Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't a soulslike, but it has a lot more in common with Elden Ring than I expected (2024)

When I'd played my first few hours of Dragon's Dogma 2, I was convinced the new RPG had almost nothing in common with Elden Ring, or any of FromSoftware's Souls games for that matter. But then I saw a clip of a player who was casually minding their own business getting yanked off a bridge by a giant bird and tossed to their death. Dragon's Dogma 2 may not really play like a Soulslike, but its world is designed to surprise, challenge, and even occasionally troll you, just like Elden Ring's.

Unlike most open world games, neither Dragon's Dogma 2 or Elden Ring go out of their way to explain themselves. Capcom has its own feel for action combat, the thing that so many other games have attempted to copy wholesale from FromSoftware. But otherwise they're kindred spirits, with confusing UIs and quests that are more like riddles than checklists.

Parts of Dragon's Dogma 2 are even more confusing and hostile than Elden Ring, like the Dragonplague sickness that causes your companions to turn against you. But Dragon's Dogma 2 is as much about learning to mitigate failure as Elden Ring. You won't find devastating bosses like Malenia in Dragon's Dogma 2, nor will you be deliberately tricked into falling down a pit—you'll probably just do that on your own. Instead, you'll stumble into a flying skeleton wizard on your way to another quest, or you'll get kidnapped by a griffon you didn't expect to take flight with you on its back.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a big, clumsy game with no intention of giving you the tools to tame it. FromSoft uses immense difficulty to push you to explore and strengthen your character over time, and Dragon's Dogma 2 uses things like carrying weight capacity and semi-permanent health loss for the same reason. Both games force you to gamble your odds of survival in a world that isn't made for you to conquer, but to survive.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is frequently fulfilling in the same ways as Elden Ring—here's all the ways it reminds me of FromSoftware's landmark RPG, and the few things that set it apart.

Dragon's Dogma 2's character creation makes Elden Ring's look like a joke

As a long-time FromSoftware fan, it's hard to say this but Elden Ring—and the Souls games before it—have awful character creators. It's impossible to make a character in Elden Ring that doesn't look hideous from some angle. It's far easier to make a Shrek-like abomination than it is to make a regular human being with human proportions. Making a character that doesn't look disturbingly soft or craggy is about as challenging as the boss fights. It's charming, sure, but it's definitely not good.

Dragon's Dogma 2, however, is the complete opposite. Shrek can and does exist, but the RE Engine (which Capcom uses for everything, including the Resident Evil remakes) makes just about every character look pretty good by default. There are sliders for everything you can imagine, including the position of your character's kneecaps when they walk. I particularly like that certain sliders actually adjust multiple other sliders for you so you don't have to spend hours tweaking every individual one. It also has an undo button. More character creators need undo buttons!

Your starting class doesn't really matter in Dragon's Dogma 2, just like in Elden Ring

Vocations are Dragon's Dogma 2's name for classes, and, while they are distinct from one another, you're not locked into the one you choose to start with. You can begin the game as an archer, level it up, and then swap to a mage five hours in. You're actually encouraged to level a vocation up to unlock passive abilities that still work when you switch to a different one.

Like in Elden Ring, your Dragon's Dogma 2 character can blend classes together—albeit in a less experimental manner—through the advanced vocations you unlock through quests. Archers can imbue arrows with elemental spells as a Magick Archer and, eventually, you can unlock a class that puts all of them into a blender with the Warfarer vocation. Where Elden Ring characters have more stats- and skill-driven playstyles from the start, Dragon's Dogma 2 only loosens up once you've put several hours into it. This is because of a feature that Elden Ring sorely lacks that's up next.

Dragon's Dogma 2's pawns are what I imagine Elden Ring would be like with actually good co-op

When a cyclops roars somewhere far ahead of me in Dragon's Dogma 2, I'm not scared for my life as I am anytime I hear a threatening noise in Elden Ring. Your pawns, or NPC companions, always have your back (until they don't) in Dragon's Dogma 2 and it reminded me why I wish FromSoft would put normal co-op in its games.

