Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen PC performance

1/15/2016
by Victor Sanchez

PC requirements

Minimum Specs:

OS: Windows Vista or newer
Processor: Intel Core i5-660 CPU or equivalent
Memory: 4GB RAM
Graphics: Radeon HD 5870 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 22GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible sound card or on-board audio chip

Recommended Specs:

OS: Windows Vista or newer
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K or equivalent
Memory: 8GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or equivalent
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 22GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible sound card or on-board audio chip

(This review and performance analysis is done with the Steam version of the game.)

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is an RPG by Capcom that saw its original release for Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2012 with the Dark Arisen expansion coming out in 2013. Its great class system, amazing creature design, huge world, and epic combat system gave it cult status amongst RPG fans. The game, however, ran poorly on home console. I remember my PS3’s fans spinning their hearts out struggling to get the game up to the 30FPS and god forbid you ever try to use the sorcerer class, with the FPS shitting itself every time you use a large flashy spell, dropping the games FPS down into the mid-high teens.

The PC version, I’m glad to report, suffers from none of the console versions almost crippling performance issues. I run the game on a machine that hits somewhere in between the minimum and recommended specs, and I can report that the game runs at a very consistent 60FPS even in the thick of combat. Also, no notable performance issues have arisen other than a single crash, the likes of which only happened once.

The original version of the game also had oppressive letterboxing that could not be removed and carried over to the expansion. The PC version has fixed this issue by removing them entirely on common resolutions (e.g. 1920×1080). One minor nitpick is that the sound for the game is incredibly low, forcing you to either wear headphones or crank up the volume.

So far, this is a great port of a console game in a sea of other console classics getting poor support when making the transition to PC. Currently Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen sits around the top of Steam’s best sellers. If the game remains successful, Capcom plans to release a sequel in the future. As much hype as that gives me, Capcom has a terrible track record of managing talent and letting great franchises die (i.e. Megaman), so it’s unclear what the future holds for Dragon’s Dogma, but until then, I’ll be happy to keep playing Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen on PC.