One Step Forward and Two Steps Back - Dragon's Dogma 2 Review & Dragon's Dogma 1's Legacy

Preface

I actually wrote this one a long while back. Not as early as the Elden Ring one, but this was written I think in mid 2024, and I scrapped this script because it made me feel so negative. One of my favorite games of all time, getting a sequel that has the attention span of an elementary schooler was not really what I was hoping for. That said, there were quite a few things I actually do like about the game. This one’s going to be a bit of a mixed review, talking about both games rather than just the second game. This is probably the longest one I’ve written so far and honestly, part of it was I didn’t want to make an hour long video so I decided to throw it here instead.

OF ALL THE THINGS, I WAS NOT EXPECTING A DLC ANNOUNCEMENT IN 2026.

Look, this is obviously added at the very last minute. I’d already been planning my schedule, and well, this change was the one I least expected. I’m going to just throw this up there, and I’ll come back and update it when the DLC comes with all the patches and all that. There looks to be a lot of good stuff, I’m not sure if it’ll address all my pain points since I don’t think the story is going to be very salvageable, but it seems a large amount of gameplay stuff is going to change. Anyways, please enjoy the read!

Introduction

Oh boy, where to begin. Dragon’s Dogma (the original) is one of my favorite games of all time that I picked up right after my high school exams. I remember waking up, booting up my PS3 to play this and playing it for the entire day, going to sleep and repeating this multiple times. It was cathartic after the stress of the IB exams (international baccalaureate) to just kick back, and not be productive for multiple days at a time.

However, the game itself was special too, not just when I played it. The feel of the abilities, the visual flair, the mechanics, the story, all of it. It was obtuse and it was extremely fun, explaining extremely little and letting you, the player, figure it out. This game was my dream game back then, and I was absolutely immersed. Apparently, this was also director Hideaki Itsuno’s dream game. Of course in hindsight, we know the original game was rushed out the door, so it was quite empty in many areas and missing a ton of content that was originally planned. The soul of the game definitely made it through however, because I and many others fell in love instantly.

The story about human volition, political intrigue, insane cults and dragons immediately caught my interest, and never let go even when the game itself was missing parts of the actual story. The mechanics of each class and the visual and audio flair that they used to back that up kept the game fun even when I was replaying the game for the twentieth time. The memes that the community spawned had me laughing on the floor for years. The DLC expanded on the story concepts and I still remember the lyrics of the DLC’s final boss theme to this day.

Of course, this isn’t about the original Dragon’s Dogma. I just thought that it was imperative to explain my history with the series, because I am biased. I adore this game. I adore almost everything about it. There are of course issues, but none that were so major that they overcame how smitten I was with the game. However, I am trying to approach the second game, Dragon’s Dogma II with as much of my bias aside as possible. You can be the judge of whether I succeeded or not.

Dragon’s Dogma II is the follow up to Dragon’s Dogma, duh. The game is set in a different world, with different characters, races, and story. They used a lot of unused concepts from the first game and expanded on it. The RE engine made the game extremely good to look at, with the single most expansive character creator I have ever seen in any game. I originally tried to avoid all the trailers to go in blind, but the hype train was far too strong. I waited for this game for over a decade and I just couldn’t hold off. Everything looked amazing, some complaints such as removing old classes but nothing too major to me since a lot of the older classes overlapped.

The first big controversy that has come in for Dragon’s Dogma 2 was the performance issues. Let me say this right now, it’s an actual issue. I myself have a very beefy PC, so I didn’t experience the issues noticeably. However, it can be easily seen if you look up other peoples’ experiences and this is something that Capcom fully deserves flak for and I won’t defend them for it. It doesn’t matter how amazing a game is if it can’t freaking run. However, I can’t go too deep into performance talk, as honestly I don’t really notice it as long as it runs steadily during combat (which it did for me). I have heard it is a CPU issue, but that’s all I can say on the subject due to my limited knowledge. If this review somehow convinces you to buy this game, please download the character creator and create your character there first. Then you can spend more time actually playing in order to see if the game runs fine on your system, especially on Steam, as if you go above 2 hours, you can no longer refund it.

Another controversy that has been brought up since launch is the microtransactions. Let me start this by saying that I really wish that the microtransactions were not at all in the game, as it’s already a 70 dollar game. However, I’ve heard misinformation spread around such as “You can only start again by buying a microtransaction”, and I feel like we can take issue with design decisions rather than false information.

