Dragon’s Dogma 2 was one of my favourite games of 2024. Despite being firmly in the “story is important” camp when it comes to RPGs, it’s hard to deny that, just like in the original, the combat and vocation systems are best-in-class when it comes to the genre, and I had an absolute blast exploring Vermund and Battahl, slicing up ogres as a thief or melting griffins as a sorcerer. Dragon’s Dogma 2 Dark Arisen expands on the game with an entirely new region complete with new mechanics, items and enemies, offering a compelling reason to pick up your save.
While the story has never been a highlight for the series, Dark Arisen does at least present some interesting mysteries during your time with it. You’re sent north by Captain Brant as he’s heard rumours of a second Arisen up there, and coupled with your nightmares about a burning city, it’s safe to say it’s probably something worth checking out. As with the main game, you end up embroiled in a few different threads, and you’ll be helping out a group of Vermundian soldiers on their trip through the frozen wasteland, uncovering hidden cities and meeting bigger and badder beasties than you’ve seen in the base game. I appreciate that Capcom doesn’t always telegraph routes forward, so you’ll often need to think about how you can progress past riddles or unclear objectives, and how choices you make might impact the next stage of your journey.
Norgan, the icy region that Dark Arisen takes place in, is a harsh and unforgiving locale that makes even the arid wastes of Battahl look inviting. Settlements are nearly non-existent, with a smattering of folk scraping by in a village near the south of the region, but progressing north you’ll find nothing but enemies and snow. Speaking of snow, it can be a real challenge to navigate, with regular whiteouts rendering your map useless, even when checking the pause screen. A new compass item will helpfully point you towards your destination, but with how winding paths can be in this game, it’s not always as useful as you’d want.
While I appreciate this whiteout system adding something new to the game, it was often just a bit annoying, particularly with just how abundant the world is with groups of enemies. There are groups of them everywhere, including new enemies such as the well-armed (and often high level) Boercans, bouncing Bugaboos and hordes of ghouls that try to overwhelm through pure numbers. Alongside these there are colossal enemies everywhere too, such as variations of the ogres, trolls and griffins we killed in the main game. It’s a bit disappointing that many of them are just referenced as Norgan variants rather than entirely new creatures, but it’s Dragon’s Dogma, so at least you know every fight is going to be an incredible battle worthy of any fantasy epic. All this enemy activity across Norgan makes narrative sense, but does feel a bit excessive at times and it often gets in the way of exploration, as you can’t really go more than a minute before you bump into more enemies, so exploring the area felt more stilted than it did in Vermund.
Norgan is a high level area, and while I was level 50 at the point of starting it, it was a notable step-up in terms of difficulty. With that risk comes big rewards though, and Dark Arisen absolutely throws loot at you with the new spoiled loot system. Throughout the world you’ll find spoiled equipment and loot on both downed enemies and in caches dotted around each area. The items you find inside won’t be usable until you take them back to the village to be appraised, which costs Rift Crystals (RC). It’s a great idea, because RC was largely useless in the base game as far as I could see, so now there’s reason to actually use it, and the payoff is great as the equipment is often more advanced than that from the main game.
You’ll find daggers that augment your abilities, adding extra explosions to attacks, or additional strikes to special abilities, greaves that add health and stamina buffs and more. As someone who was quite disappointed that Dark Arisen doesn’t add a new vocation to play with, these additional modifiers through the new loot system helped me look past it. And if, like me, you’re coming into the expansion having already played the main game, you’ll have an absolute mountain of RC to spend ensuring you can appraise every piece of loot you find.
There’s also a new set of dungeons to get stuck into. These are dotted around the main game map, which meant that I didn’t experience many of them as I didn’t have access to all my fast travel points, the reason for which will become apparent in a moment. These dungeons task you with fighting your way through multiple rooms of enemies, sometimes giving you the opportunity to set traps or choke points. The few I tried were fun enough, although the recommended level is around 20, and I was 86 when I attempted the first one so the level of challenge was almost non-existent. I imagine these make more sense when you build them into a playthrough of the game, and there was a mysterious locked door at the end of the first one which I’m intrigued to learn more about.
Along with the Dark Arisen expansion, Capcom has done a few major updates to the game over the past few months. While they’re not strictly linked, I think they’re worth mentioning here. A new hard mode is available, and while I found the game difficult enough on the standard mode, I know there’ll be people out there that love it. There’s also a New Game+ mode which is very handy, as if you last left the game during the Unmoored World section like I did then you’re locked out of the expansion until you complete it or start a NG+, which I had to do. An option to skip the prologue would be nice though, as it’s a bit of a dull slog back to Vernworth and this is something I’ve seen other games implement.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Dark Arisen is a thoroughly enjoyable expansion to what was already one of my favourite action RPGs. Norgan is desolate and unforgiving, both thematically and in its use of enemies, but despite a few annoyances that hinder exploration it’s hard to deny the appeal of more Dragon’s Dogma.
