Dragon’s Dogma 2, like its beloved but compromised predecessor, can look like a conventional and unimpressive fantasy action-RPG on the surface. Knights, archers, and mages journey between medieval towns plagued by monsters, completing quests, crafting new gear, and getting stronger. But occasionally something unexpected happens. A giant griffon plops down into the field you’re in, you jump on its back to start wailing on it with a sword, and before you know it the mythical creature has taken to the sky and flown you halfway across the map before shaking you off.
Unexpected and emergent moments like this show why Dragon’s Dogma 2 can be so compelling, and also how it doubles as a robust remake of a 2012 game many struggled to fall in love with. I played the sequel for a little over an hour recently and came away excited and impressed. While Capcom has said that Dragon’s Dogma 2 will build on the first game’s story, most of what I got to see was the stuff I remember doing from the first game: fighting goblins on dirt roads. climbing up the periodic cyclops’ back, and adventuring alongside a varied cast of NPC companions called “Pawns.” Except it was all much better than the first time around.
Dragon’s What
Dragon’s Dogma has a long and contested history. It came to Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2012, just a year after Skyrim and Dark Souls. Some loved it, others found it tedious and boring. In the years since, fans have championed its excellent third-person action-RPG combat and emergent monster fights. Re-appraisals of the Dark Arisen edition on Xbox One, PS4, and later Switch have helped solidify its legacy as an underappreciated classic, with Capcom’s 2022 announcement of a long-awaited sequel reigniting hopes that famed director Hideaki Itsuno and his team can deliver on the full promise of the original game the second time around.
The first thing I noticed was just how much nicer Dragon’s Dogma 2 looked in-person than some of its recent gameplay reveals from Tokyo Game Show 2023 left me feeling. I played on PlayStation 5 and the game is using the RE Engine this time around, like Capcom’s other tentpole franchises (Resident Evil, Monster Hunter) and it looks crisp and detailed while still retaining the slightly desaturated and flat aesthetic of the first game. It fits, and is a refreshing move away from some overly maximalist visuals that can make other open-world games feel overwhelming, especially for a game in which so much of the emphasis is on the moment-to-moment action.
Combat feels even more crunchy this time around, with satisfying knife stabs, sword swings, and shield bashes. Magic spells and special skills are embellished with plenty of visual flair. The fundamental appeal of Dragon’s Dogma is an RPG that mixes all of the RPG world-building minutia of an Elder Scrolls with the tight and varied combat of a Dark Souls. And like the first game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 left me content to simply roam the map looking for more monsters to bash. But of course there was more to do than simply keep climbing up on giants Shadow of the Colossus-style to attack their weak points.
In my hour with the game I began as a human Archer, peppering monsters with arrows from a distance before, in search of something more substantial, moving to a Beastran Fighter. One of my pawns guided me to a quest in a nearby set of mines where I quickly set to work rolling boulders down hills onto enemy encampments, occasionally accidentally killing my companions in the process. A bridge let me cut the suspension ropes to send a few hapless goblins to their deaths. Once all the foes in the mines laid slain, the quest was over.
Later I moved onto the Thief role—the sequel’s closest equivalent to the first game’s Strider—whose arsenal of frenzied attacks made it by far the most versatile to play. I headed to one of the nearby towns where a guild lets you swap classes on the fly for a price, and ox carts let you fast-travel from one location to the next. Except it’s not fast-travel the way many players think of it. Waiting for the ox cart required sitting on a bench and taking a nap. When it arrived I had to pay the owner to get inside the carriage. Then my character nodded off again before eventually arriving at their destination. Like needing to carry fuel for a lantern and light it at night or risk being completely bamboozled by the darkness, Dragon’s Dogma 2 continues doubling down on popular gameplay ideas with bespoke wrinkles that add to the game’s sense of texture and realism.
One of the ox cart owners asked me to deliver a letter to his friend and fight any monsters I met along the road, and therein lies another fundamental truth about the Dragon’s Dogma formula resurrected over a decade later: a lot of fetch quests. The game’s big innovation are the varied AI-controlled pawns you can recruit that help you in combat, take you on adventures, and chat with you in-between. The results in combat can be glorious, but the overarching structure of the quests themselves can feel like the stripped-down chores of an MMORPG you’re grinding through alone. Sometimes performing the rote tasks involved make the world feel lived in, but often they can just be uneventful and repetitive.
The one thing my Dragon’s Dogma 2 demo didn’t show me was an interesting story thread or quest chain that would make me excited to explore the world and learn more about it. That could be Capcom holding those story beats back rather than revealing them in an early build, but it leaves open the question of whether the sequel can address one of the biggest weaknesses of the first game.
Chasing griffons and chimeras across grassy fields and shaded forests with prettier graphics, better Pawn AI, and over a decade of other technology and design improvements will be enough for me, though perhaps not for players who overlooked Dragon’s Dogma in the past. But based on my demo at least, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is shaping up to have all the tools necessary to become the widely acclaimed hit it deserves to be.
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