As of launch, you cannot start again, period, regardless of how much you pay. This is compounded by the fact that there is only one save file, which is a design decision I am honestly fine with since the first game was the same. However, not giving us the ability to start again is actually asinine. As of the third revision of this script, Capcom have put out a new game button, which is good cause it was sorely needed. I do hope they figure out something for the people who want multiple save files, but I am not too bothered by the lack of it personally.

To go back to microtransactions, the currently available microtransactions are in line with the first game, which is to say adds very little actual value, and the gaming experience without them feels quite good. I’ve played a lot of Capcom games in the past decade and they’ve all had similar microtransactions, which while not really excusable, isn’t as bad as how people were making it out to be. You can also get most of the items within a few hours of in-game playtime so it’s not a major issue in my opinion. To reiterate though, please do not buy the microtransactions. They are a waste of your money and time and buying them encourages Capcom to keep putting them in.

With the controversies out of the way, how do I feel about Dragon’s Dogma 2? I am very mixed. Very very mixed. As of writing this script, I’m around sixty hours into the game in NG+, and I’ve enjoyed a large majority of my time but the more time I spend playing and comparing it to the original and my expectations of what it should have been based on that, the more I take issues with the decisions that they ended up making. I’ll definitely be talking about all of the pain points I had as I go.

Story and Presentation

This section is going to include spoilers for both Dragon’s Dogma and Dragon’s Dogma 2, so if you don’t want them, please skip this section. My short tldr for this section, since it managed to somehow balloon into this hugeass section I don’t want to shorten, is that Dragon’s Dogma had a really strong story frame with weak actual moment to moment story. However, Dragon’s Dogma 2 starts off very strong, but never really gets proper payoff and really drops the ball. The themes were consistent in Dragon’s Dogma in a way that Dragon’s Dogma 2’s story never manages to be. I felt like I needed to talk about Dragon’s Dogma specifically because Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not at all an improvement story and presentation wise, and honestly was quite a downgrade. This is important because we still have access to Dragon’s Dogma, and it feels like a genuinely missed opportunity that honestly really made me sad.

Dragon’s Dogma

Dragon’s Dogma had a very noticeably rushed story, but it still managed to keep me enthralled from the start. The game starts off with the dragon attacking the small fishing village that you live in, and during the events that unfold, you manage to hurt him slightly. This leads to the dragon taking your heart, and choosing you as the arisen.

The rest of the first part of the game, which I’ll consider here to be up until you fight the dragon, is your journey to go and learn more about the dragon and become strong enough to kill it. The important parts here however are that most things that you do, even in optional and side content, are somehow relevant to the dragon. The monsters going wild and becoming more aggressive are explicitly tied to the dragon’s return. The crazy cult that’s been stirring up issues are a bunch of doomsday dragon worshippers, and become relevant in the main quest later too. The archwizard stealing the duke’s ring to become a lich is using the dragon as a distraction to do so. The duke’s many irrelevant errands for you are revealed later to be him trying to keep you busy and away from the dragon.

The actual moment to moment writing can be choppy and inconsistent, but the overarching influence of the dragon is always present. The way you resolve quests and story also affect little details later down the line, even side quests, so it feels like there is a sense of continuity to the story that you are experiencing.

All of that makes it so when the dragon appears, you know the scene is going to be amazing. This is added on by the performance of his voice actor, David Lodge, and the framing in which the game portrays him. His calm tone, his verbiage, everything about his presence demands your attention and respect. He is never disrespectful towards you, and goads you to become better and overcome him.

And then after you do kill him, the world starts breaking apart. A giant hole opens up in the main city, the duchy blames you for this, every monster is replaced with something far more threatening, and your new objective is to get to the bottom of the giant hole, almost quite literally. There isn’t too much here story wise so I’ll skip a few steps but you basically go through a bunch of dungeons and collect 20 Wakestones to go to the final and true ending.

Once you reach the bottom, you find yourself face to face with the Seneschal. The Seneschal is the ruler of the world with the power over life and death, essentially God with a capital G. He tests you to see if you have the willpower to guide the world, and essentially replace him. I always found it very cool here that each failure, one caused by a decision, another caused by losing, leads to a different game over screen which is also shown to be a different ending. If you choose a peaceful life, the Seneschal will return you to that world despite knowing what lies beyond. If you lose to him, it is revealed that the dragon is created from people like you who managed to rise to the Seneschal, but failed in the last step. The coolest reveal however, has to be that when you overcome the Seneschal’s initial fight, he actually pulls off his cloak and reveals that he is the character that you played as in the tutorial some forty hours ago (or your character in the previous playthrough if you are on NG+). This reveal genuinely blew my mind when I first played it, and I thought that it was phenomenal. If you’re playing online it can also be some rando player’s character, but I don’t quite feel like that works so well on an emotional level.

