What Are You Playing: 9 Years since the Last Dragon Age

[WritersBlock]

I can indeed confirm Denuvo ruins game performance especially load times. I got the PC version of Code Vein on sale a while ago and did not see a notice on the store page that it had Denuvo (Thought it was removed or inactive now, what a fool I was) and the game has load times that are way too long for a game as oldish as it is and for my PC specs (I play several much more demanding games than that take much less time to load). I have always hated how people on steam discussions keep outright defending crap like that.

[Zevox]

Getting close to the end of FF7 Rebirth on hard. I'll save overall thoughts for when I'm done, but for now, I have to say that the

Spoiler: Chapter 12

Show

Rufus Shinra

boss fight is great on hard. A lot of back and forth, requires you to get a good handle on its ins and outs to overcome it, and even once you do, it's not easy. Very fun, probably my favorite boss fight in the game (though we'll see what some of the last ones are like on hard).

[Sermil]

The circumstances are literally nothing alike, for the exact reasons you mention. And is also an extremely old case that has since been buried in legal precedent by subsequent cases on modding, and even broader protections that apply to 3rd party content applied to an "interactive computer service" that have been bolstered in recent years. Look up Section 230, which social media platforms and services like Youtube use as well.

The TL;DR is that the company that provides a service is not responsible for what 3rd parties use their platform for.

You're arguing legality and missing the point. The point is not that they are legally responsible for what a third-party does. The point is that their public reputation will take a hit and their all-important stock price will take a hit because of the whiff of scandal.

It is a perfectly rational response to them wanting a particular reputation.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

You're arguing legality and missing the point. The point is not that they are legally responsible for what a third-party does. The point is that their public reputation will take a hit and their all-important stock price will take a hit because of the whiff of scandal.

It is a perfectly rational response to them wanting a particular reputation.

Even the legality is shaky, just because many lawmakers don't really understand technology and what a "mod" is. All it would take is enough public visibility and the hammer would come down. Heck, Balatro - the poker-inspired roguelike cardgame that just released - had a brush with it recently because someone at the ratings board saw "poker," assumed it must be a gambling game, and jumped the rating from 3+ to 18+ which delisted it from stores in some countries.

[Jophiel]

Been playing Dragon's Dogma 2. There's a swarm of angry comments about it and they're pretty legitimate:
Microtransactions: You can buy a bunch of stuff and Capcom presented it on the store page in the worst possible way, like some giant wall of purchase options. But you can also get nearly all the stuff in-game anyway (the rest are items carved off the Deluxe Edition) and not even for much in-game currency.
Save Game: You only have a single save file, which is fine, but you can't even delete/restart the file. So, if you finish the tutorial, decide you want your character to look a little different and figure "I'll just start over and redo this..." haha, no you can't. On PC, you can kludge around it with deleting the file in Windows, turning Steam Cloud and Capcom Network off, then on later, etc. But it's dumb and there's no good earthly reason I can think of for it.
Performance: The game is very CPU bound for NPCs and an i5-10600 is the minimum spec. I'm playing on an i7-13700k and it's been fine but I could see others having trouble with older/cheaper processors.
Always Online (?): I assume this is because of the Pawn system where you hire on NPC assistants created by other players. I'm not sure the game actually is always online since you can turn off connecting to Capcom network whenever you want and just use game-created pawns rather than community created ones.

All that aside, the actual game -- the part where you move a little person around and stab monsters and pick berries -- is very enjoyable and engaging. If you played.liked Dragons Dogma 1, this is more of the same basic game. Different vocation options or abilities or gear but the broad strokes are identical. The game is more open world, with more to explore and get in trouble off the beaten path. Been playing for the last few nights and gone dagger-ham on a bunch of goblins, climbed on some giant critters so I could stab them too, got some skills to set my daggers on fire and another to leap into the air and spin with my daggers like Sonic the Fiery Dagger Hedgehog, listened to my pawns natter on about a cave they see, some apples they found or what classes we should recruit, ran some quests, died a bunch to some harpies that I later annihilated, etc. Solid fun times when you're talking about the actual game and it's a shame Capcom had to dork up the launch with their dumb microtransaction stuff and bizarre save file decisions.

