Dragon’s Dogma 2

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They say that if you eat a being’s heart, you gain its powers. To test this, I’ve gone around eating a whole bunch of hearts lately. Specifically, little candy hearts. They mostly tasted like chalk and didn’t really grant me any new powers, so I don’t know that the saying is all that accurate. For a digital representation of heart-consumption that’s a little more satisfying, you might want to take a look at Dragon’s Dogma 2, the latest action-RPG epic from our pals at Capcom.

via YouTube

As in the first Dragon’s Dogma, you control the Arisen, a chosen warrior whose heart was stolen by a dragon. This isn’t quite the death sentence one might think; the Arisen, instead, is granted a sort of destined role, and many in the realm view them as an immortal hero intended to save the land by slaying said dragon. In Dragon’s Dogma 2, this goes so far as to make the Arisen the realm’s leader…which, in turn, means there’s plenty of fake Arisen about hoping to claim an unwarranted position of power.

As the game begins, we learn our Arisen has been deposed by one of those very imposters, stripped of their memories and forced into servitude as a mining slave. The Arisen, along with a rotating party of helpful Pawn servants, will have to reclaim their throne and take the fight to the dragon, solving the many troubles of the populace along the way.

What we’ve got here is essentially a cross between the Monster Hunter series and an open-world explore-’em-up of the sort we’ve all come to know and love in the post-Breath of the Wild world. The sheer size of the explorable landmass combined with the enormous number of dungeons to explore, monsters to fight and sidequests to pursue is a little staggering and ensures you’ll rarely be wanting for something to do. Quests are often time-limited, so a little restraint in accepting the work you take on until you’re ready to actually do it is advised, but even random exploration holds plenty of rewards and that’s certainly not timed.

When the locals show up and decide you’d be better off as lunch, a corpse or what have you, it’s time to head off to battle. You only directly control the Arisen, and they’ve got a variety of classes and combat styles to choose from. Swordsmanship, archery, sorcery and plenty of other options are available, including a class whose entire combat style can best be described as “make-people-walk-off-of-cliffs-fu.” Your vocation, as they’re called, can completely change up how Dragon’s Dogma 2 plays and experimenting with the various options is a great time.

There’s a lot of joy in learning new skills and finding new gear, and Dragon’s Dogma 2 introduces new high-level abilities taught by masters hidden in the world to further encourage exploration.

I mentioned Monster Hunter earlier, but that’s really out of convenience more than anything. You’ll definitely spend a lot of time fighting big ol’ beasties like cyclops, medusae, golems and more in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but don’t come in expecting the tight, refined experience you’ve come to expect from the Monster Hunter games. This is monster slaying through slapstick eyes, with characters clinging to giants to tug them over, goblins being flung en masse off of ledges and so on. You haven’t lived until you’ve shot a harpy and caused it to careen into deadly eldritch-horror-infested water.

That’s all without mentioning the returning ability to simply pause the game and chug healing items at your leisure, which offers all but infinite survivability. Sure, your character temporarily loses max HP as they take damage, but this is easily fixed with some sleep, not to mention so slow that it won’t stop you from getting multiple health bars’ worth of resilience out of a stack of steaks or whatever. You’re not playing this for a hardcore, “git gud”-style challenge, in other words, you’re playing it because it’s hilarious and awesome in equal measure.

The Arisen alone can’t handle all the nastiness that’s going to come their way, though. That’s why you’ve got Pawns, interdimensional squires here to provide much-needed assistance. Pawns can do many of the same things as the Arisen, such as fighting, looting and (importantly) carrying heavy stuff, though there’s a number of Arisen-specific vocations that are unavailable to your AI-controlled pals. You’ll create your own Main Pawn yourself and have two additional party slots for adding other players’ Pawns to round out your team. Only the Arisen and your Main Pawn can level up, so you’ll periodically have to switch Pawns to keep pace.

This makes for an interesting sort of community-building experience. When you’re done with a Pawn, you can send them back with a gift for their Arisen, and you can expect to receive gifts for your Pawn as well since they’ll be hired by others who are playing. What’s more, Pawns can learn about how best to battle enemies, where to find treasure and even how to complete various sidequests and will offer that assistance readily. If another Arisen hires your Pawn and they learn tidbits, they’ll bring those tidbits back. It’s a sort of viral knowledge transfer…and, uh, without getting into it, let’s just say that’s not the only viral thing Pawns can do in this game. You’ll want to keep a close eye on them.

If all of this sounds great, that’s because it is! Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a good time all around…well, with a couple exceptions. First off, performance is pretty rough. Even on very high-end gaming PCs, you can expect this one to struggle in towns and during particularly heated moments. It’s a little hard to say why, though hopefully we’ll see some patches clear this up sooner or later. Next, there’s microtransactions, which are easily ignored but might rub some the wrong way. They’re not that big a deal, though, and you’ll obtain plenty of the items they offer by just playing the game normally. The time to get mad about this stuff was when horse armor was taking off in Oblivion back on the Xbox 360, folks, you’re a little late to the outrage train.

Thankfully, we live in the modern world, and given that a patch to take care of any performance issues is likely, it’s easy to recommend Dragon’s Dogma 2. Its combination of action, emergent gameplay and inadvertent humor is a little hard to find anywhere else. Combine that with the sheer breadth and depth of content to discover and you’ve got a winner on your hands. Other things you might have on your hands: a goblin. That cliff over there is looking mighty tempting…