About 15 hours into my first playthrough of Dragon’s Dogma 2, my partner asked me how I was finding the game. I let out a deep sigh and said, “Ugh, it’s great, I guess.” And truly, there is no better or more succinct way for me to express how I feel about Capcom’s latest action-RPG.
12 years after the release of the original Dragon’s Dogma, Capcom and game director Hideaki Itsuno are finally ready to give this beloved cult classic another go-around. The first game –while brilliant in its own right– ultimately fell short and slipped under the radar as there was just no competing with Dark Souls, which had released a few months prior. It also didn’t help that Dragon’s Dogma was a very cumbersome game, complete with the occasional jankiness that could make this a tough sell.
Still, it garnered a dedicated fan following. And if you could look past the jank and meet it on its own terms –a truly immersive open-world fantasy game that plays by its own rules– then you were in for a hell of a time. Dragon’s Dogma 2 builds upon everything its predecessor did, and refines the formula to make it just a little more palatable for a modern audience. Don’t get me wrong; this is still very much an unforgiving game that leaves you to figure everything out for yourself. It just looks and plays a hell of a lot better now.
Set in a world parallel to that of the first game’s, Dragon’s Dogma 2 puts you in control of the Arisen, a “chosen one” of sorts who can stand up to the draconic menace that’s plaguing the kingdom of Vermund. There’s just a catch, though. In this world, the Arisen is the ruler of Vermund, but the story starts with the queen regent drugging you and wiping your memories before installing a false Sovran on the throne. Her goal is to take over the kingdom herself, while you’re left slaving away in the mines with no recollection of who you are.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 tasks you with taking back what is rightfully yours, and so begins your journey to regaining your memories and learning what it means to be an Arisen.
No Hand-Holding Allowed
Capcom wastes no time in throwing you into the deep end. Right off the bat, you’re given a choice between four basic Vocations (read: jobs): Fighter, Mage, Thief, and Archer. You’ll take on a few tutorial quests to get a hang of the basics like healing, crafting, and heavy and light attacks. Once you make it to the city of Vernworth, the world is your oyster. You’re free to do whatever you want, take on the quests in any order you wish. And this is where the fun begins.
While most modern video games are happy to give you objective markers that lead you to exactly where you need to go, Dragon’s Dogma 2 prefers to be as opaque as possible. A random villager might run up to you, for example, and ask you to figure out why the town beggar seems to be living above his means. And that’s it. That’s all the direction you’re getting. You can then spend an entire in-game day following the beggar around to see what he does with his spare time, and hopefully try to catch him doing something he’s not supposed to be doing. There are no guarantees.
Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s main story quests are similarly opaque, often giving you some vague, general task to work towards, and leaving the details completely up to you. You need to attend the masquerade ball, but you also need the appropriate clothing which costs an absolute fortune to purchase. You’ve somehow managed to attend the ball, but now you need to figure out how to get info on the Sovran or potentially waste the entire evening and be forced to repeat this whole process on another night. It’s equal parts frustrating and rewarding, especially when you finally figure out the solution and realize it was there in front of you all this while.
It can be a mixed bag, though. While there are bright spots where the game makes you feel like an absolute genius for figuring a quest out, there were also instances where I’d spend close to an hour experimenting with various solutions that felt like what the game wanted me to do, only to stumble ass backwards into the correct solution, which I never would’ve figured out on my own in a million years. The opacity of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is often infuriating, especially when you think you’re close to cracking it, only to find out you were completely on the wrong track this entire time. Still, when you do reach those highs of finally finding that one item or one piece of information you need to progress, everything falls beautifully into place, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 quickly becomes one of the most rewarding games you’ll ever play.
You’ll soon find that there are many quests in Dragon’s Dogma 2 that are so multi-layered and dynamic, with more than one way to approach each task. These are some of the game’s most challenging aspects, and even though I often felt the stress and pressure of having to solve them quickly in time to write this review, I found its lack of transparency oddly refreshing.
Monster Hunting in the Wild
When you’re not banging your head against the wall trying to figure out why this one random NPC absolutely refuses to talk to you, you’ll spend your time exploring the open-world and fighting monsters instead. For me, this is where the game truly shines, though I’ll be the first to point out that this is where things can quickly get divisive as well.