After you overcome the fight, he asks you to kill him, so that he can finally rest after his long years of service. Once you do, you take over his position as god of the world. There’s one more step however which leads to the actual ending, and that is to kill yourself with the blade that you used to kill the Seneschal. In my understanding, by doing this, you stop the cycle of sending a dragon to the world, causing untold numbers of deaths just to find one person with the willpower to succeed you. You’re freeing the world from the invisible guiding hand of a god that has become too far removed from humanity to truly understand and care for it. And I think that’s goddamn beautiful.

The DLC also drives the point home with the story of another Arisen who walked a similar path, but was unable to kill the dragon, as the dragon was revealed to be his mother figure, the previous Arisen. His journey was also made with his mother figure’s Pawn, who became his beloved. The dragon demanded that he either sacrifice his beloved, or kill the dragon. Unable to kill either one, he cursed the world and descended into madness, leading to the creation of the ethereal island that the DLC takes place on. The DLC itself doesn’t add much to the overarching story, but it gives a clear example of the cycle of eternal return causing unnecessary pain on the people that are thrown into it.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

In Dragon’s Dogma 2, you first start as a prisoner in a slave camp. You are amnesiac so you’re not quite sure who you are or what you even are, but all you know is you’re the Arisen since you’re told that by the pawns in the camp. An ethereal figure who will be known from here on as the Pathfinder, guides you here. There is an attack on the camp by a Medusa and you seize the chance to escape on a griffin and make your way to Vermund. This part of the game is quite heavy on political intrigue and a lot of story setup that is very interesting. You’re supposed to be the Sovran, but a pretender has managed to actually steal your position with the help of the Queen Regent and a dude named Phaesus. A lot of side quests here build up to relevant plot threads in the main story as well.

Once you finish your errands for Knight Captain Brant, you try to get the throne back only for the pretender to have an artifact that lets him command pawns, so you’re unable to prove your identity and get set back to square one. You find out that this artifact is from Battahl, and thus, you need to head there and investigate.

This is where the story falls apart. You get to Battahl and journey through to get to the capital, and once you arrive you are told by the Pathfinder to head to the Forbidden Magic Research Lab (WHO NAMES A RESEARCH LAB THAT BY THE WAY), and find out about an artifact called the Godsway, which is what the false Arisen was using, and provided by Phaesus. You then are told to find the Dragonforged to get information, then to go find an oracle for more information, then “He Who Was Dragonforged” in a village you visited earlier in the story for even more information. This may sound like an infodump segment, but the information you get from most of these is essentially just a pointer to the next location. Once you talk to him, a castle will just rise from the ocean (for some fucking reason) and you are now tasked with exploring it.

After exploring it and reaching the throne room, you find the old Seneschal. I’m assuming he is the Seneschal since he has a Godsbane blade but god knows the game doesn’t explain it. He explains that the materials that have been used to create a Godsway are pieces of the souls of dead Arisen who failed to kill him. However, he decides for some reason that you’re different and entrusts you with the Godsbane blade forged from his soul, and lets you go. And now suddenly, you are working with the people who were helping the false Arisen take your throne to fix the Godsbane blade. Why would they help you or you help them? I don’t know, please explain this to me if you understand because I certainly don’t. Following this, you take a few steps to reforge the blade then head towards Phaesus. You overcome a giant colossus along the way (really cool but scripted fight), and confront Phaesus at the area you started the game in. You fight the false Arisen here and then he just disappears from the story, we don’t even know if he actually dies. Phaesus summons a false dragon, which is then promptly dispatched by the actual dragon who shows up out of nowhere and is like “Bro do you wanna go fight somewhere else?”.

You then ride on his back and go fight him. If you manage to kill him, the game actually leads to the credits, with the Pathfinder being in the area. You can speak to him to bring you back to the dragon ride segment. This narratively makes no sense as the Pathfinder wanted for you to be Sovran, but I can somewhat forgive it for gameplay purposes. At this point you’re either usually really confused and will just do the same thing again, or know exactly what to do because of the first game. If you climb to the dragon’s chest then stab yourself with the Godsbane, you will start the true final segment of the game.

