Twelve years ago, Capcom and director Hideaki Itsuno released what many gamers would later consider to be a cult classic, Dragon’s Dogma. It was a title that, although it was successful later in its lifecycle, didn’t exactly hit it off with the market at the time, though that soon changed quickly when word of mouth spread about how good it actually was. I was amongst those who didn’t give the game a chance at first, but soon after the Dark Arisen expansion was released, I jumped in, absolutely loved it, and grew to be a part of the fandom, which are the very fans who have been screaming every day for a follow-up.

Those cries would go unanswered for over ten years, with all hope nearly dashed. Little did we know that shortly after the game’s tenth anniversary,  Capcom would hold a showcase, announcing several new projects, with one of those being the long-awaited sequel simply titled Dragon’s Dogma 2. It was an announcement that made me jump out of my seat with excitement, so much so that I instantly rang up a long-time friend who introduced me to the series to let them know of the good news.

It would take nearly two years after the initial announcement, but we can finally say that the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is upon us, as the global launch arrives this Friday, March 22. But before you can experience it yourself, we’ve been graced with the opportunity to review Dragon’s Dogma 2 before launch. I have plenty to say and not enough time to say it, so let’s dive into my thoughts and find out if this is the game we’ve all been waiting for, which, spoiler alert, it most definitely is.

Editorial Note: This review is entirely spoiler-free Outside of the core story setup.

This Is Your Story

Without getting too deep into the story of Dragon’s Dogma 2, players can expect the core story to follow that of the hero’s journey. You, an Arisen, a.k.a. “Chosen One,” have been deemed worthy by the world-ending dragon to possess unique abilities and powers that can control a mysterious race of beings known as pawns. While the citizens inhabiting the world may not understand why such a singularity exists and why it would be the dragon to pick, it’s been what was prophesied to happen. Thus, the world’s fate rested solely on this chosen hero.

It’s an adventure fit for a hero, or at least we thought, because, as it turns out, the impossible has happened, and the world has somehow ended up with not one, but two Arisen.

Despite some of the plot differences listed above, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is, in many ways, a remake — or kind of — revisioning of the original Dragon’s Dogma. It’s not a direct remake on the scale of the Resident Evil games, mind you, but it rethreads some very familiar story points from the first game. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially to those with deep knowledge of the franchise, as it fits nicely into the universe’s lore. But if this is your first time playing the series, the good news is that you do not need to play any previous ones, though it’s highly recommendable as they are fantastic games.

But being someone who did play through those, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is more of that “dream” game the studio wanted to create but couldn’t because of the constraints at the time. The story and the lore revolving around the universe are far more fleshed out in the sequel, though, to be honest, the main story itself may leave you a bit underwhelmed.

That’s something that many fans felt about the previous games, where the presentation wasn’t quite up to par with the rich lore of the games. The same could be said here with the sequel, as the world is brimming with details and individual stories but sticking to the main path, and solely that, the story itself is rushely strung together. There are even plot points that felt entirely forgotten, though the game gives a sort of explanation as to why, but odd considering how much time is spent on that specific plot.

However, and this is the important part that every player should know before playing: how you experience the game and its narrative is entirely up to you. I’ll say bluntly: If you rush through the campaign, you’ll likely feel disappointed by what’s presented. There are fantastic set pieces that it takes you through, but following the plot can sometimes feel rushed and confusing if you aren’t paying attention closely.

But the counterpoint to all that is that Capcom has managed to recapture the magic I felt when playing through Elden Ring for the first time, mixed with a bit of Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s a sense of wonder in the world that makes you want to explore every inch of it, and the game doesn’t hold you back from doing so. It’s all rewarding, too, much like in Elden Ring, where if you veer off and explore something, the probability of encountering something completely new is considerably high.

In one of my journeys, I completed a quest, but rather than return, I noticed a closed-off road. Curious about how to get beyond it, I explored the area and discovered a path below. After an encounter with a few enemies and even a mini-boss, I eventually found myself on the other side of the road, now following the path. This eventually took me to a village where the locals were all acting strangely as if something sinister was happening here, warning and telling me to leave.

