While having played Dragon’s Dogma originally on the Xbox 360 and again later with Dark Arisen, playing it again on PC has been fun thanks to a quality port by Capcom. The only major issue I have had was the lack of 21:9 support, which I typically use. I’ve searched around for a fix for this, but as of yet when I go to play this game I have to switch to a more standard 16:9 ratio screen, as with 21:9 / 2560×1080, the screen is ‘zoomed in’ and the top and bottom edges of the image are cut off (to the point that I cannot change even change Options because I cannot see or reach the button to save my changes). I’m not sure if there will be a fix for this or not as apparently the lack of 21:9 support is due to “fixed UI elements.” Perhaps the mod community can work on this, but time will tell. On the other hand, the game does support an uncapped frame rate, I believe up to 150fps, and 4K if you’ve got the horsepower to run it that way.
My machine is an i7 4790K with 16GB and a GTX970, and I was able to play with the settings cranked up at 1920×1080 comfortably. There are a lot of graphical knobs you can dial-in with this PC version which PC gamers love to be able to tinker with if need be. From your basic Fullscreen/Windowed support to Anti-Aliasing (FXAA3HQ), HDR, Shadow Quality, Texture Detail, Texture Filtering (ANISO X16), Effect Volume, Distance Scaling, Depth of Field with a slider to adjust FOV, heck even Grass Quality, there are a lot of ways to tweak your experience and the differences in-game and in performance is tangible.
A variety of HUD tweaks allow you to further customize your view into Gransys and Bitterblack Isle in that you can toggle mini-maps, button prompts, subtitles, and so forth. I recommend disabling subtitles for the Pawns as they’re still a rather chatty bunch, and to that end you can actually disable their chatter altogether, making it to where they won’t speak unless spoken to. Given that they’re already kind of soulless characters anyway, keeping them quiet fit the atmosphere of the game more to my liking anyway.
Regarding control, I’ve split my time between a wired Xbox 360 gamepad and mouse and keyboard, which you can do in realtime as you play. Perhaps you like to explore and get your RPG on with keyboard and mouse but take on the epic boss battles with a gamepad, if so, that’s not an issue here. For KB and mouse, you can customize keys, even binding inventory items to numbers 1-5, which can be quite useful and efficient as you can imagine.
So in terms of presentation and controller support, this PC port hits the most important points. Other tidbits for this PC release include the attractive $30 price tag, a superb price for a very quality and lengthy game. Hard Mode is now also available from the start, right at the main menu, if you want to take on that from the get go. The Berserk armor and weapon set seen on the console versions is not included here due to licensing issues, and there are no Rift Crystal microtransactions to deal with either, those goods now come through quest completion and loot drops.
In summary, the PC version of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is what you would expect and hope for — the most technically sound and generally impressive version of the core game and it’s expansion, all at a great price. If you’re into open world, fantasy RPGs with a strong focus on interesting and well executed combat with a cool ally feature, you can’t go wrong here.
