- Quick Summary: Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is both accessible for newcomers and visually striking, with snowy exploration, giant monsters, and a challenging dragon battle to overcome. Despite limited playtime, the expansion leaves a promising first impression.
Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen immediately throws you into a different environment, but its familiar combat and surprisingly forgiving approach make it an inviting expansion for newcomers like me.
CAPCOM describes the expansion as an enhanced experience featuring new stories, areas, challenges, character creation options, and more. I only had just over an hour to experience it, so there was obviously no way I was going to see everything it has to offer. Instead, I was dropped into the snowy, mountainous environment and given the freedom to choose one of the game's existing vocations before setting off.
As someone completely new to Dragon's Dogma, I opted for the first option available to me, which I believe was the Fighter. The existing vocations all provide different ways to approach combat, and that became one of the first things I noticed about Dark Arisen.
A snowy world to explore
The preview began with a relatively straightforward objective. I needed to collect several relics and return them to a character in a small village area, with doing so helping to unlock upgrades.
With only an hour available, though, I wasn't particularly interested in taking things slowly. I pushed further into the snowy wilderness and towards what appeared to be an enormous, mountainous castle.
The Arctic environment gives Dark Arisen a very strong visual identity. The terrain and imposing mountains make it feel like you're stepping into a real adventure. Plus, the map looked like it had plenty more to offer beyond what I was able to see during the preview. That time limit was probably my biggest frustration from the preview, as there was clearly more to investigate, but I had to keep moving.
Giant monsters are the highlight
One of the first major encounters I came across was a huge mammoth-like creature wielding what appeared to be a tree trunk. It was a great introduction to the combat because this wasn't simply a case of standing in front of an enormous health bar and repeatedly hitting it.
Dragon's Dogma 2's ability to climb on larger enemies is one of its most enjoyable mechanics. I could scramble up the creature's body, look for opportunities to attack, and generally try to figure out how best to bring something several times my size crashing down.
The fight was challenging, but not overwhelmingly so. That's something I appreciated throughout my time with Dark Arisen. Dragon's Dogma 2 feels considerably more approachable than something like Elden Ring, at least from what I've experienced so far.
The bigger challenge wasn't necessarily the giant enemies themselves. It was everything else around them. During some encounters, smaller enemies would constantly swarm me while I was trying to focus on a much larger target. Some of the creatures were particularly quick and nimble, launching themselves at me and making it difficult to concentrate on the boss I was trying to overcome.
The mammoth-like creature also served as a useful warm-up for what was waiting later. It forced me to get back into the rhythm of defending, dashing, using special attacks, and, most importantly, timing everything correctly. That was particularly useful for me because I wasn't coming into this preview with hours of Dragon's Dogma experience behind me. I was learning as I went, but the key thing I noticed is that I didn't completely fail.
The encounter was also the point where I really started to appreciate how good this expansion looks. The scale of some of these creatures is genuinely impressive. This particular monster felt enormous, and seeing it lumber around the snowy environment while wielding an entire tree as a weapon made it feel terrifying, and yet the battle was manageable in the end.
A dragon that refuses to go down
Eventually, my journey culminated in a fight against a huge, magical dragon.
This thing looked like it had been trapped in darkness for decades, making it an intimidating sight. The bigger issue was figuring out how to actually do meaningful damage to it.
After fighting with little success, the answer finally became clear. The dragon had several pinker areas across its body, particularly around its front limbs and head, which acted as its major weak points. You could even cut its limbs off, although the creature had the rather inconvenient ability to magically regenerate them.
That made the fight feel considerably more involved than simply attacking whatever part of the dragon happened to be closest to me.
The health bar also gave me some serious concerns. There were multiple stages to work through, and after seeing how long the first stage took me, I started wondering how long I was going to be fighting this thing.
Again, that's probably partly because I'm a newcomer to Dragon's Dogma, but it was a genuinely tough encounter. And, as with the earlier boss fight, the smaller enemies that dragon seemed to spawn out of nowhere didn't exactly make things easier.
I eventually managed to get through it, but unfortunately, I didn't get to see the conclusion. A character was introduced in a cutscene that took over from the battle before the screen faded to black, leaving the encounter, and presumably the story, unresolved for future discovery.
A promising expansion
My biggest takeaway from this short preview is how accessible Dragon's Dogma 2 felt.
I went into Dark Arisen as a newcomer, picked a vocation that seemed straightforward, learned the combat as I went, and eventually managed to defeat (almost) an enormous magical dragon.
There was clearly much more of the new area I didn't get to see, and the map looked large enough to suggest plenty of exploration beyond what I experienced.
The new stories, areas, enemies, and challenges give Dark Arisen plenty of room to expand on what Dragon's Dogma 2 already offers. At the same time, the different, albeit existing, vocations mean there should be plenty of ways to approach those encounters.
After just over an hour in the snow, I was left wanting to see more, even though I hadn’t played the base game going in. And after getting a taste of what is waiting, I'm certainly interested in going back to find out what else is lurking out there.
Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen releases October 9, 2026, on Nintendo Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and on PC.
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