What a bummer: Dragon's Dogma 2 is a disappointment for many fans, and that for a very infuriating reason.
It's a rollercoaster ride. Dragon's Dogma is one of the biggest releases of 2024 so far and has already made waves months before its official release. Fans were excited about the trailers and the character editor, and critics praised the game highly. The release on March 22 could have been so fantastic, but it turned out differently. Players are massively disappointed, and not just because of the poor PC performance.
Dragon's Dogma 2 Earns "Mixed Reviews" On Steam
As it is often the case, games that release on both consoles and PC face challenges. The PC version tends to encounter the most issues, and Dragon's Dogma 2 is no exception. However, a poor performance is not the main reason for the massive number of poor reviews on Steam. Capcom made a particularly nasty move by introducing microtransactions, which were not mentioned beforehand.
It would already be bad enough for a full-price title to feature microtransactions, but the fact that they were kept under wraps beforehand really irks many players.
When you hear about all the additional things you have to spend money on, you might completely lose faith. Currently, there are a total of 21 additional contents available for purchase on Steam, including the feature to customize your main character after having started the game and items for fast travel. Of course, the obligatory in-game currency is also present. It's called Rift Crystals, which you use in the game to hire pawns and buy special items.
While it's possible to unlock many of these items in game, you can only do so at a very low rate, similar to many free-to-play games. The difference is, Dragon's Dogma 2 is not free, it costs $69.99, and for that, you should expect everything to be included that is needed for smooth gameplay.
Understandably, players are upset and sharing plenty of criticism with Steam reviews only sitting at 40%:
- Steam user JC writes, "Hey Capcom, You can purchase a 'good review DLC' for $1.99."
- Steam user Eldrick writes, "Microtransactions in a single player game. Can't delete save data/ start a new game if you mess up your character during creation either."
- Steam user Machiavelli writes, "$70 game, I could support to ensure fair pay for a good game, however, when you also attach bloatware "buy more crystals" and Pay to win gifts to a singleplayer game... I cannot, in good faith, support that."
It's also not possible to bypass the $2 paywall for changing the appearance of your character by editing the save files. To make matters worse, you can only have one save file at a time. If you want to create a new character, you have to delete the old one. So, before playing, you should make sure that you really like your character, otherwise you're screwed.
Let's see if the backlash has any impact on the issues. Perhaps we'll be lucky, and Capcom will realize that this idea was truly a bad one, and ultimately probably generates less money instead of more.