The Besties - Arise with Dragon's Dogma 2

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the best game of the year? Or is it the buggiest? It might be the most divisive! This week, The Besties talk about the wildly ambitious (and difficult to run on most hardware) fantasy RPG from Capcom. Plus, we take a deep dive into the reader mail pool. Did we mention we keep all the letters in a pool, Scrooge McDuck-style? Because we do. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I got an impression for you guys to start things off. Would you like to hear that? Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. Impression? Okay, this is my impression of a party of Dragon's Dogma 2 adventurers at Home Depot. Oh, there's a ladder there. It's probably good for something.

Aresin, we should see where that ladder leads. Aye, a ladder? Aye, we should get to the top of that and explore. Aresin, I see a ladder there. It must be there for a purpose. Ay, that's a tall ladder, isn't it, Aresin? We must explore it. Excuse me, sir, can I help you?

Ay, spy, can I, can I help you? I spy a ladder! It must be there for a purpose! We should climb that ladder a reason! It's good, it's good. Thanks, yeah, no, I mean there's not much chills. It's like a classic SNL bit that like doesn't have an ending, but like this feels like a safe sort of workshop. You also didn't finish it, because you have the script right in front of us,

and there are another five pages of that. Yeah. That's true, it's a lot more of people commenting on a ladder. And then when you leave Home Depot without buying a ladder, they're like, Oh, it takes two to make a sale. They didn't have enough good ladders for you. Gold is a valuable resource.

You must be prudent with it oh there's a ladder someone else bought a ladder and is walking out of the store with it oh yeah gentlemen has a lot of reason so much ladder content in this game I'm excited to talk about it no fucking kidding dog real preview the next three hours this episode. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I forgot that Justin isn't here today. My name is Russ Froschek and I'm the best game of the week.

Welcome to the best things where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter game mint. It's a game of the year club and just by listening to you my friend, I remember it's a Game of the Year club, and just by listening to you, my friend, I remember it's not just Pac-Man, it's not just Candy Crush, it's also Dragon's Dogma 2, and we're gonna talk about this big, weird game in this episode. Chris, what is Dragon's Dogma 2?

Shortly. I just have a question. Dragon's Dogma 2 is an action RPG sequel to the original Dragon's Dogma, which came out just forever ago. I say sequel, but in some ways it's like a reboot remake of that game. So if you didn't play the first one, that's totally fine. You can play as all sorts of different fantasy classes, go into big open worlds

and fight lots of beasts and have adventures. If you have a machine that is capable of running it. And infinite patience. If you've got the PS7, you're going to love this one. We're going to break it all down for you right after this. I don't think I'm exaggerating. This is the most bewildering big budget video game I can remember playing in recent memory.

This game constantly does stuff that is interesting and exciting and confusing and frustrating in equal measures and I don't know why they've made all of the choices that they've made to accomplish that. So I think a good place to start would be, let's all share our experience with the first Dragon's Dogma and that'll kind of give people like a grounding for like where our heads were at coming into this one.

I admire the hell out of the first Dragon's Dogma, I think it's a great game, but I never really cracked too deep into it. Honestly, for the same reasons that I am struggling a little bit with Dragon Stogma 2, there were a few things that that game and this game does to sort of build immersion that is not particularly pleasurable to my gamer brain. But I do think it is a very cool game,

and I'm very glad that it exists. My experience with Dragon's Dogma 1 is I knew how excited Chris Plant was for Dragon's Dogma 2. His excitement got me excited. I played about three hours of Dragon's Dogma 2 and was hating myself. Dragon's Dogma 2 or Dragon's Dogma 1? No, Dragon's Dogma 2. I hadn't played the first one. I was hating myself after three hours of Dragon's Dogma 2 and was hating myself. Dragon's Dogma 2 or Dragon's Dogma 1? No, Dragon's Dogma 2. I hadn't played the first one.

I was hating myself after three hours, and, but I knew how much Chris Plant loved the first one, and then I went back and put Dragon's Dogma 1 on a Steam Deck, and like, that managed to convince me of why, what is going on is actually quite good, but it required me playing the first game to realize that. So that's kind of weird, but... That is weird.

Client, you jump in. Go off, King. Yeah, hey, I'm gonna be the person who loves both these games this whole episode. I'm here to defend it for whoever those other people are, and to infuriate everyone else. In Dragon's Dogma 1, I had heard amazing things about it, but I had also heard like, it runs like garbage and doesn't make any sense and it really fights against you. And I had just resisted it forever or just didn't

prioritize it until this past holiday break back in December. And I was like, Hey, nothing to play. I want to actually give this a shot. And I immediately loved it. I was absolutely confused what all the gripes were. It completely clicks with the way my brain works with video games. And yeah, I honestly had very few notes for it. I was surprised how modern and ambitious it felt. It should be noted you played Dark Arisen, I assume.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was like a re-release that came out like three years after the original game and probably Fastly improved. Not the gameplay mechanics, but at least like technically it worked very well. Sure. Yes. And then yeah, and then I played this. Dragon's Dockman 2. Let's talk about, I wanna try and structure this conversation.

