Before I sat down to play three hours of Dragon’s Dogma 2 at a Capcom event last month, I gave myself two broad objectives. The first was to discover if there’s anything genuinely different about this undeniably enchanting but very familiar sequel to one of the happiest, barmiest action-RPGs of the past 20 years. The second was to royally screw myself by fielding a party consisting exclusively of magic-users.
In Dragon’s Dogma 2 as in Dragon’s Dogma 1, you lead a gang of up to three AI-controlled “pawn” characters – one permanent main sidekick who levels up alongside you, plus two auxiliary pawns created by other players, who are either summoned at Rift stones or spawned into the open world as hired help. As in most RPGs, the ideal party setup is a mix of pure melee, ranged and magical DPS or support classes, but given the whimsicality of Dragon’s Dogma’s sorcery, with its levitation spells and lightning whips, I’ve always wanted to try a whole playthrough as a posse of unescorted occultists.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 harbours several flavours of spell-caster. During the hands-on, I kick off with the Mystic Spearhand, which as the name implies, is a wizard who specialises in melee. With two PRs looking on, I’m given a party of default pawns comprising two mages and a warrior, and unceremoniously dumped outside that most romantic of medieval burgs, Checkpoint Rest Town.
I feel like I need to play them side-by-side to confirm this, but I suspect one of the biggest differences between Dragon’s Dogmas 1 and 2 is the greater density and bustle of the sequel’s world. Even smaller, grubbier settlements such as Checkpoint Rest Town teem with bystanders who keep up a pleasing burble of incidental dialogue – “aught’s to do!” this and “consarn’ it all!” that. Towns also seem to contain more quest-giving NPCs, though it could just be that the sequel’s quest-giving NPCs are pushier – they’re almost Skyrim-esque in their tendency to overshare.
Walking into the main square, I’m set upon by a guy with a lion’s face called Offulve, who locks me into some fixed-camera dialogue and requests that I look for a “pretty stone” so that he can hoodwink his employer or something. Mate, I’m still trying to remember the control scheme here – I don’t have time for your parlour games. I tell Offulve to fulve off, walk another 20 metres, and am collared by some lairy dude in armour who wants to gossip about an ancient battleground awash with skeletal soldiers and phantoms. I disengage brusquely and stumble into a chat with an old shopkeeper called Morris who wants me to look for his grandson Rodge.
In the process I learn that some quests have a completion time. Rodge is even now being gnawed on by some wolves, and the smart money suggests that he’ll be digested in, oh, let’s say three days of in-game time. Will I intervene? No, I will not. I am the Arisen, dragon-scarred avenger of these lands, not some jumped-up babysitter. Besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of previewing open world games it’s that the best stuff often happens well away from the questlines.
My trio of pre-fabbed pawns in tow, I sally up the hill to the imposing fortified gate at the town’s summit. The PR guys inform me that this is the entrance to the desert realm of Battahl, the second of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s major areas and home of the Beastren. A gate guard looks up. Do I have a permit for passage? I check my inventory and why yes, I do have a permit – thanks PRs! But the guard is a deeply paranoid man. He refuses to believe that this is really my permit, and demands that I procure another one. Zounds, it feels like I’m nudging up against some quest or other. I consider showing the guard my enchanted spear and explaining that this is my permit, actually, but brutalising the constabulary is not going to get me through that portcullis, so I spin on my heel majestically and stride back down the road into the temperate countryside of Vermund.
It’s time to put this open world through its paces. First, though, some journalistic housekeeping: I need to make my pawn entourage properly wizardly. For the purposes of this super-sorcerous diary write-up, I’m going to give them new names, borrowed from great spellcrafters throughout the ages. I rename one of the mages Galadriel, aka Princess of the Ñoldor, Lady of the Wood, Mistress of Magic. The other I rename Donald Duck, aka The Duck. If you haven’t played Kingdom Hearts you might scoff that Donald Duck isn’t much of a wizard, but I would usher you urgently to one side and explain in a whisper that Donald Duck is, in fact, one of very few Final Fantasy characters who can cast Zettaflare, and that if Donald Duck were sufficiently provoked – say, because some asshole sneered at his spellduckship – he could murder you, me, Galadriel and everybody we’ve ever loved.
