[Pc Games]DRAGON'S DOGMA 2 REVIEW A cult classic in the making.

[Navi Ceders]

My journey through Dragon's Dogma 2 has been a tumultuous one: glorious, thrilling, accidentally hilarious, frustrating, maddening—all the adjectives. It is one of my favourite RPGs, but also a huge pain in the arse. Whatever you feel about it by the end of your own adventure, I guarantee this is a game that will be talked about for a long time. Even though it doesn't massively deviate from the first Dragon's Dogma, and at times evokes the likes of Monster Hunter and Elden Ring, it still feels like a singular game, overflowing with memorable moments: monumentally epic battles with sun-blotting behemoths, slapstick encounters with goblins who are just begging to be picked up and thrown around, the endless charm of your NPC companions. Every few minutes, a new anecdote is generated. Captain Brant looking stern You are the Arisen, a soldier killed by a dragon, returned to life despite the absence of a heart. Whenever the dragon appears, a new Arisen also appears, their fates intertwined. The dragon is always destined to make an Arisen, and the Arisen is always destined to fight the dragon. Except this time there's another claiming the title of Arisen, and with it the mantle of Sovran of Vermund—a monarch, essentially—kicking off a political conspiracy that weaves its way through countless fights with massive monsters. Sponsored Links

Despite constantly flinging flat characters and stiff dialogue at you—everyone's lines are laden with faux medieval affectations and po-faced seriousness—the story itself is a creative yarn that's so much more elaborate than it needs to be, given that much of the series' appeal comes from clambering on top of angry beasties and murdering them. While many of the main beats are predictable, the narrative is constructed in such a way that it still manages to feel incredibly novel, like a FromSoftware joint but with a story that is much more accessible and explicit. 
That said, I couldn't give a toss about any of the scripted NPCs. There is a half-hearted romance and friendship system, where you can go on dates, while also giving and receiving gifts, but it feels dreadfully underbaked. The pawns, though, are a different matter. I would die for them. Especially my main boy, Gorbo the goblin.

Pawns are your loyal, chatty companions, putting their lives on the line for you every day. There's your main pawn who will be with you always, levelling up alongside their master, and you can recruit two more made by other players or Capcom. These extra pawns won't level up while in your employ, so you'll be recruiting new ones frequently, giving you a constantly changing cast of oddballs and eccentrics to pal around with. Your main pawn can be customised using the same character creator you used to build your Arisen, and it's a joy to play around with. It's so detailed you can select individual teeth to remove. Every tattoo and scar can be resized, rotated, moved around and recoloured. By stretching and shrinking pretty much every single body part, you can make an Adonis or an abomination. Technically, you can only make humans and beastren (big kitties), but you can unofficially create elves, orcs, goblins or your own unique nightmares. I could not have gotten through the game without the assistance of these wonderful little helpers. Pawns are essential in combat, letting you shore up any of the weaknesses inherent in your own skillset. And they are generally very effective, apart from that one Fighter I recruited who was meant to throw me onto an ogre's back but instead chucked me off a mountain. Their practical applications extend well beyond brawls, though. Pawns you've recruited share their knowledge with you, pointing out caves and treasure chests they've encountered with a previous master, which are then marked on your map. They'll also unlock more esoteric knowledge through their adventures and misadventures. Recruiting a pawn who'd killed a bunch of ogres is how I know that ogres are obsessed with women, and will usually try to attack them first. Yep, ogres are incels. While pawns are content to do their own thing, you still have some control over them, commanding them to take you to points of interest, help you if you're injured or unconscious, and wait in a specific spot to make sure they stay out of trouble. They can even serve as quest guides, which is especially handy given how vague the quest descriptions can be. Dragon's Dogma 2 expects you to figure out everything yourself, and I could not have gotten through the game without the assistance of these wonderful little helpers.

Your own pawn can also learn new things when they're recruited by other players, so it pays to make them as attractive as possible. I don't mean you need to make a hottie—though that's certainly a strategy a lot of players employ—you just need to give players a reason to hire them. Giving them unlockable specialisations that let them forage, craft, sell unwanted goods or heal players will absolutely get them more gigs. It's through pawns that you can trade with other players by sending them away with gifts or making requests through the pawn quest system. I'm always in need of more carrying capacity because I can't help but pick up everything, so I often request golden trove beetles, which bump up the weight limit a little bit. When anyone sends me one, they get 2,000 gold from my own pocket. There's something comforting about just hearing them chat away to each other, too, or share bits of gossip about their other masters. Like how they only ever travel with beastren, or exclusively fill their party with women. It feels like I'm in a proper RPG adventuring group, and each journey is made better by their company and funny little eccentricities. Which is a relief, because you'll be going on a lot of very long trips with them.

The world of Dragon's Dogma 2 is vast, with two main regions—one covered in forests and fields, the other scorching and arid, punctuated by the occasional oasis—as well as a smaller volcanic island that you'll likely only visit near the end of the game. Its vastness is not simply down to its literal size, though—there are plenty of other RPGs blessed with a greater scale and more densely packed. What makes Dragon's Dogma 2 feel gargantuan is the limitations placed on fast travel. Only a few locations have fixed fast travel points (you also get a small number of portable ones you can plonk down), and you can only use them if you've found a ferrystone. By the end you'll probably have quite a few, but the system discourages you from using them often. A few settlements also feature an ox cart, essentially a taxi service that you need to pay for. While on the cart, you can doze off, making travel instantaneous, but you might also be set upon by monsters, forcing you to defend the cart lest it be smashed to bits. The camping system is, low key, one of the most impactful additions to travelling around the world. Campsites are dotted all over the map, allowing you to take a kip and cook up a meal, netting you a variety of bonuses. The real boon, though, is that it allows you to escape the dreaded hours between sunset and sunrise. Nighttime adventures can be thrilling, but sometimes you don't want to run through a pitch-black forest with your lantern only giving you a mere glimpse of the threats ahead of you. You still need a tent, however, and while tents technically have infinite uses, enemies can raid your campsite and destroy them.

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