So like, if you have not played Dragon's Dogma, this is an open world, very open, I will say, action RPG. You create your character at the beginning of the game, you get to pick from like a handful of vocations, which are the classes for the game. Oh, and I don't wanna skip over the character creation. Maybe the best, one of the best, I mean, Griffin, you're the expert, one of the best character creators. It's really good, yeah, they make some cool choices with it.

You pick a base for your character, and then it branches off to eight other bases that look like it, and then it branches off again. And so before you like touch a slider, you have a character that feels very like custom and looks really good. Like honestly, I did not tweak mine much more than that. I will return to this for a Monster Factory,

which is gonna be a fucking issue for a reason we're gonna cover here in a little bit. But yes, and there's tons of vocations in the game. You unlock them as you sort of go. Some of them need quests, some of them you have to find the right NPC. And then you also make a pawn. And your pawn is a returning feature from the first game,

is an AI-controlled character that you're able to also customize, give them vocations and equipment and dispositions and specializations and all of that jazz. And then your pawn, you also, you hire two sort of pawns from the internet to come along with you to make a party of four. And also your pawn goes out and helps other people

and comes back with stuff too, which is a very, very, very cool system that this game like adds so much functionality to from the first, from the first go. Yeah, I would also add just like a setting thing. So you're aware it's like very much down the middle, like D and D fantasy thing. So like we're a game like Baldur's Gate might like play with tropes and kind of like surprise you with certain twists and turns.

I this maybe this changes later, but it does. Okay. Well, the first 15 hours of the game are like as down the middle fantasy as you could possibly imagine. Um, so a lot of, a lot of going around different sort of like pseudo medieval towns, helping people with their problems, running from place to place in the wilderness, sometimes coming across a giant ass monster

that then you and your party have to- Ogres and cyclopses and dragons and shit. Yeah, that you have to sort of fight and also climb on and stab the living shit out of, which is very, very, very good. The pawn system is, I wanna really drill down on it because it is what makes this game, so much of what this game does and how it is designed

is filtered through this system. There is very little hand holding in this game. There's very little like telling you what to do. There's very little in the way of waypoints and quest markers and stuff like that, you what to do. There's very little in the way of waypoints, uh, and you know, quest markers and stuff like that. Uh, which is a, which is frustrating. I will say a lot of the time, sometimes though, you will hire a pawn from the internet and the player that they came from has done this quest already.

And so they'll be like, Oh, a risen, just, you know, follow me. I'll take you. I'll take you. And I do want to add the voice acting is kind of hilarious because as Griffin alluded to, it's very tropey at the beginning. I have my pawn, my main pawn who sticks with me through the entire game,

sounds spot on exactly like Matthew Barry. So it's all like extremely theatrical, like there's a champion over here, which is just spectacular. It's really, really good. like extremely theatrical, like, there's a champion over here! Yes! Yes. Which is just spectacular. It's really, really good. It's sometimes like, you'll be running around with a pawn and then you will find like a little hidden collectible

and the pawn will be like, oh, I'll make sure to tell my reason about this when I go back to the world. Like there is so many little connections like that. And it is really, really, really cool whenever those kind of, whenever those pan out. Your pawns also constantly talk to each other. So like my pawn is very no-nonsense.

She's a sorcerer and she is just like very, very strictly business. And so I will hire a pawn and be like, I, Orisen, you should spend all your money on a new knife. And she'll be like, don't tell the Orison, who the fuck are you to tell the Orison? I feel such a sense of comradery with my Orison because I keep hiring these pawns that are like,

yeah, we kicked that thing's ass, great job everybody. And my pawn's like, yo, chill, calm down. Focus on the next fight, keep your head in the game. I really, really, really like that. I think that that works super duper well. And there's a million different interactions like that. Quentin, I wanna hear from you specifically about like where you think this game is sort of evolving

what they started with in the first game. I don't know if it's evolving so much as it's like, they have the capacity to achieve what they wanted to in the first game. I think this is the way that I've thought about this and I feel free to disagree with this. Baldur's Gate 3 when I play it and I love it. I want to be very clear. I know more people will prefer that game over this one, but Baldur's Gate three for me is like playing D and D. I feel like I am playing D and D and Dragon's Dogma for me is like experiencing the adventure that a game of D and D is about. I feel like I am like actually out lost in the woods.

It's night. I don't have enough resources and I need to figure out what the hell I'm going to do to get to a camp. And it's yeah, it is hard as hell for them. Like this world is quite hostile to you. Yes, which is fine. And I, I, I don't know, I, I, I think that the difficulty of it might be a little illusory in the same way that when you play a horror game, it feels harder than it actually is. It's really hyping up how difficult it is. But there were a number of times where I would have a journey and I was certain that like I am doomed. And yet an hour and a half later by the skin of my teeth, I had made it where I wanted to go.

