Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen Reviews Land at 84 on Metacritic as Steam Players Warm to the Base Game

Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, Capcom's expansion for its 2024 RPG, has a Metascore of 84 from 20 critics on Metacritic after reviews went live on 7 October. It launches on 9 October, Capcom confirmed in its launch-week Steam announcement, on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and brings the whole game to Nintendo Switch 2 the same day.

This report is built on Capcom's Steam store page and announcements, the Metacritic and Steam figures we read on the morning of 8 October 2026, and the IGN and Push Square reviews. The Steam numbers are the interesting part: players who reviewed Dragon's Dogma 2 in the last month rate it far more kindly than its lifetime average.

What are critics saying about Dark Arisen?

Of the 20 reviews counted by Metacritic, 18 are positive, two are mixed and none are negative. IGN gave it 8/10, praising a dense, vertical Norgan region, its tough new monsters and a main quest of roughly 20 hours, while finding the new appraised "Spoils" loot not particularly exciting. Push Square went to 9/10, calling it a "transformative DLC" that often shows Capcom's open-world RPG at its best.

For context, the base game holds an 86 from 91 critics on Metacritic, so the expansion is landing close to where Dragon's Dogma 2 started. IGN also notes that Norgan has more portcrystals (fixed fast-travel points) than Vermund and Battahl combined, which it calls a navigational relief.

What does the expansion add?

According to the Steam store page, Dark Arisen has three parts:

• Norgan, an abandoned northern region where you team up with Eir to investigate the undying Fallen Dragon, appraising relics to unlock new weapons and skills.
• Lost Rites: 12 dungeon challenges hidden across the existing map, holding rare equipment once used by past Arisen.
• New hairstyles and tattoos in the character creator.

Existing owners on PC, PS5 and Xbox buy the expansion as DLC; on Switch 2, Dark Arisen is sold only as the base game plus expansion, as Capcom's announcement reported by Gematsu makes clear. Steam also lists a Norgan Fashion Set as a pre-order bonus that "may also be available at a later date".

Are players coming back to Dragon's Dogma 2?

They already are. Capcom spent the run-up on two free title updates: a reusable Eternal Ferrystone for fast travel in June, then Title Update 3.2 in early September, which raised skill slots from four to six and added save slots, optimisation work and Dragonsplague changes. According to SteamCharts, September averaged 4,517 concurrent players, up 162% on August, with a monthly peak of 9,355.

The reviews moved too. Across its whole life, Dragon's Dogma 2 sits at 62.3% positive on Steam (Mixed). We counted the 1,172 reviews posted in the 30 days to 8 October and 922 of them, 78.7%, are positive. That gap is the real story behind the expansion: Capcom is selling Dark Arisen to an audience that has already started to come round.

What we don't know yet

The expansion has no Steam user reviews before launch, so whether players agree with the 84 will only show over the weekend. Capcom says further base-game updates are on the way, including a Hard Mode, but has not dated them. Every review on the first page of Metacritic's list is for PS5, so the Switch 2 version's performance is not yet well covered.

What to do now: if you own the base game, the expansion is the $29.99 DLC; anyone new, or on Switch 2, needs the $49.99 bundle. You don't need to finish the story first, as our guide to starting Norgan and the Lost Rites explains. Dark Arisen is one of the bigger dates in our October 2026 release calendar, and we will track the player reaction on our Dragon's Dogma 2 hub.