[Sapphire Guard]

Should be playing FFXVI, but couldn't fix the glitch, so the playthrough came to a sudden end. And so Clive put out his back lifting sacks in the hideaway, and his adventure ended there.

[Zevox]

Been playing Dragon's Dogma 2. There's a swarm of angry comments about it and they're pretty legitimate:
Microtransactions: You can buy a bunch of stuff and Capcom presented it on the store page in the worst possible way, like some giant wall of purchase options. But you can also get nearly all the stuff in-game anyway (the rest are items carved off the Deluxe Edition) and not even for much in-game currency.
Save Game: You only have a single save file, which is fine, but you can't even delete/restart the file. So, if you finish the tutorial, decide you want your character to look a little different and figure "I'll just start over and redo this..." haha, no you can't. On PC, you can kludge around it with deleting the file in Windows, turning Steam Cloud and Capcom Network off, then on later, etc. But it's dumb and there's no good earthly reason I can think of for it.
Performance: The game is very CPU bound for NPCs and an i5-10600 is the minimum spec. I'm playing on an i7-13700k and it's been fine but I could see others having trouble with older/cheaper processors.
Always Online (?): I assume this is because of the Pawn system where you hire on NPC assistants created by other players. I'm not sure the game actually is always online since you can turn off connecting to Capcom network whenever you want and just use game-created pawns rather than community created ones.

All that aside, the actual game -- the part where you move a little person around and stab monsters and pick berries -- is very enjoyable and engaging. If you played.liked Dragons Dogma 1, this is more of the same basic game. Different vocation options or abilities or gear but the broad strokes are identical. The game is more open world, with more to explore and get in trouble off the beaten path. Been playing for the last few nights and gone dagger-ham on a bunch of goblins, climbed on some giant critters so I could stab them too, got some skills to set my daggers on fire and another to leap into the air and spin with my daggers like Sonic the Fiery Dagger Hedgehog, listened to my pawns natter on about a cave they see, some apples they found or what classes we should recruit, ran some quests, died a bunch to some harpies that I later annihilated, etc. Solid fun times when you're talking about the actual game and it's a shame Capcom had to dork up the launch with their dumb microtransaction stuff and bizarre save file decisions.

#1 seems to not be the concern it sounded like when I first saw reports of it. If the stuff you can buy is as readily available in-game as I've seen people saying, then those microtransactions are like them selling red orbs in DMC5. Technically it's there and it is a microtransaction, but not only did they not warp the game to try and sell them the way you'd fear, they're basically just a waste of money that's there to try and bring in a little extra from stupid people. Not a good thing, but not anything that actually impacts the game.

#3 is PC-specific, so not relevant to a console player like me.

#2 and #4 concern me considerably. There just no excuse for having only one save file in this day and age, nevermind making it hard to delete it if you want to restart. And as someone who plays all his games other than fighting games offline and has no interest in the Pawn system (which was always one of the things I disliked in the first game), always online would also be pretty inexcusable to me, even if it wouldn't technically prevent me from playing.

I've also seen some people claim the game doesn't have fast travel? Is that true? I've been seeing mixed claims on it, but boy would that be a huge mark against it, if it's bigger than the first game but doesn't provide the one feature that helps make open-world game design somewhat bearable.

[Rynjin]

I've also seen some people claim the game doesn't have fast travel? Is that true? I've been seeing mixed claims on it, but boy would that be a huge mark against it, if it's bigger than the first game but doesn't provide the one feature that helps make open-world game design somewhat bearable.

It's a complete and utter fabrication. Not only does it have the exact same fast travel system as the first game (using Portcrystals to set up your own teleport network, and then Ferrystones to teleport), it also introduces Oxcarts that travel between major settlements, at the cost of occasionally being ambushed mid-trip.

There's a lot of people just straight up lying about DD2 for reasons I don't understand.

[Jophiel]

If someone dislikes the entire pawn system, Dragon's Dogma is probably just not a great fit for them. The game revolves around the pawns both mechanically from a balance perspective and in-game where the plot is all about you being the Arisen who can summon forth pawns. Most of the other stuff the game does well can probably be found in some other fantasy action RPG.

