How Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Open-World Compares to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Highlights

Dragon’s Dogma 2 offers a player-centric open-world experience with spontaneous encounters and hidden quests for immersive gameplay.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth takes a more traditional Ubisoft-like approach with fog-clearing towers and checklist objectives across the map.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 presents unique and memorable moments with unexpected enemy encounters like goblins, wolves, and even large monsters.

Rather than just a collection of dungeons being dotted around a map with random encounters in between, modern gaming’s open worlds are filled with branching narratives, side missions, collectibles, loot, boss encounters, time trials, vehicles, and a slew of other features that would have been simply impossible to implement decades ago. One of the most intriguing aspects of games-low-end-pc/”>the open-world genre is just how different the games under its umbrella can be. Now, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is the perfect example of that.

While the last decade has seen countless games adopt the same kind of general open-world formula, Dragon’s Dogma 2—much like its 2012 predecessor—isn’t afraid to break a few conventions and stand apart from the rest. While its rule-breaking can be a bit off-putting for newcomers, it’s a defining feature of Dragon’s Dogma 2, and it brings up a rather interesting comparison between it and the recently released Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

Baldurs Gate 3 Dragons Dogma 2 Character Creator

How Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Character Creator Compares to Baldur’s Gate 3’s

Baldur’s Gate 3 is widely considered to be one of the greatest RPGs ever made, but Dragon’s Dogma 2 gives its character creator a run for its money.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Have Opposite Open-World Approaches

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Adopts a Ubisoft-Like Open-World Approach

Adapting the original 1997 game’s second act, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth gives the FF7 saga its first proper open-world treatment, and it seems as though Square Enix looked to Ubisoft’s infamous open-world model for some general pointers. Introduced in 2007’s Assassin’s Creed but popularized with 2012’s Far Cry 3, Ubisoft’s open-world formula often sees players make their way across a vast map, slowly ticking off a long checklist of objectives, from side missions to collectibles to enemy encampments and several seemingly insignificant odd jobs in between.

While Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth doesn’t ask the player to liberate any enemy camps or harvest a number of resources, its open world does borrow a lot of classic Ubisoft elements, including the need to clear that map’s fog by activating a series of towers littered across the world. Thankfully, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth‘s side missions are usually a little more narratively rewarding than most Ubisoft titles, and its hidden boss fights and enemy encounters can be some of the game’s best.

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s Open World Focuses on Spontaneity

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Dragon’s Dogma 2 adopts a much more player-centric open-world experience, meaning that the player is often in charge of where they go next with little to no guidance from the game itself. Similarly to Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom,Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s open world heavily revolves around random encounters with exploration often resulting in the player stumbling upon a new town or dungeon, which could yield an array of new quests and rewards. The vast majority of the time, these side quests are not marked out on the map, instead only becoming visible after the player has been approached by an NPC.

While this does mean that some players could miss out on some major side quests by simply accidentally avoiding an NPC’s path, it does add a nice layer of immersion to
Dragon’s Dogma 2
, which is something that its enemy encounters reinforce greatly.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth features random enemies patrolling the open world, yet these encounters don’t often result in the same kind of gameplay that Dragon’s Dogma 2 offers. For instance, when fighting a gang of goblins in Dragon’s Dogma 2, it’s commonplace for other creatures like wolves to join the fight, and occasionally, even a large monster like a cyclops or griffin can suddenly appear out of nowhere and join in on the fun, resulting in some incredibly unique, and memorable moments.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

The long-awaited sequel to 2012’s Action RPG, Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 follows the Arisen, a hero whose heart is stolen by a powerful and massive dragon. Featuring a world 4x the size of its predecessor, Dragon’s Dogma 2 emphasizes customization and player control through its character creator, vocations system, and AI-controlled Pawns.

Released: March 22, 2024
Genre(s): Action RPG
Engine: RE Engine