Dragon’s Dogma 2’s lack of New Game Plus scaling has caused a bit of an imbalance. Roaming Pawns are so powerful that most monsters are being felled before players can land a hit.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has a number of tools for buildcrafting that can lead to some pretty optimized play. Stacking the right Vocation with various Augments and carefully planned gear upgrades can turn your Arisen and Main Pawn into real powerhouses.
Ordinarily in an RPG like this, when you’ve hit your endgame peak, you’ll take that build into New Game Plus to up the challenge a little. Unfortunately, Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t have the same sort of New Game Plus scaling that games like Elden Ring do. This means the health pools and damage output of monsters stay the same.
This and the lack of a hard mode are severely impacting the fun of certain arisen. Not because they’re too powerful for any sort of challenge to present itself, but because they can’t find a challenge to begin with.
Because Dragon’s Dogma 2 fills its open world with wandering Pawns-for-hire that are similar in level and power to your own, entering New Game Plus at a high level with good gear populates the world with demi-gods. Reddit user u/s1nh brought their concerns to the game’s community and many players shared similar experiences.
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“These Pawns are basically killing all the big monsters in the world by themselves and I’m not sure how to feel about this revelation,” they explained. In their own playthrough, wandering Pawns took down a Griffin and a Lich with no intervention from u/s1nh.
“I’ve noticed this in my own game around level 35, the road pawns have started to kill most of the creatures I come across which is nice,” another Arisen responded. “But you have answered my question about if the higher-level Pawns will just continue to kill the good stuff. That is hilarious.”
Not every player thinks it’s funny, however. Many are calling for higher difficulty settings to be added to the game and others who can’t wait are turning to mods. There are major concerns for Dragon’s Dogma 2’s replayability if nothing is done.
