Battahl in Dragon's Dogma 2 is an utter nightmare, but it's taught me that sometimes, giving up is also the best way to keep going

An adventurer enters Bhattal in Dragon's Dogma 2, unaware of the horrors that await him.
(Image credit: Capcom)

Dragon's Dogma 2 has a very weird take on difficulty. Things aren't too hard while you're running around Vermund—there's some goblins, some asps, and a couple of ogres. Once you get a handle on the combat system, you might even start feeling confident. Then Battahl happens. 

Anyone who has been there knows what I'm talking about, but for the uninitiated, here's a rundown.

Two experiences come to mind when I think of Battahl. Experience one: I am entering this zone for the first time, desperately trying to get to the city so I can tick off this main quest. I'm getting knocked around by goddamn everything—see, I made the mistake of showing up as a Fighter with the augment that increases enemy aggro, and everything staggers you in Battahl. Everything.

I see what I can only describe as the world's crappiest ski lift. Two of them, to be exact, linking to the same island, heading towards the city I need to get to. I think to myself, drowning in hubris: "Ah, okay. The enemy density's meant to encourage you to use this travel system, that's neat." I claw my way up to the first station and call the lift over. It's a slow and uneventful journey.

I arrive at the first pitstop and fight some bandits who'd claimed dibs on that pillar of stone. I kill them, and moments later a griffin shows up. I scare it off. I get on the next lift and my pawns, as if seeing the writing on the wall, refuse to accompany me. A harpy shows up, grabs me, and hurls me off for having the audacity to try and go somewhere in a videogame.

The second experience was when I was trying to get out of fantasy Australia. I elect to take the oxcart, but we get ambushed. My sorcerer pawn thinks "Hey, this is a great time to cast Seism!" and obliterates my only mode of transport, leaving us stranded in the exact middle of where I was coming from and where I was trying to go. I spend about five minutes fighting off choppers (and also a cyclops, who shows up mid-brawl). We win. Then a griffin happens. I try to climb on its back and it immediately takes off.

At this point I am fully surrendered to the whims of fate. I mean—look, I had plans, but clearly Dragon's Dogma 2 doesn't care what I think, want, or feel. Unless I'm willing to burn a Ferrystone, no journey is assured.

And it's not just me—here's a couple of clips from my fellow arisen that really drive home both how enemy-dense Battahl is, and how utterly useless its ski lifts are.

Average Battahl exploration experience from r/DragonsDogma
"Is that a......well shit" from r/DragonsDogma

Yes, you can out-level Battahl. But if you have the audacity to go there before your time, the zone transcends 'git good' and veers into 'the universe hates you'. I remember Elden Ring's hellscape of Caelid, and that place is downright relaxing in comparison. In fact, Battahl is like a mini-Caelid with the exact same enemy density. In a word, it sucks. It's a bad place to be at.

But when that oxcart trip was thoroughly interrupted, something snapped. My frustrated grumbling crumbled away and I just started laughing—maybe I'd had one too many concussions from red wolves and angry choppers, but I was starting to actually have fun.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is an infuriating video game, but only in the sense that players—myself included—are used to getting what they want. And I don't even mean that in a 'I needed to git good', souls-adjacent, delayed gratification way. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is hard, but if you keep hitting the wall it'll crumble. You can still climb that mountain, and if you persist, you'll get where you were headed.

A Dragon's Dogma 2 party fights off again'st a griffin atop a grassy hill

(Image credit: Capcom)

Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't a mountain, it's the adventuring equivalent of Russian Roulette. Anything short of burning a Ferrystone has a non-zero chance of becoming a drawn-out nightmare. When I got on that oxcart, I wanted to get to the Checkpoint Rest Town, but a bullet was in the chamber when I squeezed the trigger—so instead, I was shot with 20 goblins, a cyclops, and a one-way ticket to nest town.

In the same way that, say, Genichiro Ashina forces you to learn Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice's combat system or quit, I think Battahl forces you to learn how to simply go limp in the jaws of the game when it clamps down on you. Dragon's Dogma 2 and its interruptions aren't tests of your skill or patience, they're testing your reflex to fight the current of a river when you're pushed into it.

This game really isn't for everyone. Heck, Battahl almost made me lose interest, so it's barely even for me. The zone itself also feels emblematic of the game's flaws. Quests feel thin, incomplete, or needlessly cruel (I have fully given up on being poisoned by a harpy for that one guy). The enemy density—even when you outscale it—feels downright noisy. But it's also pretty great once you stop caring and just let the river carry you where it may. 

The next time a griffin divebombs your oxcart or ski lift, the next time a cyclops punts you into a chasm with no clear exit, the next time you realise that the map lied to you and that there's actually no route to your destination, I want you repeat these words: "It is what it is". See if it works.

Harvey Randall
Staff Writer

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

Read more
A fish-man looking stoic
Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is an aggressively old-school MMO that hates hand-holding so much it won't even give you a map—but a certain type of player might just love it
An Arisen climbs an ogre in Dragon's Dogma 2, preparing to strike it in the head with a duospear.
Dragon's Dogma 2 understands that fantasy's at its best when it knows how to revel in the mundane
elden ring nightreign
3 hours with Elden Ring Nightreign helped me accept it's not the co-op FromSoft game I asked for, but damn fun in its own right
A grinning Henry and Capon ride proud-looking steeds.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review
Monster Hunter Wilds
I wish Monster Hunter Wilds' open world and changing seasons were ambitious enough to justify its PC performance woes, but they've yet to truly wow me
Monster Hunter Wilds - a hunter faces off against Doshaguma in a field
Why did Monster Hunter Wilds dedicate so much effort to its environments, only to completely drop the actual 'hunting' from Monster Hunter?
Latest in RPG
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
A lolporrit squeals in excitement while being driven in a moon buggie in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, patch 7.2.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2's trailer has me finally hyped to get stuck back in—and to go to the moon and pilot some mechs, because why not
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 barbers change hairstyle - Henry sitting on a horse wearing armour.
How to find a barber and change hairstyle in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 image - Henry riding a pink and blue striped horse while holding a fish
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 now has Steam Workshop support, and of course one of the first mods lets you adjust the 'jiggle physics'
Erenshor - A player and two simulated MMO party members stand on a plateau in front of a yellow landscape
This RuneScape-looking 'simulated MMORPG' has all the nostalgia without the drama because all the other 'players' are NPCs
Latest in Features
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
Monster Hunter Wilds' new gyro controls are a fantastic option for disabled and able-bodied players alike
A busy marketplace in The Bazaar.
The Bazaar could be the future of autobattlers, if it stops strangling itself to death with its own microtransactions
Marvel Rivals characters - Hulk with his hands out as if he's grabbing the camera.
Marvel Rivals' growing roster of heroes scares me, but the game's director seems sure that all is under control: 'Everything is progressing smoothly'
Rainbow Six Siege year 9 season 2 key art - two Rainbow Six Siege operators facing each other
'Siege 2 was never on the table': Rainbow Six Siege X director explains why the 10-year-old FPS doesn't need a sequel
Gallica and the protagonist from Metaphor: ReFantazio.
The best deals in the 2025 Steam Spring Sale
Hands pushing poker chips on a table
Winning $2.6 billion in this poker videogame has completely ruined fake poker for me