Unlike most other open-world games where fast travel is a feature we’ve come to expect, Dragon’s Dogma 2 loves making you do everything manually. You’ll eventually unlock traditional fast travel through the use of Ferrystones, but these are consumable items that don’t come by easily. In addition to that, you can only fast travel to major cities and landmarks, and there are barely five of them available in the first region. You can create your own fast travel points by placing a Portcrystal on the ground, but again, these things are rare.
Don’t expect to rely on Ferrystones in Dragon’s Dogma 2. Oftentimes you’ll be running from one place to another, or making use of the oxcart service that departs from town each morning. Even then, the oxcart services come with their own headaches. Not only do they cost gold, you can also get attacked during the ride. Mess that up, and your oxcart rider could get killed, preventing you from being able to take the oxcart the rest of the way on your journey. If this happens often enough, eventually you’ll lose the oxcart service altogether because all the riders are dead.
You can fix this by reviving the riders with Wakestones, but just like Ferrystones, these things are extremely rare. You could also pay to revive them at the town morgue or cemetery, but do you really wanna waste your hard-earned gold on something as frivolous as fast travel when you could be buying some sweet gear instead?
The good news is that there’s plenty to see and do on-foot. While I found myself disappointed with the overall lack of enemy variety, the bosses are once again the highlight of Dragon’s Dogma 2. This game is the epitome of Emergent Gameplay (TM), where there’s no telling what you’re going to run into each time you leave the comforts of the city. I can’t count the number of times I’ve strayed off the beaten path to go check out a random ruin that looks interesting, only to run into a boss, get close to beating it, and then be immediately assaulted by yet another boss that randomly decided to show up.
The combat of Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels incredible, especially once you start unlocking some of the more exciting Vocations. I started off as the Fighter, which admittedly felt a little cookie-cutter. After all, who isn’t tired of the ol’ sword and board formula? But once I got my hands on one of the new Vocations, the Mystic Spearhand, it was as if I’d unlocked a whole other game within the game.
The Mystic Spearhand Vocation lets you wield a duospear, which makes the Arisen look like a total badass when they spin around with it, and it also lets you use a little magic on the side. After leveling up the Vocation a little and unlocking a few new skills, I was casting homing magic bullets in battle, conjuring little shields for myself and my pawns, while also leaping into the air dragoon-style to take down griffins and other flying foes.
Just like its predecessor, the fun of Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes in being able to experiment freely with any of the Vocations anytime you want. It’s easy enough to rack up enough Discipline Points to unlock new ones, and once you do, you can swap between them at no cost at all. Every Vocation comes with weapon skills, core skills, and augments that can help to round out your build and create a play style that suits your own tastes and preferences.
Pair the excellent combat with the genuinely fun open-world exploration, and I quickly found myself forgetting about all my frustrations with the lack of fast travel. Honestly, if I wasn’t rushing to play through the story for review, I could easily see myself sinking a hundred hours into exploration and side quests, while playing around with all the Vocations I’d unlocked along the way.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t a game that’s going to be for everyone. Just like its predecessor, it’s a confident, self-assured game made by a team that was clearly unwilling to compromise or water down its vision for the sake of modern conveniences we’ve gotten so used to, and it’s a better game for that. There are stumbles, yes, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 has also quickly proven itself to be one of the most refreshing fantasy RPGs I’ve played in years, and that’s a pretty insane thing to say, especially considering that we now live in a post-Elden Ring world.
By the time I finally figured out what to do with that damn beggar after stalking him the whole day from the town square to his house, I was left exhausted. No sooner had I started to make my way to turn in the quest when a dragon decided to land right smack in the middle of town to scorch everyone, including my party. I was woefully underleveled at that point, died, and had to restart the quest all over again because the game hadn’t auto-saved. At that point, I was too tired to get mad at the game. The sheer absurdity and unintentional comedy of the whole situation left me speechless.
If you haven’t gotten your copy of Dragon’s Dogma 2 yet, it’s available on PC, Xbox, and PS5.
Ugh. Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s pretty great, I guess.
Verdict: Recommended
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Published: Mar 20, 2024 11:00 am