Dragon’s Dogma 2 Multiplayer Explained: Can You Play With Friends?

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is more than just one of the best games of 2024; it’s an epic RPG adventure that revives a franchise many had left for dead. It’s a must-play experience for fantasy fans everywhere.

However, many of those fantasy fans are already asking some version of a pretty important question, “Does Dragon’s Dogma 2 offer any multiplayer options that allow you to play with your friends?”

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is a pretty hard “No.” Dragon’s Dogma 2 does not include any co-op or competitive multiplayer options that allow you to play the game with others. For many, that will understandably be a deal-breaker. After all, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a party-focused RPG action-adventure that would seemingly be perfect for co-op play. Sadly, until modders do their thing (or Capcom makes a huge update to the core experience), there is simply no way to play Dragon’s Dogma 2 with your friends.

So why bring this topic up at all? Well, it’s because Dragon’s Dogma 2 does support a rather unusual form of online play that is worth knowing about.

See, in Dragon’s Dogma 2, your allied characters are referred to as Pawns. Early in the game, you’ll be asked to create a “Main Pawn” that is highly customizable and will soon become your faithful companion. As you travel, you will also have the ability to recruit additional Support Pawns through various means.

That Main Pawn you create can then be recruited by other people playing Dragon’s Dogma 2. In fact, many of the Pawns you encounter while playing the game are actually clones of Pawns created by other players. The others are Pawns created by Capcom. It’s a network that allows Dragon’s Dogma 2 players to influence each others’ adventures and even interact with each other via slightly more indirect means. Think of it like the recruitment system in the Dark Souls games. The major (and unfortunate) difference is that you can’t control your Pawn and invade other players’ worlds.

However, it is possible to directly recruit a friend’s Pawn via the game’s Pawn network. Unfortunately, you can only do so if you’re both playing on the same platform as Dragon’s Dogma 2 does not support cross-platform play. For more information on how to recruit a friend’s Pawn, please consult this guide.

There are many benefits to participating in the Pawn recruitment process. Not only will recruiting player-created Pawns grant you access to powerful allies, but using that Pawn will give valuable Rift Crystals to the player who created them. That reward process works both ways, so it’s a good idea to always upgrade your Main Pawn in order to make it as appealing to other players as possible. The more players that use your Pawn, the more rewards you receive.

It’s also possible to use those Pawns as a link between worlds. After dismissing a Pawn you recruited from another player, you’ll have the option of giving it a gift. That gift will then be available to the player who created that Pawn. This is a fantastic way for friends to exchange items, though random players will also often gift you with additional items if they are satisfied with your Pawn’s performance. Furthermore, your Pawn can actually become more powerful the more times it is recruited and utilized by other players. It’s just another reason to try to make sure your Pawn is recruited as often as possible.

While it’s certainly unfortunate that Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t offer a more robust direct multiplayer option, that Pawn system will at least allow players to share the experience in some way. In any case, here’s hoping that Capcom eventually figures out how to make co-op make sense in the world of Dragon’s Dogma.