[WritersBlock]

It is awful having only one save file. Especially when my antivirus deletes my save file like it did with dead cells and even with cloud storage I could not recover it. Or when I was farming Those giant crystal realms in my ps4 version of Shadow warrior 2 and all the missions disappeared except the dlc christmas mission and all those upgrades and levels went down the drain.

Considering crap like that and how so many game companies don't seem to hire actual programmers, I think its quite important to let you save whenever you want to or at least have more save slots.
(like a like of falcom games have or Astlibra revision that also has quite a few pages of save slots, sword and fairy 7 had tons of slots as well)

[halfeye]

It is awful having only one save file. Especially when my antivirus deletes my save file like it did with dead cells and even with cloud storage I could not recover it. Or when I was farming Those giant crystal realms in my ps4 version of Shadow warrior 2 and all the missions disappeared except the dlc christmas mission and all those upgrades and levels went down the drain.

I don't remember which game you are talking about, but that does sound bad.

Considering crap like that and how so many game companies don't seem to hire actual programmers,

Programming is not easy.

Programming is like writing a story, but if you get something wrong later on, you can destroy the whole story rather than having an oops moment. Of course, retcons and bugfixes can save the day, but it all interacts and one bugfix can cause another bug if you don't understand everything about the whole system (which since several somebodies else wrote other parts of it, you almost certainly don't).

[Zevox]

It's a complete and utter fabrication. Not only does it have the exact same fast travel system as the first game (using Portcrystals to set up your own teleport network, and then Ferrystones to teleport), it also introduces Oxcarts that travel between major settlements, at the cost of occasionally being ambushed mid-trip.

There's a lot of people just straight up lying about DD2 for reasons I don't understand.

That's good to hear at least.

If someone dislikes the entire pawn system, Dragon's Dogma is probably just not a great fit for them. The game revolves around the pawns both mechanically from a balance perspective and in-game where the plot is all about you being the Arisen who can summon forth pawns. Most of the other stuff the game does well can probably be found in some other fantasy action RPG.

The combat, particularly how well it handled combat with large monsters, was what I liked about it. At the time at least no other game had done that so well. And honestly, that's kind of what I expect to like in a Capcom game - gameplay, particularly combat, tends to be their strong suit. Not so much the story, that was kind of a joke even in the first game, and I know better than to expect strong writing out of Capcom in anything besides Ace Attorney anyway.

The Pawn system I disliked because it's just inferior to having actual party members. You get stuck with bland followers who repeat the same few lines constantly, and can only even customize your main one, you have to use premade/other people's pawns for your other two, which sucks even compared to having a fully customizable party like in Dragon Quest 3 and 9 (which is itself inferior to actual party members). I don't know why they thought the weird system of sharing your pawns with other players was a good idea, but I disagree with them on it.

[Jophiel]

I figure if they were static NPCs, they'd be no more dynamic or exciting; it'd just be the same three faces saying the same lines. It's not as though your main pawn does anything more than the two temps do, after all. But, being hireable, I don't need to sweat about equipping them or spending money on them and it's always nice when I'm trotting about and one says "In another time, we found a cave near here -- want me to show it to you?" because their actual owner did, in fact, discover a cave and imprinted the knowledge on their pawn.

Even better is when they say "Oh, my master completely missed this! I'll have to bring news to them" because I found something they didn't

[Form]

My partial second playthrough of Lies of P became a full playthrough. I've killed all the bosses by myself this time, including the King of Puppets and the secret boss after the 'final' boss. Got all the music records and defeated 2 stalkers that I had spared the first time around too.

Though I did sort of cheap shot 2-3 of the bosses. By throwing a couple of firebombs and/or shot puts at their head to whittle down their last little bit of health. No, Nameless Puppet, I don't think I will enter melee range to stagger you with melee attacks when you're almost dead. I'll just throw this metal ball that I have in my pocket at your head and then wail on you.