In the final segment of the game, the oceans rise and it is quite similar to the post Dragon world in Dragon’s Dogma, where a lot more enemies spawn and a lot more difficult enemies appear. You join forces with Phaesus, who somehow survived, and work towards trying to save as many people as you can. You talk to the heads of all the towns you’ve journeyed through and end up bringing them all to the seafloor shrine, and the game then goes into the ending sequence. The Pathfinder is then revealed to be a giant-ass dragon and takes control of your main pawn, who is partially shifted into a smaller dragon. Your pawn overcomes this mind control through their belief in you, and brings you onto the Pathfinder and you, again, have to climb the dragon to get to the weak spot. Your pawn returns to help once you get there, knocks the dragon off balance and opens its heart cavity enough for you to deliver the final blow.

The game then shows all of the characters who you saved and worked with in the ending credits, seemingly in a world without dragons, arisen or pawns. I’m gonna be real, as cool as all the setpieces and cutscenes are, the story just falls flat for me. There’s no emotional connection here and the themes don’t stick the landing like they did in the first game. This is why I had to explain why I love Dragon’s Dogma’s story, and had the expectations that I did coming into Dragon’s Dogma 2.

Visual and Sound

Visually, I think the game is absolutely fantastic. As with every previous RE Engine game, the game is extremely good to look at. The visual design is much more grounded than other similar games, so it can look a bit boring. However, I do really like how grounded it feels, and the visual fidelity adds to the vibe quite well. The enemies look really nice and the different tiers have differentiation and visual distinction between them. I don’t believe that it is as visually as unique as the other RE Engine games such as the RE Remakes, Devil May Cry 5, or even Monster Hunter Rise but I don’t personally find that to be a major issue.

On that topic, the visual effects in regards to skills and spells are extremely satisfying. They have a huge amount of oomph to it, and feel absolutely amazing to use. There are some issues with how big the oomph is however, as sometimes you can’t see what’s going on in all that oomph, and you’ll miss a goblin flying out of the particle effects to knock your head over.

The sound design is generally really good, with enemy attacks being quite clearly telegraphed and ambient noises allowing you to tell what kind of enemies you are looking out for in the area. Most of the aforementioned sound telegraphs are readable even when not paying attention, which I think is fantastic. I don’t honestly have too much to say here cause I don’t think that anything is a major issue.

The music for the game is fine. There’s a few nice tracks, but I don’t think there was any moment where I was like “Holy shit that’s so good” except maybe during credits. I will say that personally I do prefer Dragon’s Dogma’s tracks in regards to the music, so my expectations may have been a bit higher than what the game was trying to go for.

Gameplay

Now for the meat of what we’re (or well, I’M) here for, gameplay mechanics!

Once the game starts, you will be asked to create a character. This character is known as the Arisen and will be your player character for the entire playthrough. The character creator is the most expansive and detailed character creator that I have ever seen, and I find it extremely impressive that they’ve managed to create something like this. I am not by any means a detailed character creator, but I think that the level of detail you can go into is really cool.

Once you’ve created your character, you’ll then create a Pawn who will serve you for the rest of your journey. The creator is the same as the one for the Arisen, however, I think there is a lot here that stands out. In the original game, your actions and commands during your adventure shaped how a pawn acts and its inclination (or some elixirs to force the pawn’s inclinations so they acted in specific ways). It is much the same here, but to a much greater degree. The voice that you choose will determine its inclination, but it will learn from strategies you use against your enemies. This could include pushing them off cliffs, climbing them to throw their balance off, grappling with them so teammates can destroy them, along with many others.

The Pawn system, much like the original game, is the multiplayer aspect of the game. Rather than joining your friends’ game directly, it is your pawn who will be hired onto your friends’ party. The knowledge and skills they accumulate while journeying with you can help your pawn become a much bigger asset to your friends, such as leading them on quests, showing enemy weak spots and strategies, translating Elvish so you can understand it, among other things. You can also benefit from their journeys through the rift, and it definitely emulates the feel of having a real party of people who know different things in a multiplayer game. They’ll also comment on peoples’ preferences in party composition, actions, and preferences which can be really funny sometimes:

I don’t think I’ve done the system justice since it has so much depth, but I think I’ve provided a rough idea of how the system works. The benefits of having a good and useful pawn (or an attractive one since those are picked quite often too) is that they bring back Rift Crystals based on the EXP they gain on their journeys with other players. This is the currency you use to hire pawns above your level, as well as unlock/change cosmetics and other similar things at the Pawn Guild. It may also get some more use if Dragon’s Dogma 2 follows the first game’s pattern, though as of revising the script, it’s been two years and most likely we are not getting a dlc.

