Capcom choosing the exact same subtitle for two separate expansions in two different games makes a lot of sense. Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is not only a thematically relevant title, but thanks to the first game’s expansion of the same name, it also conveys to longtime fans what to expect: namely, a new gameplay cycle focused on reworked loot and plenty of dungeon crawling. The key difference this time around is that instead of heading into the labyrinthine depths of a cursed island, you’ve got an entirely new region to explore.
As someone who loved Dragon’s Dogma 2, I couldn’t really ask for much more. Yet changes to some of the game’s core systems also dilute what made it so unique when it launched back in 2024. I know it’s always been a fairly divisive game, and these changes are intended to make the experience more approachable, but they also strip away some of its magic in an effort to appeal to more people. Dark Arisen is still a great expansion, transporting you to a fascinating new region with more loot to earn, fantastical beasts to slay, and stories to behold, but it also shifts Dragon’s Dogma 2 in a slightly different direction.
To start with, Dark Arisen alleviates some of the game’s intentional friction by reducing how often you need to travel on foot. The Eternal Ferrystone was already added to the game a few months ago, letting you freely fast travel to any portcrystal without expending a scarce resource. Those same portcrystals are located at every key location in Dark Arisen’s new Norgan region. You still have to reach them on foot first to activate them, but once you do, you can simply teleport from one side of the map to the other.
Using the Eternal Ferrystone is entirely optional; you can still traverse almost all of Norgan on foot if you desire, so the friction is still there if you want it. However, Dark Arisen also feels designed with unlimited fast travel in mind. The first settlement you come across, for instance, acts as a hub of sorts, letting you manage your gear, rest at the inn, and pick up a fair few side quests, so you’re intended to return here often.
Meanwhile, many quests require you to visit the same locations over and over again to speak with specific characters. Heading off on foot might be an option, but it’s never incentivized and feels antithetical to how it wants you to play.
I’m not a fan of this change. I can acknowledge that giving players more choice is a positive, but the back-and-forth quest design and reliance on fast travel means you never really feel like you have options when traversing Norgan. This has a fairly significant knock-on effect, too: Without embarking on foot more often, I rarely stumbled into the emergent moments that made the base game so thrilling. And without that palpable sense of adventure, Dark Arisen feels less like Dragon’s Dogma and more like any number of action-RPGs, rendering this a fundamental change to its identity, rather than an improvement.
When Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched, traveling the regions of Vermund and Battahl felt treacherous, especially in the black of night. The world was as hazardous as the enemies you encountered, and campsites provided a welcome respite on your weary travels. Now, those feelings of everpresent danger and welcome safety are mostly gone. There’s no risk when you can freely fast travel out of danger or skip a journey entirely. The game’s uncompromising design has been softened to broaden its appeal.
The same goes for changes to its save system. By letting you roll back to a manual “Interim Save” at any time, there’s no longer any risk involved in your decision-making. You won’t have to live with the consequences of accidentally angering a bunch of guards in Battahl’s jail or fret over when to use the Unmaking Arrow. This one-hit-kill item still triggers an autosave as soon as it’s fired, creating tension the moment you decide to draw back the bowstring, but the ability to select an earlier save robs it of its finality. If these changes were strictly tied to Dark Arisen, they wouldn’t be quite as detrimental. Yet this sanding down of its intentional friction affects the base game, too.
By changing these systems, Capcom has fundamentally altered what made Dragon’s Dogma 2 so fantastic. The emergent moments that happened on the road, the interplay between its systems and physics engine, and the need to deal with the consequences of your actions–all of this combined to make the base game an unpredictable and powerful adventure that stood apart from other similar games. I enjoyed its resolute design because it forced me to tackle the world on its own terms, providing a challenge that captured a rousing sense of adventure. I still thoroughly enjoyed Dark Arisen, despite these changes, but there’s also this nagging feeling that something’s missing.
Norgan, for its part, has moments where that classic Dragon’s Dogma abrasiveness returns. The frigid region offers a nice change of pace from the verdant forests and arid deserts explored previously, with jagged, snow-capped cliffs; frozen rivers; icy tundras; and dilapidated, long-abandoned castles.
