It's Been Two Years Since *Dragon's Dogma 2* Released, and Players Are Still Waiting for DLC?

For an action RPG, a second anniversary often feels like a mid-game save point: a chance to look back at its reception, and also to see clearly whether it still has what it takes to keep pushing forward. Yesterday happened to mark the second anniversary of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s release, and Capcom shared a commemorative illustration to thank players. The occasion also made the comment section lively again.

Interestingly, player sentiment is still a classic case of “love it or hate it.” On one side, some are urging Capcom to hurry up with DLC or even a sequel, which shows that this system-driven adventure framework still holds considerable appeal. On the other side, some continue to dwell on the PC version’s Denuvo issue, arguing that its continued presence still affects both the experience and the overall impression. This divide lines up perfectly with Dragon’s Dogma 2’s performance on Steam: its Simplified Chinese reviews are currently “Mixed,” with a 43% positive rating across 13008 reviews.

But if you look only at that number, it’s easy to miss what truly makes it special. Dragon’s Dogma 2 was led by former Devil May Cry 5 director Hideaki Itsuno, and the team clearly had no intention of making it a purely linear, progression-driven game. Instead, they continued to strengthen that emergent “something happens while you’re just walking around” kind of experience, an approach that was explicitly inspired by Grand Theft Auto V. You’ll constantly run into on-the-fly changes in the wilderness, across quest chains, through vocation combinations, and within the pawn system. That’s exactly where it feels most like a platformer or a puzzle game: rather than handing you a standard answer, it throws obstacles, terrain, enemies, and systemic mechanics into the same box and pushes you to piece together your own path forward.

More importantly, this time the development team also added quite a bit of content that the previous game couldn’t realize due to technical limitations, while making focused improvements to older mechanics. Its worldbuilding is equally distinctive: the human regions lean toward a Mediterranean European atmosphere at the crossroads of the classical and medieval eras, while the areas inhabited by the feline race draw from Arab Mediterranean culture. This blend of visual and geographic flavor makes exploration itself feel like the pleasure of “solving a map puzzle.”

Recently, with the release of Crimson Desert, some players have gone back and reassessed Dragon’s Dogma 2, only to give it even higher praise, saying the latter feels smoother and more cohesive as an overall experience. This kind of “return comparison” says a lot: some games are highly controversial at launch, but as time goes on, the true value of their system design gradually rises to the surface.

If you’re still on the fence now, the buying advice is simple: the current PC price is ¥348.00, or ¥328.00 after coupons. If you care deeply about Steam reviews, optimization controversies, and the Denuvo issue, you can keep waiting; but if you already enjoy high-freedom combat, dynamic encounters, and that sense of an unpredictable journey, it remains one of the most distinctive titles on the market in recent years. Two years on, the most awkward thing about Dragon’s Dogma 2 isn’t that no one remembers it—it’s that too many people are still wondering whether its next step will be an update or not.