Let’s talk about classes now. This is going to be a gigantic section, so strap in. There are a grand total of ten different classes in Dragon’s Dogma 2, with six being returning classes from the first game, two being a split of one of the original classes, and three being completely new. All of the different classes here feel quite unique compared to the original game where the classes used a lot of similar basic combos but added different advanced things. A lot of the previously popular skills (Tusk Toss, Hundred Kisses, Anodyne are the first that come to mind) also became built into the basic kit, which I appreciate a lot. The melee classes (Fighter, Warrior, Thief, Mystic Spearhand) now also have access to finishers (sweetass animations by the way) that become available once you break the enemy’s stability meter. On the other hand, the magic classes (Mage, Sorcerer) now have a mechanic that allows for you to trade stamina to cast spells quicker. This means that as long as you have stamina, most of your spells will come out very quickly.

However, while the classes do feel much more differentiated, we did lose a few active skill slots compared to the first game. In the first game, you had access to three skills on your main weapon and three skills on your off weapon, or six spells on a magic focused vocation. In this game, every class gets four active skills, which is kind of fine, but it does reduce your ability to react to a lot of situations in my opinion. This places more emphasis on your pawns to be able to contend with things that you cannot, which I think adds a decent depth to party building but limits what you yourself can do. I’m not sure if this is a net positive or negative, but I honestly forgot we had so many skill slots in the first game so it didn’t really occur to me until I started reading peoples’ thoughts online. I think it’s an issue that someone who has played the first game recently will definitely feel, but anyone picking this game up without prior experience will not find it to be too big an issue.

Fighter is the traditional sword and shield front liner class with quick attacks and the ability to block and parry attacks. Though it is simple, it is probably my personal favorite class when trying to journey without pawns. It has a large amount of survivability tools and if you are playing safely (and aren’t severely underleveled), it is very unlikely that you will die.

Warrior is the class focusing on wielding a giant weapon, providing huge damage at the cost of speed. This is one of the classes that I feel got the best facelift, as the basic swing mechanics feel pretty damn good. The basic mechanic is that your swings can be charged to do more damage, similar to how Monster Hunter’s greatsword works. However, a few levels into the class and you’ll be able to time swings to speed them up, which gives you an alternative method of approaching enemies based on your preference. It doesn’t honestly sound impressive on paper, but it feels really good to use and with the upgrades you get to perfectly time the charge/swings applying to different skills, I think that Warrior has become extremely fun to use for any encounter.

Thief is one of the two classes split from Strider in the first game. It is a speedy and agile damage oriented melee class, and is probably the single most busted class in the game. It has the tools to deal massive damage, dodge basically anything as long as you have stamina, and pull flying enemies into melee range to finish them off. If you need physical damage, this class will take care of it handily. With the changes to the system, they no longer have access to double jump and dodge roll passively, though Thief does have access to a skill that can replicate double jump.

Archer is the other half of Strider from the first game. As with Thief, it is a speedy and agile damage oriented class, except at range. The damage that they output isn’t quite as insane as Thief, but with the different arrow types, they provide a different kind of utility than Thief brings to the table. I will be honest, I am not that fond of how Archer plays in this game compared to the Strider/Ranger classes in the first game, though the bows in the first game are genuinely broken as you could shoot ten explosive arrows per shot, so maybe they did need the nerf. As with Thief, with the changes to the system, they no longer have access to double jump and dodge roll passively.

Mage is our dedicated support class, with Anodyne being bound to the heavy attack button. They have the (now unique) ability to enchant party members with elemental damage, as well as buffing their speed or stamina and cleansing debuffs. They are absolute powerhouses in regards to utility, though their damage spells are not that impressive. Having a mage in the party will almost remove the necessity of curatives completely. The reduced number of overall spell slots however usually means that Mage will not want to run any offensive spells, or at most maybe one, so that they have room for all the support spells.

Sorcerer is the dedicated magic damage class. They are able to regenerate their mana, and they get access to the Mage offensive spells as well as their own spell list. Their damage feels quite great, though they feel like the class that suffered the most from the reduced overall number of spell slots. They lost a lot of status effect spells from the first game as well, which really pigeonholes them into pure damage.

