Dragon's Dogma 2 PC optimization guide: Best settings for optimal performance

Dragon's Dogma 2 is arguably one of the most visually stunning role-playing games of 2024. However, the visual splendor comes at a massive cost, i.e., the game's rather rocky performance. Dragon's Dogma 2 is built on Capcom's proprietary RE Engine, which the Japanese developer has been using for most of their current-gen titles.

The RE Engine is one of the few modern game engines that's known to deliver exceptional visuals without sacrificing performance. While Dragon's Dogma 2 does deliver on the "exceptional visuals" front, it fails to maintain a steady framerate on PC, which can be a dealbreaker for some players.

Fortunately for PC players, Dragon's Dogma 2 offers plenty of graphics options to tinker and experiment with to get the desired performance. Having played the game on a mid-range PC, I came up with the best settings that should guarantee smooth 60 FPS gameplay while also retaining the best aspects of the game's visuals.

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PC optimization guide for Dragon's Dogma 2

In most games, you can scrape past the system requirements mentioned by the developers and still have a playable and, dare I say, enjoyable experience, provided you are comfortable tinkering with the settings, that is. However, for Dragon's Dogma 2, you will want to adhere to the system requirements laid down by Capcom.

While you can get by with the minimum system requirements, you won't get a steady 60 FPS. Yes, even with FSR3 or DLSS enabled. If 60 FPS is your target, you will want to aim for the recommended system requirements. That said, here are the official system requirements for Dragon's Dogma 2:

Minimum

• OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)/Windows 11 (64-bit)
• Processor: Intel Core i5 10600 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT with 8GB VRAM
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Additional Notes: Estimated performance: 1080p/30fps. Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800 is required to support ray tracing.

Recommended

• OS: Windows 10 (64-bit)/Windows 11 (64-bit)
• Processor: Intel Core i7-10700 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 / AMD Radeon RX 6700
• DirectX: Version 12
• Network: Broadband Internet connection
• Additional Notes: Estimated performance: 2160i/30fps. Framerate might drop in graphics-intensive scenes. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800 is required to support ray tracing.

During my time with the game, I found GPU to be the limiting factor for performance. While yes, you also need a powerful enough CPU - given it's an open-world game - Dragon's Dogma 2 is GPU-bound for the most part, even at 1080p.

Optimized settings for Dragon's Dogma 2 PC

During my time with the game, I found the biggest performance-impacting settings to be: Texture Quality, Shadow Quality, Screen Space Reflections, and Ambient Occlusion. The Texture and Shadow Quality settings, in particular, are where the game struggles the most, especially if you have a GPU with 8GB or lower VRAM.

The in-game graphics settings. (Image via Capcom)

I played Dragon's Dogma 2 on a PC with a Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, RX 6600XT GPU, and 16GB RAM, with the game installed on a Gen. 4 NVMe SSD. With the optimized settings, I usually hovered at or around 60 FPS, with dips to the high 40s during effects-heavy combat sequences or while exploring Vermund.

That said, here are the optimized settings for Dragon's Dogma 2 on PC:

• Display Mode: Fullscreen
• Screen Resolution: 1920x1080
• Refresh Rate: Default (your display's native refresh rate)
• Frame Rate: Variable (cap it to 60, if you're getting stutters)
• Vertical Synchronization: Off
• Dynamic Resolution: Off
• FidelityFX Super Resolution 3: Off
• DLSS Super Resolution: Off
• Rendering Mode: Progressive
• Image Quality: Default
• Ray Tracing: Off
• Ambient Occlusion: Off or SSAO (if you have enough VRAM)
• Anti-aliasing: TAA
• ScreenSapce Reflections: Off
• Mesh Quality: High
• Texture Filtering: High (ANISO x16)
• Texture Quality: High (0.5GB) or if you have more than 8GB VRAM, choose High (1GB)
• Grass/Tree Quality: Low
• Resource-intensive Effects Quality: Off
• Shadow Quality: Low
• Shadow Cache: On
• Contact Shadows: Off
• Motion Blur: On
• Bloom: On
• Depth of Field: On
• Lens Flare: On
• Lens Distortion: On (+chromatic aberration)
• Subsurface Scattering: On
• Motion Quality: High

You can also use DLSS or FSR3 to potentially boost your frame rates a bit, but don't expect anything more than 7-10 additional frames, with drops below 60 FPS at constant intervals.

Side note: there's also a rather lengthy shader compilation step when you boot up the game for the first time. On a 6-core, 12-thread CPU, it took me roughly 10 minutes to compile the shaders.

While Dragon's Dogma 2 is an excellent role-playing game, one that feels very reminiscent of old-school RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons, Ultima, and Dark Souls, its PC (and console) performance leaves much room for improvement. The optimized settings here should give you a decent gameplay experience at launch.

Although the PC port of Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't as bad as, say, Star Wars Jedi Survivor at launch, it's still not up to snuff and necessitates tinkering with the graphics settings to get a stable frame rate.