Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (2013) Backlog Review

With the release of Dragon’s Dogma 2 serving as a stark reminder of how long I’ve put off the first game, it seemed the right time to pick up the Nintendo Switch port of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen – trading prettiness for portability – and chip away at the backlog. Developed and published by Capcom, it’s a distinctly Japanese action-RPG, even if the setting and dubious voice acting evokes generic European high-fantasy. It’s a game that takes a while to reveal its narrative and mechanical depth, but it is a lot of fun if you enjoy the hands-on combat and Pawn companion system – though the longer you play the more annoying several time-wasting mechanics become.

The convoluted plot and unsettling characters are by far the most JRPG thing about Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. You’ve got overwrought writing, chosen-one themes, obvious plot twists, a complete lack of subtlety in human interactions, and several bizarre encounters with no foreshadowing and often no purpose beyond shock value. I’ve never been sure if these recurrent JRPG elements are by design, a problem with direct translations, or just my own predominantly western filter, but that unpredictability and weirdness was a narrative highlight in 2024 – a time when cinematic storytelling techniques and audiovisual spectacle are often valued more than the novelty or quality of the story. That said, it does take a while to hit any interesting revelations and for several plot threads to converge.

A brisk, confusing, but narratively significant prologue hints at the cyclical nature of the dragon and their link to “Arisen”, followed by your freshly customised hero encountering the reborn dragon ages later; surviving despite losing their heart; and being taunted by the dragon to try reclaiming it. What follows is a tutorial-heavy trek to the capital of Gran Soryn; an encounter with a seemingly unhinged Duke who claims to have once slew the dragon; the emergence of a Dragon-worshipping cult of necromancers; and an introduction to the mysterious Pawns – ageless, human-like warriors with no individual will or purpose other than to aid the Arisen. Their primary function is as AI companions and as part the indirect multiplayer element, but their origin and fate are also significant to the plot.

Once your hero is accepted into the Duke’s “Wyrm Hunt” and the second act begins, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen lets you off the leash, providing plenty of time and space to appreciate its mechanical depth – just so long as you don’t progress clearly-marked primary quests that trigger the next act, potentially change the world-state, and can cut off entire side quest chains. That freedom can be a double-edged sword for those that crave frequent narrative beats, as the lengthy mid-game – which features lengthy treks to each corner of the world map – feels a lot like running errands for the Duke and a handful of significant NPCs, often with little indication of how these tasks will assist the Arisen’s hunt for the dragon. It doesn’t help that quest design is not a strong point.

You’ll be sent to deliver messages, kill things, collect things, and escort friendlies – with few novel set-pieces outside of boss battles with a big health-bar to whittle down. It doesn’t help that while Gransys is geographically big, it’s not dense. You’re often sent back to the same location – sometimes right after a prior quest sent you there – maybe a new path unlocked or some new foes. There is an inordinate amount of notice board collectathons and escort missions to gain XP, currency, and the affinity of NPCs, but the primary and side quests do push you to explore new areas and even feature some simple platforming or puzzling to break up combat loop. They offer more cutscenes, flesh out the lore, handle the world-building, and even offer player choice – though that rarely amounts to much more than access to new gear or a temporary ally. Even the end-game choices ultimately loop you back towards a canonical ending.

On the upside, simply exploring Gransys is initially thrilling and sometimes felt like a janky sandbox-style RPG you’d get from European developers like Piranha Bytes or Spiders – the sort of game where you can exploit the terrain or enemy AI to survive battles well beyond your character level and gear. Unlike those games, the action is more hands-on, and a skilful player can also defy the odds if they avoid damage and exploit weak points. Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen never feels as slick as Capcom’s dedicated action games (think Devil May Cry) but your hero can still run, jump, and grapple enemies; they have light and heavy attack complemented by blocks, parries, and rolls; you can equip up to six special abilities or spells; and, as with so many games in a post-Dark Souls world, you’re primarily limited by your stamina-bar.

With no level-scaling, high-level monsters patrolling parts of the world, and even tougher foes emerging after dark, Gransys is a dangerous place and not one to be explored alone. Aiding you is a fully customisable main Pawn, and up to two others you can recruit in the world or summon from Rift Stones (some of which are actually other player’s main Pawns if you enable the online mode). The game offers a flexible vocation system with basic, specialised, and hybrid classes, each levelled individually and offering unique augments – think active skills or passive buffs – that you unlock using discipline points and assign to limited slots. You do the same for your main Pawn and while you can’t control them directly, you can gear them up and assign augments that best compliment your playstyle. For other Pawns, you can always view their skills and gear before recruiting them, dismiss them and recruit others whenever you need to change strategy, and even expend rare Rift Crystals to hire powerful Pawns at a higher-level than your party.

The lack of direct party control might not appeal to everyone, but it adds a degree of randomness to combat and allows for emergent scenarios – in which it can feel like Pawns are reacting to the situation despite pulling from a relatively limited pool of AI behaviours. That said, you can request basic behaviours from your main Pawn – such as prioritising larger foes or protecting your hero – and they learn from your actions, like charging in aggressively vs. baiting enemies, or prioritising looting before finishing off stragglers. In and out of combat, Pawns also provide constant guidance – perhaps a little too much. They’ve got a few lines for each quest stage, they can guide you to objectives markers in the world, they call out enemies and weak spots, and even remind you of the appropriate weapon or magic type to use against them once they’ve observed its effects. They’re not complex party companions with deep backstories, unique quests, or romance potential, but they never complain (no matter how you treat them) and are infinitely more reliable after a bit of on-the-job training.

By far my biggest criticism of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is the presence of mechanics that feel like they’re wasting your time. The “combining” mechanic feels bloated for the sake of it, allowing you to breakdown or refine hundreds of ingredients and crafting parts into only a dozen or so truly useful items; separate inventory and equipment menus make distributing, comparing, and equipping gear or consumables a pain; and there are quests tied to the time-of-day, but no way to sleep until dawn or dusk outside of two inns and rare camps. Most problematic, however, is a combination of the aforementioned scale of the world, bland quest design, and re-use of locations, with severely limited fast-travel options – something that was apparently even worse in the 2012 original.

To be fair, the Dark Arisen update introduced an “Eternal Ferrystone” so you no longer have to pay or scavenge for them to travel to Portcrystals; they’ve added another permanent Portcrystal to the starting village in addition to the capital; and you can find, carry, and place up to 10 portable Portcrystals in your first playthrough instead of only in NG+. The downside is that despite these tweaks, you still spend an inordinate amount of time retreading the same paths, battling through the same respawning mobs, and opening the same respawning loot chests. Does it support the levelling and gear system, sure, but it slowly drags down the experience the longer you play and that initial sense of wonder exploring Gransys with my party of Pawns eventually gave way to frustration, as samey quests would send me trudging back and forth for little gameplay or narrative reward.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen was played on Nintendo Switch. It is also available on PC, Xbox One/Series S|X, and PS4/5.