Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Set in a huge open world, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen presents a rewarding action combat experience.
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a rpg, open world and character customization game
developed and published by Capcom.
Released on January 15th 2016 is available only on Windows
in 7 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 46,418 reviews of which 41,094 were positive and 5,324 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.7 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 3.38€ on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows Vista or newer (32 or 64 bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 660 CPU or equivalent
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon HD 5870 or equivalent
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 20 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX-compatible sound card or onboard audio chip
- Additional Notes: 1) Supports Keyboard+Mouse and XInput/DirectInput devices including Xbox 360, Xbox One, DualShock4 and Steam Controller.
2) Some high end integrated graphics chips and modern gaming laptops with a discrete GPU may work but have not been tested, nor are they officially supported by Capcom.
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
In May of 2012, a much underappreciated generational masterpiece was released, Dragon's Dogma. Unfortunately it was released six months after Skyrim, and was completely drowned out by the hype for that game following its release. A year later, the expansion Dark Arisen launched adding the much beloved Bitter Black Isle. Three years after that, it would finally come to Steam. And now nine years later I'm finally giving it a review. My first review for any game bought on Steam, despite owning dozens of them. I played Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen extensively on the PS3 and own it on the Switch as well. Now after having completed the game entirely having gotten every achievement, I feel that is only proper I give it a review. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a philosophical masterpiece that explores the concepts of agency, will, cycles, meaning, and purpose in a thought provoking and intriguing way. What is more is it does all of this while having combat that puts many modern RPGs to shame. I don't think I've played another RPG that comes close to matching Dragon's Dogma in terms of gameplay. If I have it was probably another Capcom game. The narrative of Dragon's Dogma begins in a humble fishing village and will quickly takes you across the realm and into the heady depths of politics and intrigue. However it is not in the narrative events, but the philosophical underpinnings surrounding them that the game finds its narrative value. Most of the narrative serves to build up the world and the actors in it, so that the game can later use this to explore the philosophical questions it seeks to explore. Don't expect The Lord of The Rings though, this game was on a tight budget and it shows in places. The narrative you are presented at face value is meager and lacking until you begin delving into the more heady philosophical questions the game first hints at, and then shoves blatantly into your face demanding an answer. The Dark Arisen DLC expounds even further upon this by taking you to Bitter Black Isle, where you will uncover more about the world's lore that can help to paint a clearer picture. Overall I would say this game's narrative is high quality in the areas that matter, but don't expect something that is easily digestible. Hideaki Itsuno, the game's director, seems to be fan of a meta narratives and exploring deeper ideas rather than popcorn entertainment. Skyrim this is not. The gameplay of the game is built off of nine classes, each with their own unique abilities and limitations. Though the spread of abilities and limitations was not equal. With some classes being borderline useless in a number of fights, and others being able to build themselves such that they never have any issues anywhere. Balance issues aside though, the actual gameplay is very good. Each class, with the exception of Warrior, gets six abilities. Using Strider as an example, you will have three abilities for your daggers and three abilities for your bow. In addition to having these six abilities though, you will also have light and heavy attacks available. The game manages all of this through some very clever control mapping. It is the skills themselves that are the real star of the show though, with nearly every skill in the game being interesting in some way. Even if it is only for looking cool. The game's balance issues due effect the skills to some degree though, and you will find that some skills never leave your loadout while you never seem to find a good use case for others. One last tidbit for magic classes, you can hit L3/LS while casting a spell to manually aim. Moving on to the world, Dragon's Dogma takes place in the world of Gransys. And while it may be showing its age graphically now, I would contend it is still a beautiful and spectacular world. More importantly though it is filled with unique and interesting creatures and a variety of quests. I make no guarantees for the uniqueness of the quests, only the monsters. Nor do I make a guarantee for the variety of the monsters, be prepared to hear your pawns shout "Wolves travel in packs Arisen!" many times. You will find more than just wolves though with hordes of goblins, cyclops, chimera, and other mythological creatures. You'll just find that some of them are far more common than others. The ones you do find though will be a lot of fun to fight as Dragon's Dogma allows you to freely climb onto large enemies like cyclops and chimera, allowing you to directly attack their weak points. Quests in Dragon's Dogma are fairly typical, you talk to an NPC and get told what to do or you go to a notice board and pick up a quest notice. NPC given quests are the more interesting story given quests, while the more mundane slay 8 rabbits or 10 bats quests are relegated to the notice boards. Quests given by NPCs however while largely optional, are with almost no exception, worth completing at least once. The main Narrative thread of this game can be completed in a couple of hours if you're speedrunning it, so it is well worth spending the extra time on side quests as they come up. This is especially true as certain points in the main quest will auto-fail certain uncompleted side quests if you don't do them first. There is urgency to complete the side quests in this game, but there is also help. Early on you will make a character that will act as an AI controlled combatant to help