Dragon’s Dogma 2 is all about finding the fun in the friction

By Phil Bothun

At first brush, Dragon’s Dogma 2 feels like a game not made for me. Much like when I picked up Elden Ring, I’m a newcomer to a series people have loved for years. People very happy their favorite 2012 RPG is getting another shot.

Which is good, because I still don’t completely know what I’m doing. I’ve played for around 8-10 hours now, leveled up a vocation halfway, made it to the big city, and stumbled upon a real classic amnesia plot. I’ve let my ingredients rot, been absolutely crushed by a cyclops, and pushed a bit too hard before camping.

I don’t know what exactly I expected when I booted the game up for the first time, but somehow, this wasn’t it. Unless you had played the original, I’m not sure there’s a modern analog. You just have to meet Dragon’s Dogma 2 on its own terms. I keep wanting to criticize it for its imprecise combat, constant backtracking, and other oddities, but every time I try to formulate a coherent thought on it, the game manages to endear me to it more. It’s not clunky design, it’s intentional.

I think the most moment-to-moment frustration is when your party feels like the most inept MMO group. You can see right away why the current crop of open-world RPGs are the way they are. In most modern open world games, the player character is a super human whirling dervish of knives, arrows, and flames. In Dragon’s Dogma 2, you’re kinda good at one thing. The rest is up to your Pawns.

Ah the Pawns. Where to even begin. In Dragon’s Dogma, you begin the game by creating your character and then a Pawn, a character who is your forever companion. Just like you, they level up and can change classes. Unlike you, they also travel the multiverse and can be temporary companions to other players. While with another player, they won’t pick up experience, but they do gain knowledge: locations of chests and caves, tricks to bosses, or just random world knowledge. You can also add up to two more Pawns to your squad to help with combat, gain some of their passed around knowledge, and round out your team with special skills.

You have minor control over Pawns, reduced down to “Go!,” “Wait,” “Help,” and “To me.” You can’t issue direct commands to your party, instead they operate based on their temperament and skill set, an esoteric concoction I haven’t quite figured out yet. It all works together to feel less like managing an RPG party in something like Baldur’s Gate or Dragon Age and more like an unruly group of MMO randoms all on voice chat doing their best Shakespearean accents. It's chaotic, hilarious, and sometimes frustrating.

Around hour seven, my squad of three pawns and my archer character stumbled across a Minotaur boss in a forest. I noticed early on that my arrows were doing almost nothing, but when the mage enchanted our weapons with electricity things started moving. Once the enchantment wore off, the Mage never recast it. Instead, I sat there burning through every explosive arrow I had and doing chip damage on this monster for 10 minutes, hammering the pawn commands trying to get the Mage (named Shitface, more on this later) to enchant our weapons again, but we had to do it the old fashioned way. Was I hitting the wrong command? Was the Mage’s temperament not one that was buff-friendly? Did they know something I didn’t? Or was this particular Pawn who whiled away time by striking every destructible box and barrel with lightning just bad at being a buddy? Big Sid energy.

Pawns can be equally uncooperative when it comes to traversal abilities; I gave my main Pawn (MainPawn, sigh) the springboard ability so they can toss someone on their shield to reach high places. I thought I was basically unlocking a double jump, but oh boy was I wrong. There are so many times when he will point out a chest, say “Wow, I sure wish we could reach that somehow” and I sit there dumbfounded at the screen, pressing the commands hoping that he’ll pick up the hint that we could, indeed, reach it if he just used the damn ability I know he has. I’ll never complain about a game adding a grappling hook ever again. I did upgrade MainPawn’s springboard ability because the one time he did do it was pretty cool.

Just like the Pawns, combat, and navigation, with every passing minute, I’m growing to like the friction. The Pawn banter is dumb, but fun. That Minotaur battle is a story now, instead of just another 5 minutes hitting the X button. And honestly, you don’t need to get every treasure chest, it’s ok.

Food and potion ingredients degrade in your very limited inventory over time and I like it. Do I need to run around with 30 beast-steaks? No, I’m an item hoarder; I’d never use them. But, combine that degrading inventory with probably not being able to cast heal at will and you’ve got yourself a recipe for finally going through those inventory items. Sure, I’m still collecting some potions, but nothing feels critical to save for endgame battles.

Which brings me to the micro-transactions of it all. Dragon’s Dogma 2 made headlines around release time because of its micro-transactions strategy, specifically that there were single use resurrection stones, books to re-access character creation, and fast travel stones for sale. These are all items you can acquire in-game and are definitely not necessary purchases. I think these are bad micro-transactions, but it has nothing to do with the game at all.

Ever since the Terminus Armor in Mass Effect 2, I’ve been a deluxe edition person. I’m the idiot who pays a couple extra bucks for something that probably isn’t more than a cosmetic upgrade. But I sure am a sucker for a good piece of armor. But in DD2, just the sheer confusion of what exactly was included in the collectors edition gave me pause.

Which is the worst part about these micro-transactions/DLC: they’re just bad, confusing purchases. If you die in a fight and just need a wakestone to revive and finish the fight, if you have zero wakestones, you just get booted to the game over screen. I can’t load up the store and purchase a “continue.” The game has no confidence or interest in selling you these items. I think it’s intended to be that way: whaling-out on resurrection stones just really doesn’t make the game that much easier. The micro-transactions just reek of corporate mandate, not deliberate game design.

While I enjoy most of the game’s friction, there are aspects that remind me that video games have come a long way, but not everyone has come along for the ride. For every Pawn cosplaying as a mall-brand Gandalf or Geralt, there‘s another one named Shitface, Fux, or Fatty. It’s gotten better since launch, but it really feels like there was no accounting for toxic teens of 2024.

The other outdated choice I could do without was the absolute jump scare of going from normal medieval armor to Lingerie Robin Hood. Some of the completely out-of-pocket armor designs create enough odd dissonance with their Shakespearean voices that you can’t help being reminded this is a Video Game Ass Video Game. Do I think that needing to put my archer in underwear and thigh-highs for significantly better armor sucks? Yes. Is the game hard enough that I feel I need to wear the skimpy briefs? No.

I’m enjoying my time with Dragon’s Dogma 2. I think it’s a campy, weird time that has some really compelling gameplay friction that feels like a response to sprawling power fantasy RPGs. Sure, it’s a game about saving the world, but I’m just here to adventure with my batch of buddies and learn some Elizabethan swears.