And that's the way that like a lot of this game works. The, the, the worst part of the game, I think is the A to B of it all is the you're in one town and then you have a mission where you need to go fetch something and it is very far away and there's no fast travel and you need to go there and then grab it and then come back.

And that feels very, very basic, but I don't think that's really what the game is. I think that is an excuse to get you out into the world. And I talked with fresh about this before. Let me clarify this. Cause I, what you just said was a little bit confusing and I want to drill down. What you're saying is the actual quest objectives, the things that you're trying to do, like go to this town, talk to this guy, and come back. Which happens a lot, there are a lot of those quests. Those actual quests are the worst part of the game. Is that what you're saying?

I think at the beginning of the game they get much, much better. Again, I'm 15 hours in and have not seen a good quest. Yeah, but I just don't think that's the point. And, and, and what we had talked about before this was like the comparison of left for dead that you go on this journey and what you're going to see is going to be totally different than whatever I saw or whatever Griffin saw. Maybe you go and it's like a really calm journey. Maybe you decide to take an ox cart like I did at one point after I had a super super I had just gotten a super powerful weapon. I was so exhausted from like two hours of like all this adventuring. I just needed to get to

a location to deliver a letter. I take an ox cart halfway through when we are at the most out of the way point. The ox part gets attacked by goblins. No problem. I have a super powerful weapon. I'll get rid of them. Unfortunately, the ox cart gets attacked by goblins. No problem. I have a super powerful weapon. I'll get rid of them. Unfortunately, the weapon was so strong, literally it obliterated the ox cart in the process. So now I have in the middle of nowhere, and I need to find a way to get back to camp. And that is like a totally different experience. Or maybe you go in it's in the middle of night, and you see glowing blue flowers and you follow that into a cave

and that begins like a completely different quest. And then you wake up in the morning and find that you're actually like at the foot of where you wanted to be. That to me is like the magic of the game. Not like, yeah, I needed to deliver a letter. Yeah, I fully did not enjoy a lick of like my first five hours maybe in this game, because my expectations were not set correctly.

I feel like if you go into this game thinking like, okay, I'm going to level up and get stronger and do a knockout some quests so I can get through the story and then see whatever it has next for me, like any kind of like hope for like constant forward movement and progress, I feel like is not what this game delivers. But the sense of like immersive, like exploration and adventure and danger, uh, is, is really cool. It's really, really cool what this game, uh, can't, can't accomplish because of the choices that it, that it has made. That's, that's the big thing. If you do expect the former things like, why does this game not have fast travel?

Are like completely nonsensical. It's infuriating why they would not have certain choice. There is fast travel. You just have to pay like $10,000 for a fairy stone to go to one of two spots until you start unlocking like like custom, uh, fast travel points and shit like that. Um, right. But once you realize, or if you can get on the wavelength of the point is to be in a

pickle, the point is that there is no like safe option to just fly back home and heal up. That's when, for me, the game really started to sing. and heal up, that's when, for me, the game really started to sing. I am so willing to concede so much to that idea, right, of like, this is not an easy game. This is not a streamlined game that lets you skip a lot of the stuff that a lot of other games let you skip.

So like, no fast travel without using an extremely rare resource or taking an ox cart which may get attacked along the way. Like, I actually think that's really cool. I think that's great. Not like rolling up in a town and it's like, you gotta find Linert and give him this letter. But then it doesn't tell you where that fucking guy is, but you can see a picture of what his face looks like. Or there's a circle that's like the size of the entire fucking city. Right, and then you find him and he's like, all right, now go throw these bombs at these lizards.

And I'm like, okay, and I do that and I come back and he's fucking gone, he's moved somewhere because of the time, and it's back to the grinds, the old Linert hunt, like that shit sucks. The amount of time I spent running around a town looking for one NPC who keeps walking around randomly with no indication of where they are is like so anti-fun.

I would, I would, I'd say two things. One, the things that people like in Souls games continue to be the things people don't like in this and I find it like so strange. And I don't know if that's just because Souls tickles a different part of the brain for different people, but the idea of a character being impossible to find or not having specifics is fundamental to those games.

Well, I'm gonna- Well, okay, hold on. Souls games don't have quests, right? Souls games don't have that, okay, I just ran into a random dude who wants me to deliver a letter to Larry, right? And you get, like, there's no menu in a Souls game. So there's no list of quests that you're trying to check off

in a Souls game. Exactly, yeah. Technically, it's all optional. So if you miss that shit, it's like, you don't even know it. You don't even know that you missed that shit. But if I get a quest, like, there's a certain expectation that like, I don't know, man, like, this is baseline level, this is baseline level stuff.

