Touted as a game that could greatly benefit from the PS5 Pro's arrival, Dragon's Dogma 2 takes advantage of Sony's new system through several graphics settings that were recently added via an update.
Those familiar with Capcom's open world RPG will know that the title has struggled to attain smooth technical performance since its launch back in March. Although the developer has made significant improvements through numerous patches, the frame rate still has a habit of ducking and diving on the base PS5, regardless of your settings.
With the PS5 Pro, then, the hope was that Dragon's Dogma 2 would finally be able to hit high frame rates without sacrificing image quality. However, we've been playing through the game again on the new console, and the results are disappointingly mixed.
First, the good news: Dragon's Dogma 2's frame rate is the best it's ever been, both out in the wilds and within its CPU-melting towns and cities. And thanks to the Pro, you don't have to tank the resolution in order to maintain those better frames; the title's new 'Balanced' graphical mode looks great and runs well, targeting 60 frames-per-second.
Enabling Ray Tracing doesn't seem to have any notable impact on things either, besides making the lighting look rather lovely. A win, for sure, in a game where environments can often appear picturesque.
And now the bad news: the frame rate still doesn't hit a consistent 60fps. Again, it is smoother than what you'll find on the base PS5 — as you'd expect! — but the underlying inconsistency remains. The near constant dips are easy to perceive if you're sensitive to such fluctuations.
Then there's the PSSR stuff, which could quite clearly be better implemented than it actually is. The display menu now has its own PSSR setting, spread across three options: Graphics, Balanced, and Performance. This lets you determine how much influence Sony's AI-driven upscaler has on the picture, and while it does seem to help Dragon's Dogma 2 maintain improved image quality overall, it also introduces some weird side effects.
Moving environmental assets like grass and waterfalls can end up looking shockingly blurred, like the tech doesn't quite know what it's meant to be rendering. These jarring abnormalities tend to get worse as you lower the PSSR settings. A fairly serious fumble as things stand.
The bottom line here is that on PS5 Pro, Dragon's Dogma 2 runs better than it ever has on the base PS5, and you get to customise your graphical settings to suit your needs. But at the same time, performance is still far from perfect, and PSSR throws up some dodgy image-related issues.
Hopefully, Capcom will continue making improvements to Dragon's Dogma 2 now that the Pro is here. Having said that, it's now more obvious than ever that the game is technically flawed on a fundamental level, when not even the raw power of Sony's new $700 system can smooth things out.
Will you be playing Dragon's Dogma 2 on PS5 Pro? How do you feel about technical issues still being present on Sony's new system? Go ahead and slay that dragon all over again in the comments section below.
Comments 51
Also shimmering issues on Dragon Age, makes me wonder whether it’s a system level issue that devs can’t hack just yet, will likely be ironed out, it’s day one of the refresh so I expected some bumps, it’s great that it stays within the VRR range though, I hated the dips on my base PS5.
I think this game is maybe the best example of waiting to buy a game until it's fully optimized- maybe behind Cyberpunk 2077. I feel like I've been rewarded waiting to buy this, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, etc. just because they're getting PS5 Pro enhancements
Bit of a weird take imo - game is wayyyy better on Pro, even with RT on the framerate holds up - 60fps almost all the time on balanced, and still within VRR window even on quality.
YMMV of course but on my Sony OLED I've been more than impressed with the improvements! It's not perfect on PC builds costing twice the price but the Pro patch has at least finally made the game experience enjoyable for me.
End of the day the Pro can only do so much with a CPU heavy game.
I'll wait and run it on the PS6 then.
@Enigk better start saving now... PS6 probably going to cost $10K unless Sony starts getting some competition soon here.
I haven't had a chance to test it yet, still downloading a ton of stuff, but this will be one of the first I try as I dropped the game fairly early due to its ps5 performance. I did see the DF video mentioning pssr causing conflicts with rt on though.
And here is the proof that it is not the hardware but the software that is the problem.
Im sure I read somewhere that even strong PC CPU's struggle to acheive anything near what they should due to the game not using all cores (and maybe only 1 properly) - I dont know if its true, but it sounds reasonable.
I saw the comparison for alan wake 2 and boy. base ps5 performs better and doesn‘t have artifacts from PSSR. now DD2 can‘t even reach locked 60fps. This pro version collapses faster than I thought it will
@Cerny You should see how Silent Hill 2 on Pro in Performance mode performs, it would probably look better on PS4...
@KillerIsD34D god no, for real?! a couple hours ago I was looking for comparisons but couldn‘t find one
Doesn't matter how powerful the machine is, down to game optimization, I played through on the series X with pretty much no problem until the end game, the whole world was about 20fps. I will wait for the DLC before buying the PS version!
