Dragon's Dogma 2 PC frame rate issues acknowledged by Capcom

Capcom has confirmed it is aware of frame rate issues in Dragon's Dogma 2 on PC and is looking to improve performance in the future.

The open world RPG is released tomorrow, 22nd March, but does suffer from an inconsistent frame rate when playing on PC.

"In Dragon's Dogma 2, a large amount of CPU usage is allocated to each character and calculating the impact of their physical presence in various areas. In certain situations where numerous characters appear simultaneously, the CPU usage can be very high and may affect the frame rate," reads a statement from Capcom shared with Eurogamer.

"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."

Of course, more powerful systems will run the game better, though results seem to be inconsistent. For reference, the minimum system requirements on Steam are as follows:

• CPU: Intel Core i5 10600 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT with 8GB VRAM

The recommended requirements are:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-10700 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 / AMD Radeon RX 6700

Capcom has not discussed potential frame rate improvements for the console versions, where there are also performance issues.

Across both consoles, the game does not include graphics or performance options and instead runs with an uncapped frame rate that generally hovers around 30fps but can vary depending on the environment. This was stated by director Hideaki Itsuno on X, formerly Twitter.

As a result of the frame rate issues, some players are planning a killing spree of NPCs to drop the CPU load.

"Idea: a community made list of inconsequential NPCs you can kill to boost FPS," reads a post on the Dragon's Dogma subreddit. "Since the way NPCs are handled is theorised to be very taxing on your CPU, killing off NPCs should boost your performance. However, what's the point of killing off NPCs to boost your frame rate if you're also killing content. This is why I am suggesting a community sourced list of junk NPCs we are free to murder."

Responses include killing any non-shopkeeper, guards, or even murdering NPCs after finishing their quests.

"This idea is wild. The optimisation is so bad that we have people wanting to commit mass genocide for more fps," one commenter surmised.

Frame rate issues are already a meme for the game before it's even been released.

My body may be ready for tomorrow but my pc is not
byu/mechsmechsmechs inDragonsDogma

This is hilarious, but Capcom relly needs to work on a fix
byu/IcePopsicleDragon inDragonsDogma

Sacrifices must be made
byu/Nachooolo inDragonsDogma

Dragon's Dogma 2 is out on 22nd March across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. It received five stars in our Eurogamer review, which praised its "limitless potential".

For more on Dragon's Dogma 2, Digital Foundry will have a full analysis soon.