Dragon’s Dogma II just says “Dragon’s Dogma” on the title screen. That’s because it’s not a true sequel but more of a remake of the original concept. The game takes place in a similar parallel world and incorporates many of the story elements, mechanics, and ideas from the original game. That’s a far cry from a direct sequel by any measure but the original game never really lived up to the ideas that the developers had for it to begin with. That’s not to say it isn’t good, but we just didn’t have the technology at the time.
This new version of the game is significantly larger than the original (about four times larger) and still takes its cues from Europe and North Africa for designs and backgrounds. You play The Arisen, a person who has been linked to a giant evil dragon which is ravaging your home country of Vermund and threatening the neighboring country of Battahl, which is mostly populated by lion-like humanoids called beastrens. There are elves about too once you find them and no one particularly likes a giant sentient dragon attacking them. Fortunately as the Arisen, you have the ability to summon Pawns, semi-sentient creatures of various species (human and beastren primarily) to aid you in your fight against the dragon.
Pawns are one of the key mechanics in Dragon’s Dogma II and if you played the first game, you’re already yawning because this isn’t news to you. Nothing has really changed here for that. You summon a primary pawn and up to two secondary pawns which can be dismissed at anytime and returned to an extra-dimensional rift that can be accessed through magic stones. These characters help you in battle, direct you when you are lost, and even help manage your items. Instead of levelling up, secondary pawns stay at a static level. They can be used as mules for your gear, but as you gain power, you’ll want to dismiss them and hire more powerful pawns from the rift with Rift Crystal points. Some hidden lost riftstones even have unique pawns. If you choose to play online, you’ll also be able to recruit other players’ custom pawns, but even offline, you’ll have access to a huge variety of Capcom created ones. Just don’t dismiss them without taking your gear from them as they’ll take it all with them!
Both you and your pawns have a class. Your class and your primary pawn’s class can be changed at the vocational guild, allowing you to build up various skills and shift between them to find the play style you’re best suited to. There are ten vocations to choose from including things like fighter, mage, archer, trickster, and warfarer. Pawns are limited to six of those vocations and a few of them have to be unlocked before you can use them but depending on your approach to gameplay, you might not shift vocations for a long time. That’s because Dragon’s Dogma II is unique among open world action RPGs.
This is not your standard game by any means. Normally, when you play a game like Skyrim or Dragon Age: Inquisition, there are markers for quests and recommendations on where to go. Not so in Dragon’s Dogma II. Instead, you’ll be handed quests by people you run into or occasionally main quests from major characters. The game doesn’t distinguish the two however so you just have a list of things to do in your quest menu. They might be as simple as finding some flowers for a girl in the poor quarter or as vague as finding information on a man mentioned in a letter with no other details at all. If the characters mentioning the quest don’t know where to go to find what you’re looking for, there are no directions either. You’ll just have to wander around and figure it out.
That’s kind of the key element in Dragon’s Dogma II aside from pawns. This is a game that has no clear directions other than to prove that you’re the Arisen and defeat the dragon. How you do that pretty much depends on who you talk to and what you do however. The game uses a day and night cycle and events are often timed, leaving you having to choose which tasks to fulfill if you take too much on. Take too long and someone might die or people might turn against you. The game doesn’t tell you any of that though. You just find out by wandering about in the world. You can muck everything up simply by ignoring people or become a hero without really trying to by managing to pull off some key things. Much like real life however, you won’t know how things will turn out until after the fact.
This leads to more than a bit of frustration. It’s true that we as gamers often complain that there’s too much handholding in games but Dragon’s Dogma shows us what a game would be like with essentially no handholding at all. Turns out it’s kind of frustrating and confusing. Not knowing where to go, how to proceed, or even why you’re doing things sometimes can be downright irritating. In one quest you need to get dressed up for a masquerade and meet with someone at a fancy ball. However, no one tells you exactly where the ball is. They also don’t tell you that the clothes you need cost 300K in gold and you definitely won’t have that much. So you have to intuit what to do and hunt around until you find someone that might have those clothes that you can steal from. Stealing isn’t a thing in Dragon’s Dogma II so just go on and take whatever you can grab even if it’s right behind the shopkeeper. It still won’t help you. You’d think you’d get some good coin for those clothes when you were done with them too, but they only sell for a couple of thousand gold and that isn’t much.
A fair portion of Dragon’s Dogma II is similarly convoluted in design. Again, if you’ve played the first one, you’re expecting this, but if you go in cold, this is one odd approach to game design. With no idea where to go and what to do, you’re forced to explore. There are enemies absolutely everywhere and they respawn now and again, so expect to be fighting a lot. Once you wander around, you’ll randomly encounter people that ask you to do things or information that leads you to go somewhere else but expect to do a lot of walking because Dragon’s Dogma II doesn’t have a standard fast travel system. Of course it doesn’t. You can take Ox Carts from area to area once you’ve visited each end of the route or you can use magic crystals to travel to a handful of key locations. Unfortunately, each crystal to travel with costs you 10K in gold for a single use. That’s a lot of scratch to skip walking. Ox carts are slower but only cost 200 gold per leg of the journey. You press the Doze Off button, wake up and you’re there, unless your ox cart gets stopped by random enemies and you have to fight your way out. Some of them are nasty too and can smash the cart, leaving you stranded. Not good.
