Dragon’s Dogma 2 Impressions: Didn’t Play the First One? No Problem, You’ll Love it Anyway

ign.com:

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Dragon’s Dogma 2. I have Dark Arisen in my Steam library and a paltry 70 minutes of gametime that is likely going to increase in the coming weeks. But while I may be inexperienced compared to those already aware of Dogma’s greatness, I can safely say that my preview session broke my hype meter. I cannot wait to play more. After being dropped into a random save that started me in the middle of a town with the Mystic Spearhead Vocation, I wasn’t really sure of where to go. But that was the beauty of this demo. Dragon’s Dogma 2 organically gave me plenty of options for what to do next, and there’s no wrong answer. I was almost immediately greeted by a traveler asking me to find their Jadeite Orb, because if it wasn’t found, his master could have him killed. Morris, a shopkeeper, told me that his grandson Rodge had gone missing and a villager informed him he was dragged off by wolves. When I started talking to people in town, I met Folkes, who told me about a town north of Venworth that was overrun with fell beasts. All of these options were there to pursue in addition to the main storyline.

And while I was probably supposed to do the main quest, I decided to go it alone, jumping on an ox cart to the next town to see what else I could discover.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 really clicked with me because you need to constantly be on your toes. There are moments of downtime when you can just enjoy the vista or pose with a random Ogre you’ve defeated. But more often than not I was organically finding combat encounters and secrets that I wanted to investigate more. And that amazing loop was consistent as I made my journey back.

Over the course of 80 minutes I fought a Griffin that flew me into the air and dropped me to my death. I discovered the untimely fate of Rodge was affected by the fact that I decided to run off exploring the wilderness – a completely different outcome than what Mitchell encountered in his IGN First playthrough a couple months ago.