Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t care if you’re new to it, it will still give you a thrill

Dragon dogma 2 is like a fantasy-inspired episode of 1000 ways to dieif a real-life example witnessed by Polygon is any indication.

Last week, Polygon was invited to a three-hour hands-on preview of Capcom’s upcoming action game, which follows a game with an unconventional backdrop. The original Dragon dogma is something of an enigma, a third-person, heavily combat-oriented action RPG set in the post-Skyrim fantasy tree. Although it didn’t immediately find a wide audience, it gained the status of a bona fide cult classic over the years, buoyed in part by a 2013 reissue (Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen). Dragon dogma 2 straddles the line between sequel and reboot; you don’t need to have played the original to understand this, although familiarity with the series might have kept me going better.

During an early fight, a giant eagle flew out of nowhere, picked me up and threw me 100 feet off a cliff into the ocean. Then the water literal ate me. That wasn’t the only time I died. I was also caught by a dragon, electrocuted by a griffin, frozen by a harpy, kicked by a golem, beaten by an ogre, and chased relentlessly by a group of club-wielding orcs. Wolves ate my face. I fell off (so many) cliffs. But I persevered, but was really nixed by one thing: a gate.

Our preview of the sequel was split into two separate 90-minute sessions, with each session presenting a different calling (class, actually) at a different point in the game. For the first session, I played as a Mystic Spearhand calling and was tasked to enter Battahl, a nation of cat people known as beastren. It seemed easy enough. Needless to say, it wasn’t.

Early on, I saw a border passage order in my inventory. I thought I could use it, but because I wasn’t an animal, the guard at the gate refused to let me through. So I headed to the nearby village to see if I could find an alternate path through the gate, but instead I was inundated with distractions. Every few steps an NPC stopped me. A shopkeeper asked me to find his missing grandson, but gave no clue as to where he was, such as a waypoint on a map. Two citizens asked me to track down something called a “Jadeite egg.” Both promised a reward. Neither offered a waypoint.

Some side quests are time limited Dragon dogma 2. If you don’t complete certain quests in real time, you will permanently fail them. That means if you do too many quests at once, you’re pretty much guaranteed not to be able to play this game 100%. I chose to track down and rescue the shopkeeper’s grandson, partly because I’m too much of a hero to let an innocent child die, but mostly because I heard a PR rep drop a hint during the session to another journalist about how I said child.

Image: Capcom

When I tried to save the child, I discovered that you can’t swim in it Dragon dogma 2. Almost every body of water is home to something known as ‘The Brine’, a red mass of mindless Lovecraftian tendrils that swallow you up when you try to swim. This posed a problem. You can only travel quickly between cities (and for a fee). As far as I could tell, there were no mounts available in the preview build. And the route to where the child seemed to be would take me past several bodies of water that would eat me again.

After several embarrassing deaths, I tracked down the shopkeeper’s grandson and brought him back to safety. Despite walking around the city for the rest of the first session, I never found a way through the gate. (A PR rep later told me about some viable methods I’d missed, including climbing a ladder or buying a beast mask and wearing it as a disguise.)

But that wasn’t a problem because I saw Battahl in the second session, which put me in the Magick Archer class. The main story quest in this session was about fixing a sword for a guy, but if my experience with the gate has taught me anything, it’s that Dragon dogma 2 is most interesting when you’re just messing around.

Image: Capcom

During the struggle, I immediately noticed a palpable difference between the two callings. The Magick Archer was generally more agile, faster and easier to control than the Mystic Spearhand. As a Mystic Spear Hand, I had access to a spear and some spells, which kept me close to enemies. The Magick Archer, meanwhile, came with a bow but no string – a conduit for a whole host of magical abilities, including one that essentially guided missile from 007 Nightfire. With at least nine confirmed callings Dragon dogma 2I’m impressed with how diverse the two I played were, and I’m curious to see if there’s a similar variance between all the available vocations.

During the second session, I focused mainly on the series’ vaunted pawn system – fully customizable party members that provide support in battle – which returns for Dragon dogma 2. You can encounter and recruit randomly generated pawns around the world. Playing online allows other players to recruit your pawns into their groups, and vice versa. When the full game comes out, pawns can also help you if you’re stuck, a PR rep told me.

Image: Capcom

For example, let’s say you can’t get past a gate leading to the Battahl region because of a guard who refuses to accept your fake papers. If you recruit a pawn from a player who has completed the quest in their game, the pawn will provide hints on where to go or what to do. Since all the pawns in last week’s preview were generated by Capcom, rather than other actual real-world players, I didn’t see this in action, but man, I sure could have used it.

Although I spent most of my three hours with Dragon dogma 2 lost or dying (or both), I totally see the appeal. Dragon dogma 2 features the kind of emergent, tell-your-friends-later gameplay that you simply can’t script. You learn your mistakes the hard way: getting lost and dying over and over again. The real clincher, for me at least, is that every death comes in Dragon dogma 2 is actually consistent funnymainly thanks to a retro-style ragdoll physics system (similar to that of the eminently memeable game du jour Hell divers 2). I learned to look at the sky; next time the eagles won’t get me. But there’s bound to be something else, and I’m curious to know what.

Dragon dogma 2 will be released on March 22 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series