Capcom just released new gameplay of its upcoming 2024 RPG Dragon’s Dogma 2, the follow-up to the fan-favourite first game featuring AI party members called Pawns, giant monsters you can climb on, and titular dragons wrecking your day in the fantasy land of Gransys.

There’s a lot being showcased and promised here, from special class skills to two giant continents of Gransys to explore and slay monsters in. I had the golden chance to play through parts of the first continent: Vermund, a land full of trees, grass, knolly hills, and ambushing cyclops and preying griffins amidst the throngs of goblins and bandits.

Just keep in mind that I only had 30 minutes with the demo, so half my playtime involves getting distracted by many, MANY monster encounters rather than actually making meaningful story progress. I tried out the three available classes/Vocations: Fighter, Archer, Thief. The fighter has blocks instead of dodges, the Assassin can dart around the screen and come back with quick hard-hitting stabs, and the Ranger is just better from afar pelting arrows long-drawn and loose while the remaining three Pawns just wail on the bad guys.

I prefer the up-close and behind approach, but all three play to their strengths just great, especially when dealing with big bosses. I just like stabbing things, climbing onto enemies bigger than me, and going for their jugulars or backs. The game also favours anyone using the environments to their advantage. You can cut down bridges to make enemies fall to their doom, or just get higher ground via climbing up hills and trees, pelting enemies with arrows from above. Simply put, there are more options for taking down enemies.

Giant Attack

So far, we’ve come across a griffin and the titular Dragon (the big red one), albeit in a flashback and in a battle that only lasted a few minutes for plot reasons. You’ll get to see more of the key character Urika the archer in the latter section, following a questline involving more goblin murder and royal authority figures trying to put the both of you down. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see through most of it as I spent a lot of my time just going through different monster-killing spots leading up to this important plot point.

What I can tell you is that the new Dragon’s Dogma 2 world is massive, and your action character controls help make the experience all the more action-packed and thrilling. It’s very easy to get lost in this new version of Gransys, what with the towns, plethora of monster-hunting missions, and giant beasts like Griffins hanging around asking for a fight.

30 minutes is not enough to see the full potential of this demo; I seriously believe it when the Capcom devs said the game’s world will be four times larger than the original. True, the setting is still in a lush forest-and-hills area like in the first game, but the devs are probably keeping their cards close to their chest to reveal more environments like Battahl and other nations at a later date. As an appetizer though, it’s enough to get us craving for more party-based RPGing on steroids. Capcom is clearly doubling down on what they did back in 2011, and it shows.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has no release date yet, but it’s still in development for PC, Xbox Series, and PlayStation 5.