There’s plenty of stereotypes about the north that Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen does little to dispel. It’s cold up there, the people are a bit more unusual, there’s dragons, and it’s great for a bit of thrifting to find relics.
Norgan is an icy region of the world, dropping the temperature and with some appropriately frosty foes. This Far North is a suitably desolate place, the ruined castle forts, the abandoned log cabins, the roving bands and their wolves, and annoying flying creatures (especially when playing as a Fighter class).
We were dropped into this expansion with a level 50 character, a couple of pawns and a blank canvas of the map to fill in through exploring. There’s roving bands out here and the key loop really is to venture forth, defeat enemies, see if they drop any relics and take them back for appraisal. It’s a familiar loop of hunting for better stats on loot, but compared to the instant gratification of many action RPGs and looter shooters, having this need to head back and have your finds appraised is a nice thematic change. It could make your adventuring a bit more tentative, seeing how far you can get until your pawns start to fall in battle and your health starts to drop, and then teleporting back to camp to rest up, restock and see what you’ve found.
And that’s a key change for Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen. The Eternal Ferrystone is coming as part of Title Update 3.2 and alleviates one of the key complaints from the game’s original release, where fast travel relied on Ferrystones as a consumable resource. Similar to the Dark Arisen expansion for the original game, Capcom is introducing an infinitely usable Eternal Ferrystone, letting you fast travel as you see fit – you just have the slightly secret shame of an in-game counter of how many times you’ve used this, instead of braving and trudging through the world.
There’s further gameplay tweaks being brought into the game through this Title Update. Dragonsplague can be cured with a special draught, there’s all manner of new and enhanced Pawn actions, all of the Vocations have been tweaked and adjusted, but the most immediately impactful is that you can now assign six weapon skills. As with the other weapon skills, these are a button combo of a shoulder button and face button, but the fifth and six are now mashing two face buttons together, in a fighting game style.
It’s the same style of thoroughly enjoyable and distinctive action RPG adventuring. After some light adventuring, following some of the missions from NPCs and pointers from our pawns, our time with this build was coming to an end. We jumped ahead to one of the major battles in this expansion, facing off against an imposing Fallen Dragon.
It’s protracted challenge, given the number of layered health bars it had, and the way that it could summon a horde of undead to swamp your band of fighters, and spew out inky gloop. I was able to whittle away his health though, occasionally choosing to clamber up its legs to attack its wings and eventually managing to hack off one of its arms – a new pawn behaviour can see them give you a leg up, though I didn’t manage to trigger this.
Jumping across to try out the Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game, and it actually feels like it holds up well on the handheld. Sure, after playing on PS5 Pro, it’s a clear step down in resolution and the frame rate is only targeting 30fps again, but it was surprisingly accomplished with Switch 2 in hand and I could easily slip into battling a Griffin in an early game mission. Heck, even ending up on the Griffin’s back while it tried to flee, and falling to my death in a town when my stamina ran out was enjoyable.
Between the new content in the Dark Arisen expansion and the two major updates from this summer, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is really maturing into something that appeals to a broader set of gamers. I can absolutely appreciate a creator choosing a particular direction and a style and tone to their work, and it’s one that we loved back in 2024 in its original form, but it’s a game that is now more accessible and well rounded.