And then there’s the third pawn, Conan. He’s some kind of barbarian, as you may guess, and as such, he can get stuffed. I scornfully dismiss the handsome brute – OK, I actually send him off with a thumbs-up rating and a modest gift of consumables for his creator, because the greatest magic of all is courtesy. As he leaves, Conan grumbles that “I fear your party will be diminished by my absence”. He’s not wrong, especially because I promptly forget to recruit a replacement pawn from the crowd, but still – I’ll make him eat those words.
We enter the wilds! Everything quickly goes pear-shaped. Rounding a canyon bend, we spy a group of torch-wielding goblins harassing a goat. Donald Duck is apoplectic. He tries to hit the goblins with thunderbolts and is immediately stabbed in the kidneys. Galadriel then attempts to cast a healing aura and gets axed in the face. The goblins and goblin-variants in Dragon’s Dogma 2 seem nastier than their forebears in the 2012 game, opening fights with flying leap attacks that appear paced to stunlock you, unless you block, which we mostly can’t, because we’re a bunch of squishy sorcerors. As I catch up and wade in belatedly with my enchanted spear, my party’s lack of balance is painfully obvious.
Still, the Mystic Spearhand isn’t too shabby on the frontlines. I use a kind of blink-stab to get behind one goblin and then launch a wave of turquoise puissance into the mob. A terrible realisation dawns: the Mystic Spearhand is sort of a Jedi Knight. Its signature move is essentially a low-level Force throw, conjuring a small bubble of energy within which you can seize enemies and objects and punt them about with a flick of your wrist. Come to think of it, my preview character looks a bit like Anakin Skywalker – he’s got the same surfer haircut. Argh, I wish they’d let me capture my own screens.
I am going to perform incredible feats with telekinesis. But first, I am going to stroll blithely into this here cave. Galadriel is right in the middle of a long anecdote about pawn mythology when some kind of massive gecko falls off the ceiling and the gloom comes alive with enemy health bars. As in the first game, darkness in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is dark; you’ll want to fill up and equip your oil lantern before straying into any dungeons. Or, you can light your way by firing off spells in all directions.
I use the Farce to hurl a chunk of wood at one of the lizards and am swiftly surrounded, stabbed and sat on. Fortunately this spectacle of lacklustre Farcemanship buys Donald Duck the time he needs to rattle off a colour-clashing but undeniably effective series of fire, icicle and lightning spells. It may be that he doesn’t yet know this enemy’s elemental weakness, and is testing out different status effects: pawns accrue such knowledge when they travel alongside you, taking it with them when they’re summoned by other players.
Donald’s barrage gives me space to regain my feet – recovery times in Dragon’s Dogma 2 are long, comparable to those of the Monster Hunter games – and flex my budding Sith abilities with greater success. It turns out you need to wound enemies a bit before they’ll consent to be Farce Thrown, which, you know, that’s not how Darth Vader rolled, but you do you, Capcom. I hurl the reptiles around unscientifically while Galadriel, who is still telling me that anecdote about bloody pawn mythology, summons various healing and power-up auras. It doesn’t appear possible to use Mystic Spearhand telekinesis on your companions, not even “accidentally”, though as somebody who often employed Dragonshouting as a means of transporting glitchy Skyrim companions, I plan to experiment on that front down the line.
Following the lizard cave, there are wolves, harpies, more wolves, and some wolves to wash it all down. One of OG Dragon’s Dogma’s wobblier elements was its reliance on filler battles during exploration that often slop together into one, quest-length exercise in punching no-name wildlife. The sequel appears to share this weakness. Often, the ease with which minor skirmishes combine and multiply is entertaining, as when bringing a surprise Griffon to a goblin fight. But it does get a bit draining, especially when you’re a previewer trying to flush out more intriguing setups and stories.
I’m just beginning to lose patience with the fauna when lo, an Ogre lumbers out of a bush with the air of a midboss returning from the loo. Now this is a foe worthy of Dragonkin Skywalker’s ample talents. I really hated Ogres in the first game for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they are massive creeps who make a point of scooping up female characters, running off with them and chewing on them like dog toys. Secondly, they get all rowdy and hyperactive when they’re low health, which is problematic in caves – thankfully, we are currently standing on a forest track, in full beaming sunshine.