Mystic Spearhand is the new fighter/mage class replacing Mystic Knight, though they play nothing alike. They are a high damage, and extremely mobile class with abilities that really reminded me of Noctis from Final Fantasy 15. It feels quite fun to play, zipping around the battlefield at teleport speed. They also have a few team utility spells, and some very entertaining spells like yeeting the enemy into orbit or throwing a goblin at a dragon.

Magic Archer is a returning bow/mage class from the first game. I haven’t actually tried the class as it’s given to you extremely late in the game, but if it’s anything like the first game then it’s probably horrendously overpowered and trivializes everything it looks at. They are another ranged magic damage dealer, but rather than focusing on spells, they shoot magic arrows.

Trickster is a strange, strange class. I will be honest, I saw how it played and thought “That looks really boring” and just completely ignored it for the rest of the game. I can’t speak for this class, but to the best of my knowledge, it is a support/tank class that cannot fight for itself at all. I have seen people recommend rather than run Trickster, to run Warfarer with some Trickster skills and weapon so that you can actually act yourself.

Warfarer is the final class in Dragon’s Dogma 2, with access to every single class’s gear and skills (except master skills) and the ability to swap on the fly at the cost of lower stats than dedicated classes. However, since there are only four slots for skills, and one of them is going to be taken up by the weapon swap, you effectively only have three skills to use between every weapon equipped. This is far too restrictive to create meaningful setups in my opinion, and honestly it makes me sad that this was what it ended up being. On the other hand however, due to having all gear access, it is the true endgame because you can fashion your armor however you’d like for the weapon you’d like to use.

All in all, I think that the way the classes are implemented was fantastic, though the lack of skill slots does hurt some classes more than others. Most of the classes are interesting, at least conceptually, with really cool things that push them apart from the other classes.

Now, with our character out of the way, let’s talk about the world. Dragon’s Dogma’s open world map is god damn huge, especially with the scarcity of fast travel. The map consists of the grasslands and forests of Vermund, the arid desert of Battahl and the volcanic islands to the southeast. The map itself I believe is four times the size of the first game’s map, and I think that the sense of scale as well as the feel of the journey was implemented really well. Within these zones there are a lot of unique areas as well, with many caves and broken castles to explore. The caves do get monotonous and samey, but many of them are shortcuts through the terrain and add to the journey. I’m not an explorer at heart so the level of knowledge I have on the world may not be great, but I didn’t feel like it got boring to explore at any point. The caves can be a bit of a letdown due to most not really having relevant loot in them though.

The world itself is also quite a bit more populated than in the original game. In the original game, there was Cassardis, the starting town, the Garrison near Cassardis, and Gran Soren, and maybe a few garrisons and houses placed throughout. In Dragon’s Dogma 2, we have 2 kingdoms, each with its own capital city, and multiple villages, encampments and houses that can be found in the wild. The world feels a lot more populated and lived in, and I believe that the wandering pawns help here as well.

Oh, did I mention that Pawns created by other players (or Capcom if you’re offline) will wander through your world? You can sometimes run into pawns that you’ve hired before, and they’ll have different dialogues based on how well you treated them. This really adds to the populated feel of the world, and because there are a lot of players, we see a lot of variety in pawn looks and personalities. The wandering pawns can actually lead to some really cool moments, like you see a pawn fighting a group of monsters in the distance and you come to their aid. Then suddenly out of nowhere, a Griffin shows up and a large monster battle begins with your party and the wandering pawn working together to take it down. Moments such as these will happen organically a lot due to how populated the world is.

Which actually leads me to my next point. I feel that the world is actually a little too populated. I know I just said that that was a good thing, but let me explain. The world is really populated by both wandering pawns, wandering NPCs, and enemies. There are SO MANY ENEMIES. I cannot take more than five steps after finishing an encounter without initiating another. It starts off feeling really scary, and difficult, but this actually leads into a scaling issue as you get a ton of experience from fighting these mobs and start being able to steamroll everything. I’ll expand on this point later, but I do think that the sheer overpopulation of enemies in this game is the cause of a lot of core issues that the game faces.

