Dragon's Dogma II Review

A sequel well worth the wait!

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Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S

Reviewed on: PC

Developer: Capcom co.

Publisher: Capcom co.

Release: March 22, 2024

Time Played: 45 Hours

Genre: Action RPG

ESRB: M

Intro:

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the highly anticipated sequel to the 2012 release of Dragon’s Dogma. An exciting open world full of discoveries and terrifying monsters. If your unfamiliar with the series don’t worry, you can hop right into this game with no knowledge from the first game. I have finished the first one and put a lot of time into this game and would love to share with you what can be expected from Dragon’s Dogma 2 before you buy it. And stick around till the end to see my personal thoughts and rating of this game.

Where it starts

After an extensive character creation, you wake up in a cell, a prisoner forced to labor deep in some mines. It doesn’t take long before disastrous events help you escape and discover you are Arisen, a special person chosen to hunt down and fight the Dragon. With this newfound knowledge you will need to master a vocation, or two, make some friends, and fight through hundreds of vicious monsters on the grand adventure ahead. Do you have what it takes?

Can the kids watch?

Dragon’s Dogma two can be quite violent with all the fighting, sometimes you will come up against human enemies, but most of the time it will be mythical monsters like goblins, griffins, and dragons. There was a little bit of blood splatter, and some dismemberment of certain monsters, and there are a couple beasts with exposed breasts but no nipples. It is worthy of it’s M rating, but most of the game doesn’t cross the line.

Vocations

Choosing the right Vocation is paramount to your survivability, but not permanent. You start the game with one of four basic Vocations, unlocking the rest as you progress. While you fight you gain experience for your character level, and discipline for your vocation level. Discipline will be used at Vocation Guilds to learn new skills in your chosen Vocation, that is also where you can change your vocation. Each vocation has unique skills and fighting styles, it was a lot of fun testing them out to see which one fits best.

Your best friend

Almost always at your side will be your own customized Pawn. Pawns are beings from the Rift, sworn to obey the Arisen during their journey. They will help you in combat and mule all the random items you don’t want to carry yourself. You will oversee your pawn’s vocation, skills, gear, and bags. They will loot chests and pick up things from the ground for you as well. Your pawn will even call out when they see a chest or treasure nearby. They do a very good job relieving some of the burden you have as an Arisen.

Online Pawns

Scattered throughout the game you will find Rift Stones, at these locations you can reach out into the internet and rent a pawn created by your fellow gamers, your pawn is in there too for everyone else. Pawns near your character level are free to rent, but if you start looking at pawns far past you, it will cost you Rift Crystals, found in the world and earned when people borrow your pawn. You can rent a total of two pawns to create a well-balanced team, but they don’t level with you, so you will be trading them out often.

Helping Out

While moving about you will be approached every now and again by someone who desperately needs the help of an Arisen. After hearing them out you’re given a new quest to undertake. The quest log usually shows you where you need to go, but sometimes there is no known destination and you’re forced to look around manually. Sometimes you may have a Pawn with you that has prior knowledge of the quest from playing with someone else, if you want you can tell them to lead the way, taking away a lot of the busy work of searching.

Traveling the Wilds (exploration)

The world in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is quite vast, and full of amazing discoveries waiting for you. There are main paths between locations with small turns to side paths you can travel along, fighting monsters and meeting new people all the time. But if you venture a little off the beaten path you may be lucky enough to find a cave full of enemies and treasures. It’s a good idea to keep your eyes peeled at all times, but your pawns may call out nearby hidden paths or caves, if you’re lucky.

So many ways to fight (combat)

While in combat you’ll have access to the skills attached to your chosen vocation, but there is so much more to fighting than just those skills. In the battle area you can find rocks or explosive barrels to pick up and throw at your enemies, doing massive damage, you can even pick an enemy up and throw them! There are a lot of ways to finish a fight quickly, if take stock of the surrounding areas when getting into a fight. There may even be random NPCs walking nearby that hop in for some of the fun.

Big Monsters

Most of the enemies you encounter will be small things, about your size, but there will be times when you come across a big beast, denoted with their own health bar at the top of your screen. These big baddies bring a whole mess of trouble with strong moves and a lot of health to burn through. You don’t have to stay on the ground to take them out though, you can grapple onto their legs and start climbing to find a nice sensitive spot to hit, eventually knocking them over making them prone to a lot of damage. The more you learn about your vocation and their move sets, the “boss” enemies can get much easier to deal with.