For the most part however, you’ll be walking from place to place, besieged by enemies and slowing down bit by bit as you pick up gear and gold and max out your encumbrance. Yes there’s encumbrance too and it sucks. You can carry your gear and weapons, a few additional items, and after that, you start to become loaded down and walk and move slower. You’ll also burn through stamina faster meaning you’ll be walking and not running. Ugh. While you’re out in the world and fighting, taking hits also lowers your maximum hit points which makes you more and more vulnerable and after it gets dark, things get really nasty. That means stopping to camp at campfires. This replenishes your party’s health to full and allows you to swap from day to night. Unfortunately, if you, say, dismiss a pawn that happens to be carrying your camping gear and they take it with them, you won’t be camping at a fire and you’re in for a long desperate struggle through the dark to get to safety. The dark is particularly dark here too, requiring you to carry a lantern and lantern oil in order to see anything at all at night.
Whew. Sounds weird, right? It is. If anything, Dragon’s Dogma II is more reminiscent of old computer RPGs than much modern. It’s hard to really classify the game, but if you really need some imagery, think of it as Great Value Dragon Age: Inquisition. Nothing is really as good as Inquisition but it’s got the same kind of vibe and story. Just like real Great Value products, sometimes Dragon’s Dogma II manages to excel more than you’d expect, but often it’s just kind of weird and acceptable rather than what you might really have wanted. That goes for the story, that goes for the mechanics, and that even goes for the combat, which we’ve ignored up to this point. Combat in Dragon’s Dogma II is awkward and weird. Each vocation has a different approach to combat but your pawns are constantly getting in your way and doing their own thing while you try to fight.
The combat interface is loose and fairly simplistic. No odd combos or weird moves to make, just a shoulder button that drops down an equipped attack wheel and another that blocks. Face buttons to attack and some special moves that you buy at the vocational guild. You can even grab enemies (and allies) and throw them. On the PC version of Dragon’s Dogma II, the game is equally playable with keyboard and mouse or controller, but if you haven’t played it a while, controller is definitely more intuitive. Either way, you’re in for some frantic combat as enemies come at you from all sides in free-for-all combat situations that randomly pop up throughout the game.
That doesn’t sound that bad, right? It isn’t, but the problem is it isn’t all that fun either. Half of the time your pawns destroy everyone before you even get a chance to and the other half of the time they’re worse than useless. Repetitive combat is frustrating at the best of times, but in Dragon’s Dogma II, you’ll fight the same enemies over and over again. Granted there are some spectacularly cool gigantic enemies as well like huge ogres, manticores, medusas, griffins, and more which definitely spice things up. These larger enemies are fascinating because you can use the grab to climb up on them and attack them while they whirl around attacking your pawns. The combat for these monsters is absolutely epic and cinematic as all heck. It also gets boring when you have to stop and fight a giant monster for 5 minutes, then keep going only to run into yet another giant monster. After a while, there’s really no point other than levelling and you’ll just run past them and keep going so you don’t waste daylight.
That’s the crux of the issue here. Everything is put in because it seems cool and novel and unique but nothing really feels like it meshes together effectively as you play the game. Even hours and hours in, you’ll still end up floundering to figure out what to do, where to go, or why you’re even bothering. The main quest line barely has any hook and it’s hard to care about any of the characters you encounter, creating a lack of immersion that becomes tedious. It’s ironic because the detailed world building here should have the exact opposite effect but for some reason, all that devotion to creating a living, breathing world makes it feel like even more of shell or a skin. There’s one quest where you arrive in town only to find a kid has been taken by wolves. You get the information as to where he’s located and off you go. But if you didn’t talk to enough people, he’s not there even though you know where he is. Back you go to talk to more people just to find out that he’s exactly where you already were. Shocking. At this point, it was time to rest and heal the party and honestly, since the game has time sensitive events, maybe the wolves will eat the kid and we can all move on. Unfortunately, the wolves just kind of saved him in the back of their cave until The Arisen arrived just in the nick of time to save him. Stupid wolves. Then it was time to bring him home, but along the way, three or four groups of enemies attacked and the kid disappeared somewhere. Perhaps he got stuck in some terrain or something but he was nowhere to be found. Returning to the town to tell his uncle that the boy was saved, the uncle had forgotten entirely about his nephew and just tried to sell stuff from his shop. That quest is still on the queue, destined to never be completed.