I get like, don't mark him on my map until I find him, and then maybe show him where he is, or don't mark him on my map, and then like, he is in one or two places consistently. But the like, running around, hunting, like, there's so much stuff, so many of these choices work for the immersion of the game, and so many of these choices keep me from doing the parts of the game that I really, really do enjoy. And it's so, so, so

frustrating. The other part that I didn't have this experience at all. I like don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know if that is because I had a, so when you're picking pawns, and this is not a like you're playing it wrong because how are you playing it? It's how you play it. Yeah, there's the option when picking pawns to pick a quest giver who it like will very intentionally direct you through things And I always made sure that I had at least one in my party And I don't know if that is what say but they have have experience with the specific quests that you have in your log. Yeah, I always used log, right?

Extra Rift Crystals to buy somebody who, or like contract somebody who was, I don't know, three or four levels above me, and that seemed... Okay. Yeah, they didn't have experience. That's kind of cool that that works, but it is... I just think the things you're doing, I don't wanna go too long in the quest

because I think it is the weakest part of the game. The things you're doing in the don't want to go too long on the quest because I think it is the weakest part of the game. The things you're doing in the quests are just like not very interesting compared to the things that are very interesting, which are like the combat and the exploring the world. Very interesting. Giving five flowers to a random little girl, it's bad. It's like not an interesting quest and shouldn't realistically like, I would be much happier if this game was just like, immersive sim,

explore the world, you might run into someone who gives you like a randomly generated like quest, that's totally fine with me. But so much of the game, like when you're in a city, capital city, whatever, is like, here's 50 quests and none of them are a good experience. And none of them are good experience. Yeah, I will again say that is very much the beginning city.

I mean, I'm 15 hours in, Chris Planet. It's a slow yes. I'm 15 hours in and haven't gotten a single engaging quest. Okay. So. I also like, my PC, I think I built it maybe a year and a half ago. So it's not the most up to snuff,

but it runs pretty much everything I throw at it, really, really well, including Resident Evil 4 on the RE Engine. And this game runs like dirty dog water, most of the time, and then when I get into the capital city, it really, really, really chugs. And from what I understand, performance is actually worse on console, I don't know what versions you guys are playing.

We're on PC, it runs pretty badly for basically everyone, even if you have a really high-end rig. My understanding from a technical standpoint is that the game is very demanding from a CPU standpoint and not so much from a GPU standpoint. So you go into a city where the CPU is trying to churn all these NPCs, and it fucking shits the bed, basically.

I mean, it is also- I got it running on a Steam Deck, solid, I don't know, five to 10 frames. It's fucking unbelievable. I will say this, a lot of my feelings about this game are, and I'm trying to like not make this a facet of how I think about games critically, but when a game runs, just can't go on the steam,

like does not run at all, is not optimized even the least little bit, it is frustrating because this is a game that would be so incredible. It would not bother me at all if, you know, every like journey from one city to another took a half hour and there was, you know, very little fast travel in the way if like I could just pick it up and play it whenever I... So I do want to come back to that towards the end of this segment, but I will say I think it is unfair for anyone to say

your giant open world game needs to run well on a Steam Deck. I think that's like, especially for a brand new game these days, like I would be shocked. I would have been shocked if this game ran well, let alone any brand new brand like open world game. There are games like Baldur's Gate three is- Elden Ring is-

Like they're a game, sure. That's run well and I think that's great. I don't necessarily, I can't ding any games for that. I can ding a game if you're throwing a $3,000 PC at it and it still can't run smoothly, then I'll fucking hammer drop you and that's what's going on. It's honestly, it is a, I think this is a frustration rather than like a, what the fuck are they doing?

Like, I really wish I could play this game on Steam, because I genuinely do think if I could have it on the go, pick up and play whenever I had a few free moments, because that's, honestly guys, I don't have a ton of time where I'm holed up in my office playing video games. Did you try streaming it from your computer? I've not tried streaming it.

No, I've had sort of mixed success with streaming it from my PC. Maybe I will get that issue. I wanna talk about the thing that I absolutely love about this game, and it's a thing that really no other game that I've seen is pulling this off, except for maybe Dragon's Dogma 1. Specifically, the combat and the chaos of combat

in like a large group when you're in the middle of nowhere. I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game,

and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and I'm talking about the game, and we'll take guys down very effectively. While that's all happening, let's say you're fighting a bunch of lizard people, a giant fucking ogre shows up and starts stomping through the mess. And the game doesn't pause for a boss fight or anything like that. That's just part of it. And you can now, at any point, like it's a Monster Hunter game, fucking leap up on the Cyclops or whatever it is and start stabbing its head,

and it loses its balance and falls over and crushes one of your guys and then you have to revive your guy and so like that the chaos of the combat is incredibly good and I will add that I started playing as an archer and I would not recommend that if you're playing this game play as something with any sort of melee at least to start off with because you really do get a much more of a tactile sense of the physical objects in this world. The fact that you can pick stuff up, throw stuff at guys, like you can do that with an archer, but someone with more of a melee class is going to have a much more engaging time, I think. One caveat to that, I think Sorcerer, or sorry, not Sorcerer. Mage is another good starting class. It is the opposite.