Traversal in the open world is mostly going to be in the form of travel by foot. You’ll be walking around a lot, and the twist is that each time you take damage, a small amount of it is shaved off of your max health. Now, you might be asking yourself “Kina, why is this in the Open World segment, and not the combat segment”, and the answer is… well, actually I forgot to mention it. But, it is actually also core to the open world because as you journey through the world, you will need to camp and rest to regain your max health. This means that you will need to keep a camping kit on you and find suitable camping spots to rest. However, if you do not clear the surrounding area, it is entirely possible that you will be ambushed in the middle of the night, and your camping kit broken. This will leave you out in the open at night, where visibility is poor and more dangerous enemies spawn. I’ve had moments like this when my party was whittled down to just me and another person’s pawn, and the night ambush leading to some of the most tense moments in my playthrough.

Fast traveling does exist in Dragon’s Dogma, but it is either extremely expensive (ferrystones), or subject to the whims of the random encounters in the world (oxcart). To explain, Dragon’s Dogma has a traditional fast traveling mechanic that can only be accessed through ferrystones, which are one use teleport items that will take you to a target point. The ferrystones in question are quite expensive or are in limited supply for most points in the game, though by endgame you’ll be getting them as drops from monsters as well. You can place a portcrystal to set up more places for you to travel to. It’s a really fun system that they brought back from the first game, and I’m quite happy it still exists.

One thing I really dislike is they made all portcrystals return to your inventory for NG+, where in the first game it retained the locations on the map. This is an issue for me because in the first game, you could skip the tedious parts of the game using a ferrystone, but you’re forced to do every single part in NG+. I expect games to have tedious parts in the game, but in most there will be ways to skip the tedium in NG+, and that’s not quite doable here.

The other fast travel mechanic is the oxcart system, which will take you from point A to point B. These points are preset, and generally towns or villages of interest. The interesting part however, is that if there are monsters along the way, you may be taken out of fast travel and have to join the caravan in defending the oxcart. If the oxcart is destroyed by the monsters, which can be done by monsters both big and small, you will have to walk the rest of the way. I think it’s a really cool spin on fast travel that keeps you on your toes and the world feeling alive. This in addition to random enemy encounters has led to some really fun stories I could tell. For example, my oxcart was attacked by an Ogre, and while I was fending the Ogre off, a freaking Griffin decides to drop by and say hi, leading to a three way fight between my party and the oxcart peoples, the Ogre, and the Griffin. And I realize that this can seem really tedious for many players, and while I do agree that there’s a level of friction in this system, I think that it adds more to immersion than it takes away with the tedium.

One more thing I also really appreciate is the random encounters and the persistence of some parts of it. For example, the Griffin from the earlier story actually ran away when it got to low health, but the next day tried again to attack me. It got away again, but tried a third time which was when I finally slayed it. This reminds me a lot of the old Elder Dragon health bar persistence that Monster Hunter 2 Freedom had, where damage done to them would remain until you finally slayed it.

Another example that comes to mind is when I woke up from my house, walked to the middle of town and found out it was being attacked by a drake. I ended up fighting it enough to chase it away (though unfortunately never found it again), and I just found it very cool that monsters could just rush into town and try to do damage. I’ve seen this with drakes, griffins, cyclops, and goblins so far, so I imagine most enemy types are game for the system.

The random encounters, both with pawns and with large monsters, lead to no two journeys ever really feeling the same even if you’re taking the same path, and I appreciate it a lot.

Enemies are what you’ll be engaging with in this game far more than other obstacles. While you do spend a lot of time traversing the map, doing quests, etc, you’ll spend a large amount of time fighting cool big monsters. However, this leads into things both good and bad. Normal enemies are generally pretty good, with a lot of different variants of the normal enemies to keep things fresh. The large enemies are great, feeling very threatening but not impossible to overcome at proper levels and strategies to approach them with. Proper levels is the keyword that we’ll come back to though. They’re all generally quite straightforward, if you don’t know how to fight them your hired pawns will probably tell you how to. There are also some extremely cool scripted moments that had me fanboying really hard, I won’t say exactly which one because it’s a moment you’ll want to experience, but it’s goddamn cool. One enemy type at the endgame did annoy me though, since my pawn told me to “Hit the glowing spot” when half its goddamn body was glowing, though once I did figure out which glowing spot I was supposed to hit, it clicked and became really fun. The explanation just didn’t quite hit right.