Other experiences are similar. Remember that masquerade? Once you get the clothes, there’s a chance that when you actually show up, there’s no one to talk to there to complete the quest. There’s nothing you can do about it either. Another time the Arisen was asked to infiltrate a prison and told that if they got caught, there’d be no help for them. Well, there’s no sneaking so after just walking in, the guards came after the party. There was nothing to do but slaughter them all and dump their bodies off the cliff into the ocean. From then on, the prison was unguarded and no one noticed at all. There was literally no impact for a major prison break in the largest city of the game. Most of the time, things work great in Dragon’s Dogma II but with so many moving parts, it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll run into a variety of weird problems, often at inopportune times. The dragon you’re supposed to fight at the end of the game for example? It’s got something like six life bars and you’ll just randomly stumble upon it repeatedly, well before there’s a chance to defeat it. Hopefully you like running away like Sir Robin in Monty Python and The Holy Grail.
Even more frustrating is that Dragon’s Dogma II is a beautiful game that’s begging to be explored. The scenic vistas everywhere are spectacular, the enemies are rendered in painstaking detail and the buildings are lovingly crafted and full of all sorts of visual interest. Character armor, weapons, the whole nine yards…it all looks fantastic. This is the sort of crisp design and visual work you want to see in a major title and it looks great on the Xbox Series X. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t look spectacular is the small text that you’ll have to read…larger text definitely would have been nice on occasion, especially with the incredibly dense menu system. This is a spectacle of a game and the developers clearly loved the content and did it amazing justice here.
On the PC side of things, gameplay is a bit less smooth than on the Series X. Even using a 3080Ti, there are visual bugs and framerate drops. Slight blurring here and there happens in some games these days and it’s understandable. However, the framerate drops on a high end card are a different story. Remember all those neat objects and background items that make Dragon’s Dogma II feel like a living world? They also cause massive framerate drops on the PC version and when there are too many items or characters on screen, the framerate starts to plummet. The same thing happens when your pawns are all onscreen, and as soon as they disappear, the framerates rise rapidly. Hopefully there are some patches that remedy these issues soon but right now, the visuals are a bit inconsistent for PC players.
Sound is also similarly impressive with lots of strange noises, excellent creature sounds, and creaking ox carts. The music is suitably grandiose as well, ramping up for major combat and slipping down quietly for more subtle infiltration. Unfortunately, due to the sheer amount of time you spend wandering about, the same songs will often repeat to the point where they lose any of their punch, no matter how well-composed they are. The ‘danger you’re in an unauthorized area’ music is particularly irritating, especially when you’re entirely safe on occasion. All in all though, the music for the game is solid and the sound effects are quite impressive, making for excellent accompaniment to the visuals.
The voices are another matter though. Everyone is talking all the time in Dragon’s Dogma II and much like real life, it can get on your nerves sometimes. Particularly irritating are the pawns, since they follow you around and constantly banter, telling you things they think are important. Fortunately, you can turn their voices off because otherwise, you’ll never get a moment’s respite. The voice acting itself is fairly good and a ton of people have things to say but it can get a bit irritating in the bigger cities when random conversation snippets are everywhere. Major characters are interesting at least, though because of the layout of the game, you rarely get as much interaction as you should and unless you make progress, they tend to repeat their lines fairly quickly.
The totality of Dragon’s Dogma II is an uneven and inconsistent experience that allows for a wide range of approaches to gameplay. That openness leads to a lack of focus though and players looking for a more narrative experience and deeper storylines should probably look elsewhere. The purpose here isn’t plot though. Instead it’s exploration and wonder. To have a massive, complex world like this to explore without constantly being told what to do is something unique in gaming. However, it also means that not every player is going to have consistent experiences, making the game more than a bit of a mixed bag. With spectacular visuals and a re-imagining of the original game system, Dragon’s Dogma II is a unique entry in the field of action RPGs that manages to stand out among other open world games without copying stale mechanics. At the same time, it’s a confusing game that challenges the patience of players and provides a volatile, unpredictable experience with odd glitches and strange design choices that are clearly held over from the previous game.
But is it good you ask? That probably depends on the player. A lot of love went into the release of the game but it’s not going to appeal to everyone, making this a hard sell for more casual players. Fans of the original are going to absolutely devour Dragon’s Dogma II with the increase in size and complexity and the similarities to the original. Players who are jumping in because they heard about the game are going to struggle with the unique design elements and unexpected handicaps that some game elements provide. Either way you cut it, Dragon’s Dogma II stands alone as a fascinating take on action RPGs. It’ll be up to you to decide if it’s for you however.
This review was based on digital copies of Dragon’s Dogma II. It was played on an Xbox Series X and on PC using a 3080Ti graphics card. Dragon’s Dogma II is also available for PS5. All screenshots are from the Xbox Series X version of the game.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.