Personally, I think hidden time bombs are part of the pawn system's charm.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 and its reception was a bit of a wild ride to follow—an otherwise bombastic, colourful RPG was bogged down by some mind-meltingly foolish microtransactions, the optics of which were far worse than the reality.
Still, I’ve had a blast getting wrecked in Battahl, and the game’s willingness to ruin your day at the slightest provocation is both hilarious and endearing. Dragonsplague is a great example, it’s a sickness your pawns (magically-hired party members) can contract which, if left untreated, will straight-up murder an entire town full of NPCs with little provocation.
If you’re not a masochist like me, though, you might enjoy this latest patch. Dragon’s Dogma 2 now has a casual mode in which your sick pawns will never go nuclear. Here’s a full list of the differences in this new difficulty setting:
Reduced inn fees for staying at an inn.Reduced price of Ferrystones.More difficult for weight carried to become “Heavy” or “Very Heavy.”Less Stamina expended when dashing outside of battle.Loss gauge will not increase when selecting “Load from Last Save” after the Arisen dies.Pawns will recover from dragonsplague without a “devastating calamity” occurring, even if the symptoms progress to a terminal stage.
While it’s neat to have the option, I can’t help but wonder if making Dragon’s Dogma 2 convenient kind of defeats the entire exercise. Part of the charm of this game lies in making you hoof it between major settlements, manage annoying backpacks, and having griffins divebomb the cart you just paid for.
This is, after all, a game where, in one play session, I had the audacity to take a cart to another settlement, got ambushed by a pack of enemies halfway through, accidentally had one of my pawns destroy the cart (they had Seism prepared), and then was attacked by a Griffin. How little this game cares about your plans is a positive, not a negative, to me.
Mind, the game does have a few other draws. A fun class system, some quite solid fights, and a world full of nooks and crannies to explore—maybe this mode will help the less hardship-tolerant among its prospective playerbase get invested. The patch also has a few other notable changes—balance tweaks, performance updates, and the like. You can read the full list of notes on the game’s official website.
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