you on your journey. This character is called a Pawn, and your pawn may be hired by other players to help them on their journey just as you may hire other players pawns. If your pawn is with another player when they complete a quest, they will obtain knowledge of that quest and when they return to your world they will be able to guide you through the quest according to the knowledge that they have. Conversely you can hire a pawn that has knowledge of the quest you want to do. The pawn system has many benefits beyond just the timely completion of quests though. Pawns fight alongside you and by hiring additional pawns you can create a party of up to four ready to face whatever challenges await you. Pawns aren't just hired mercenaries though. They are a key part of the game's lore and learning more about them as you journey through the game will be important to understanding the world of Gransys. And the gameplay design of Pawns reflects this, being a very deep and nuanced system. Even to the point of its own detriment as it is all to easy to make a pawn that is detrimental rather than helpful. Most of the pawns you find ingame whether auto-generated or human made will be awful. With poor equipment, ability choices, inclinations, or a mix of all three. You will want them though, Gransys is a very dangerous place to travel alone for the inexperienced. Pawns bring many advantageous if you're judicial in your selection of them, and there are communities online where you can find other people's pawns to hire and get your pawn hired now. Overall, I would say that Dragon's Dogma was ahead of its time in many ways and the industry still hasn't caught up to some of the elements of its design. Pawns I'm talking about Pawns. Why are this game and its sequel still the only games to use this feature in 2025? Get with the program RPG devs, developer made followers are a relic of a game that came out in 2011. Player made followers is where it's at. But yeah, the lore of the game is top notch, even if the initial presentation is lacking at first. The game play knocks it out of the park even to this day, unlike a certain game that came out six months earlier. And the Pawn system is a stroke of genius. I give this game a 10/10 with highest honors. May we see more games like it in the coming years, and fewer games that aren't worthy of comparison to this one.
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I bought this game at the end of 2024. never heard or played this game before. BUT DAMN, this game still on fire. even compared to other my brand new games. Story 8,5/10. -time to completed was managable -the plot twist caught me off guard -we can choose routes (for the sake of ending we want) -NPC quite dynamic (could affect the story a little) Music solid 9/10 -matched every situation -made me had this deep connection to the story and the journey Quest 9/10 -TON OF QUESTS -literally u could slain everything and still have other quest to do -u can FAILED to do something and cant retake the quest until NG+ (and it would affect the story. I really like it) -but the escort quest sucks Exploration 10/10 -HUGE MAP -open world -for me to completed 1 playthrough (did main quest and side quests) and light up the whole map (only Gransys) without fast travel etc, need around 80 hours (im quite chill guy when explore something) -there are various type of enemy and material. u can't get bored out of it -even after 150 hours and NG+, im still not done yet. I STILL EXPLORING until i know every corner of this game Battle mechanism 10/10 -SO MUCH skillset to try -We can mix and match the skill we need every situation -VOCATION SYSTEM WAS PERFECT. we can try different role and abilities -Pawn could help us in the field we lacking (like healer/tank/DPS) -Cool looking weapon (and have so much type) -we can climb up the monster, so melee type vocation not gonna suffered a lot. lol The game itself was not hard, more like challenging in a good way. but every enemy has different pattern, resistence, ability, size, speed, etc. So we need to work our brain out to survive. On the Gransys Map, we could easily win every enemy encountered, with a few exceptional. But SPOILER ALERT: on Bitterblack Isle, better prepared bcs the big guys can one-shot us lol. The only minus was graphic, i mean this was AN OLD GAME. 1st time released in 2012 (its been 13 years), and the DARK ARISEN released in 2016. So the graphic was outdated. But that was not really a minus for me. I mean, i can feel the dynamic of every law in this game. Like the movement of the animal, the interaction between NPC, the pattern of monsters, the movement of water/wind, changing of weather, the movement of my robe when i walk or run or got drenched, etc. So an old school graphic was not a setback for me. At the end, this is a really SOLID GAME, even in the 2024/2025 or sometimes in the future. 9/10!
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Recommended if your hair is thinning and your marriage is failing. The save/load system, timed quests and lockouts make me want to tear my eyes out. Still a lot to like about the combat, narrative and aesthetics.
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I've learned many things, from how wolves hunt in packs to what a base and trifling creature man is. This game is a masterwork, you can't go wrong! You'll definitely find aught to enjoy.
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Masterpiece. Bought this for $5 thinking it would be a nice way to know if I would be interested in the sequel, since I haven't played many games like this before. I was hooked almost instantly. 94 hours in, and so much more of the game left to beat. There's no point in me overexplaining. This game has aged very well and plays pretty good on mouse+keyboard although it was clearly designed for controller. If you enjoy fantasy RPGs, you should experience it for yourself. Make sure to search up the dinput8.dll because that's how you'll get to play in borderless windowed mode among other benefits. While it lacks a true multiplayer component, the novel pawn system leads to dynamic combat situations in its own way. I would have really liked to be able to swap the two support pawns for a second player and their main pawn, and I hope one day there is a Dragon's Dogma game with multiplayer.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 08 April 2025 14:20 |
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| SteamSpy data | 11 April 2025 17:17 |
| Steam price | 15 April 2025 04:46 |
| Steam reviews | 14 April 2025 14:07 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen compatibility
Online players
532
Developer
Capcom
Publisher
Capcom
Release
15 Jan 2016
Platforms
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