[Zevox]

So, finished up FF7 Rebirth hard mode today. For those that don't know, hard in FF7 Remake/Rebirth is kind of the New Game+ mode - you only get access to it upon beating the game, and only by using Chapter Select with a file that's already beaten the game. In Rebirth it's balanced around the assumption of you being at the game's maximum level to boot. Besides just amping up the difficulty, it also has a couple of major mechanic changes: you cannot use items (i.e. potions, phoenix downs, etc) at all, and in places where you'd normally fully restore hp and mp (inns, benches) you only restore hp, not mp. You do get a full restore at the end of each chapter, so you can go nuts on the final boss of the chapter, but before then this makes mp management a hell of a lot more important, and methods of healing that don't use mp massively more valuable even if they're less effective than ordinary healing magic. It also means resurrection spells are a lot more important since you lack easy access to phoenix downs.

All that explained, while I enjoyed the hard mode run quite a bit (more so than the initial run in many regards, both due to the challenge and due to already having the open-world filler done*), I do think it works less well in Rebirth than in Remake, in large part because you have a much larger party. In Remake you spend most of the game with a part of only 2-3 characters, only hitting 4 near the end, once you've reached Aerith in the Shinra Building, so your mp management is a lot harder, and Chakra/Prayer incredibly important. In Rebirth, you've got 5 characters minimum, 6 for most of the game, and 7 tops, and you're only using 3 at a time - it's a lot easier to have a character who's not doing the fighting use cure + magnify to keep the party topped off and not be that worried if they run out of mp. Or you could burn mp fairly normally on everyone but Cloud and just switch party members when your current two run low. I found I just didn't need the non-mp healing effects nearly as much this time around because of that. And with how potent Aerith's Soul Drain ability is at restoring her mp (just use it on a staggered foe), it's easy to keep her able to keep throwing magic around to boot.

And that's all without getting into the fact that there is a way to restore mp to full in this one, though I think it's a bug. Resting at Chocobo Rest Stops, the ones you need a cushion to use, still restores your mp. This kind of defeats the purpose of the mode though, so I'm assuming it's unintentional, and I avoided them after I found out. But until they patch it out, you can totally abuse it to defeat a big part of the challenge of hard difficulty.

Anyway, I'm actually still not quite done with the game. The real hardest challenges seem to be the post-game Battle Square and Combat Simulator fights, as I only managed to do some of those before deciding I wanted to finish the story on hard instead of bashing my head against the wall some of them represent. I'll be trying to finish those, but I'm not sure if I will - the Combat Simulator fights in particular are kind of long, being either five straight rounds with a single character or ten with a team, which gets rough just in the amount of time an attempt takes. Still, the fact that I do want to do them should tell you just how much I love the combat in this game, it's fantastic.

*For reference, my hard mode run was about 40 hours shorter than my initial run because of that. And still longer than any run I did in FF7 Remake.

I figure if they were static NPCs, they'd be no more dynamic or exciting; it'd just be the same three faces saying the same lines. It's not as though your main pawn does anything more than the two temps do, after all. But, being hireable, I don't need to sweat about equipping them or spending money on them and it's always nice when I'm trotting about and one says "In another time, we found a cave near here -- want me to show it to you?" because their actual owner did, in fact, discover a cave and imprinted the knowledge on their pawn.

Even better is when they say "Oh, my master completely missed this! I'll have to bring news to them" because I found something they didn't

Even Capcom can manage to create characters with a basic personality and backstory, which is all it'd take to be better than the pawns. And I'll take having to equip them over needing to hire new ones every couple of levels because only your main one levels up with you.

[Rynjin]

It's a fun social system. I like seeing other peoples' creations. I like hiring my friends' Pawns. Them being "actual characters" wouldn't add much, because this is not a story-driven game. I would rather hear useful banter repeated over and over than the same bland story bits, which is what happens with most RPG characters with "real personality".

Half the time they'd say the same stuff ("We really should be getting back to the city!") and half the time they'd say stuff that'd get older way faster ("You know my father used to say 'You've got to grab life by the horns!'. I wonder what he meant by that?").

[Zevox]

It's a fun social system. I like seeing other peoples' creations. I like hiring my friends' Pawns. Them being "actual characters" wouldn't add much, because this is not a story-driven game. I would rather hear useful banter repeated over and over than the same bland story bits, which is what happens with most RPG characters with "real personality".

Half the time they'd say the same stuff ("We really should be getting back to the city!") and half the time they'd say stuff that'd get older way faster ("You know my father used to say 'You've got to grab life by the horns!'. I wonder what he meant by that?").

