4/5
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.
That looks nice. For big RPGs like this I am willing to compromise on some visuals as long as it’s not too bad and performance is good. The benefits of handheld outweighs some drop in visual quality (for me).
