Review: Dragon's Dogma 2

Published Mar 20, 2024

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Summary

Dragon's Dogma 2 offers diverse combat with 10 unique classes and strategic teamwork options for engaging battles.
The vast open world encourages exploration with minimal hand-holding, leading to a rich and immersive experience.
Despite technical limitations and AI issues, Dragon's Dogma 2 impresses with its engaging combat, world design, and lack of hand-holding.

It’s hard to believe that it has been over a decade since the firstDragon’s Dogma. From the director of the Devil May Cry series (except the first), this wasn’t exactly a genre Capcom was known for publishing. Sure, they were in the Monster Hunting business, but considering at the time we had the Japanese publisher extending its outlook to more western developers to create titles such as DmC, Dark Void and Lost Planet 3, it was a refreshing change of pace thatDragon’s Dogma delved deeper into the RPG chops of the studio. What an experience it was. While it certainly wasn’t perfect by any means, it opened up to a larger audience, having a strong emphasis on western mythical monsters such as goblins, ogres, medusas and more. Clumsy controls meant nothing when you could be climbing the back of a chimera while teammates unleashed fury upon it. While it has been awhile since we saw the franchise in the west, Capcom has created a new magical world to explore in the sequel, once again retreading a story of a heart-stealing dragon.

Shadow of the Dogma

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a traditional RPG through and through, with ten different classes that can be swapped between – four of which can be acquired throughout the adventure. Each class is distinctly different from one another, from the standard sword and shield users to the more advanced Trickster orSpearhand. Combat is exceedingly satisfying because of this, as their playstyles mesh strength, dexterity and magic together perfectly, so picking and choosing teammates is crucial.

You can run a full group of tanky warriors to force stuns and staggers, but curatives will have to be brought to compensate for a lack of a healer. Playing someone nimble allows you to easily climb on larger monsters such as chimeras and dragons, dealing stronger attacks to their weak points. And, of course, mages and sorcerers are squishy but can deal some powerful magical attacks at a distance while inflicting various status ailments. Each contributes to the fight, making all classes viable for adventuring with. Not only that, but using and leveling each class up also compliments one another as they’ll gain specific attributes that can be equipped to help in battle.

Interestingly enough, there’s a serious lack of traditional bosses, with only a couple being found throughout the lengthy campaign. Instead, it’s all about going out into the vast world and finding encounters on your own. This is without doubt the best part ofDragon’s Dogma 2, as Capcom has crafted an immense and beautiful world ripe for exploration, and the best part: they rarely hold your hand. Some quests will specifically show the area that needs to be explored, but there are others that will not outright specify where to go, and it’s up to the adventurer to explore and find the solution or location. This is on top of the world map being completely uncharted, encouraging everyone to go out and find the little nuggets spread throughout the land. There are no towers to climb to unlock little icons on the map; there are no dedicated markers indicating which is a main story mission or a side quest; it’s all up to the player to interrupt and find their own way through this dangerous and treacherous world. Because of this, it's one of the most enriching games in years. At every turn,Dragon’s Dogma 2 continued to impress me further despite the story being lackluster.

Pawn Stars

Pawns play a significant role inDragon’s Dogma 2 as it allows for a team of four to be personally built. This ties into the multiplayer aspect, where you’ll be able to summon other player’s pawns into the world to fight and even guide you provided they’ve gone through the same quests or explored specific areas of the world. Maybe there’s a chest that has gone unnoticed or a cave off the beaten path; pawns will regain this knowledge and pass it along to others. On paper, this is a smart aspect that connects everyone’s experiences and helps them in an indirect, asynchronous manner, but while this was in the first game, we can’t help but feel sad that there isn’t full on cooperative play in the sequel. It may be some technical limitations we don’t know about the engine, but it feels like a lost opportunity to allow players to play together synchronously with one another.

