Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen arrives April 23, fans stunned by reasonable pricing

Capcom has made a habit of thinking primarily with its wallet of late. Street Fighter X Tekken’s extra characters, which were on the disc yet required players to pay extra to unlock them, is just one example. A more recent example can be found in an article we published only yesterday on the upcoming home console/PC release of the year-old, formerly-3DS-exclusive Resident Evil: Revelations. Given this trend, it’s quite surprising when the company offers something objectively valuable for little money, as is the case with the upcoming Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen.

Despite the title, Dark Arisen is really closer to an especially large downloadable content addition than a new entry in the nascent Dragon’s Dogma franchise. Unlike most DLC however, Dark Arisen is getting the full retail treatment. When it debuts on April 23, the game will be available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in retail disc form (though PlayStation 3 owners can also grab the title as a PSN download).

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What exactly is included in the new Dark Arisen expansion? Glad you asked. This morning Capcom served up unexpectedly candid details on the expansion in handy list form. Take a look:

A massive new underground realm to explore featuring over 25 terrifying new enemies
More skills/equipment/augments:
- Level 3 Skills
  - [Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen] provides each character class with a new tier of skills, giving players new devastating abilities and skills to master
- Over 100 pieces of new equipment14 new character/Pawn augments
  - All new high level weapons and armor sets for players venturing into the underground caverns
- New tiers of equipment enhancement
And there’s more:
- Increased character customization options
- Item appraisal
- Option to select Japanese voice over

Impressive. Capcom has seemingly taken every interesting aspect of Dragon’s Dogma and fleshed it out to a massive degree for Dark Arisen. As fans of the original game, we’re quite happy with this list but we have yet to mention the best part of Dark Arisen: Those who have played Dragon’s Dogma can use their existing characters and pawns throughout the entirety of the new content. What’s more, those who somehow missed Dragon’s Dogma aren’t left out of the fun; Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen includes a full copy of Dragon’s Dogma alongside all of its new additions. Granted, Dragon’s Dogma is year-old game so it’s not like you’re getting a free title that would otherwise sell for $60, but given its scope, clever gameplay mechanics, and novel take on the open-world roleplaying game genre, it does make for a very impressive bonus.

More impressive? Once released, the entire package will only set you back $40. That’s $20 less than standard, modern retail pricing and is about what we’d expect to pay for the Dark Arisen content by itself under normal circumstances. We don’t know why Capcom has decided to be so uncharacteristically generous with this particular game, but we hate to stare into the jaws of a gift horse – particularly when said horse brings with it a chance to further explore the fantastic world of Gransys.