Dragon’s Dogma 2 Review – A Triumphant Adventure

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a grand adventure; a grueling marathon of a game that demands effort and time, promising unparalleled joy in return. It delivers in spades. What Capcom has created here is a genre-busting denial of conventions with incisive and deliberate design choices that play with what we know an RPG to be. In myriad ways, it feels like a refined version of the 2012 original, less a sequel and more a second run at perfection. This time, it reaches the finish line and keeps on going.

You are the Arisen, a typical ‘chosen one’ who commands barely emotive pawns who follow your every whim, who one day is fated to fight against the dragon that roams the land. This is the titular dogma at work, and throughout this 50+ hour adventure, these tried-and-true concepts are played with, played straight, and defenestrated with aplomb. With a strong narrative, an open world filled with beautiful sights, and a robust physics engine, Dragon’s Dogma 2 impresses throughout and never fails to surprise in its lofty ambition.

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I’m So Glad Dragon’s Dogma 2 Isn’t Afraid To Be Janky

Capcom is maintaining the original’s charm, warts and all.

Naturally, this being an action RPG, and one from Capcom’s Hideaki Itsuno (Devil May Cry) at that, combat is a highlight. After going through the incredibly complex character creator and a brief opening set within a mine invaded by Medusa, you’re thrust into the open world and all but left to fend for yourself. Combat stands out in this modern ecosystem of dodge rolls and invincibility frames – if an attack connects with you in Dragon’s Dogma, it hurts.

Tactics are placed above reflex in an unforgiving system that rewards adaptability, preparation, and wariness. Taking lots of damage reduces your maximum health, running out of stamina will stun your character in a fit of windedness, and debilitations are actually debilitating. You’re forced to think strategically, and this is where the game shines. The environment is as much a participant as your foes – there are boulders to toss at enemies, breakable dams and bridges to be used as traps, and siege ballista to be employed against the toughest of enemies.

There’s a massive, sprawling, open world to explore, and the level of detail consistent throughout is phenomenal – keeping your surroundings in mind is always a pressing matter. Spying a leaking wall and smashing it open to summon a torrent of water to wash away a cave full of saurians springs to mind as one of the coolest feats I managed to pull off, though I suspect we’ll be inundated with similar (and even cooler) examples across social media soon enough.

Elite enemies provide the most memorable moments. Pulled from the Big Book Of Classic Mythological Monsters, the likes of cyclopes, ogres, and chimera are awesome in their might and difficulty. There is nothing more embarrassing than being hurled off a cliff by the bash of a club larger than you, or more humbling than having your strategy of climbing up onto a drake’s back being upended by the drake flying high up into the air and throwing you off to plunge to your death. These enemies feel intelligent and dangerous, yet still so rewarding to fight, and a sign of the dedication to innovation that suffuses throughout the entire experience.

Nowhere is this innovation more perfectly on display than in the pawn system. Being a permanent ally for your player character that other players can hire, pawns are ingenious for their social aspects. They are a mode of self-expression, humour, and non-verbal communication (between players; the pawns themselves are irrepressibly chatty), made all the more versatile thanks to the character creator. You’ll encounter some of the most beautiful individuals you’ve ever seen alongside horrific experiments in cruelty to body sliders, and plenty of licensed characters in between.

I made my pawn a buff himbo and named him Eik. Eik went on to become the highest-ranked pawn on PC during the review period, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, Eik would return to me with ‘gifts’ of rotten food or basic herbs, sometimes with rare and useful items such as the scarce fast-travel items. Gifts, combined with ratings of thumbs-ups or hearts, give you a fleeting glance at how your pawn – your outstretched hand to a world of random permutations – is received by those they meet. Despite having no multiplayer of its own, Dragon’s Dogma 2 still feels like a co-operative outing where your actions not only impact your own world, but many, many others. Even if it’s just through a buff himbo called Eik.

Pawns themselves are charming and possibly even chattier than their incarnations from the previous generation. I grew very fond of my Eik, and even pawns I hired multiple times, which mostly consisted of those from my colleagues here at TheGamer. Being able to tell a friend of the shenanigans their creations are getting up to in my game brings a unique sense of joy that I can’t see being replicated. The constant comments on nearby ladders and ingredient spawns went quickly from annoying to endearing, only fleetingly flicking back to irritating if I was stuck trying to find my way to a campfire or running away from a horde of deadly goblins.

Quests are similarly designed to promote collaborative gameplay. Pawns will remember the details of a quest, and once learned, will share them with new Arisens in different worlds. Many times, Eik would come back from other realms with solutions to quests I hadn’t even encountered yet. This works particularly well because many quests are purposefully obtuse. Some will give you scant details and point you in a vague direction, others will sit in your quest log for hours until you stumble upon an item you need or a pawn who knows the way. In this, you’re encouraged to search specifically for pawns who can help, which is a wonderful way to spread your digital wings and connect with new people.

This doesn’t come without risks – a disease specific to pawns called Dragonsplague is present and can be transferred between pawns in the rift. What starts as a rumour about a condition that makes pawns turn on their masters can turn into an ugly reality if you’re not wary, as certain enemies force your once-loyal ally to crush you with impunity. Take it from me, if you’re playing a squishy mage and your pawn is a buff warrior, be very afraid if his eyes start glowing red and the dragon you’re fighting says something braggadocious. This adds a nefarious layer to pawn-swapping interconnectivity in a game that all but necessitates the mechanic and keeps you wonderfully on your toes.

Unfortunately, performance issues are a plague of their own – it’s gorgeous, but this comes at a hefty price. Frame drops, extended periods of lag, and outright freezes hassled me from start to finish. It’s worse during fights with massive enemies and in crowded areas such as Vernworth, where you’ll spend a significant amount of your time, and it can seriously bog down the experience. I’m assured by colleagues that with a beastly rig (and mine is no slouch) it runs fine, but my time with Dragon’s Dogma 2 was tarred by serious faults. Another sore point is the voice acting, which is usually quite good but often feels far cheaper than the rest of the game would have you believe. One particular pawn voice often sounds like a shaky Matt Berry impression, and I’ve started actively avoiding pawns that use it as a result.

Speaking of immersion breaking, using blatantly real footage of meat being cooked whenever you make a meal at a campsite is an illusion-shattering choice. It’s a small thing, but professionally lit clips of sizzling meat that look like they’re grabbed from an ASMR YouTuber’s stream do not spark joy. It’s a small thing in the long run, but when the rest of the experience is so tight, high-quality, and notably handcrafted, it stands out.

I’d like to thank these stalwart allies for the joy and support they provided.

I rolled credits on Dragon’s Dogma 2 after 49 hours, and can easily see myself doubling that number before I’m done. There are quests I left incomplete and plenty I didn’t even scratch the surface of – I never once encountered the Sphinx, for example. The wide range of vocations offers endless replayability, and the world created here is simply one you’re going to want more of. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a masterclass in compelling game design, and proof that deviation from the norm and challenging your audience can pay off immensely. Capcom has created not only a true successor to the 2012 classic, but a game which manages to be everything that fondly remembered gem always wanted to be.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Played on PC

Pros

• Incredible sense of adventure
• Masterful combat system
• Pawn mechanics are a triumph

Cons

• Serious performance issues
• Shaky voice acting

A review code was provided by the publisher.