I like none of those things about the pawns and feel like them being actual characters would add a lot - i.e. having any actual personality to the people you spend the most time with in the game at all.

The pawn system is just a really low bar to clear being better than, IMO. It's quite a glaring weakness of the game to me.

[Jophiel]

It's a fun social system. I like seeing other peoples' creations.

Yeah, same. I like "pawn shopping" before setting out and seeing everyone's creations. I like getting my pawn back with a little gift and story about their time abroad. It's like perfect social interaction for me: I get to feel like part of a community without needing to, ew, talk to people

[WritersBlock]

Picked up Drakensang off gog since it was on sale for 2 bucks, installing to try it out for a little bit to see how it is. (Maybe get a few mods for it first as well)

[Rynjin]

I like none of those things about the pawns and feel like them being actual characters would add a lot - i.e. having any actual personality to the people you spend the most time with in the game at all.

The pawn system is just a really low bar to clear being better than, IMO. It's quite a glaring weakness of the game to me.

Them being 'actual characters" wouldn't add anything to the game and would arguably detract from it. If I don't like a pawn's face, voice, attitude, how they fight, etc. I can trade them out anytime.

If I don't like an "actual character" in an RPG I'm stuck with them and their annoying catchphrases the entire game.

[Zevox]

Them being 'actual characters" wouldn't add anything to the game and would arguably detract from it.

Yeah, that is just a point on which we will never agree. No RPG benefits from lacking characters, as far as I'm concerned. Even basic ones are better than non-entities like the pawns.

[AlanBruce]

So, finished up FF7 Rebirth hard mode today. For those that don't know, hard in FF7 Remake/Rebirth is kind of the New Game+ mode - you only get access to it upon beating the game, and only by using Chapter Select with a file that's already beaten the game. In Rebirth it's balanced around the assumption of you being at the game's maximum level to boot. Besides just amping up the difficulty, it also has a couple of major mechanic changes: you cannot use items (i.e. potions, phoenix downs, etc) at all, and in places where you'd normally fully restore hp and mp (inns, benches) you only restore hp, not mp. You do get a full restore at the end of each chapter, so you can go nuts on the final boss of the chapter, but before then this makes mp management a hell of a lot more important, and methods of healing that don't use mp massively more valuable even if they're less effective than ordinary healing magic. It also means resurrection spells are a lot more important since you lack easy access to phoenix downs.

All that explained, while I enjoyed the hard mode run quite a bit (more so than the initial run in many regards, both due to the challenge and due to already having the open-world filler done*), I do think it works less well in Rebirth than in Remake, in large part because you have a much larger party. In Remake you spend most of the game with a part of only 2-3 characters, only hitting 4 near the end, once you've reached Aerith in the Shinra Building, so your mp management is a lot harder, and Chakra/Prayer incredibly important. In Rebirth, you've got 5 characters minimum, 6 for most of the game, and 7 tops, and you're only using 3 at a time - it's a lot easier to have a character who's not doing the fighting use cure + magnify to keep the party topped off and not be that worried if they run out of mp. Or you could burn mp fairly normally on everyone but Cloud and just switch party members when your current two run low. I found I just didn't need the non-mp healing effects nearly as much this time around because of that. And with how potent Aerith's Soul Drain ability is at restoring her mp (just use it on a staggered foe), it's easy to keep her able to keep throwing magic around to boot.

And that's all without getting into the fact that there is a way to restore mp to full in this one, though I think it's a bug. Resting at Chocobo Rest Stops, the ones you need a cushion to use, still restores your mp. This kind of defeats the purpose of the mode though, so I'm assuming it's unintentional, and I avoided them after I found out. But until they patch it out, you can totally abuse it to defeat a big part of the challenge of hard difficulty.

Anyway, I'm actually still not quite done with the game. The real hardest challenges seem to be the post-game Battle Square and Combat Simulator fights, as I only managed to do some of those before deciding I wanted to finish the story on hard instead of bashing my head against the wall some of them represent. I'll be trying to finish those, but I'm not sure if I will - the Combat Simulator fights in particular are kind of long, being either five straight rounds with a single character or ten with a team, which gets rough just in the amount of time an attempt takes. Still, the fact that I do want to do them should tell you just how much I love the combat in this game, it's fantastic.

