OSAKA – The day Dragon’s Dogma 2 launched in March 2024, the internet lit up in two very different directions. Critics called director Hideaki Itsuno’s fantasy action-RPG one of Capcom’s most ambitious games in years. Players on Steam began review-bombing it. The reason: a suite of microtransactions that let paying customers skip items the game already gave them for free, sitting in a storefront that had never been mentioned before release.
More than two years later, Capcom has begun the process of erasing that storefront entirely. On June 11, the company announced through its official Dragon’s Dogma account that it would be discontinuing most of the game’s paid DLC items on June 24 at 5 p.m. PT, ahead of a major expansion scheduled for October. Two days earlier, the studio had released Title Update 3.1, an extensive quality-of-life patch that addressed the game’s most persistent criticisms: limited fast travel, sluggish traversal stamina costs, and a cluttered user interface.
Taken together, the moves signal something more deliberate than routine post-launch support. Capcom is not simply maintaining Dragon’s Dogma 2. It is scrubbing the game of everything that made it difficult to recommend, before asking players to buy it again.
The items being pulled include Portcrystals, Rift Crystals, Art of Metamorphosis incenses, Makeshift Gaol Keys, and Wakestones – the full inventory of purchasable shortcuts that had drawn the sharpest criticism at launch. Two items survive the purge: a Camping Gear bundle and a Music Collection pack. The Deluxe Edition disappears entirely. Capcom confirmed the base game will receive a permanent price reduction on June 24 as well, though the studio had not disclosed the specific percentage as of publication. Anyone who had already purchased the removed items will retain access to them.
The official statement offered no narrative explanation. “Due to the development of additional content and various adjustments for the upcoming title update,” Windows Central reported, citing Capcom’s announcement, “the following products will no longer be available.” The phrasing is bureaucratic, but the logic is not hard to read. The upcoming expansion – Dragon’s Dogma 2: Dark Arisen – is being positioned as the authoritative version of the game, arriving on October 9 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam. Walking into that launch window with a microtransaction scandal still attached to the storefront page would have been commercially irrational.
Dark Arisen adds a new region, twelve Dungeon Challenges, expanded character customization options, and a series of gameplay adjustments drawn directly from community feedback. The name itself carries weight: the original Dragon’s Dogma received a Dark Arisen re-release in 2013 that became the definitive edition of that game and significantly expanded its audience. Capcom appears to be running the same play a second time, stripping the base product down to its most defensible form before presenting an upgraded version.
Title Update 3.1 is part of a two-stage patch roadmap ahead of the October release. The June update introduced an Eternal Ferrystone – a reusable fast-travel item that eliminates the consumption mechanic that had made long-distance travel punishing – alongside additional Portcrystal placements across the map, expanded oxcart schedules, reduced stamina costs while running outside of combat, and a new Guardian pawn specialization designed to defend campsites and oxcarts from raids. Inns became cheaper. Ferrystone prices dropped. A free camera mode landed in Photo Mode. The second major title update, expected at the end of August, will target performance optimization, save system refinements, balance adjustments to enemy stats, and further pawn behavior improvements.
That performance update carries specific stakes. When Dragon’s Dogma 2 shipped in 2024, its frame rate on consoles routinely dropped between 20 and 30 frames per second in populated areas – a problem that made the combat, one of the game’s strongest elements, feel erratic rather than precise. Capcom acknowledged the issue and issued incremental patches, but a dedicated performance pass has been one of the most requested items from the player base ever since. The August update represents the company’s first explicit commitment to address it directly.
The rehabilitation effort extends beyond Dragon’s Dogma. This week, Capcom announced Onimusha: Way of the Sword for Nintendo Switch 2, reviving a franchise that had been dormant for nearly two decades. Technical specifications confirmed through the game’s official website show it will run at 30 frames per second in both docked and handheld modes, with an optional variable 30-40 FPS mode for players who prefer flexibility over consistency. Nintendo Everything confirmed the resolution sits at 1080p when docked, dropping to 900p in handheld – standard targets for the platform.
The game’s protagonist is modeled on the face of the late Toshiro Mifune – the Japanese actor who defined the samurai film genre across decades of Akira Kurosawa collaborations – rendered here as Miyamoto Musashi. Capcom is setting the action in an Edo-period Kyoto overrun by demonic forces called Genma, with Musashi wielding an Oni Gauntlet that absorbs enemy souls. It is a franchise return timed precisely to the moment the Nintendo Switch 2 is establishing itself as the platform most aggressively courted by third-party publishers. Onimusha: Way of the Sword is scheduled for September 25, 2026.
What Capcom is executing across both properties is a variant of the same strategy. In Dragon’s Dogma 2’s case, the company is removing friction – paying penalties, performance shortfalls, limited quality of life – to restore credibility to an IP that arrived at market with serious baggage. In Onimusha’s case, it is betting that a recognizable franchise name, a provocative casting choice, and a high-profile platform can together create an audience for a series most younger players have never encountered.
What remains unresolved is whether the August performance update can close the gap between what Dragon’s Dogma 2 has always promised and what it has actually delivered on hardware – and whether the Switch 2 version of Dark Arisen, arriving on a platform with its own performance ceiling, inherits the same frame rate problems the base game never fully solved. Capcom has not addressed either question publicly. The October 9 launch date is now three and a half months away.
