. Seeing pawns out in the world who aren’t in your party going about their day. Getting attacked by monsters n bandits too. You see other adventuring parties of 4 who you can also sometimes see fighting orges, cyclops and bandits. The world feels like it continues whether you act or not. Not many open world games accomplish this feeling.

Just rambling. I like both games, just for different reasons. ER lore, bosses, and difficulty scaling x DD2 combat system + pawns, would be my marriage of the 2.

I see where the budget went

imagine if ER had a real main quest lol

Imagine if this game had one

Need a hard mode and ng+ difficulty scaling asap. Like by next month at the latest.

this game has like 20x the quests of ER

and the quests aren’t just “repeatedly randomly run into some woman and feed her an eyeball” I’m a huge souls fan but this game isn’t really comparable to soulsborne, it’s more of a skyrim-like with better combat

High-fiving your pawn after every battle is so cool. It's a small thing but it does so much to make the player feel connected to them.

It can’t touch Skyrim in terms of quests which is over a decade old at this point.

Don’t even get me started on the “sneak into the castle 4x” MAIN quest when this game doesn’t even have a functional stealth system

The combat is dope, but the game is lackluster in soooo many ways, and when combat is the best part the lack of enemy variety hurts a lot. Like I said, I am actually enjoying my time with it, but it feels half-baked in a lot of ways when the potential is clearly there for this to be something really special.

Capcom official survey for the game
enqform.capcom.com/form/pub/form1/dd2_en2
Fill it out, it’s asking about various things like difficulty, DLC etc.

Ehh I think the enemy variety arguments aren’t genuine. There are AI behavioral difference between the various types of Goblins, Saurians, and wolves for instance. I think it’s partially because the way difficulty in the game is handled, it can all feel the same. Rarely is a single encounter gonna do you in. It’s the repeated battles without resting, and when you start running low on consumables, etc. which is cool imo, but these encounters are usually very easy to deal with if you’re half way good. So doesn’t require a different approach. Just brute force it.

I hear that questing in Bethesda games is good, but looking at Starfield reviews says different, but teams change been more than a decade so I’ll take your word for it. I’ll probably never play a Bethesda game because their gameplay mechanics are janky as f*** and just looks boring to me.