Dragon’s Dogma 2

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Current goal: Defeat the false Arisen

Buy it from: Amazon | Best Buy | Humble Bundle

I confess, my admiration for Dragon’s Dogma 2 is borne in part out of my frustration and disappointment with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which I played right before. That game had its merits, but god, was its world lifeless. No day/night cycle, no sense that anything truly unexpected or unplanned could happen, just little dollops of “content” (ugh) that repeated again and again: here’s another lifespring, same as every other; here’s another tower, you know the drill. Dragon’s Dogma 2 is, in many ways, the opposite of this, and I love it for that.

Take, for instance, the time a story-crucial NPC—our good friend Brant, for my fellow players—went and got himself killed valiantly fighting a minotaur that had stormed the city gates. His body was just lying there in the street, and there I was with nary a wakestone to my name to bring him back. Coincidentally, however, just before he perished, he’d given me an item that would highlight wakestone shards on my map. So I began frantically using the damn thing, desperate to scrounge up three shards and resurrect him before his lifeless body was dragged away. Was this whole ordeal kind of an annoyance? Sure! But I love it. I love that this is a world in which, because of all the game’s complex, interacting systems, sometimes wild or inconvenient shit just happens and you have to deal with it! I’m hoping for fairly smooth sailing as I continue my quest this weekend. But not too smooth. — Carolyn Petit