*For reference, my hard mode run was about 40 hours shorter than my initial run because of that. And still longer than any run I did in FF7 Remake.


Even Capcom can manage to create characters with a basic personality and backstory, which is all it'd take to be better than the pawns. And I'll take having to equip them over needing to hire new ones every couple of levels because only your main one levels up with you.

I finished Hard Mode on Rebirth as well. I wasn’t pleased with the way Remake handled that mode and was hoping they would take notes for this title. It isn’t a Souls game. And it shouldn’t strive to be that.

They, predictably, went that route. In a game where you have a device that literally transmutes items, this one is rendered near obsolete in Hard Mode because of a very petty decision to restrict items. You can still make the game difficult. Don’t make it restrictive. Yes, materia is typically maxed in NG+. And there are some destructive combos you can use with it. But this mode seems like the developers are punishing its player base for going back in again. A perfect example is chapter 12, with incredibly questionable back to back fights. Never mind the gauntlet that is the final stretch.

[Zevox]

I finished Hard Mode on Rebirth as well. I wasn’t pleased with the way Remake handled that mode and was hoping they would take notes for this title. It isn’t a Souls game. And it shouldn’t strive to be that.

They, predictably, went that route. In a game where you have a device that literally transmutes items, this one is rendered near obsolete in Hard Mode because of a very petty decision to restrict items. You can still make the game difficult. Don’t make it restrictive. Yes, materia is typically maxed in NG+. And there are some destructive combos you can use with it. But this mode seems like the developers are punishing its player base for going back in again. A perfect example is chapter 12, with incredibly questionable back to back fights. Never mind the gauntlet that is the final stretch.

I don't agree at all. Without items turned off, the game will remain no challenge unless they buff the enemies to the point of starting one or two hit killing your characters regularly*. You can stockpile a ton of them and they're very powerful, especially Phoenix Downs, which you get plenty of from very early. The way Remake handled the mode worked fantastically, I felt; Rebirth, less so, due to the reasons I outlined. I actually really liked the Chapter 12 gauntlet - as I mentioned, the last boss of that on hard is my favorite fight in the game, and I didn't feel any before him were too hard. Even one immediately prior only took me two tries. The final stretch is fine too, you don't even have to restart earlier fights if you fail in a later one, it's quite generous on that.

*One of the few bosses I have a complaint about is actually because it does that:

Spoiler: Chapter 13 boss.

Show

The Red Dragon fight on hard is ridiculous, because its unblockable breath weapon that envelops the floor hits the entire stage, rather than having a part of it you can run to to safety like in normal/dynamic. This does so much damage that the only character I had survive it was Barret with an HP Up materia at full health. I thought an obvious answer to this would be using Elemental Materia + Fire Materia on my characters' armor, get that immunity/absorb to fire and render a lot of its attacks useless; nope, doesn't work. In fact, the boss seems to completely ignore all sources of invincibility besides Limit Breaks - and I mean the animation while you're performing the Limit Break, as even Aerith's Planet's Protection Limit Break got ignored as soon as the animation ended, and its whole purpose is to give you temporary invincibility. That combination was just kind of BS.

And it is no way comparable to Dark Souls, let's be clear. Dark Souls did not invent being hard, and that is not its defining feature, and FF7 Remake/Rebirth does not share any of its actual defining features. Frankly they are much better games than Dark Souls in many ways, IMO, and I find the challenge they present with their hard modes much more satisfying than Dark Souls', personally.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, that is just a point on which we will never agree. No RPG benefits from lacking characters, as far as I'm concerned. Even basic ones are better than non-entities like the pawns.

Frankly, Pawns have more personality than most "actual characters" I've been saddled with in my RPGs. I think this is just a matter of you not having a ton of experience with the game. Pawns acts as kind of the emergent/environmental storytelling equivalent of RPG characters. Yeah, they're replaceable, but that doesn't mean you don't get attached and a little sad when a Pawn you've been rolling with for a week gets petrified by a Cockatrice, lets out one last "We did it master, yay teamwork!" or whatever, and then crumbles to dust, never to be seen again.