Of course, I stuck around and explored, only to get caught up in a new story without any actual quest to put in my log. Many quests are like that, where NPCs will ask for help or tell you to go somewhere without the log getting updated, yet will reward you for following through. That’s a very similar take to what FromSoftware did with Elden Ring, and like so, I found myself jolting down notes, taking screenshots of locations, and marking them myself.

I’ve spent numerous nights dipping well into the early morning hours just exploring and trying to unravel the secrets in this game. Over 60 hours into my journey, I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of possibilities that Dragon’s Dogma 2 truly offers.

This becomes especially true once you realize just how reactive the game’s NPCs are to certain decisions and outcomes you make. A glimpse of that happens fairly early on when you’re going to Checkpoint Town to continue the story. You’ll get approached by several NPCs looking for a particular item, one that a local merchant sells. Well, as it turns out, this merchant is also a forger and will forge almost any item you have had. These forged items are almost identical to the originals, outside the fact that they may produce different effects.

I returned to this mechanic almost 30 hours later because I wanted to see what would happen if I gave a certain NPC a fake item. The result was not disappointing, as it was entirely different from when I had given them the real item they requested.

In another quest, I was tasked with finding an assassin. I failed, and though all seemed good, the assassin eventually killed the NPC I was trying to protect. Again, this is a mechanic that I feel I’ve only seen a small glimpse of, and it still surprises me every time I try a different approach to some things. I am sure I’ve yet to discover other mechanics and items similar to the forger, with them having a massive list of usage throughout the game.

Once I started to play Dragon’s Dogma 2 with the approach of exploring and discovering things myself, the game’s brilliance began to unfold. It’s a fantasy RPG that, while it does guide you, works better when you decide to take full control of the story and veer off to take the road less traveled.

The funny thing is, I spoke with a few other reviewers, and their stories were nothing like mine. I had done stuff they missed, and vice versa, while having very different outcomes in other situations. Despite following the same path, they encountered some things I didn’t. It became evident how much freedom and how the world reacts to that there was, something you won’t discover unless you step away from the main narrative and take in the world around you.

I realized this appreciation during my second playthrough, as it was a story not written by someone else but one forged by my own hands — a book that felt like mine to tell.

It’s utterly amazing what can be done in this world, and Capcom has nailed down exactly what it means to create a living and breathing environment that reacts to your every action. So, while the main campaign may feel underwhelming initially, it’s all about whether you decide to take control of your destiny in the game, which ties in very nicely with the game’s overarching narrative.

It’s the ultimate RPG fantasy that every role-playing game fan dreams of.

They’ll Be Singing Legends About You and Your Epic Battles

The one thing that every fan of the series can agree with is that the combat of the original Dragon’s Dogma and Dark Arisen is among the best for an RPG. The vocations (aka classes) offered and all their unique abilities made for a very robust game that catered to all kinds of different playstyles. Want to be a cool-ass knight wielding a massive sword like Guts from the Berserker series? Or maybe you want to be Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, conjuring spells. Maybe you like playing from the shadows, moving swiftly and silently like a thief in the night, dual-wielding a set of deadly daggers? Yes, you can be all those in Dragon’s Dogma 2.

Whatever playstyle you preferred, Dragon’s Dogma had it all, presented in such a slick and imaginative way that many other action RPGs haven’t quite captured since. There’s a reason why the games are so highly talked about to this day, and even then, I think most are underselling them, and I probably will be, too.

The animation work was astonishing for a game of its time, and it still holds up strong for even today’s standards. Severely underappreciated, and I’d even go as far as to say that the combat was well ahead of its time.

So, my expectations for the combat in Dragon’s Dogma 2 were extremely high, expectations that I’m happy to say have been met.

