Dragon's Dogma 2 First Impressions: Capcom Pulled It Off, but PC Performance Was the Biggest Problem

For fans of the series, I can tell you this much: with Dragon's Dogma 2, they pulled it off. These were my first impressions after my initial hours with the game, not a full review. There were a lot of pros and some negatives, and the biggest problem I had was PC performance in the game's larger areas.

Capcom provided me with a code for review, and the second it hit my inbox I dropped everything I was doing and jumped in. I wrote these impressions for anyone still on the fence about whether to buy it, so I will go through the gameplay first and then get into the performance issues, which is where most of my negatives sit.

Dragon's Dogma 2 takes everything the first game did right and does it better

Dragon's Dogma 2 is effectively what it was marketed as the entire time: a single player, narrative driven action RPG. If you played the first Dragon's Dogma, this is essentially the ultimate Dragon's Dogma experience. It takes everything the first game did right and just does it better. In terms of gameplay, it is basically the first game with better visuals, and the open world is vast and instantly immerses you. There are two countries, the first being Vermund and the second being Battahl.

The story is intriguing, and it definitely feels like they put more of an effort into the narrative this time around. The game does an amazing job of setting the stage, from the characters you encounter to the mythical beasts you eventually fight, and you get a sense of the scale of the open world fairly quickly. I think new players of the series are going to play the intro and immediately be hooked, not only by the story but also by the gameplay.

If you plan on playing Dragon's Dogma 2, I strongly recommend avoiding playthroughs, especially of the introduction. You are going to want to experience that yourself, because in my opinion it really is that good.

Travel in Dragon's Dogma 2 is fun enough that fast travel isn't missed

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a big game, and one of the pre-launch concerns was that it does not feature a traditional fast travel system. What I will say is that the traveling does not feel tedious. As Itsuno said prior to release, traveling is fun, and when you make traveling around the map a fun experience, fast travel is not needed. From my time with the game, I think that is indeed the case.

You will be walking around and suddenly get ambushed by, say, a bunch of goblins, and then about 35 or 40 seconds after killing them you will be in another fight. That does not mean you cannot travel quickly. It is not a Pokémon tall grass situation where you walk through grass and immediately get encounters. The encounters feel super organic, and you can usually see them coming.

From there, you can decide whether to keep going down that path and fight the goblins or whatever else is there, or walk a little to the right or left where they cannot see you and carry on with your journey. It really is completely your choice.

Running out of stamina sounds like your character is about to die

When traveling, you can jog as much as you want without depleting your stamina, but sprinting will eventually drain it. Once it runs out, it legitimately sounds like your character is about to die. Your character gets out of breath, your controller starts shaking, and you think you are about to black out.

Then one of your pawns comes up and gives you more stamina, allowing you to continue on like normal.

The pawns feel like they play to their vocations the way Itsuno originally intended

Initially, the pawns are great. It definitely feels like this is how Itsuno originally intended pawns to play in Dragon's Dogma 1. They play to their vocation in such a great way that it feels like every single pawn is playing its vocation correctly, and they are not constantly in your way like in other games with party systems. Because of the improved AI, the pawns play better to their vocation in Dragon's Dogma 2, and I think that alone is a massive improvement over the first game.

Another awesome addition is the amount of chatter between pawns, which makes you feel like you are in a party. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth does a really good job with discussions between characters, but a lot of those are named characters with a history of dialogue between them, so it is a lot easier there than in Dragon's Dogma 2 given the sheer number of pawns.

Expect a lot of chatter. You will get complimented, and you will start dapping each other up. Every time you dap up one of your pawns, you have "the exaggerated Swagger of the Arisen", and it gives me goosebumps every single time, especially right after taking down a group of enemies.

The voice acting is phenomenal, from the pawns to the named characters. Like the first game, this one did a great job with it, so major kudos to the team at Capcom for nailing it.

The RE Engine visuals are a major step up, though motion blur was on by default

The graphics in Dragon's Dogma 2 are a major step up from the first game. This game comes 12 years after the original, and if you put the two together they look like completely different experiences. It definitely seems like Dragon's Dogma 2 is taking the RE Engine to the absolute max, not only with the massive open world but also with the visual quality.

The default settings had motion blur enabled, and I immediately turned it off, so minus 10 points to Gryffindor for having that option on. There were a lot of graphics options, but a couple were missing that I was really disappointed about, which I cover below. From a graphical standpoint, though, the game looks great.

Enemy variety seemed fine in the first eight hours

Another concern I had seen was enemy variety. I did not really get enough time to judge that, and as I play more I could have a different opinion. But from roughly the first eight hours, I thought the variety was fine. You will run into a lot of goblins, but it is typically not the same creatures back to back.

The Dragon's Dogma 2 website lists about 21 monsters, and I am sure there are probably more. If you are concerned about enemy variety, at least for the first eight hours it is perfectly fine, though I could totally see my opinion changing.

My PC setup and caveats on performance

Most of my cons were performance related. As a disclaimer, I was using GPU encoded capture software, which could be part of why the frame rate was not as consistent. However, I was on a pretty solid machine: an Intel i7 10700K CPU, which I believe was running with XMP and which I do not think I had adjusted beyond that, but either way it is plenty for modern gaming. My rig had 32GB of RAM, the game was installed on an M.2 drive, and I used my RTX graphics card.

I played on high to medium settings with ray tracing enabled, but the overall frame rate did not really change much with RTX on or off. And a last disclaimer: I am not a tech guru. For a full, in depth analysis, more tech focused outlets like Digital Foundry are the place to go.

Dragon's Dogma 2 had FSR 3 and DLSS but no frame generation

Dragon's Dogma 2 features FSR 3 and DLSS, but unfortunately it did not have any frame generation technology. There was no Fluid Motion Frames with FSR, and no frame generation with DLSS 3 or 3.5. That part was kind of annoying. I was really hoping for some form of DLSS frame generation, because I have a high end card and I want to utilize it.

My message to Capcom was to give us DLSS frame generation or FSR 3 fluid frames, because I am sure it would help a lot in some of the more CPU intensive areas with low frame rates.

Frame rates dropped to around 30 in larger points of interest

Outside larger points of interest, the frame rate was pretty solid: about 60, sometimes 70, 75 or 80, depending on the circumstances. Usually, whenever there were large creatures on screen, the frame rate was actually pretty consistent.

Whenever you went into larger points of interest, though, the frame rate was pretty much dead. Outside those areas you would get about 60 to 70 FPS, but as soon as you entered one it dropped to about 30 to 35, sometimes even lower than 30. I personally think that is totally unacceptable, and in my experience the biggest problem with Dragon's Dogma 2 was the performance.

This is just my personal experience, and things could be totally different depending on hardware. But I was using a pretty beefy machine and still had issues.

Verdict: I am personally satisfied

Negatives and performance issues aside, I was having a good time with Dragon's Dogma 2. I played the first game and loved it, and Dragon's Dogma 2 is just more of that, and better. So I am personally satisfied.

Whether that is enough for you is totally up to you, because at the end of the day this is just one person's opinion.

Did you pick up Dragon's Dogma 2, and did the performance in its larger areas hold you back?