// KOTAKU — GAMING
Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen – The Kotaku Review
CapcomDragon's Dogma 2Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen
When I booted up Dragon’s Dogma 2 again to play a bit of New Game+ in preparation for the Dark Arisen DLC, I was initially feeling a bit humdrum about the whole thing. My Arisen was at a very high level, I’d seen everything I’d wanted to see in the base game, and as much as I had loved that adventure, I wasn’t super stoked to be back. The clips I’d seen of Norgan, the new region introduced in the DLC, had not convinced me there was anything sufficiently new or exciting about it that would hook me. More of the same monsters, just in the snow this time. Sure.
But then I went to Norgan, where Dark Arisen reminded me that I freakin’ love Dragon’s Dogma 2. I love that it’s weird, and harsh, and sometimes even silly. I love being a little guy running around the big ol’ feet of a big guy and trying to bring that big guy down. I love reaching a dialogue choice that seems extremely straightforward and panicking for several minutes because I think the game might be trying to trick me. I love (hate) every time my Pawn invites me to take things out of her pack anytime I like (I do not want your rotten harpsbud, November).
With Dark Arisen come 12 new dungeons added to the existing world. Personally, playing on New Game+ with a character starting at around level 70 and climbing into the hundreds throughout the expansion, I found these dungeons to be relatively nothing. I even forgot they were in the DLC for a while after I was introduced to them, because everything else is so much more interesting. These dungeons are largely just a series of combat trials at a level that makes sense for a character finding them in their place in the original world for the first time, which means I blasted through them and anyone else who’s already finished the game once probably will too. There are some neat new monster variants, and the weapon rewards look pretty cool; I just had no use for them. If you’re playing for the first time, though, it seems like these will blend in pretty seamlessly with the rest of the adventure, so it’s nice to have them.
The new region, Norgan, is the star here, and where I spent almost all my time. Norgan is a snowy tundra of a region north of the existing map, and you’re sent there both to track down rumors of a second Arisen and to find a resolution to your own terrifying, seemingly prophetic dream. Norgan is harsh, with little sign of civilization, lots of ruins buried in the snow, and a single settlement of friendly people trying to carve out an existence up here against the onslaught of threats from monsters, raiders, wolves, gryphons, giant stompy troll-like creatures, and now suddenly also a plague of weirdly fast zombies.
I am willing to eat crow on some (not all!) of my past complaints that the updates and DLC would make Dragon’s Dogma 2 far too easy. I still think those Dragonsplague curatives are way too easy to make and a terrible idea conceptually—when my pawn caught this flu early on in my DLC playthrough I recognized it right away (instead of spending several agonizing days wondering if I was imagining things) and then shoved her off a bridge as the good Lord intended. But it’s the fast-travel stuff I’m no longer upset about. In the main game of Dragon’s Dogma 2, a major update giving players effectively an infinite number of fast travels and a pile of portcrystals to place wherever they like trivializes the pacing of the adventure. Without these things, you have to be thoughtful about where and when you camp, and the routes you take to and fro. You can’t just blaze through dungeons, port back to town, heal up, then pop back into the action. It takes time to get places, and you might be waylaid by monsters that will fully wreck your shit, even if you travel via oxcart. I love that aspect of Dragon’s Dogma, the increasing fear as my health sinks lower and the sky grows dark and I have no idea where the nearest campsite is and no way to get back to Vermund