Dragon’s Dogma is a game that is already twelve years old. The game contained a number of original gameplay elements for the time and allowed players to make choices that affected the story, but it failed in the areas of fast travel and performance, complaining of an extremely low frame rate. I don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, but we can safely say that Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the successor to the first part in every way and this obviously has excellent, but also less positive, consequences.

Initially, the game settings are quite similar to those in the first game. The player takes on the role of The Arisen. You don’t just become that. In the opening stage of Dragon’s Dogma 2, we see flashbacks to how the player fought the dragon as a regular soldier. The dragon appears to have ended that soldier’s life, but then grabs his body and rips out the heart. You might think that this is not a recipe for a long life, but nothing could be further from the truth. The soldier survives and turns out to be the dragon’s chosen one to live out his life as The Arisen: the only one capable of defeating the dragon and thus continuing the cycle of battles between dragons and Arisen.

This is a big undertaking, but there is good news: aresin is respected around the world. Everyone knows that the role you are expected to play is crucial to their survival, so many characters tend to help you. In fact, in the human kingdom of Vermund, kingship is reserved for the Arisen. This also brings us to the first hurdle you face as an Arisen in Dragon’s Dogma 2. In the absence of an Arisen, Vermund is ruled by the Deputy Guardian, or in this case the Guardian. It turns out that there is also someone introducing himself as Al-Qaim. So, in the first part of the game, the story is not only about preparing for a battle with a dragon, but also about getting a foothold as the one and only ruler.

This story is filled with political intrigue, partly linked to the rival kingdom of Batal. Where Vermund is the kingdom of men, Batal is the kingdom of beasts. Just like in games like The Elder Scrolls, there are multiple races, which is reflected in the appearance of the characters in the game and in the story. I thought the overall story was good, although it’s recommended that you try your best to do the side quests as much as possible. You’ll often be deepening the main story and you’ll miss out on a lot of fun stuff if you only focus on the main quests. However, doing a lot of side quests makes the long game more exhausting: estimates of the number of hours you need to complete Dragon’s Dogma 2 vary from thirty to eighty hours. I haven’t reached the end after fifty hours, so I’ll assume the latter and not the former.

Microtransactions

When you begin this adventure, you have purchased the game at “full price.” You start the game and then you see that there is a menu where you can buy add-ons. Let us immediately take the bull over which there has been, or perhaps still is, a lot of hype. Of course, I also believe microtransactions should not be encouraged in games. The fact that the discussion about Dragon’s Dogma 2 mainly revolves around this is a shame in itself. However, I don’t have too many issues with what the game has to offer. These are “time savers”: things that can speed up your gaming experience, because they make the game easier. Everything you can buy in the store can also be earned in-game and this is easy enough that additional purchases aren’t really necessary. Moreover, making the game easier is not necessary at all, because we are definitely not talking here about a particularly difficult game. So the discussion about how reprehensible microtransactions are in the “full price game” seems primarily theoretical or ideological. In general, it is not necessary to be a fan of microtransactions, but I think their role, potential added value or indispensability in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is not so bad. So you can safely ignore them without missing anything.