The first Dark Arisen expansion for the original Dragon’s Dogma has a well-lauded place in video game history as the expansion that “fixed” the base game, sanding down the rough technical edges and tweaking things to make the notoriously obtuse RPG more approachable. It also added hours of new content, spiraling an already heady story directly into the heavens on the back of dragon wings. Dark Arisen 2 isn’t as transformational as the first one was, primarily because many of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s biggest issues have been fixed through incremental patching since it came out in 2024. But the new content here definitely flies in the same ambitious skies as its predecessor, pushing the story and world design to new heights, even if some of the new progression options get left behind.
As with Dragon’s Dogma 2’s base campaign, Dark Arisen 2’s story remixes themes from the first game without being a simple retelling. Like in the first, another Arisen has been rumored to exist, something that shouldn’t be possible and demands your immediate attention. This takes you north to the frozen mountains of Norgan, a place that is largely abandoned save for the single settlement at its border (and the steady stream of visitors coming from other lands to investigate what’s been lost under all that ice besides you).
The expansion’s story also meanders in similar ways to the base game, with plot points getting sidetracked by little tasks or other happenings, but it didn’t feel as distracting since a lot of the “help me and I’ll help you” quests are relegated to side stories. As a whole, this roughly 20-hour main quest is solid, lacking in nuanced writing or ground breaking storytelling but bursting with a tangibly broody mood, big moments, and some genuinely interesting lore. It’s meditation on how a hero of destiny chooses their fate (if they get a choice at all) is unsubtle, and spends far too long at the end really sending the message home, but it sticks it.
For those who don’t mind a lot of filler with their killer, there are plenty of people with tasks thoroughly less vital to the survival of reality that need doing. A couple of those quest lines stand out – one where you help the son of the village’s leader become brave and tough enough to follow in his footsteps, for example – but most are just a flimsy excuse to run around the world and beat up enemies.
The frigid Norgan region is delightfully dense with things to find and see even if its smaller than most other regions in Dragon’s Dogma 2. What it lacks in square footage on a map, it gains in a sprawling sense of height that stretches from it’s jagged icy peaks down to winding underground caverns that spread wide and interconnect. Navigating up and down the rocks is a treacherous and daunting road at first, but climbing hooks can be used on specific poles scattered throughout to bridge elevations without the fuss.
Combined with how dungeons and caves tended to loop back on themselves, revealing exits or opening doors that served as their own shortcuts into and out of zones, and Dark Arisen 2 felt almost like a Zelda or Metroid game in ways this series never has before. The abundance of portcrystals scattered around the map is another navigational relief. There are more in Norgan than there are in Vermund and Bathall combined, making travelling to different zones far more reasonable than it was in the base game.
Note that reasonable doesn’t necessarily mean easier. The portcrystal’s abundance is a practical matter, as ox carts wouldn’t last long in the harsh environments. Norgan’s wintry winds often pick up, turning snowfall into blinding whiteouts that threaten to freeze you to death if you aren’t protected by special winterized gear or new consumables designed to stave off these frost effects for a limited time. These came in abundance pretty regularly so I never felt like my life was in danger out there, but the scrambling effect it has on the minimap and how generally hard it is to see or navigate in real time made them a threat worth waiting out at camp.
Norgan’s crumbling castles and snowcapped cliffs are a welcome change of pace from the rolling hills and dense hinterlands of Vermund and he craggy deserts of Bathall. It’s also not all snowy wastes. I was surprised to see a break in the snow drifts when I came across a festering poisonous swamp. It matches thematically in that everything in it is dead (or maybe wishes it was), but areas like that and the crystal caves deep below the mountains subverted my expectations for the region in a welcome way.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/dragons-dogma-2-dark-arisen-review