I blink-stab through the Ogre, chiselling approximately 2% off one of its three healthbars. It responds by performing a standing jump and landing right on my head. Excellent! Marvelous! Let’s do this. The Ogre refuses to play ball, however. It skips the customary warm-up fight, plucks a levitating Galadriel out of the air, and gallops away hooting and hollering into the woods. This is an outrage! Come back with my Galadriel, you scumbag. I’m pretty sure she’s the only one in the group with healing spells.
I think mournfully of Conan, our banished warrior, who is probably even now telling his creator-player what an absolute chud I am. Warriors certainly come in handy when you’re fighting a big, fast, tough enemy like an Ogre. Then, as if in answer to my prayers, some kind of cavalry arrives in the shape of a travelling oxcart. Homely though they are, these carts are among Dragon’s Dogma 2’s headline features – you can buy passage in order to fast travel between major landmarks, which has led to some discussion of fast travel systems in general. What I didn’t realise, going into this hands-on, is that each comes with an entourage of mercenaries. Were these seasoned adventurers going to abandon some pack of quack-conjurers to their plight? The hell they were. Accompanied by a sword-and-boarder, a nimble archer and a fellow mage, Donald Duck and I hare away in pursuit of the Ogre and find it nibbling on Galadriel’s head.
Galadriel doesn’t seem excessively bothered by this. “Do hurry,” she says placidly, adding that we should be cautious of the Ogre’s slime and that it’ll be an easier target if we knock it on its bum. This is the kind of steadiness under pressure you just don’t get from stupid warriors. We dutifully light the monster up with stormclouds, teleporting groundpounds, fiery sword combos and arrows to the knee. It doesn’t fall over, but it does lose patience with Galadriel and throws her off a cliff, KO-ing her. Ever the responsible squad leader, I leap down to revive her. The Ogre follows. Look, can you just give me a minute please. The Ogre smacks me around like a tennis ball on a string, but I eventually break away and revive Galadriel – just before her spirit fades back into the Rift – while the oxcart guards keep the creature occupied.
Rising demurely to her feet, the Lady of the Wood casts some kind of icicle nuke, engulfing the Ogre in frost stalagmites even as Donald Duck catapults himself out of the treeline, lands on the monster’s head and sets it on fire. That’s good teamwork, colleagues! The Ogre dislodges the Duck by flopping onto its back, attempts to charge at me and gets itself all tangled up in the oxcart, which has meanwhile been picking its way down the hillside with the remorseless calm of an old lady trying to jump the queue at Tescos.
The oxcart proves to be the Ogre’s undoing. It passive-aggressively buffets the monster into the cliff face, sabotaging its maneouvres while I teleport onto a flailing arm, haul myself up to the creature’s face and start jabbing it in the nose with my spear. In short order there’s a burst of victory slow-mo, a fanfare plays, and congratulations one and all – we have successfully defeated an Ogre with a party of magic-users. Those oxcart guards? Well, they chipped in a bit here and there.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 – Vocation Gameplay Spotlight: Mystic Spearhand It seems only polite to complete the first leg of my hands-on diary by booking passage aboard the cart. While sitting in the cart (pawns still have to walk, which feels very mean-spirited of Capcom) you can hold a button to fall asleep, fast-forwarding to your destination. Or you can choose to stay conscious for the whole ride. The developers have prepared for this eventuality, with cutaway camera perspectives kicking in while you’re idling in the cart. It’s certainly a delight to watch the scenery pass: Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Oblivion-adjacent high fantasy aesthetic can seem a bit insipid, next to the Jurassic settings of stablemate Monster Hunter, but the geography is gorgeous on the whole.
Mind you, given that oxcarts travel at slightly slower than walking speed, I estimate that making a habit of staying awake during such journeys will extend your playthrough by about 10,000 hours. During my hands-on, I had other fish to fry, but that’s a tale for another day.
Coming up in Act 2: Crime! Punishment! Griffons!
