I wish I got a better read on Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen from my preview
Earlier this month, RPG Site had the chance to get a very brief hands-on with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen. I find myself in an unenviable position; I desperately loved Dragon's Dogma 2, I still stand by my original review, and yet while I am excited for the chance to play more - I'm not quite sure exactly how the structure for the expansion will work in practice.
On paper, Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen focuses on exploring the new land of Norgan. This new segment of the map is utterly separate from the rest of the experience, even down to unique portcrystals that can only be placed within the new region. The loop can roughly be described as such; explore Norgan, uncover and challenge the 12 Lost Rites dungeons for their rewards, and unravel the new story of the expansion. All the while, players will find relics that they can appraise - each coming with buffs to take them beyond equipment found outside of Norgan.
That's cool! Besides the climate, I mean. The problem is that the limitations of the preview session meant that I was only ever engaging with this gameplay loop in loose concept; never in practice. Not to the extent where I could feel the weight behind it. I'm intrigued; and, of course, I'll be there to grade how I feel about the changes in the coming weeks. As of right now? It's simply too difficult to come away with strong feelings on the actual Dark Arisen content one way or the other. I technically got stronger equipment from battling monsters outside of mere experience points - but that's so clearly barely scratching the surface that I don't really know what the play is here; build up a base level of gear in Norgan before exploring the DLC's depths, I assume, but the how still feels a bit nebulous.
Certainly not helping matters is having to decipher what is actually new to the expansion, and what was added to the game post launch. One such example would be the addition of two new skill slots. These weren't actually new to the expansion, but it doesn't change that it's new to me. The same goes for the Eternal Ferrystone, which admittedly I find myself feeling mixed at best about its inclusion. The former is rather nice, certain vocations in the original release could have used with more options, so it's a welcome change. Everything else is, to varying degrees, less immediately obvious how much it will impact things.
Of course, much like with my recent Onimusha preview, we did also get the chance to check out the game on Nintendo Switch 2 in handheld mode. This, too, comes with a fair share of caveats; the demo we had access to reminded me of a Monster Hunter demo, where players load into a fight against a specific enemy. If you've already played Dragon's Dogma 2, the problem should be self-evident - just because performance is fine in combat encounters, that says little to nothing for the state of the game in the cities which plagued the game's performance since launch.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the game seems to run just fine in combat encounters - jury is still out for the performance in cities, though. I won't hold my breath on that one. Visually, I appreciate how things hold up for the most part. The new snowy mountains of Norgan hold up well, and the framerate appears to be a relatively steady 30 FPS; I don't know if the demo was actually capped, or if things just worked out around that level of performance on its own, honestly. Visually, it looks about on par to Pragmata's image quality on Switch 2. That all said, I'll leave Mikhail to handle our full impressions of the port once we get closer to launch, as usual.
Ultimately, I don't know; some of the story teases seem neat, but chalk this up to another preview session that has left me with far, far more questions than answers. I'm excited for Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, and I can but only hope that the excitement does not end up misplaced. Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen launches for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC (Steam) on October 9, 2026.