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Considering games in the same category, such as Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, and to a certain degree, Monster Hunter, all thrive not only due to their worlds and well-crafted systems, but thanks to their engaging cooperative play, it’s disappointingDragon’s Dogma 2 lacks such a feature. Having such a beautiful world teeming with exploratory opportunities being limited to a single player experience leaves us wanting more, especially when there’s already a multiplayer component implemented and the last game in the franchise was an MMORPG. Granted, the artificial intelligence on pawns is generally good while in combat, but in the open world, they have found themselves stepping in wrong territories and off cliffs one too many times.

The Slog

By far the biggest problem Dragon’s Dogma 2 has is its traversal. We’re not even talking about the climbing mechanics whilst in battle, which we will touch on later, but getting through the world itself. Not having a mount isn’t going to make or break the experience provided we have the means of getting around relatively easily, but unfortunately that isn’t the case. There’s an oxcart that allows the protagonist to go between two major cities along with a checkpoint, but outside of that, you will have to use an expensive item to fast travel, and that’s provided the location has a special crystal to accommodate such a consumable, which there’s only a couple in the world and portables versions are exceptionally rare. It got so bad that I was at the end of the game (or the point of no return) and decided against cleaning up the journal simply because getting back to the final area would have been too much of a hassle.

All of this wouldn’t be as bad if the world wasn't just so dense. It’s a weird complaint to have because Capcom has created a rich and beautiful world that you can explore, yet getting from point A to point B is such a hassle because there’s just too many enemies populating the roads. We’re only talking about after going through these areas on the first go around, as engaging in the many side quests and farming specific monsters will have the player retreading familiar ground, and being that there’s the element of light being a scarce resource at night, it also becomes a race against the clock. All of this overly inflates the amount of time you’ll be inDragon’s Dogma 2, and considering this is an already lengthy adventure that has a lot of reliability, it almost feels like it discourages against a lot of side quests that take you around the world, which is a real shame considering a lot of them are well worth your time, and some of them will impact certain scenarios.

Visual Consistency and Audio Clutter

For an open world game, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is one of the more consistent visual experiences we’ve seen in a while. While character models in cutscenes no doubt look better than their in-game counterparts, there’s a shocking amount of detail spread throughout the land. The lighting is second to none, with the feeling of dread being prominent at night. Seeing mere feet in front of you becomes a challenge when night falls, and even a trusty lantern cannot fully reveal the horrors that await outside the safety of cities and towns. It also adds to the experience that the visual effects from magic truly illuminates the screen and takes it to another level, along with a shocking amount of attention to detail on clothing and weaponry. The world is vast and has a significant amount of variety in its surroundings, from the grasslands of the midlands to the deserts of the south.

As for the audio department, it’s a mixed bag. For example, audio cues are prominent and greatly help ensure players know when enemies are about. The music can have some high highs, but also low lows, as most of the campaign mostly just sets the mood more than it does get the blood moving, allowing you to take in the atmosphere of each area. Unfortunately, it’s the voice acting that can be lacking and downright annoying. A lot of characters sound stiff, and the pawn dialogue will quickly become grating, having the same lines said over and over again on the fifty-plus hour adventure. It’s interesting to learn that a pawn’s master mostly takes on women in their party the first time, it’s said, but after the twentieth time it’s mentioned in the course of a single sitting, you will want to turn off the pawn’s volume setting.

Closing Comments:

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is majestic, marvelous and magnificent. It’s an experience that’s like no other that will have you immersed for every second of play. Unfortunately, there are certain elements that hold it back from greatness. For starters, retreading already-explored areas for side quests and materials is a pain. Getting from point A to point B is a hassle that requires a great deal of time or coin because of the lack of a competent traversal system. On top of that, this could have immensely benefited from cooperative play. It already has multiplayer functions, so it’s disappointing we only got asynchronous gameplay, especially considering a pawn’s AI can be lacking outside of combat and their mouths do not stop moving. With that said, combat is highly engaging, the structure of the open world encourages exploration like nothing else and lack of hand holding is the best choice Capcom could have made.Dragon’s Dogma 2 has all the right to be theElden Ring of 2024, but unfortunately, it’s held back by technical limitations and bizarre design choices. Despite this, there’s still so much brilliance to be found.