The hyperboreal climate doesn’t just provide a visual shift, either; the weather can be both an ally and a foe. Sudden blizzards blanket the screen in heavy snowfall, obscuring your view within a few feet and taking the mini-map out of action. You also can’t fast travel during these intense whiteouts, which restores the feeling that you’re battling the elements just as much as the ghouls and monsters waiting to ambush you.
On the flip side, you can also use the environment to your advantage, knocking down giant overhead icicles to crush your foes, throwing and skewering them on pointy shards of ice, and rolling boulders downhill that grow larger as they pick up more and more snow. You’ll appreciate the extra help when facing down demonic goatmen and abominable snowman-esque monstrosities with gnarly mouths that cover their entire torsos.
At first glance, Norgan’s map might seem fairly small, but there’s a sprawling verticality both above and below the surface that hides its true density. New climbing hooks and grapple points have been introduced to help you tackle the elevation changes, while interconnected dungeons and caves reveal shortcuts amid expansive ancient ruins and the piles of loot therein.
Speaking of which, Dark Arisen entirely reworks the game’s loot system with the addition of Relics. You’ll unearth this generic gear in chests and on the bodies of defeated enemies, and can then take it to one of the new vendor characters for appraisal, revealing what kind of equipment you’ve found, its raw stats, and, on occasion, whether it has any special attributes that enhance weapon skills or grant passive abilities.
This creates a Monster Hunter-esque loop as you explore and defeat powerful foes to gather more Relics, before returning to the appraiser to reveal what you’ve found and upgrade your character. An unseen dice roll determines the type and quality, and no single piece of gear will remain in use for too long before you’ll invariably find something better, but this is still a marked improvement over the base game’s uninspired loot system–where I think I purchased more usable weapons and armor than I actually found.
The base game’s map has also received a similar gameplay loop of its own, with the addition of 12 repeatable dungeons known as the Lost Rite Trials. While you can easily travel back and forth between Norgan and Vermund/Battahl, these new dungeons are designed to be tackled before venturing into the snowy north, setting you up with more powerful gear to make the transition easier, with repeat visits netting more and more loot.
Some of these dungeons are fairly straightforward (reach the end and kill everything along the way), while others rely on different mechanics or require prerequisites before you can enter. One such trial, which asks you to enter as either an Archer or Magick Archer, features rooms filled with support pillars you can shoot down to topple the terrain and wipe out groups of enemies.
Aside from better gear, completing each Lost Rite Trial nets you an Offering Flame. These can be used at various Obelisks scattered across the frigid Norgan landscape to unlock new vocation skills and stat buffs that boost health, damage, and so on.
The new skills are welcome, though bumping up the amount of skills you can equip at one time from four to six is a more notable improvement. Having more options at your disposal opens up the game’s combat a tad more, and somewhat makes up for the lack of new vocations. As someone who’s already maxed out most of the game’s classes, though, I realize I might notice the dearth of new ones more than most.
One of the more surprising things about Dark Arisen is how much I enjoyed its self-contained story. Okay, maybe “enjoyed” is the wrong word, but I was definitely more invested in seeing how things would unfold than I was in the base game. It’s a solid-enough vehicle for getting you from point A to B, even if it’s still just remixing themes from the first game. More characters are involved, and you spend significant time with them, so there’s at least something to latch onto. The writing still has little time for subtlety or nuance, but it’s appropriately broody, and the story eventually leads you to some fantastic set pieces and locations.
At over 20 hours long, Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is the kind of hefty expansion we don’t see very often. I might like this softened version of the game a little less than I did before, but even if some of its prickly nature has been smoothed over, Dark Arisen still offers a whole bunch more of what I loved about Dragon’s Dogma 2 in the first place. For first-time players, and those returning with new hopes, it’s a more approachable game, and I hope this helps it reach a broader audience. Whichever side of the divide you fall on, there’s something here for both. That might sound blasphemous to some, and its vision isn’t as unflinching as it was once before, but Dark Arisen–and Dragon’s Dogma 2 on the whole–are still well worth your time and attention.
