KitGuru Games: Dragon’s Dogma 2 launch squandered by greed

While I'm typically more positive when it comes to discussing games, today we're going to be diving into a very unexpected controversy. This week, Capcom officially launched Dragon's Dogma 2, a game that was getting rave reviews ahead of its release and was hyped up by many who loved the original game from a decade ago. Unfortunately, Capcom was keeping a few things quiet, with an atrocious list of microtransactions dropping alongside the game. 

Dragon's Dogma 2 was set to be another hit in a long-running line of solid releases from Capcom in recent years. Unfortunately, the launch-day excitement has been absolutely squandered, with Capcom launching a list of 21 purchasable microtransactions for the game, many of which spit in the face of the game's deep RPG design.

In a game like Dragon's Dogma, players spend a ton of time crafting not only their main character, but their ‘Pawn' as well, a secondary character that joins you in your party and will mould its playstyle around the things you do in battle. Want to reset your Pawn to act differently? That will cost you £1.70.

There is a particular quote now doing the rounds on social media from Dragon's Dogma 2 director, Hideaki Itsuno, where he explains that fast travel wouldn't be necessary in games if the ‘travelling' part of the game was actually fun. In direct contrast to this, Capcom thought it would be prudent to sell ‘Portcrystals', an item that costs £2.49 and allows you to fast travel to a location of your choice.

Dragon's Dogma 2 does not include a New Game button, so once you've created your character and committed to it, there is a sense that you are stuck with it. To get around this, Capcom is selling a Character Editor item for £1.70, allowing you to tweak your character's appearance should you want to make any adjustments after starting the game. Getting around this is a convoluted process that involves making sure your Steam Cloud Saves are switched off, finding your original save files hiding in a folder and then deleting them. Sure it's not the end of the world to have to go through this workaround, but the fact that Capcom is obscuring the ability to start a fresh new character and instead selling you an item to make any appearance changes, is nothing short of bad practise.

With these two examples alone, Capcom has already undermined core pillars of the game. Dragon's Dogma 2 was designed to be played and explored without fast travel – so why sell pricey single-use fast-travel ‘crystals'? The character creator is one of the most detailed in the industry – so why lock adjustments behind a ridiculous paywall and intentionally make it difficult to start a new character?

As a hardcore RPG, Dragon's Dogma 2 players also have to grapple with limited inventory space and weight management, a good chunk of which is taken up by your camping gear. Don't like this? Well you will be pleased to learn that you can spend £2.49 for an upgraded camping kit that weighs less and takes up less inventory space. Running low on revive potions? Just buy some more at the low price of £0.89 each. Want to hire some new Pawns to join your party and aid you in battle? You can top up on Rift currency to do exactly that. You can even pay for a special key to escape jail should you be arrested in-game – which is an issue, as Dragon's Dogma 2 has save policies in place to make it harder for players to ‘save scum' to avoid things like ending up in jail when trying to steal valuable items or sneak into closed off areas.

It is just baffling to see how each and every microtransaction directly counters deliberate design decisions made for the game. What we could have had here was a deep, rewarding and challenging RPG, but it has all been cast aside in favour of penny pinching.

Imagine being able to buy revive stones as a microtransaction in a game like Elden Ring? The game would be nowhere near as popular as it is if its mechanics and design were undermined at every turn by paid-for items, so Capcom's decision to go down this route with Dragon's Dogma 2 is all the more baffling.

Now the ‘good' news is that you can buy many of these ‘time saving' items in a cheaper bundle, rather than buying them all individually, but it still doesn't change the fact that the very existence of these items damages the perception of the game and casts doubt on the design decisions made to make the game more challenging. Something like not being able to save scum to avoid going to jail would be easily forgiven if Capcom wasn't also turning around and trying to sell you a ‘get out of jail free' card.

Turning inventory and weight management into a core mechanic is usually commendable for a serious RPG, but the ‘seriousness' of the game is immediately called into question when you can just spend £2.50 to buy a magic camping set that gives you back inventory space. This contradiction between developer-intent and monetisation hurts nearly every aspect of the game. I could even look past the ‘one save slot' rule if we could freely make adjustments to our characters in-game, but you can't, you need to  buy an item for that, or delete your save and start over.

Now, what should have been a fantastic launch weekend for Capcom, and a big boon for the popularity of Dragon's Dogma as a franchise, has been utterly wasted. The high critic scores don't mean much when word of mouth amongst paying customers has turned overwhelmingly negative. Over on Steam, the game has already dropped to a ‘Mostly Negative' score based on over 11,000 user reviews. The subreddit for the game is also filled with complaints, as well as memes about how bad the game is. When the meme-makers turn against you, it tarnishes your reputation in ways that are not easy to fix – just look at Cyberpunk 2077. Even now, three years on and after a renewed wave of critical acclaim, there are still people who talk down on the game due to its launch troubles.

The worst part about this is if sales are hurt, which they very likely will be, the chances of Dragon's Dogma becoming a mainstay franchise start to get very slim. It already took over a decade to get a sequel to the original. After this debacle, Capcom may need to put the series on ice once again.

The main saving grace here is that most of these items and currencies are earnable in-game, and the critics that did review it for launch all played it without knowledge of the incoming microtransactions, which does suggest that they can be ignored for the most part, but the fact is, many are now going to be put off upon visiting the store page for the game. Prior to this, Capcom had a lot of goodwill built up amongst gamers but the fact is, that has now been traded off for overly pervasive monetisation.

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KitGuru Says: Have any of you picked up Dragon's Dogma 2 already? Are you enjoying the game? Have the newly announced microtransactions soured your opinion or desire to pick it up at all? 

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