It’s not a very different game in terms of core combat, which, in my eyes, is a good thing because why fix what isn’t broken? Improve upon it, which Capcom has done in several areas, to make it more fluid and up-to-date. Considering this is a new engine, everything has been rebuilt from the ground up. Yet, Capcom has managed to capture the feeling of the original, only better with all the new and improved animations and more stylistic combat that brings it even closer to the Devil May Cry series, though with its unique identity.

But with Dragon’s Dogma 2 and modern technology, Capcom can create things on a grander scale than the original. Battles are much bigger, not just in terms of enemy count but also in everything else. Fighting a dragon, for example, and seeing them whip up massive tornadoes and other cool particle effects make for rather epic and memorable moments.

Unfortunately, the enemy variety is pretty light from start to finish, but Capcom makes full use of what’s there, ensuring these monsters have a lasting impact on the players. The new hybrid vocations are fantastic to play as, too, though I’ll always find my way back to being a thief with its fast-paced combat and expanded moveset (all vocations have unique exclusive moves) that are just so fun to combo with.

But the big significant changes aren’t what’s been changed with the core gameplay, but what’s been changed elsewhere.

It wouldn’t be a Dragon Dogma game if the “Pawn” system weren’t making a return, and in the sequel, it’s been improved in every way imaginable. For starters, the AI themselves are quite helpful and one point when it comes to battles. There are a few commands you can perform, but I found that during combat, the pawns were very self-sufficient, aiding me whenever I needed healing or a monster’s attention diverted and other actions. There may not be co-op (though I wish there were), but the pawns certainly make up for the lack of it in how well they operate on the battlefield.

It’s not just their combat expertise that has improved; outside of combat, they have several helpful traits that benefit largely when connecting online. Every pawn has its personality, with your main one evolving to offer better benefits in and out of battle. However, not every pawn is the same when it comes to abilities and specializations, and when you hire a pawn from the Rift, they also retain all the knowledge of their master.

Some pawns can provide guidance, while others can even translate certain languages for you that would otherwise be unreadable. One of the coolest things, though, is how the pawns will talk amongst one another, discussing their journey with their masters and how your choices were different from theirs. Hints that the world offers a lot more without being too obvious. Hired pawns will even help you find hidden items their master collected during their playthrough.

It’s a clever way of making online important and worthwhile without forcing an always-online connection for no reason, like so many other games that mandate it.

It goes without saying that not everything in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is as good as one would hope for. For starters, the save system. You only get two saves, one for the last rested inn and the other a manual save that can be overwritten anytime with the auto-save system. It’s the same system carried forward from the first game, and like here, it’s not very well explained.

Even if it was, it’s still not a fun system to work with. I completely understand that the studio wants players to live with the decisions they made, but it’s also a system that can easily turn a lot of players away. I’ve lost countless hours myself after dying because of being restricted from saving in some parts, and the auto-save never kicked in. This system also locks you to a single character unless you’re on PC, which allows you to easily back up your saves by hopping into the folders. Consoles have cloud backup, but that will eventually, at one point, result in a lost save should you ever decide to download that file or upload a new one.

It’s an inconvenience many have voiced before, and I hoped the sequel would have a better system. Sadly, this is not the case.

But my biggest gripe isn’t with the save system but with general traversal in the game. The world of Dragon’s Dogma 2 is far larger than the previous games, but like those games, you’ll spend much time walking to locations or using travel carts. Fast travel does return here via Portcrystals, but it’s so limited. When you get your first Portcrystal, the game tells you you can only set ten of these at any moment. It’s more than enough, and some cities have a permanent one that unlocks after touching it. But that’s not the case for all major cities and towns out there, and after 60 hours, I’ve only found three Portcrystals myself.

Sure, you might think that’s a bit of a nitpick, but Capcom is also heavily monetizing Dragon’s Dogma 2. Most of the items they plan on selling are easy to get, but the one that stuck out is that they’re selling Portcrystals at $3 a pop. That doesn’t sit well with me for what I probably consider one of the best items in the game to use, especially with how rare they’re to come by. There could be an item somewhere in the game that changes that, but based on my time, I haven’t seen it yet.

