Capcom's fan-favourite action role-player returns with a major new DLC expansion that will challenge even the most experienced players. Dragon's Dogma is a role-playing franchise that leans into its contrarianism. For one thing, despite the enormous popularity of the original, it's taken 14 years for a sequel to emerge, but its gameplay is where things depart the most from long-established role-playing standards.
A big part of that is its intense sense of danger, where despite being the dragon-chosen Arisen, and rightful sovereign of the realm, you regularly face creatures more than capable of killing your entire party. That party comprises three AI-controlled pawns – one made and equipped by you, the other two made by players online, who can also hire a version of your pawn, leaving you gifts if their performance merited it. Choosing the right team to accompany your Arisen is vital to survival, and having a good mix of melee, ranged, and magical support gives you the best chance of making it through battles that, especially at the start of the game, can be pretty taxing.
A Return to Formidable Danger
One of the reasons Dragon's Dogma has such ardent fans is its singular atmosphere. The landscape is dotted with realistic-looking castle ruins, set against its glorious countryside, and even when you stick to the roads you'll frequently be assailed by goblins, bandits, and larger, more mythical predators. Ogres, griffins, and cyclopes stomp or flap into view and before you've had a chance to level up enough their arrival is a terrifying moment. As the game often reminds you during load times, running away is nothing to be ashamed of.
As the game progresses, your party soon gets to be almost invincibly powerful, with those formerly frightening adversaries dismissed in a hail of magic arrows and sparkly hammer blows. It certainly makes your Arisen feel as omnipotent as their in-game reputation suggests, but you do start to miss those formative days, when just travelling to a neighbouring town felt like an exercise in perilous brinkmanship.
Dragon's Dogma 2 came out two years ago, so it may be hard to recall that sense of vulnerability, but as you start out in Dark Arisen, the game's sizeable DLC expansion, you'll rediscover the fear of randomly encountering overwhelming odds. You'll also need to figure out how to play the game again, your multiple powers and maxed-out character classes being dangerously half-remembered – which would've made some sort of re-training tool useful.
Exploring the Frozen Island of Norgan
What you get instead is a griffin ride to the frozen island of Norgan, whose bestiary is several orders of magnitude more dangerous than the mainland's. On arrival you meet a small band of mute but savage warriors, the Beorcan. Accompanied by howling white dire wolves, they quietly and efficiently lay waste to your party, which turns out to be a fitting welcome. That's because Norgan's wildlife is refreshingly lethal. The game advises you to be at least level 40 to take it on, but our Arisen was almost level 60 when we landed, and battles still felt ruthlessly challenging.
As in the early hours of the original game, you'll find yourself having to be cautious, timing each blow and regularly absenting yourself from the action to heal, before carefully re-engaging. It's a return to the old feeling of pioneering excitement as you gradually expand your knowledge of the new map. Fortunately, help is at hand in the form of relics. You'll find these on the corpses of fallen enemies, as well as in chests and piles of rubble secreted around the impressively natural-looking, snowbound countryside.
Like engrams in Destiny, relics are useless on their own, needing to be taken to Jiera, the village elder, for appraisal before you can equip them. They can turn out to be armour, weaponry, or magic rings but all are significantly stronger than anything you'll come across on the mainland. You'll also find Norgan's tougher monsters supply massive amounts of experience points, making the first few hours on the island feel like a return to the early game's rapid progression.
Dark Arisen isn't afraid to hurl multiple enemies your way long before you're equipped to handle them, but give yourself a few hours of hard-earned victories, and those campsites teeming with Beorcan and dire wolves become a lot less scary. While some of the beasts you encounter look like bigger, more aggressive versions of their main game counterparts, there are plenty of entirely new creatures to slaughter, each with their own attacks and weaknesses to learn and exploit. There's also a welcome preponderance of dungeons to explore, many of which loop back on themselves, so you can exit without tediously having to retrace your steps.
New Hazards and Changes
Monsters aren't the only risk to life and limb. The further north you travel, the colder the weather gets and you'll start getting hit by snowy whiteouts that limit visibility, prevent use of the mini-map, and permanently reduce your party's stamina until you're able to rest at an inn or campfire. You will discover ways to mitigate that, including thermal clothing and magical heated stones, but it adds to the learning curve and general uncertainty about your team's safety.
In the original game, traversal was always a factor, your party having to march long roads or use ponderous ox carts to travel between distant destinations. There were portcrystals that let you fast travel to them directly, but they were scarce and using them required rare and expensive single-use ferry stones, making it a luxury only to be applied in the tightest of spots. A few months ago, the base game received an update that gave all players an infinite ferry stone, making fast travel an everyday facility. While it certainly adds to the convenience, and makes Norgan, with its more numerous portcrystals, a great deal more accessible than it would have been, we can't help missing the old feel of dangerous navigation, when you were never quite sure whether you were going to make it as far as your destination.
Those forced route marches also meant there would be times when a major encounter saw the sun go down while you were still in battle, a long way from the nearest settlement. In most games that would simply mean firing up a lantern, but in Dragon's Dogma much fiercer supernatural beasts inhabit the darkness, adding to the urgency of finding refuge at a village or camping spot.
That's just one of the ways Dark Arisen changes the familiar rhythms of the original game. Random battles are harsher and occur more often, and you'll find a rare new currency, Norgan ducats, that you can use to buy magical items. Back on the mainland there are new Trials of the Lost Rites; heavily defended dungeons with powerful rewards at the end. If your original game save is far enough along, it's worth completing some of those before you hit Norgan, to soften some of its initial shock.
Switch 2 and Verdict
This is also the first time Dragon's Dogma 2 has been available on Switch 2 and while the action is identical, there's noticeable pop-in as textures and chunks of scenery suddenly appear, and not quite as much detail as you'll see on PlayStation 5. It's not something likely to bother you unless you play both versions back-to-back though and it remains an impressive feat that it works on the lower-powered console at all.
For players who've yet to experience Dragon's Dogma 2, it'll take some time before their party is strong enough to take on Dark Arisen but it's an experience well worth the perseverance. The tougher, combat and dungeon-orientated approach allows for rapid progress and it's a welcome return for the series' trademark feeling of continual, exciting jeopardy.