[Zevox]

Frankly, Pawns have more personality than most "actual characters" I've been saddled with in my RPGs. I think this is just a matter of you not having a ton of experience with the game.

Sounds more like you haven't played any good RPGs to me. I played through Dragon's Dogma entirely back when it first came out, so no, my opinion is not from lack of experience, it's from not liking the whole pawn concept at a basic level.

[Rynjin]

Sounds more like you haven't played any good RPGs to me. I played through Dragon's Dogma entirely back when it first came out, so no, my opinion is not from lack of experience, it's from not liking the whole pawn concept at a basic level.

I've played plenty of good RPGs. None in the style of DD would be improved by having distinct, story-relevant NPCs you have to drag around.

Especially as in specifically DD's case you lose out on almost all the mechanical underpinnings of Pawns if you turn them into distinct characters. Inclinations, quest experience, item trading, Pawn quests, etc. all go out the window when I'm stuck with a specific roster of characters I will likely cease to care about 2-3 runs in.

Because that's the big thing: Dragon's Dogma is a game made to be an infinite loop. You play it for the gameplay, not the story. The more unskippable story elements are added to the game, the less replayable it becomes. The more there are distinct NPCs with their own wants and desires to nag me about their personal quests, own wants and needs I have to juggle to keep the ones I like in the party without getting stuck with the ones I hate because fo choices I make this run, etc. the less I get to enjoy teh actual GAME.

Most "good RPGs" are passable games with excellent storytelling. They're one-and-dones, for the most part. I have no particular desire to do another run of Baldur's Gate 3, and likely won't for a good long while. Excellent game; not eminently replayable.

These two types of NPC design are largely incompatible. The more the NPC party members actually MATTER on an individual level, the more chains get put around the player trying to play their own way.

Not every game, nor even every RPG, needs to have Final Fantasy-esque personalities which stand out to a distracting degree. Sometimes it serves the game best to have party members who fade into the background, and whose attachment is built on adventures shared, not plot told.

Hell, to take the discussion away from DD for a moment, do you dislike Pokemon? Because it's largely the same thing. Your "party members" are blank slates made to serve a purpose...and yet you get attached all the same. It's the entire conceit behind Nuzlockes, after all.

[Zevox]

Because that's the big thing: Dragon's Dogma is a game made to be an infinite loop. You play it for the gameplay, not the story. The more unskippable story elements are added to the game, the less replayable it becomes.

I don't know about "infinite loop" - I found I was good with the game after my second time through - but I agree that Dragon's Dogma was a game I played for the gameplay, not the story. I do not feel like companions would make it "less replayable" (more on that in general below), or that a better story wouldn't be to its benefit though. I just don't expect Capcom's writers to be capable of more than a simple, basic story.

I don't even believe the original game was going for people not caring about the story, either. A fair bit of effort was clearly put into what story and side-quests were there; it just wasn't very good, at times becoming laughable. (I will never forget going on that quest to help the Queen, having her come up and hug me and then say "You must think me a shameless harlot," to which my mental response was "Well not until just now, but if that's where you're going with this, then yeah." Hillariously awful side-quest that one.)

Most "good RPGs" are passable games with excellent storytelling. They're one-and-dones, for the most part. I have no particular desire to do another run of Baldur's Gate 3, and likely won't for a good long while. Excellent game; not eminently replayable.

For me, that's a contradiction in terms; there's no excellent game that's not eminently replayable, because a game being good is all it needs to be replayable. I've already replayed BG3 twice, and intend to do more once I'm between new releases sometime. That's already more than Dragon's Dogma made me want to do, and the better story and characters a big part of why. I've replayed Persona 3 and 4 more times still over the years, and those don't even have the customizable main character and branching story choices of BG3; but they're my favorite games of all time, and that makes them more replayable to me than even BG3 will ever be.

These two types of NPC design are largely incompatible. The more the NPC party members actually MATTER on an individual level, the more chains get put around the player trying to play their own way.

I cannot say thay claim makes the slightest sense to me.

Hell, to take the discussion away from DD for a moment, do you dislike Pokemon? Because it's largely the same thing. Your "party members" are blank slates made to serve a purpose...and yet you get attached all the same. It's the entire conceit behind Nuzlockes, after all.

