Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Review

I am divided with Dragon’s Dogma 2: Darkness Rises. On the one hand, I stand by my original assertion that the type of game Dragon’s Dogma 2 was trying to be was something special, and this expansion isn’t even trying to be the same RPG. What gives me pause is the recognition that Dark Arisen isn’t bad, and in fact I imagine that for most players it will deliver more or less what they expected. Beyond anything else, understand that Dark Arisen is worth playing – even more so for new players.

If you want to know what Dragon’s Dogma 2 was, I already wrote a review about the game a few years ago. Even beyond Dark Arisen itself, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a very different RPG in some pretty significant ways; some are undeniably good, while others aren’t necessarily aimed at improving the type of experience the game already was, but fundamentally changing it.

For the former, you can now equip up to 6 combat skills to your vocations, which is a very welcome change – for the latter, with the idea of ​​fast travel being diegetic and intentionally friction-filled, the addition of the eternal ferry stone means you have very little reason to use an oxcart, especially with the increased number of port crystals scattered across the land and at your disposal since launch.

These are changes that aren’t directly related to the expansion, but fortunately these changes seem to have been made with the understanding that it wouldn’t just be the new region Dark Arisen added or changed with the game. This is where the Lost Rites dungeons come in; 12 dungeons scattered across the world, unlocked when obtaining the Godsbane blade. This won’t mean much to those who are new to the game, but for those who have already played the game, yes, it means that you will have access to the new content quite late in the adventure.

These Lost Rites provide some balance between the challenges of the new Norgan region and what was the original endgame of the Dragon’s Dogma II base. Completing these dungeons provides you with all sorts of gear, allowing you to skip all the hassle of building up your kit so you aren’t underprepared for the new content – at least in theory. You can call on blacksmiths to further upgrade this gear, but it’s probably not worth it. By far the biggest reward is how some of these dungeons will offer flames that can be used to activate obelisks in Norgan, which provide permanent stat boosts and enhanced variants of existing combat skills.

Norgan itself is a new region that, as far as I know, is also unlocked upon receiving the Godsbane Blade; this and the Lost Rites dungeons are unlocked by speaking with Brant at the Vernworth Stardrop Inn. Once he points you in the right direction, you will be transported to Norgan, a remote tundra northeast of Vermund. You’ll also need to use Ferrystones to travel from Norgan, and it comes with its own unique set of Harbor Crystals; you can’t just gather yours from the base game to use here.

I think Norgan succeeds in being satisfying new content, but it doesn’t feel as transformative as the original Dragon’s Dogma’s Dark Arisen with Bitterblack Isle. Instead of offering an entirely new playstyle, you guided the exploration of a new region of the map; you gather new material, but not really in an active way. Defeating enemies and searching for treasure chests rewards you with relics that can be exchanged in town for a pittance in Rift Crystals.

While I think the overall structure of Dark Arisen is great, I have to admit that I’m not a fan of Relics. Very quickly, relics instantly outnumber all the gear you collected in the base game; even those lovingly improved by blacksmiths. This isn’t really a surprise, but the relics themselves can’t be upgraded any further – so by the time you reach Norgan, even if you haven’t played with the blacksmiths, you’ve lost all reason to visit them once you hit the DLC.

Relics are random, but it never feels too necessary to max out your gear; any relic will do, and while you’ll probably struggle at first before you and your pawns have received a full set of Relic gear, once you do it quickly the game’s difficulty will even out again. While there are new enemies and bosses to face, I wonder how I might have felt about the DLC if I had created an entirely new save file, rather than using the one I saved in 2024. Would I have felt burnout doing the same old song and dance, without any of the meaningful connections to progression that the base game had access to?

One of the main differences between Dark Arisen comes down to the story; I won’t lie and say that the new narrative is particularly strong, but what it does offer is a much more telegraphed hook for the story to progress. There are many more NPCs in play in Norgan, and while some of them primarily participate in side quests, many of them tie directly into the main narrative, hitchhiking frequently. This will probably be a godsend for many, and I wouldn’t say I didn’t like it, but it’s undeniably a very different tone from how things worked in the base game beyond perhaps the very end of the game.

As for Norgan himself, I rather like his layout. The emphasis here is more on verticality, with several segments of the map featuring cave systems or structures that span the layers of the map. This is a denser map than was available in the original release, so looking at Norgan on a map you might get the impression that it is rather small – in practice this is not the case. Escalation Hooks provide a way to create shortcuts to and from different levels of the map in different locations, and are frequently given as a reward for exploration.

This seems like a perfect example to highlight my main problem with the DLC; Since relics and obelisks are your way to increase your power, exploration doesn’t seem as interesting when you’ll almost always be rewarded with relics that you roll to determine exactly what you actually collected at your base, or with escalation hooks which only provide a way to explore more of the map where you’ll again be rewarded with more escalation hooks and relics.

If the map layout wasn’t so appealing and if there weren’t some interesting wrinkles in things like blizzards that force you to protect yourself from the cold and directly impact your ability to keep track of your map, I don’t know if the DLC would have landed positively for me. Even now, while I enjoyed my time with it and think it’s worth playing; Dark Arisen definitely feels like a DLC that narrows the scope of what Dragon’s Dogma 2 was, rather than expanding what was already there. I could see how, for some players, this will be exactly what the game needs – but I don’t really think I could agree with that, personally.

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen expands the content available to players, and you’ll probably have a good time – but as enjoyable as my time was, I can’t help but consider it less like an expansion of what the original game was, and more like a restriction within a much narrower scope of the RPG. At the same time, I don’t know how you could add anything else to Dragon’s Dogma 2 that wouldn’t also require a massive reorganization of the game from the ground up.

It’s not quite the expansion I would have liked, but I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t have a good time with it, or that its design was poor just because it’s different. No, Dark Arisen’s flaws are his own, as are his successes. It’s nowhere near as memorable as Dark Arisen from the first game, and I don’t know if that’s enough to change anyone’s mind about the game – but we’re still left with some DLC that’s still worth your attention.

8