Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen review for Nintendo Switch 2

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen review for Nintendo Switch 2 Dragon’s Dogma II Nintendo Switch 2 review

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen review for Nintendo Switch 2

Posted on October 9, 2026 by Dawn in Reviews, Switch 2

System: Switch 2
Release date: October 9, 2026
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is a pretty bold statement of intention from Capcom. With how divisive the game was when it first launched on other platforms two years ago, and how transformative the Dark Arisen expansion was for the original title, the name carries with it an inherent promise of change and expansion beyond the norm. Being late to the party works in favor of Nintendo Switch 2 owners, as Dragon’s Dogma 2 arrives on the platform after multiple updates, improvements, and a wealth of new content to explore. It’s still not an adventure that is going to appeal to everyone, but it is definitely the best it has ever been, and one that is an easy recommendation to make with a few minor caveats.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 thrusts you into the role of the Arisen, a singular hero chosen by the dragon by way of the rather unpleasant selection process of having their still-beating heart plucked from their chest and devoured. But as this (un)fortunate individual, it is your destiny to lead the Pawns and rule over the Kingdom of Vermund. Or at least it would be, if someone else hadn’t claimed this position and was already sitting on your throne. There is only one Arisen per generation, so something is clearly afoot here, and after a daring escape from the mines and a journey to the capital of Vernworth, your adventure to uncover the mystery begins.

Despite the explosive opening sequence of events and intriguing mystery promised by the plot, there were long stretches where I often forgot what I was supposed to be doing to move it along. Most modern open world titles seem to be deathly afraid of this exact circumstance happening, and will hold your hand in a death grip and relentlessly march you towards the next story objective, or mark absolutely everything of interest (and plenty that isn’t) on your world map. Dragon’s Dogma 2 will guide you to where you need to be once you’ve selected a quest, but for the most part it will let you discover things organically. There is a true sense of scale to each area you visit, and the game allows you to take things at your own pace and find out for yourself if there is anything worth discovering.

But you exist as part of the world rather than at the very center of it, and as time passes, events will move on with or without your input. Characters you fail to save or help may no longer need your assistance or even die if the situation is critical, if enough time passes, then something you’re supposed to be delivering could expire, and you might even miss out on a quest entirely. A lot of events happen when you’re exploring the world, which makes fast travel (something you can now do infinitely thanks to the Eternal Ferrystone added into this version of the game) itself a choice: do you travel to your next quest and risk missing an event on the road, or take the long way around and see what you can discover? In an era of sprawling open worlds where empty space is often not worth exploring more than once and you can spend a lot of time going back-and-forth with no reward, it’s a refreshing change of pace.

All-powerful Arisen you may be, but you need your trusty sidekicks by your side, and this is where Pawns come into play. You’ll create your own at the beginning of the game, but can hire two more to form your standard RPG staple party of four. As well as being extremely helpful in combat by drawing aggro and serving as another source of damage, they’ll learn the lay of the land right alongside you and can lead you to some interesting discoveries that you may otherwise miss out on completely. Inventory weight management (a system I always personally dislike dealing with in games) became much easier to deal with when I could treat my Pawns like pack animals, evenly distributing the spoils of war and discovery as necessary.

It’s easy to feel an odd sense of camaraderie with your Pawn companions as you adventure through the world together, but it is by no means a perfect system, as Pawns have a distinctly uncanny feel to them at times that you only get from AI trying their best to mimic human behavior and failing spectacularly; it’s lore-accurate given their nature as emotionless puppets who exist solely to serve the Arisen, but it’s carried to an aggravating extent at times. They’ll repeat the same lines of dialogue ad nauseum out in the field, and they’re not the most helpful of guides – the very first Pawn I hired told me that he knew exactly where a herb I was looking for could be found and then proceeded to run up and down the same ledge multiple times, all while my main Pawn told me without a trace of sarcasm that having him as a companion was an invaluable boon indeed. Needless to say, I replaced him at the earliest opportunity, which happened to be just down the trail a few minutes later when a passing Pawn offered his services, complete with the enticing sales pitch of promising to guard my back – something he absolutely failed to do later when we were all mauled by a pack of harpies that continually put us to sleep. Finding that perfect party is very much a work in progress.

