Dragon's Dogma 2

Dragon's Dogma 2 picks up more than a decade later, continuing the cult action RPG and once again casting the player as the Arisen, a person whose heart was taken by a dragon and who sets out to both revive and avenge the world. This time the open world encompasses two rival realms, a human kingdom and a land of feline inhabitants, and the journey between them matters as much as the destination. The game deliberately doesn't hand out fast travel for free: trekking along a road where a band of goblins might attack at any moment, or an ogre might come down from a hillside, forms a substantial part of the experience.

The series' main distinguishing feature remains the pawns, artificial companions the player either creates or borrows from other players online. Pawns learn from the player's playstyle, advise on where to go, and carry their accumulated experience back to their creator. Combat combines fast-paced action with vocations ranging from warrior through archer to mage, and in encounters with large enemies you can literally climb onto their bodies and stab at their weak points. The emphasis on physics, character weight, and use of the environment makes every fight feel a little different from the last. The chosen vocation can also be switched in larger cities, so a single character can gradually go through several completely different combat styles.

The game runs on the RE Engine and on PS5 offers detailed lighting, a grounded view of the world, and a realistic day-night cycle in which night is genuinely dark and dangerous. After release, criticism emerged over uneven performance, especially in cities, along with reservations about how the game handles saving and paid convenience items. Even so, most reviews received it positively, precisely for its uncompromising approach and for feeling unusual amid the current flood of open-world titles. The strongest experience is nighttime travel with a lantern, when you can only see a few meters around you and every sound from the forest spells trouble. Today it's a title for players who want adventure rather than a quest checklist.