The stamina and weight system are constant balancing acts in every portion of the game. Never have I felt like a game was making me think I was doing something wrong than the stamina and weight system in Dragon’s Dogma 2. You can only run a few feet before running out of stamina when out of combat. It’s punishing for simply just wanting to explore areas. In towns, you have unlimited stamina, yet as soon as you step out, that meter starts draining for simply making a short run to the next place. Why can’t the open world have that everywhere besides during combat?

The nice thing about all these issues is that they should be addressable. In the worst case, mods will probably improve on some of them on PC, much like in the original games.

This brings me to the next section of our review, which is the visuals and performance.

A Stunning Next-Gen Showcase of the RE Engine.

Capcom’s RE Engine, which debuted with 2017’s Resident Evil 7 and was followed by the remake of Resident Evil 2 in 2019, has been quite the showcase for the past few years. While initially created to power the next generation of Resident Evil games, the publisher has used the engine in other games and genres since its debut, such as Street Fighter 6, Devil May Cry 5, Exoprimal, and even Ace Attorney.

It’s an engine capable of quite a lot, though arguably, outside of potentially Monster Hunter Wilds, it has yet to be used for a game of this size and graphical rendering. All past games have always had some unique art style tied to them, and more commonly, they were linear-style games. Resident Evil Village was probably the closest we’d seen the engine to produce an “open world” with its wide environments aiming for realistic visuals. Still, it was a frontier that the engine had yet to conquer.

Well, that all changes with Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is an absolute showcase of the engine’s capabilities, not just from a visual standpoint but also from a technical one.

Starting with the visuals, this is, in my opinion, the best-looking RE Engine game to date. Environments are so rich in details, regardless of the graphical level or system you’re playing on. The PC version of the game is a full showstopper when it comes to the visual quality and animations being displayed. Mind you, there are some areas that can be rough here and there, with the lighting producing weird effects in some cases, but in general, Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks as next-gen as it gets.

It wasn’t a title that I was going in with the mindset that it would set some sort of graphical benchmark, and yet here I am saying it does (PC with everything maxed out, at least, not so much on consoles). This is especially true in Vernworth, the massive capital of the world, as it’s brimming with rich details during the day while showcasing the power of lighting at night. The game has a day-and-night cycle, and no matter the time and location, it all looks stunning.

Capcom doesn’t just pull from a single type of environment either, as there are plenty of locations to wander through, and again, it all looks so damn good going through it. The large set pieces, those with more baked lighting and such, are some of the best I’ve seen this generation, and they blend in beautifully with a tone that the story wants to tell in those given moments.

On PC there’s support for ray-trace lighting, which really makes environments and such pop more with the dynamic lighting. It still looks great with it off, but that ray-tracing is truly on another level we’ve yet to see in RE Engine games.

Now, onwards to what most of you are probably wondering about: performance.

Given Dragon’s Dogma 2’s size and scope and how little the studio has talked about performance outside of consoles being unlocked with 30 frames-per-second as a baseline, one might expect this is an indication of a poorly optimized game. Well, running on a PC rig equipped with an Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU and AMD 7900x CPU, performance on such a beast is, in general, rock solid outside of one area I’ll talk about shortly.

I have a 120fps 4K supported display, though in most cases, I will stick to 60fps as I play with every kind of setting enabled and, on the highest, usually plays smoother at 60fps, from my experience. I played at 120 fps for a while, which was mostly solid throughout most areas.

Moving down to a 4070, 3080, and even a 3060 and weaker CPU systems along with resolution decreases, Dragon’s Dogma 2 held frames very well throughout testing. There were some minor dips here and there out in the open parts, but nothing too detrimental.