You are going to basically use your pawns almost like a strategy game where you are like buffing them and supporting them and making them powerful and healing. And I, that's what I started with. I found it really helpful and less intimidating, um, then getting into action. I was, I was just really worried that I wasn't going to be good at the video game. And then once I got my footing, it was easy for me to hop into a more, the clock, the class that I ended up using was magical spear hand, which is like a mix of like, it's a mystic mystic spear hand.

It's pretty sick. Thank you. Yeah. You're basically Darth Maul. Um, so you're mixing magic and you, yeah, you're basically Darth Maul. So you're mixing magic and really strong, powerful direct attacks. Thief is great too, I really enjoyed my time as Thief because those big boss fights,

there is very little more satisfying than climbing up a Cyclops Shadow of the Colossus style, getting on its head and then just stabbing its stupid brain a million times. And the game wants you to play as many of the classes as possible because as you level up the classes you get special augmented skills like the ability to know where like hidden items are that are unique to that class but then when you change classes you can continue to use them. Yeah so eventually you create this very customized, very like whatever your skill sets are,

make a very customized class, which is great. I love that system as well. I think it's really, really smart. I, to sort of wrap things up here, I feel like I am probably going to put this one back in the Disney vault for a little bit and see if it can, at the very least see if the performance can be improved.

I know they are working on a big patch for the game now. Because I think if some of those issues were ironed out, I would, like the needle would tip over towards me like really loving this game. And it's just, it is not there yet. There are some things about the game that are weird. Like this pawn system is so, it's all about interconnected experiences

with the pawns that you borrow from your teammates. And so to sort of facilitate that, there's weird, like, de novo anti- anti cheat shit that is in the game because they don't want you to make a pawn that's too strong like there's some stuff that's like weird for a single player game and all of the like DLC paid DLC stuff which is I think just Capcom's jam now I guess because there's a lot of that in Resident Evil 4 also yeah I do want to say about that stuff even though people were right to make a big deal of it, because it's shitty that it's there,

I think it kind of, like, makes the purchasing experience feel a little shittier. The things that you can buy with real money are, like, having... If you play the game for five hours, you'll be like, oh, this would be a very stupid purchase for me to make. Because the things you can buy are, like, things you can very easily access.

Yeah, I will say certain stuff like, you only have one save file, which I think is also kind of like there to, if you had multiple save files, you could have multiple pawns, right, that you had and could loan out and maybe that would complicate things. But that is frustrating, I will say,

because when we do make a Monster Factory for this, I'm either going to have to, I guess, remake my character or start a new save, neither of which is a particularly appealing thing, and the fact that there's no new game option from the main video. It's like, the world is- Yeah, they have said that that will be fixed, but as of now,

you cannot make a new, I tried doing it, because I was like, I don't like Archer, I have said that that will be fixed, but as of now, you cannot make a new, I tried doing it, cause I was like, I don't like Archer, I'm gonna start with a different class, and I literally couldn't. I mean, I guess I could delete my save, but. Delete your saves locally, and like disconnect it from the Steam cloud, there's so much shit that you have to,

it's fucking bonkers. Chris Plain, I wanna let you sort of., I want to let you, um, I'm just going to end with a little story of, of an adventure I had. Is that okay? Yes, please. So I think, I think this is an example of when the game works at its best. There are two main regions in this game. And at a certain point you need to go to the Western, Southwestern region and it is a big big jaunt and I finally decided you know what I'm ready to go I'm gonna go make it over there so I leave town and there's some stuff I want to do outside of town that I knock out first and it's probably midday at this point and I start heading west and I'm go west and west and west and I finally get to where I thought the bridge was on the map to

start heading south and the bridge is destroyed. There's nothing there, it's just completely demolished. And I realize, well shit, it's like starting to become evening, I need to go north to get to the nearest bridge, then cross, then come back south. So I start up going north and keep running into a whole bunch of other beasts and goblins on the way. And I press on and I get to that bridge and I go across and what do I find waiting on the other side? I find a little boss fight in the cave and I can't resist. And I take on this like giant mythological beast one of those things where it's like a

lion and a goat and a snake all tied together. Uh, Chimera I believe they're called. Yeah. And I, and I, and I destroy it by together. Chimera, I believe they're called. Yeah. And I, and I, and I destroy it by the skin of my teeth and then I realized, shit, why did I do that? Now I have no health and I don't even know where I am and I have like this long journey ahead. It's turning into night and worse.

There is a dragon blocking off my Southern route. So now I have to go further North. Now I'm just like trekking along, right? And I climb up this like really high rock and I'm looking for a campfire. Just one place where I can rest. Night's coming. I can heal up all my characters and I can figure out things from there. And I see it.

