Capcom’s sprawling open-world epic, Dragon’s Dogma 2, has kicked the doors off the RPG scene with its seemingly endless amount of medieval sword-slashing content. Unfortunately, it isn’t all sunshine and roses for the action-adventure tale, as players continue to report numerous performance issues on consoles and PCs. Of course, Capcom isn’t standing idly by while waves of complaints keep pouring in. Instead, the team behind the game has identified the causes of these problems, and they apparently stem from Dragon’s Dogma 2’s complex game design overwhelming users’ CPUs.

At first glance, the Dragon’s Dogma 2 system requirements aren’t all that demanding. According to the game’s Steam page, its recommended specs only require an RTX 2080 / Radeon RX 6700 with a Core i7-10700 / Ryzen 5 3600X. That’s less than the requirements of the upcoming Steam version of Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition, which notably has an RTX 3060 listed as a recommended spec. However, even players running high-end PCs, like those equipped with 4090s, are experiencing the same issues in Dragon’s Dogma 2 as everyone else. So, no, not even one of the best GPUs in 2025 can help you run this game.

Dragon’s Dogma 2’s dynamic NPCs are causing CPUs to struggle

Responding to IGN, a Capcom representative revealed the heavy CPU usage that in-game NPCs demand. “In Dragon’s Dogma 2, a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and dynamically calculates the impact of their physical presence in various environments. In certain situations where numerous characters appear simultaneously, the CPU usage can be very high and may affect the frame rate. We are aware that in such situations, settings that reduce GPU load may currently have a limited effect; however, we are looking into ways to improve performance in the future.”

Since these problems revolve around the CPU and not the GPU, simply lowering your graphics qualities or turning anti-aliasing off won’t help. Fortunately, the game’s development team is likely working on fixing these issues already. So, hopefully, you won’t have to wait long until you experience the game without any hitches. You may also find this guide on Dragon’s Dogma 2 graphics settings useful.

About the Author

Nico Vergara

Nico is a Tech News Writer for PC Guide. He is also adept at finding a good deal every now and then, stemming from his days penny-pinching as a broke college kid.