[Review] Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen

This brings me to the voice acting. It’s dreadful. Sometimes it has a quirky charm as your pawn ruminates on their surroundings in clever ways, such as explaining why a certain area of the city is quiet at this time of the day, but most of the time it’s repetitive chatter from the same three voice actors over and over again. Thankfully you can turn the Pawn dialog off which is a blessing. What you can’t change, however, is everyone else’s VO which is just as labored and uninspired, if not more so. It makes upgrading your gear and interacting with essential NPCs a chore, as they repeat the exact same single line of dialog ad nauseam every time you complete an action or return to a menu. This alone is enough to transform you as a player into the very weary traveler everyone keeps referring to you as in-game. It’s far from a deal breaker, but it did encourage me to step away from certain shops and quests sooner than I normally would.

One element that underlines much of the game’s content is a distinct lack of hand holding. You’re relatively free from the get go to just pick a direction and run. You’ll almost certainly die if you do, but the option is there for you. This trend carries over to much of Dragon’s Dogma’s systems as well like builds and gear upgrades. It can initially feel overwhelming like you aren’t being told the finer points of class choices, the all important what to do and what not to do, but once you dig your teeth into it and look past the admittedly clunky UI everything is fairly self explanatory. If anything this creative choice strikes a fine balance between trial, error and the fun of experimentation. It also lends the game a sense of mystery I feel is imperative to any RPG worth its salt.

That feeling of mysterious uncertainty is also entrenched in the game’s world rather gracefully. Gransys is a slightly smaller and more linear kingdom than the ones you might be used to in an Elder Scrolls or Witcher game, but it has plenty of open fields, gnarled cave structures, and murky catacombs to facilitate exploration and combat. It’s pretty middle of the road artistically, lacking the specificity with which games like Skyrim are designed, but as someone who prefers the more nondescript lush greenery of Oblivion then that’s fine by me. Particular mention must go to the way light and shadow work in the environment. When night falls or you enter an unlit cave you can’t see a single thing beyond roughly four feet. Once you light your lantern, however, every item and player present casts real-time shadows that bounce and flicker off the surrounding environment, creating an intense, foreboding atmosphere as you tiptoe deeper into the darkness. It’s another aspect of the game that plants you in the boots of your character and by virtue of that, immerses you deeper into the game’s world.

Technically then, the game is an absolute showcase on the Switch. The aforementioned lighting effects are a visual treat to behold, but outside of that the game shines graphically especially in handheld mode. If you’ve played the game before then the resolution might be a little fuzzier than you remember, but asset-wise little was lost in the transition. Coming out of a valley for the first time and seeing the walls of the main city Gran Soren surrounded by decayed battlements, wildlife and rolling green fields stopped me dead in my tracks as I thought to myself, “Really Capcom? You actually managed to pull this off?” Capcom has repeatedly knocked it out of the park with their Switch conversions and this one is no different. There are some issues with pop in but those were present on other platforms well before the Switch version was even under consideration. Performance thankfully stays close to the 30 frames per second mark, too, even when things get busy onscreen. Handheld or docked, make no mistake – this is a standout title for the Switch on a technical level.

In the many years I’ve been playing video-games, the ones that have left the most enduring mark on me have been those that make me rethink what’s possible within the confines of their worlds. The likes of The Elder Scrolls IV and Deus Ex were watershed moments in this regard, as they managed to provide an extra layer of depth and interactivity to their respective settings. They felt like emulations of living, breathing worlds as opposed to simple smoke and mirror illusions meticulously crafted to feign depth. Now, in 2019, I’m delighted to be able to add another game to that list: Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. It truly speaks volumes that this game can still have such a profound effect on me after so many years on the market, but it truly scratches an itch I wasn’t even aware I had. The extent to which Capcom has gone to loosen the reigns and let you discover your own adventure feel like a breath of fresh air in the current gaming landscape. It immerses you deeper in its setting using methods you’d never anticipate. Most importantly though, it knows it’s a videogame, and it knows exactly what it needs to do gameplay wise in order to hook you in for good. Don’t miss this one.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen review copy provided by Capcom for the purposes of this review.