Eh, I can't say I have strong feelings on Pokemon at all anymore. I liked it when I was a little kid, during the first two generations, but just kind of got bored with it after that. Diamond/Pearl was the last generation I played (and even that was out of a fit of nostalgia), and them never changing anything much or getting better stories was a big part of why. I wound up feeling like I could get the same experience by replaying my older games as buying any new ones, so I just stopped doing that, and ultimately lost interest in even replaying the older ones.

I've actually never experienced a "Nuzlocke," and only even learned what they are out of idle curiosity. They hold no particular interest to me.

These days the closest I get to Pokemon is when I play mainline Shin Megami Tensei. And yeah, I'd say having demons instead of party members in that is part of why I've never liked mainline SMT as much as spin-offs like Persona or Devil Survivor.

For a similar point of comparison, I like Fire Emblem quite a bit more than X-Com in the turn-based strategy game category. Having actual characters probably contiributed to me liking Midnight Suns more than X-Com too, though gameplay also plays a big role in that one.

[ArmyOfOptimists]

For me, that's a contradiction in terms; there's no excellent game that's not eminently replayable, because a game being good is all it needs to be replayable. I've already replayed BG3 twice, and intend to do more once I'm between new releases sometime. That's already more than Dragon's Dogma made me want to do, and the better story and characters a big part of why. I've replayed Persona 3 and 4 more times still over the years, and those don't even have the customizable main character and branching story choices of BG3; but they're my favorite games of all time, and that makes them more replayable to me than even BG3 will ever be.

Just off the top of my head, any game that heavily relies on exploration or puzzles has the first playthrough as the best experience. They don't tend to be particularly replayable. Sometimes, attempting to replay them can even damage the positive impressions you originally had. You simply can't re-experience the wonder of figuring out a puzzle for the first time or the surprise of finding something you had no idea existed. They're still great games; they just don't tend towards repetition.

You seem to really enjoy story heavy games, so it's no wonder that Dragon's Dogma isn't a winner for you.

[Kardwill]

Just off the top of my head, any game that heavily relies on exploration or puzzles has the first playthrough as the best experience. They don't tend to be particularly replayable. Sometimes, attempting to replay them can even damage the positive impressions you originally had. You simply can't re-experience the wonder of figuring out a puzzle for the first time or the surprise of finding something you had no idea existed. They're still great games; they just don't tend towards repetition.

Yeah, you can only ever discover something once, so games that resolve around "figuring out" or finding stuff are often best during their first, unspoiled run.

The three games I enjoyed most this past year have been Return of the Obra Dinn, Outer Wilds and Breath of the Wild. (Yeah, I'm at the speartip of the Hype ^^ )
And I don't think I'll replay either of the three.

RotOD and OW are games that can really only be played once, since the core of those games is uderstanding how they work, and applying that knowledge to "solve" the game. That process can only ever be experienced blind. And the emotional impact of the OW would probably suffer a lot if I played it again, too. I don't want to cheapen that experience.
(They're fantastic games, by the way.)

Even BotW, which is pretty standard openworld RPG, probably won't be played again, because a lot of the enjoyment of the game is exploring the map and finding hidden places. That sense of wonder and discovery just won't be there on a second playthrough.

[warty goblin]

I've never found my desire to replay a game to depend much on "replayability" as generally defined, i.e. unseen mechanical or story content. If I had a good time the first time through, I'll consider replaying it, otherwise I won't. I've happily played through Tomb Raider 2012 at least twice, and that game is completely linear. Infinite loop games, at least the singleplayer ones, tend not do much for me, at some point it's extremely obvious I'm just making the number go up, and I don't care - hence my substantial apathy towards the world of Diablo type games. Which isn't to say I need a story, I've played something like 70 hours of Crimsonland, which is pure score attack, I don't want to admit how much World of Warships, and I used to play Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in endless bot matches. If the gameplay is good and engaging, I'll show up, but I don't need replayability type stuff like NG+ or endgame content or whatever to do it. If anything, those tend to turn me off, because they often mean that the base first runthrough isn't actually good in its own right, and instead functions as some sort of weird tutorial/hazing ritual for the good stuff.