Weapons & Clothes

While exploring the game you will find shops selling new gear and weapons for your characters, each new one providing higher stats at much higher costs. The gear in stores is really good, but some of it can be found in the wild for free. You will also be able to upgrade your gear at the shops. Upgrades require gold and materials ranging from plants to monster parts, the more useful the equipment the rarer the parts you’ll need to upgrade. Between you and your pawn you could be spending a lot of money and time trying to get the best of the best.

Combining Items

If you and your pawns tend to pick everything up, you will end up with a lot of different plants and meats in your bags while adventuring. A lot of these items can be mixed up together to make many different items from curatives to arrows. It’s helpful to have a small stash of heals on hand instead of depending solely on magical healing. One thing to watch out for would be the slow decay of items while in your bags. Edible foods will age and eventually go rotten, losing most of their nutritional usefulness. They can still be used to make lantern oil so if you lose track of time, there’s always that.

Fast Traveling

The world you can travel in is quite large, and sometimes you don’t want to go on the tedious journey between one place to another. In those cases, you have a couple of different options. There is an ox cart that travels the main road at certain times of the day, if you wanted you could pay the driver and hop on. You can sit and watch the oxcart move slowly or take a nap to wake up when you arrive, or if a band of monsters attack the cart on the way. Time will still move forward in the game, but in real time it’s a fast travel. Or you can use a ferrystone to teleport to a discovered portcrystal. There are a few permanent portcrystals in the game, but you can also find a few to place wherever you want.

Outro:

I am having a blast playing this game, I’ve put well over forty hours into it and am nowhere near ready to finish it. With all the different areas to explore and treasures to find I’m spending hours walking around and enjoying every minute of it. The environments are gorgeous and immersive when I’m either walking deep in the forest with the sounds of the wind traveling through the trees and some songbirds singing their songs or deep in a dark cave with the light of my lantern only reaching so far in front of me and some scary monster roaring from deep within. This game was so well made.

It’s obvious a lot of thought and work went into the creation of the combat system and vocations. Every vocation feels unique with a little crossover between a couple of them. Some are straight physical damage others are magic damage and a couple mixing the two damage types together for some awesome effects. I found a vocation I fell in love with, but I’m still compelled to try them all out and at least max their level, it’s easy to swap vocations and try new things out. And not only the different vocation skills, but the option to grapple enemies or throw random items around in fights was a very cool mechanic to play with. I didn’t even have to be in combat, I could pick one of my pawns up and throw them toward an unreachable point for them to throw a ladder down, it’s awesome how many different routes are available to accomplish a single task.

There were a lot of different quests to undertake while playing. Some were even time sensitive so if I started it but didn’t finish in the allotted time it would fail, never to be tried again. And some quests have different outcomes depending on choices I made or how I finished the quest. I’m not clear on whether it would change the story much or just the rewards, but the game is good enough I’d want to go through it again and try a few things differently.

The overall story was alright, but it didn’t feel like the focus of the game. Of course, big things happened as I moved through, but it was much more enjoyable exploring and leveling up. Not that I would want a bigger focus on the story, the game is great as is, I just don’t feel like the story telling was front and center. Between exploring and taking on side quests I almost forgot what was going on in the main story when I got back to it. Have you ever played any of the Dragon’s Dogma games? Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

And without further ado it’s time to rate this game

The visuals were excellent, the fine details on the monsters were awesome, I’m giving it a five.

The story didn’t stand out in any special way, but it wasn’t terrible, I’m going with a three.

The gameplay was smooth and worked exactly how it should, for the most part, sometimes it was kind of difficult to command pawns for certain tasks and there were some collision issues, but it’s still getting a four.

Replayability feels very high as well, this game will definitely leave a mark and stay in my memory for a while, pulling me back in I’m sure, it’s getting another four.

Not sure if you can tell or not but I absolutely love this game, I’m having so much fun it’s deserving of another five.

Giving Dragon’s Dogma 2 an average score of four point two out of five, because of that I’m going to be placing it in my Special Reserve. I love this game, like in an unhealthy way, it’s keeping me from getting work done, like this review, and it’s mocking me as I try to go to sleep at night at responsible times. It might be a problem loving a game this much, but it feels good.