Dragon’s Dogma 2 has a free two hour trial for RPG fans who are tempted but not yet Arisen

Why, that’s easily enough time to get bodyslammed by a griffon

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Capcom.

Let me continue the theme from our round-up of Steam sale reccs for under a tenner, while exchanging the concept of money for the concept of time: what can you do in celebrated open world “anecdote generator” Dragon’s Dogma 2 in two hours or less? Two hours being the length of the free Dragon’s Dogma 2 trial that is now live on Steam. For context, this is approximately how much time Capcom gave me to preview their latest action-RPG, many headline cycles ago. During that brief window, I managed to become the worst wizard in Dragon’s Dogma 2, but I know you can go further. I’m so confident of this, in fact, that I’m going to start feeling all insecure and hurt in anticipation. How could you trample on my feelings so?

The trial will run from now until 19th July at 6pm BST, 10pm PT and 1pm ET. Here’s the Steam page. Should you feel tempted to buy the full game, rejoice in the knowledge that your trial save progress will carry over. You can also effectively extend the trial by several precious moments by kitting out your character in advance using the free Character Creator & Storage tool. As for what you might do in those two whole hours, beyond trouncing my preview accomplishments and revealing me for the pitiful backslider that I am – I would focus on levelling up a class to get a sense of the ability design deeper in. I would also hire-and-fire as many Pawns created by other players as you can – they’ll clue you in about secrets or sidequests they’ve had experience of in their worlds.

We like ourselves a Dogmatic Dragon round these parts, but the game has a Mixed rating on Steam for reasons ranging from performance through complaints about an empty world and underwhelming story to the game’s design just being a bit chaotic. One of the bigger contention-bones back at launch was the spread of dragonsplague, a Pawn ailment spread via online interactions, which could lead to major story characters getting murdered (you’re highly unlikely to experience this in the opening two hours). I’m interested to know what the RPS commentariat thinks of the game in hindsight.