@KillerIsD34D yup there is a comparison now on YouTube and W…T…F…! imagine paying 800€ when the base model has better graphics 💀 💀
this is absolutely pathetic, we are on day 1 and there are already three titles WITH patches and they all look way worse. this has to be a dream and I will wake up every minute. sony is so f*cked up
@Cerny the SH2 patch for Pro isn’t out.
@JokerBoy322 I've already saved myself £700 from not purchasing the Pro so I already have 7% of the price saved.
The only game for which i want to buy a pro rn. Lol. Guess i will wait...
At the end of the day, this game was a botch job.
The PS5/XSX hardware specs were well known to the developer early in its development, but forget that, because it doesn't even run perfectly on my PC's 7800X3D which is currently regarded as the best gaming CPU out there.
Given that latter point in particular, you can't really blame the console hardware.
Putting aside what you all might like about the gameplay and some of the systems the game uses (and I do enjoy a lot of it), you have to concede that the physical implementation of it was an appalling failure.
They should feel ashamed.
@DonJorginho So you‘re telling me that EVERY ONE of the 3000 PS5 games need a patch first to have the chance to look not worse than the base model? 🤣🤣🤣 ohh boy
Does anyone know if the npcs still pop up in front of you when you're in towns at all? That was one of my annoyances about the game.
Thanks for that hands-on! I got tired of listening to DF's praising on how mind-boggling, clear, and very-very good every game they tried on PS5 Pro looks.
Did Capcom ever fix the PC port performance issues?
Why...it's almost like optimization is more important than horsepower.
Experienced almost no problems on base console. Love the game. The tone here is strange given that they say it is improved in so many ways.
@Nepp67 Yep, still there unfortunately.
@Rich33 I'm probably the one that you're thinking of talking about that, and yes, it's only using between 7-28% CPU on a 7800x3D, usually in the single digits, and that's with the praydog VR mod running on top of it and SteamVR/OpenXR + Virtual Desktop encoding/streaming to a Quest 3. That said it's not struggling at all on that CPU but it's informative that it's actually using so little, implying it's all on a single core, and explains some of the issue on consoles and weaker CPUs.
@Cerny multiple PS5 Pro patched games look better than anything we’ve seen this generation so far, you can cherry pick a few outliers to suit your agenda but the results don’t lie, you were always going to whine and complain, let’s be honest with ourselves here buddy.
@Cerny To be fair, while Sony is f'd up, the issue isn't really Sony's fault. It's that devs by and larger are releasing games with trash optimization and relying on brute forcing to fix the game. The problem is the consoles don't have the grunt to brute force things the way super high end PC does, and the devs just seem to be relying on letting Nvidia and the consumer spending thousands to sort out their mess.
Where Sony's problem comes into play is the existence of the pro, much like the PS5 itself, is too expensive for the console space, and too weak to actually be able to brute force the way these games really require. It's an awkward product that probably shouldn't exist. Not that people that get what they want out of it won't enjoy it, but it's a VERY expensive way to not actually fully address the real problems. It's like a jet missing 100lb of fuel required to get to it's destination, so they emergency refuel mid-air another 60lb of fuel. Not only did they take the most expensive way to address the problem, they still can't get to the destination anyway but they'll feel better getting closer.
The only way to fix the real problem is to fix the entirety of the software side of the industry and return them to making games fit for the console rather than last minute ports of PC games. To do that Sony and Nintendo and MS would have to put their foot down and force developers to meet quality standards on their hardware for licensing. But they're not going to do that because people buy the garbage anyway.
@NEStalgia
Apologies, I thought it was said that the CPU wasnt reaching near the framerate expected (whether that was 90 or 120 etc) - hence why i said struggling to acheive near what they should - and when looked into the useage was very low indicating low number of cores used.
@DonJorginho I preordered the Pro as soon as it was available and had a hard time cancelling it, I had hopes until last minute. I love having the latest tech and for me graphics are very important. But the reality is, DD2 has the same artifacts even WITH a patch. And games with no patch do look horrible now too.
Show me any game that a) is not a sony first party title b) runs in 60fps. I really would like to see the graphics that aren‘t possible before. I know Alan Wake 2 looks better, but it‘s still 30fps which totally misses the point of the pro. I‘m curious what game you are talking about
Maybe I got lucky, but I really don’t get the weird obsession with this games performance. I bought it at launch, and it runs absolutely fine. A bit of jank, but it’s never impeded the gameplay or led to any frustration.
It’s also just an incredible game with completely bonkers action and situations you stumble into.
It's a very CPU heavy game.
Too bad the CPU in the Pro didn't get the same level of upgrade, as the GPU.
@ShogunRok Damn
I am having a blast with DD2 on Pro. The “Balanced” mode is really the sweet spot. So far no issues I have encountered with the frame rate. Playing the Pro on Sony 120Hz OLED.
@Sergo “proof that its software not the hardware”
Not really, it’s proof that you shouldn’t build a console with a cpu bottleneck. Especially with some modern games leaning more heavily on cpu processing for certain tasks.
Nobody in their right mind would build or buy a gaming pc with a modern rtx 4060 and then bottleneck it with an ancient ryzen 7 3700x (essentially the ps5 pro spec) and expect to achieve decent frame rates in any modern cpu intensive games. Why should the ps5 pro be any different? There’s only so far a gpu can carry a ***** cpu.
Maybe will buy for PS6. Nothing to do here.
@neillaw the problem is really that the PS5 pro is just not that powerful lol, for £700 the device is awful. People are going to realize what money they wasted in this soon. I have been saying these issues will happen with the pro, it really needs a cpu improvement. Almost every game coming out uses ue5 and it's very CPU intensive. This trend is going to continue glad I realized how stupid this purchase would be and upgraded my PC instead, bow it's probably 4-5 times stronger than the PS5 pro and my old PC was at least 2 times more powerful. PS5 pro GPU is comparable to a amd 6800xt which is a 4 year old GPU lol. This console is gonna get destroyed by gta6
@NEStalgia it's not all the devs. The PS5 pro is just not a good console upgrade. People with sense realized this when the specs were announced which is why I immediately upgraded my PC when I heard the specs of the PS5 pro. Every upcoming game almost is using ue5. None of these games are gonna perform well on a PS5 pro with it's terrible cou unfortunately, no amount of upscaling is going to help in a CPU intensive game. PS5 pro may be the worst price to performance console ever released imo , it is actually laughable
@tclarke90 yeah same boat for me. When I head what pro was rumored to be, I expected the price to be right where it is, saw Xbox capsizing and went back to PC as a result as well. Pro is a mess and this giant party everyone is throwing over crappie CPU and low mid-range GPU for $700 is baffling (especially from DF, everything feels off about their coverage. I blame push a bit less because they mostly live in a console bubble and don't know the difference)
Though I still blame the devs because they know the specs of the PS5 which is the main console in circulation. Build your game to run right on the hardware the customers use. And that goes to Epic too. They built that engine with the current consoles in mind early on. Why does it basically not work? Even ignoring the pro.
@tclarke90 From what I've seen so far on the tech inside from the Digital Foundry reviewing it's going to be well worth it. I wouldn't get too tied up over the CPU. It's good you mentioned GTA6 because I think that is very likely going to be the game that showcases the Pro model, let's see what happens
So much for "PS5 Pro will be only console able to run GTA VI at 60FPS"
It's pretty clear that keeping same CPU will be main bottleneck for games like GTA VI, DD2 etc.
@Sergo I was just thinking- isn't this evidence that it doesn't matter whether you take the pro, or not; the point is, the games themselves need to be developed to run properly on the base console.
@Neither_scene In general is true but why we do not have smae problems all arround. We get games that are so beautiful like hogwards, cyberpunk, F1 etc. and then some game "oh, we cant do it with that hardware". Well, it seems it can be done.
@J2theEzzo Yes, you can say that. True. And games should be smooth on PS5 as many have proved it can be done and PS5 Pro to be with some RT or some fancy things for just people who want it.
But in general, YES, you are correct.
@Sergo Yeah, that's how I feel. If you really want to play with fancy lighting and all the bells and whistles, the pro is for you, but that isn't a reason to release games that aren't already optimised for the base console.
I made it past the character creation for my player character and pawn last night. So far so good on PS5 Pro.
Sadly expected considering that the CPU is the main bottleneck in this game. And the Pro didn't do much to improve on that.
You can put the best hardware of the world, if you don’t know how to optimize your code, you will always get poor performance. Find a course on Computer Science and parallel programming, you will quickly learn how to totally destroy a program performance if you are not careful how memory works.
$700 unless you own a physical copy, then it’s $800. Also if you live in a place with sales tax (vast majority of the U.S.) then it’s much closer to $900.
What a joke.
You got that right, even on a beefy PC it's not ideal but still much much better. Until next generation will it be a good experience.
I see a trend here... People complaining just think they know what's going on while people that actually have the pro just say they're happy. I'm more than happy playing near 60 fps with Ray tracing on this game. It looks beautiful and loses that flat look that open world RPGs have that I can't stand. RT is a must and so is 60 (or close to that).
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