It's actually like not super far away. It's down the hill for me, but there's a whole bunch of goblins. And I think, okay, as long as I can just make it through them, I get to the campfire, and that'll be the end of my session. I get through the goblins, I'm practically dead on my feet. I go to the campfire. I have light the campfire except for I don't because I realized shit, I forgot to pack a kit. And now I am like just trapped. And not only am I trapped, I come out of that menu and the second I come out, that dragon from the south had been following me and it kills everyone in my party.

So now it's dark, my entire party is dead. I run into a forest to hide from the goblin, immediately ambushed by these goblins and camouflage. I kill them and my session ends with me at effectively one point health foraging this empty forest looking out for camouflage goblins to avoid in the dark and it is like pitch dark. Just trying to find any food that I can get to stay alive. And that is for some people sounds terrible and difficult and annoying. And for other people like me, that's just a great adventure. It never felt hard. It

felt like it was just part of my story and it ruled. It was just I've had so many little journeys like that where things go completely different than I could have possibly imagined. And there are so much more interesting and so much more fun and so much, I mean, they're just unforgettable. Well, that's great. Um, yeah, this is, this is the epitome of a, your mileage may vary. Yeah. I feel like, um, I, I feel like it, how I felt, I think about dragon

stagma, which is that like, I want to like it. I really, really want to like it. Cause I do think I think about Dragon Stogma, which is that like, I want to like it. I really, really wanna like it, because I do think it is doing a lot of very special stuff. And maybe it'll get there for me, but I am genuinely glad that it is clicking for you, and I am jealous, because I really wish I could give it my heart, and that's a great, that's like a joke that-

That was funny. It is good. Fucking totally bust up about. Let's take a break and then talk about something else. Okay, we've got a bunch of reader mail. Before we get into that, I do wanna mention, I kind of alluded to this earlier, if you're worried because your machine,

I mean, I don't know that there's a machine on the planet that is up to snuff for running this game well, but if you're confident that you don worried because your machine, I mean, there's no, I don't know that there's a machine on the planet that is up to snuff for running this game well, but if you're confident that you don't have a machine that can do it, I would really strongly recommend checking out Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen, which is the first game. It's available on Steam.

It runs perfectly on a Steam Deck, like steady 60 frames, all settings to max. And in my experience, looked a lot better than Dragon's Dogma 2 because I was able to run it not at 1080p, well, ironically, the Steam Deck's even lower than that. But it looks much better, I think, aesthetically

and at 60 frames a second. And I would say I found that game's intro to be far more interesting and welcoming than Dragon's Dogma 2's intro, which is a lot of like fetch quests in the first five hours, whereas this is like, oh, I'm already fucking shit up very early on, which I thought was really good. So the, I think other people are on to this because the price is now $29.99 on Steam. What? It was $10 like a minute ago. I know. They've caught on. Cool, cool, cool. Love to hear it.

That's fucking crazy. Okay, yeah, that sucks. I mean, it is a good game. I would imagine Capcom does a lot of sales, so I would imagine it's going to drop down again. But that's fucking crazy that it's 30. I got it for five bucks Yeah, it was five bucks like a minute ago. I feel like it's always in like steam sale. Yeah I mean it you know realistically it's worth $30 if you get into it It's gonna be but I think for a game that is very divisive People just want to check it out. I am sensitive to not wanting to drop 30 30 bucks for a game. That's 10 years old Yep

anyway Cool. Do we want to go to the old sack? Yeah, let's go to the old sack is what we're gonna call it Chris take it to the sack. Oh man. I wasn't ready to take it in the sack. Um This one is from Im Tuck Hey besties after years of listening to plant talk about Nier Automata, I've finally picked it up. I'm loving it so far, and what's really struck me as I wander through the world doing random side quests and fishing is how much heavy lifting the soundtrack is doing in setting the tone of the world and overall feel of the game for me.

I'm not one to usually give the soundtrack and games much attention, so I am finding it really interesting. Are there any games for y'all where the soundtrack has played a particularly significant role in making the game what it is? Yeah, my immediate response to that is Stardew Valley. There aren't, like when I play those games, those sorts of games portably, almost always I keep it either very low volume or muted. And when I play Stardew Valley, I cannot do that because I love that soundtrack so much, and it so contributes to the vibes of that game that, you know, as the music sort of mimics the change in seasons and the events that are going on, um, I think it totally transformed the experience

in a really amazing way. Um, so... I mean, I feel this way about hundreds of games, I feel like. Yeah. I never play a game on mute. Like, I... What comes to mind for me immediately is disaster pieces, stuff in like Fez,

the Fez soundtrack. The Hyper Light Drifter soundtrack is maybe the bet. Like, it's so atmospheric and just like cool and weird in the way that that game is weird. Obviously like, you know, Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild. Like there's, there are a lot of games that have almost a sort of like, I don't know,