The console versions of the game, though uncapped, targets around 30fps. That may not sound that good, and in most cases, I would agree, but with the right techniques and motion application, 30fps can look really good. There are dips, some big ones, but in general, I didn’t mind how 30fps looked and ran here. Don’t get me wrong; I’ll take 60fps and higher any day of the week when it’s an option, but it’s an option that is not on the console version.

But it does look like Capcom is using the right motion blur and other motion options correctly here because the game looks smooth in motion. We’ve had plenty of other 30fps games where it’s really noticeable with dips, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 does have those on the console, but generally, the frames hold strong and steady. That’s coming from someone who does experience straining in their eyes when playing a game at 30fps. So, if you have a PC that can handle Dragon’s Dogma 2, especially since it has FSR and DLSS support, then I highly recommend playing the game there. But if you only have a console, the 30fps dilemma isn’t as big as some try to make it out to be, at least in this case.

I know when 30fps is an issue, as there’s normally visible pacing and such. There’s some of that in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but honestly, I would compare the smoothness to something like Driveclub. It’s a 30fps racer that you’d have a hard time telling if it’s 30fps, all because of how good the motion blur and smoothing effects are. The visuals, on the other hand, have clearly been toned down in a lot of areas to even get it to run as smoothly as it does. It’s still a very beautiful game on consoles, but you’ll notice a lot more rough patches compared to its PC counterpart. It doesn’t seem like ray-trace lighting is in the console version. Not surprising considering how demanding any ray-tracing feature can be.

Now, the one area that we did notice is an issue across every tested hardware, and something other reviewers mentioned to us is that as beautiful as Vernworth is, the area is consistent with frame dips. No matter what settings I went with, there was no way to counter the dips experienced in the city. The dips were less noticeable on the stronger GPU and CPU combos, but I still noticed some severe ones here and there. But the weaker the hardware, the more dips occurred. I suspect Vernworth is a very CPU-demanding area, given the size, the number of NPCs, and the schedules they run on, something that isn’t as extensive in other parts of the game. It’s really just this part here, and we expect some improvements to come post-launch.

Wake Up, Arisen, You Have a Dragon to Slay

If you’d told me a few years back that we’d get a sequel to Dragon’s Dogma, I wouldn’t believe you, and I’d probably cut all forms of contact with you for playing with my heart like that. Yet, here we are, over 12 years later, on the eve of the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, getting that sequel that everyone wanted but no one ever thought would ever get made.

I’m amazed it took Capcom this long to do one. It seemed like a no-brainer to do it, yet we had to wait over 12 years for it to come to fruition. Leading into the release, I had doubts that the magic touch the studio and its director had for the first game wouldn’t be something they could just pick up from again, resulting in some weird, hollowed, poor attempt that would cut back everything about the original that we loved. We’ve seen it happen with so many other projects from other studios before.

But I kept my faith up, hoping that the world I would soon return to would once again ignite the passion I had for it from the first game. To say the least, Dragon’s Dogma 2 has excelled in nearly all my expectations, and it is an easy contender for Game of the Year.

While I know it’s not the perfect game, and certainly not one for everyone, I do know that it’ll be a title that I’ll find myself returning to year after year until Dragon’s Dogma 3 is made. Let’s hope that’s not another 12 years, but if it is, at least we’ll have a sequel to keep us busy for the years to come. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an instant classic, the ultimate RPG adventure that fans have been dreaming about, making that long wait well worth it.

Score: 9.5/10

Pros:

• Satisfying combat offers good improvements over the first.
• The pawn system is better than ever.
• A massive open world that is just waiting for you to explore.
• Side quests and explorations are some of the best we’ve seen in a game. If you loved how Elden Ring handled it, you’re going to love it here.
• Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of hours of content worth.
• The PC version is a beautiful showcase of the RE Engine’s capabilities, while the PS5’s performance is solid. Overall, the visuals are stunning.

Cons:

• One save-only system, a feature from the first game, is still not great.
• One of the best items in the game feels so rare that they decided to sell it as a microtransaction.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.