Random encounters with big beasts in Dragon's Dogma 2 are like boss battles with your pals if your pals were obsessed with pointing out ladders and obeyed your every command. Pawns are the most stupid and helpful companions you could ever ask for which makes every victory against a griffon or dragon a triumph. Elden Ring players who felt they were in a buddy cop movie with their Mimic Tear summon need to discover the joys of playing an entire game with three powerful idiots by your side.

Spirit Ash summons are cool and all in Elden Ring, but they don't spread gossip about other players or lead you toward treasure. Pawns give Dragon's Dogma 2 a cooperative feel without having to actually coordinate playing with friends. They're the number one reason to play it if the brutal, lonely world of Elden Ring kept you from enjoying it solo. Exploring dark caves is less terrifying when you know you can run and hide behind your pawns. Just be careful if their eyes go red and they start talking about not feeling well.

Quests are just as bizarre in Dragon's Dogma 2 as they are in Elden Ring

I spent an entire evening in Dragon's Dogma 2 re-exploring a cave for weapons that I actually already had sitting in my storage because the quest didn't bother to inform me. Quests are arguably more opaque in Dragon's Dogma 2 than Elden Ring. You'll bump into a shady guy asking for a "Jadeite Orb" and the only hint about the next step you'll have is that you should talk to bandits. The quest text won't duplicate this hint; you just have to listen carefully to the NPC and remember it.

Some of Elden Ring's minor quests work like this, and, admittedly, Dragon's Dogma 2 at least has a quest log, but the most important ones in Elden Ring are hard to mess up. There's a reason most players successfully completed each and every step of Ranni's questline. You can fail Dragon's Dogma 2 quests for taking too long or showing up at the wrong time of day. I personally love how it makes zero effort to help you out because it forces you to treat NPCs as actual characters who may have agendas you're not privy to, but it's also a pain if you have a completionist brain.

Dragon's Dogma 2 and Elden Ring are games about getting annihilated by just about everything you can think of. You'll be smashed by a surprise boulder in a cave or flung to your death by a pawn launching you in the opposite direction of a nearby ledge. Capcom's game will kill you in the most humiliating ways no matter how experienced you are; I can only imagine FromSoft nodding in approval.

The penalty for your death in Dragon's Dogma 2 is having to reload a save that could be hours away from where you were. Frequently saving your game generally alleviates this, but it's a different story if you lose a pawn. To resurrect them, you need Wakestones, which are relatively rare items at the start of the game. And given how crucial pawns are you'll want to avoid being reckless enough to get them killed unless they write the end to their own story.

Your character, on the other hand, is largely expendable and, even though I'd consider Dragon's Dogma 2's combat to be significantly easier than Elden Ring's, you will spend a lot of your adventure getting pummeled. Thankfully it's frequently more funny than maddening, unlike some of the deaths I remember having in the back half of Elden Ring.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is an adventure and Elden Ring is a trek

Elden Ring is a big puzzle of a world and most of the game is about solving all of its little mysteries. Dragon's Dogma 2 has a slightly different approach that eventually lands in a similar spot. Most of your time will be spent poking around forests and caves for treasure and surprise encounters. The focus is on the thrill of climbing a hill, spotting a place to camp in the distance, and all the random battles you have in between. Compared to Elden Ring, Dragon's Dogma 2 feels more like a D&D campaign with your party than a brutal climb to the top of the food chain.

That said, both games heavily rely on your curiosity to lead you toward your next objective. You won't get very far if you expect them to tell you what is or isn't interesting. You have to figure that out yourself and be okay with running into obstacles you can't overcome quite yet. Both games give you the stress of pushing just a little bit too far and losing more than you would've liked and the excitement of barely scraping by. The journey may look dramatically different in each game—Dragon's Dogma isn't going to make you wade in poison swamps—but the emphasis is on everything that unfolds along the way.

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