I have like a synesthetic sort of relationship where the music is so integral to like the playing of the game. Yeah, Nier is, it's funny you mentioned Nier, the reader, M. Tuck mentioned Nier, because that is really the epitome of this example for me, because I think, again, totally personal opinion, the music is like head and shoulders better

than most of what you're doing in that game. So that is like a really extreme example of that. It's also almost like, you know, there's a distinction between soundtrack and score. And I think near place with that, like in a really fun way. Like there's, there are set pieces in that game where when I think about them, I hear like the song that plays because they are so like,

they are not ambient. They are like pretty in your fucking face. And I really, really like that about Nierah. Yeah, totally. Yo, there's one that we're missing here, Tiny Wings. It's just, oh, sure. Yeah, man. It's perfect. I don't know that I remember the Tiny Wings music.

Are you for real? Yeah, I don't remember it. Fresh. I'll have to look it up. When you listen to it, you're gonna, it's why you play Tiny. Super Brothers Sword and Sorcery too. Oh, good, yeah. I tell you, Bellatro is gonna be that for me, I think.

I'm gonna hear Bellatro music when I'm like 85 years old. Oh yes, the Jokers, the Jokers are coming for me. Oh, that's a good segue actually. We have a question from Steven J. Allen. I kind of feel like I'm missing something with Bellatro. I'm really enjoying it, but I also have a rather low win rate, two games out of however many, and I haven't gotten wild game-breaking runs that people keep talking about. I'm no stranger to deck builders, roguelikes, or poker, so I'm not sure what to credit to,

but it feels like bad luck. Sometimes it's just as simple as a boss-blind, annihilating strategy completely, but often it's just not finding synergies necessary in Jokers and not getting the planets, tarot cards necessary to make a run work. I'm curious if any besties or other fans are having the same experience. If I'm missing a crucial piece or I'm supposed to feel this way. or I'm supposed to feel this way? I think especially early on, you have to be okay

with the fact that you're going to lose like 90% of the runs that you, or more, like you're going to lose a lot, a lot, a lot, while you unlock some better cards and figure out sort of the core strategies that work. And those are different for every deck, which is another thing, as you unlock more decks the game gets. Once you unlock the checkered deck,

which removes clubs and diamonds, which makes getting flushes so much easier, it's pretty easy to cut your teeth on that deck, as you figure out, okay, so I need a card that adds chips and a card that adds multipliers and multiplies my multiply. If you can get those three, then you can kind of like build everything else around it.

But I mean, yeah, I still, I've beaten Bellatro many, many times and unlocked pretty much everything at this point and I still lose like, quite a bit of my runs, just because like, yeah, it doesn't work out all the time. But that's not, I don't know, that doesn't dissuade me from enjoying it. Yeah, I again, still haven't played Bellatro,

but it does sound a lot like- Ross! Sorry, I'll do it. I think I'm reaching the end of my patience with you, with this particular oversight. It's so crazy. Not an oversight, it's a fucking Dragon's Dogma sucked up my life for the last week. Okay, well, now you don't have to play thatma sucked up my life for the last week. Okay.

Well, now, now, now you don't have to play that way anymore. Now you can play. Okay. Uh, but it does sound a lot like binding of Isaac where at this point, um, I don't know that Bellatro ever gets to the point that I'm at with binding of Isaac, which is like, I can run, I can win pretty much every run that I do with some degree of variance, but I do think, yeah, it's just like probably a familiarity and like unlocking useful shit kind of scenario.

It's an incredibly complex, like there is a lot to this game that I am still, me and Justin and Travis were just talking about this because Travis and I are like pretty deep in and Justin was struggling, but he also wasn't skipping blinds, which is like a thing you can do. Like you can skip any non-boss round of this game

and get like a little perk. And sometimes those perks are better than whatever you could get by like playing the hand. And so like once you start doing those, it helps. Once you start like figuring out like, oh, I need to get a purple seal on this card and then start building around, discarding that as much as I possibly like there's there's a million different ways for you to free to play this game

cool point you want to do the Andrew letter Yeah Andrew writes hello besties when the topic of the Android games came up in the past I mentioned a game I loved called slice and dice a dungeon del a dungeon delving roguelike where your party of heroes and monsters are all dice. I wanted to mention that it had a major update this week, and the biggest new feature is that it's now available on iOS and Steam. Speaking our language.

I've lost a lot of time to this great little game. It's super easy to pick up and has the depth to last a long time. I will make sure that we, this is me now, this is Plant now. Downloading this right now. I'm gonna make sure that I drop a link to this game in the show notes on besties.fan. So people can get attracted.

It is, there's 440 reviews on Steam. It is at 98%, which is always a good sign. God damn. It looks very good. Yeah, this looks like good shit, man. For mobile as well. Just like looking at the Yeah, this looks like good shit, man. For mobile as well. Just like looking at the graphics, this seems very mobile friendly.