Combat in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a fast-paced, frenetic affair reminiscent of Capcom’s Monster Hunter series at the best of times, particularly when going up against larger enemies, which you can (and frequently will need to) climb on to attack specific weak points, exploit the environment to create an opening for uninterrupted damage, and be aware of both yourself and your party of Pawns. These encounters are unfortunately few and far between in the base game, but are far more plentiful in Norgan. The Vocations you can choose from are all classes you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever played an RPG before – you’ll be able to begin as an Archer, Fighter, Mage, or Thief – and are easy to get to grips with, with a lot of potential for build crafting later when you can diversify into Advanced and Hybrid Vocations, which all come with their own set of skills to make things a little more interesting. The lack of a lock-on is a little glaring at times, but it adds to the frenetic nature of things and makes positioning and strategy important. Overcommit and you’ll be punished for it, especially on higher difficulties.

For the Nintendo Switch 2 version at least, the content added by the Dark Arisen expansion feels seamlessly woven into the base game. Due to the lack of cross-platform saves (at least at time of writing), you’ll be starting from scratch whether you’ve played the game before or not, and although the new region of Norgan is accessible from early on, it is significantly more challenging due to the higher level requirements. I entered there as soon as I could, eager to explore the icy new region, and was forced to make a very swift exit after less than an hour. The Lost Rites, twelve new repeatable dungeons that are scattered across the base game’s maps, have a far more modest level requirement of twenty, and feel as though they were designed to be tackled alongside the main story.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a notoriously demanding game at the time of its release, and what Capcom has achieved with performance on Nintendo Switch 2 is phenomenal. The game allows you to choose between a variable frame rate and a 30 frames per second lock, and a separate toggle for framegen. Interestingly, you can also choose to lock the action to 30 FPS and enable framegen, though I didn’t notice a difference in performance with this particular setup from having just the former enabled.

The different levels of performance between docked and handheld were quite dramatic, although playing with a variable frame rate with framegen enabled in handheld mode provided the best experience for me, with incredibly smooth performance in most instances and very little input lag. That said, I noticed a lot of ghosting when attacking with this setup, which had the unusual side effect of making melee combat feel oddly cinematic at times. Playing with the 30 FPS cap in handheld made the game feel more sluggish by comparison, but still a very stable experience.

When docked, the game has noticeably less blur when in motion (unless of course you choose to enable motion blur, which is an option only available in docked mode), but background texture loading and pop-in become significantly more noticeable when you pan the camera even slightly, regardless of settings. It’s not as immersion-breaking as it sounds, though it does make handheld the better way to play the game if you’re even slightly sensitive to dropped frames or bizarre visual shifts. It’s especially prominent with subtitles enabled, as the text that floats overhead moves in a noticeably jittery fashion, and I wish that Capcom had included an option to disable these specifically. Disabling subtitles also removes them from cutscenes, which don’t have an auto-advance option, meaning you will need to either skip dialogue entirely or endure awkward pauses while you wait for a character to finish what they’re saying with no on-screen indicator for when they’ll be finished.

This level of performance comes at a price, however, and the visual cutbacks are quite significant. In handheld, it can be especially painful at times; there are very noticeable levels of blur even when you’re just standing around talking to NPCs, very low texture quality when out in the field, and highly visible anti-aliasing around character models close up. Docked, the game is of a slightly higher visual quality, but this is let down somewhat by the textures taking their time to load in. It’s certainly playable, but the question of whether or not the visual cuts justify the performance – which is far better than I expected, especially in handheld – is going to come down to personal preference.

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen is a game that understands that an immersive world is made up of more than just big set pieces and dramatic narrative beats, and that things are often at their best in those smaller moments that you stumble across entirely by accident on the road to your destination. It’s not something you’ll remember for a single epic moment but for that one time your pawn got you out of (or more likely into) a scrape, or that one NPC who decided to stop you in the middle of a very important quest because he wanted a herb growing just outside of town and was too scared or lazy to get it himself. It’s far from the prettiest game on Nintendo Switch 2, but it has been well-optimized and arrives in its best format so far. There’s never been a better time to begin your journey as the Arisen.

Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.

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