The enemy variety feels like there are less than in the first game however, as there are many enemy types that just appear extremely rarely or only once. I believe the actual variety is around the same compared to the first game’s base game, but I don’t have the actual numbers so I’m not quite sure. Contrary to the prevailing opinion I’ve seen online, I actually think the variety of enemies is fine. However, I do think that they become repetitive because of how densely populated the map is, and how big it is. As I mentioned before, you can’t take five goddamn steps without triggering another fight, and I feel like this actively contributes to multiple different issues. The first issue is that since there’s so many enemies, you get bored of the ones you keep facing, leading to the complaints about variety, which honestly, is fair. The second issue is that because you’re fighting so many enemies, you end up being really overleveled really quickly, so you end up being able to just power through and just ignore enemy mechanics or patterns, leading to the variety of normal enemies being understated. The third issue is that the density leads you to having to rest up a lot more, which leads to some enemies being respawned, leading to more repeated fights. Please correct me if I’m wrong as well, but there seem to be pre placed enemies (which will never move even after respawning) and enemies that wander around. The enemies that are pre placed are really jarring to me because if you use the same path multiple times, they are always in the exact same location. All of these issues lead to an end game where you are so severely overpowered that enemies are just a nuisance that you can swat aside, even the ones that used to be big and threatening. Being able to delete a boss’s health bar is only really exciting the first few times you do it, but once you can consistently delete bosses your level spikes up even faster, exacerbating the issue.

As far as quests go, I’m going to be real with you, the quests in this game are not that interesting even compared to the first game. I don’t honestly mind that the quests are mostly “Go to X, kill Y”. The actual act of adventuring and fighting are well crafted enough that going there and killing a unique or rare monster is really engaging. However, there’s very little to say about it honestly. Some of the quests do some cool world building, but the large majority not so much.

Maybe the main thing I’d probably want to talk about here are the time specific quests. There are quests in the game that once started, are time limited and you should definitely prioritize them if they pop up, as the quest will go very differently depending on the amount of time you take to do it. However, these quests are definitely not as omnipresent as I thought that they would be considering they brought it up in the promotional materials. One of the quests even starts with an NPC going “Oh man that poor guy is gonna die and leave his wife widowed if he does this mission”, but the timer doesn’t actually start until you talk to his wife. I actually spent multiple in-game weeks adventuring before I talked to his wife, so I was very confused that the game didn’t actually progress while I was gone, especially since there was no quest marker initially and I forgot all about it.

Which brings me I guess to one other complaint, is that sometimes NPCs will ask you to do something, and then no quest marker/log appears at all. With how jank this game can be, I was not at all able to tell whether the quest was broken or if it just assumed you’d figure it out yourself. In my case it was just a “Figure it out” moment, but I have also heard other people say their quests were broken too. It’s not the end of the world to miss out on a quest or two, but for the completionist out there, you will go goddamn insane.

The last point I have under this topic are the escort quests, which are arduously long, though the companions are generally pretty cool and able to hold their own. I don’t appreciate however, that it gives a mega boost in affinity, so you have some moments where you accidentally max out someone’s affinity when you’re trying to romance another. I uh, had to kill someone to get rid of the extra love interest I didn’t want. Sorry bro.

Conclusion

Like I mentioned in the introduction, I did really like the game a lot. The gameplay is fantastic, and the player options available were pretty damn good. The main issue I ended up having was that the enemy density caused a lot of issues that snowballed as mentioned in the gameplay segment. On the story side however, I genuinely cannot get over how badly they dropped the ball. It feels like someone with adhd wrote the story then no one else looked over it to see if it felt right. There are a lot of cool setpieces and fights, really cool visuals and a lot of things you are able to do.

I genuinely do think that this game is a very unique offering. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of adventuring with a party in a world that is so open for the most part. The issues come in on the finer details like enemy density, enemy scaling, player exp scaling, among other issues that I’ve mentioned. I think that if they work on it and put out something akin to Dark Arisen, though I hope much more open world changes rather than just a huge great dungeon like the original Dark Arisen, then I think the game could end up being far more replayable than it currently is, where here I’ve already outscaled most enemies at level 60 and can delete most things without really thinking about it. Unfortunately, it does not seem like we’ll be getting this expansion. The copium on the subreddit is so real right now though.

As much as it hurts me to say it, I don’t recommend getting the game as of current, especially with all the performance issues. If you have a very beefy PC and are looking for a gameplay focused game, I might suggest it. It is a fun game for what it is, with a lot to do and a very immersive feel for the adventuring part. However, don’t go in expecting a fantastic story, because they genuinely dropped the ball on that part of the package, meaning that any story focused player should stay away from this game.