So that's awesome. Definitely gonna check that out. You guys been playing anything else? No. No, okay. I get it, it's a big game. I have, for the last two weeks, we've been doing the Max Fun Drive

and I have done a couple of streams in Fuser, Harmonix's short-lived DJ game. It's like a card game, right, wasn't it? No, so that's DropMix. Fuser is a computer game that you cannot buy anymore. It has been delisted for reasons beyond my service. Probably licensing reasons, right? Probably licensing reasons,

but I was fortunate enough to grab it before that happened. And I also got some helpful guidance from Polygon's Pat Gill about how to find custom songs that people have added to the game. And that has blown this shit wide open for me. And I am having just the most fun fucking around with this game and like mashing up like Gangnam Style and Gitlo and Pony and Cruel Angels Thesis. And like, there's so, so much that the Fuser community, which is small but very like feverish, I will say, that man, I really have had a lot of just late nights

staying up till like 1 a.m. just mashing up stuff. And it is such a treat. It is so much fun. So yeah, I mean you can't get it, so it's probably a bummer to hear. You might be able to get it somewhere. What are you implying, Griffin? I mean, I don't know, man.

Like I'm all for, you can't get the, so the options all for... You can't get the game, like, so the options are you just never can play this video game or you get on your sneaky little computer and you do some sneaky stuff. I would add, for what it's worth, Fortnite did add Fortnite Festival, which was developed with Harmonix's expertise,

and it allows you to do these like crazy remixes for the songs that you own, but it does also require that you're basically starting from scratch in terms of a library, so that could get pretty fucking expensive. Yeah, no, I, yeah, no thanks. But if you wanna just like dip a toe in, there are a bunch of free songs as well

that it comes with, just a heads up. I've been watching a new anime TV show. We've been watching show called a sign of affection. It's about a young woman in college who's just kind of getting by. She's deaf. She falls in love with this guy who's like a world traveler. She grew up in like a really small closed environment. He's been all over the place.

Will they or won't they? I hope they will because I'm committed and I'm really addicted to it. And also if you are the type of person who like my wife has trouble with anime because you're like that's a lot. There's a lot of cutting. There's a whole lot of energy going on. How am I ever going to fall asleep if I watch this late at night? This is the show for you. This is the very like chill out anime. I like that. A quick shout out to Helldivers 2, which continues to be fucking great. If you haven't kept up with it, they continue to do these

stealth drops of features they added Max a couple weeks ago. Most recently, they've been teasing. They were a while, like teasing these rumors that they were like aerial, um, terminates the bug, uh, race in the game. And then suddenly they showed up and I did my first game with them last night, the other night, actually with a bunch of friends and just getting swarmed from the skies, which has never happened before in another helldivers run was fucking intense and stressful and exciting. And honestly, I was talking to Plant about this.

I think Helldivers 2 is, in a lot of ways, doing what Dragon's Dogma 2 is trying to do, where it's creating these, like, very exciting, unexpected moments in an experience. Now, to Plant's credit, he mentioned rightfully that Helldivers two really does require multiplayer to have the full experience. Whereas obviously Dragon's Dogma two is just solo, but if you do have one or two buddies that you can jump into a game of Helldivers two with.

It's still like you play for 40 minutes and you have like a total fucking arc of an experience in ways that I just haven't seen in many other multiplayer games and their their roadmap is kind of genius they're releasing like new mini battle passes every month and you can earn the currency to unlock that battle pass within playing you could also spend real money on it but like you could just play the game and just keep getting this new content, which is terrific. And I can't wait to see how it evolves. That's gonna do it for us this week on the Besties. Thank you so much for listening.

I want to thank the following people for being patrons of the Besties. Thank you, y'all. We have StuVious, we have NL, we have Thousand Autumns, we have Poo, Ghoul, Bear, and we have Generik Keto, Generik Kiddo, maybe. Thank you for being patrons of the Besties. The next patron exclusive, we just had an episode of the Resties go up this week. We've got our Besties Bracket episode going up next week on Tuesday.

That is the bracket about the best video game twists. So definitely check that out if you haven't yet. Patreon.com slash the besties. That's where to find. And people will really want to check out the newsletter this week because listener Paul Got a tattoo of New York giraffe and it is unbelievably great and He was generous enough to let us post the image right on his face It's the giraffe face right on his face. It's why it's kind of like a mission impossible thing, you know

It's like he's just yeah identity now exactly Hey, what are we talking about next week is in you know? It's like, he's just a new identity now. Exactly. Hey, what are we talking about next week? Because in our document, it says Dragon's Dogma 2, and there's no fucking way that's right. So I think we're going to be, because we missed it this week, we're going to be doing Princess Peach's Castle of Illusion. What is that game called?

Princess Peach Showtime. Princess Peach Showtime. Princess Peach Showtime, the much-awaited Mario and Beetlejuice mashup we've all been waiting for. You can check that out next week. So join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties!