It’s really funny but it feels like the modding community of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is doing its best to make me restart it. You see, the vanilla version had awful mouse camera controls and stiff combat mechanics. So, yesterday, we got a mod that improved its mouse camera movement. And now, we have a mod that introduces a lock-on combat system.
The vanilla version of Dragon’s Dogma 2 does not feature any lock-on combat system. As such, combat can feel a bit weird, especially when you’re facing a lot of enemies. This is also due to the weird keyboard and mouse controls. But now, thanks to this mod, you can lock on to an enemy.
Once installed, you can look towards an enemy and click on the right analog stick to lock on to them. Then, you can push the stick to the left to switch to another target to the left of your current one, or to the right for one to the right. You can also push the stick up and down to change which joint on the enemy is locked onto. Yes, by default the mod is customized for gamepads. However, you can easily edit it and replace the right analog stick with the mouse.
You can go ahead and download the mod from this link. From what I know, Capcom does not plan to add a lock-on mechanic to the game. As such, I highly recommend using it.
Speaking of Dragon’s Dogma 2, I also recommend using the other mods we’ve shared for it. For instance, the Save Manager Mod is a must-have mod. This mod allows you to start a new game, create multiple characters, and have an unlimited number of save files for each character. Then we have this mod that improves the quality of Ray Tracing, and reduces its smearing side effects. Finally, we have the DLSS 3 Frame Generation Mod. This will greatly improve performance, but it will also introduce major visual artifacts (due to the awful DLSS 3 Super Resolution implementation).
Have fun and stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Pretty much every attack and skill the player can use has a degree of passive tracking and very generous hitboxes. It’s deliberately calibrated to make weakpoints easier to hit.
Interesting mod, but interesting is all it is. The developers certainly didn’t think through everything with this title, but they did get some things right and this is one of them.
how was this not in a game in 2024 post dark souls just strange
Man! Every f*king game nowadays needs this trash a*s system because w*nkers lack the skill to crowd control effectively. They need everything to be one on one lest they be overwhelmed. I wonder if these “hardcore” gamers will be able to handle a game like NG2.
From even infected the latest Armored Core with this cr*p.
It’s a mod, dude. Calm down. You wouldn’t even know it’d exist unless it was reported on like it was here.
Besides, I would argue that a lock-on feature can help to make a game more engaging and less frustrating to play. It allows for smoother and more realistic looking combat as opposed to frantically swinging your weapon at thin air as you normally would without it. You can still make a game super challenging to play while maintaining the ability to lock-on. FromSoftware’s titles since Demon’s Souls are a case in point.
I’ve never played the 3D Ninja Gaiden games before but it didn’t take much for me to look it up and quickly see that the game also utilises a lock-on mechanic whenever you draw your bow and arrow. It automatically focuses on the closest enemy without any effort from the player. So I don’t know what you’re talking about there.
But yes, not all games require it, especially if it’s fast paced titles like the NG or the old school GoW games which utilise fixed cameras to some extent. The issue is nobody makes those kind of games anymore.
No. It’s a game design choice that dictates the flow of combat. Games built around engaging multiple enemies, like this one, rely on directional input and soft lock-on/tracking attacks. Games that prioritise 1v1 combat or crowd control based on retreat/spacing, like Dark Souls, feature hard lock-on.
Watch a skilled player engage mobs in a Souslike. They do so without lock-on. Target switching is too slow, dodges too constrained and automatic target selection frustrates when engaging multiple fast moving enemies. This is why NG2 only had melee lock for boss fights, not regular encounters.
Not everything has to be a Souls clone.
Fair points. It’s really determined on how the game is designed I guess. For games like this where you’ll be facing huge, slow moving creatures then perhaps it’s not really a necessity to have a lock-on mechanic. Again, it matters on so many factors.
For DS some may benefit without having to lock-on but others I’m sure can’t imagine playing it without that functionality. There’s no method that is 100% guaranteed the best way of playing for all people as you and OP tried to insinuate. I think the best kind of games are the ones that give you the ability to choose and don’t penalise you for trying to play your own way.
One of the first few action games to feature a lock-on mechanic is The Legend of Zelda: OoT and I can’t imagine playing it without that. It plays nothing like any Souls-like game but it just makes a whole lot of sense when playing it. The flow of the game dynamically changes when you go into that lock-on mode: from the way you’re able to strafe around the enemy and pull off acrobatic manoeuvres to dodging their attacks in a seamless way. Not every game that utilises that type of gameplay feature has to automatically be associated with anything Souls. FromSoftware did not pioneer that specific functionality.
Also you completely dismissed the fact that I mentioned that NG2 has what appears to be a forced lock-on mechanic whenever you draw your bow at any random enemy. So it’s not just exclusive to boss encounters which you alluded to.
No, I directly stated that intended combat design invariable shapes control and camera. It was a response to your supposition that DD2’s combat would be improved by aping Souls like combat. I don’t believe it would.
When hard-locked, movement and dodging is interpreted relative to the characters rotation, which is snapped to a single target. This is why you circle when strafing. It is beneficial when facing or prioritising a single target. When surrounded by enemies, you require the ability to reposition, accurately, in all directions. You also require the ability to rapidly alternate between targets. Thus begins the divergence of two different types of action games.
Souls games, on a design level, largely intend 1v1 combat. High enemy damage incentives drawing single enemies, and disengaging when overwhelmed. If you choose to disregard this and engage large groups aggressively, lock on is detrimental.
The majority of combat in DD2 is against mobs, not bosses. Entire classes focus on rapid movement between enemies. Lock on hinders this. 1v1 fights tend to be against towering enemies, with an emphasis on physically climbing them and/or targeting weak spots. Hard lock can be frustrating with large enemies. You either lose sight of the ground or spend the battle staring at their ankles. The soft-lock already present in DD2 prioritises weak spots, meaning you just have to point your character in roughly the right direction.
TLDR; Different games, different mechanics.
Ranged != Melee. I chose not to respond to something I don’t disagree with. As someone who primarily plays mouse + keyboard, but uses a controller for 3rd person action games, there was a brief period where I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a thumbstick. Aim assist is a nice opt-in feature for such cases, though I feel magnetism (ala Doom) is a better choice than hard lock because it doesn’t reduce ranged combat to mashing buttons like a primate.
I don’t think I insinuated that DD2 would benefit more by having the ability to lock-on. I was making a general point about their usage in first and third person melee games. What I said initially was that games which avoid using them can end up having a gameplay where you’re frantically swinging or charging at thin air by mistake. But as I said, it all comes down to how well the combat is executed by those who make the games.
The limitations you mentioned when locking on is a valid point and it certainly makes very little sense to force it into a game where you may end up facing off waves of enemies that you have to take on simultaneously. However, Assassin’s Creed was able to handle that task in a pretty decent way, even if the end result didn’t pose much a challenge to the player, at least with the early entries. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an example of a more challenging game that makes use of it. Chivalry 2 is another first person medieval game but it does not use a lock-on mechanic like KCD and it works better off without it due to the way it plays.
The Batman Arkham series was able make the combat fun and engaging without implementing a lock-on mechanic. However, when you’re engaged in combat, Batman or whoever else, will home in on enemies if you press on the action button while aiming towards their direction or if they’re in close proximity. The same with pretty much every 3D Sonic game whenever you perform aerial attacks. This was done intentionally in order to prevent the player from easily missing their targets as they evidently would without that kind of assist. You could say that they’re holding the players hand too much by doing so but I get the sense that if those games strived for accuracy, it could cause plenty of frustration.
I’m not exactly sure what a soft-lock is and I tried looking it up and found other unrelated info about it. But if it’s basically what I mentioned above then fair enough. The very first weapon skills mentioned in the video you attached shows exactly what I mean though about how your character will overshoot past certain enemies due to the nature of the ability itself. Perhaps having the ability to lock-on wouldn’t address this issue properly and may introduce newer problems but you certainly wouldn’t be dashing off a cliff like the player does as shown in the end of that segment. Making it function so that it’s like Batman or Sonic would probably help it in that sense and it wouldn’t even need to be applied to every skill you have. Just the ones where you will have less control over. But perhaps it doesn’t need it if that one flaw was intentional by design.
Might have misread you then; I do have an axe to grind. Mechanics dictate gameplay, and the industry trend of including “soulslike” mechanics in every ARPG, even when it features mechanics at odds with them, doesn’t do the genre any favours.
Soft lock-on orientates the player towards/tracks a viable target only when a contextual action is performed – like attacking. All of the examples you provided are soft lock-on, and DD2 features it.
Pretty sure it is. Not mentioned in that video is the fact that it’ll hit all enemies along a trajectory, and is useful for quickly creating/closing distance – something that you couldn’t reliably do with aggressive tracking.
Right. But a lock-on mechanic no matter the genre should not be a defining factor of what makes a game Soulslike. But I get your point. There are a lot of games that try too hard to be a Souls game in every way possible.
I’ve already mentioned that Zelda is a much older franchise and has been using that functionality to its benefit. It continues to work great with their latest entries and plays nothing like any Souls game. DD, because of it’s nature, may suffer from using this mod but it’s something I’d like to see in action before I can really judge it in all honesty.
Naturally, but it is one of the many mechanics finding its way into many/most recently released ARPGs largely on the back of FromSoft’s popularity, hence the usage. I like variety, hence my argument.
Novel idea, maybe start there next time.
“Novel idea, maybe start there next time.”
What are you talking about? That’s exactly what I was trying to get across from the very start. I literally said “not all games require it” on the last paragraph of my first post. It’s the OP you should be telling that to since they were the one who labelled the mechanic as a “trash a*s system”. Not only is that take straight up rubbish but it’s plain wrong.
Soulsfans are braindead, this is supposed to play like DMC and Shadow of the Colossus, but no, every game needs to play the same because they lack IQ points IRL.
Precisely. Lock-on precludes all of the faster/more movement oriented classes.