Our Dragon's Dogma review is now live, a roaring beast of internet journalism spanning three whole pages. You'd have thought that would be enough, really. You'd have thought Matt would be able to shut up about the game now. But life isn't that simple, and nor is Dragon's Dogma.
Here are his answers to 23 questions you asked about Capcom's new RPG way, way back in April, not long after we took receipt of review code. For God's sake, don't ask him any more. I sit next to the man. I'm starting to hear him in my sleep.
There isn't any rain or snow, but there's an impressive variety of tone to the weather. Some days you'll see bright and cheery blue skies, while other days will be dim and overcast. The Magic Knight video we've made has a lovely bit of fog right at the end - click below to have a look for yourself.
Just wondering how many pawns you can have at one time?
Three, but one of these is your permanent sidekick. The other two can be swapped out at a rift stone at any time, or replaced with random pawns you meet while in the field.
Are there good variety of enemies/dungeons that haven't been shown off in the official videos?
Tonally, the environments are all quite similar to what you've seen so far. There aren't a huge number of dungeons to explore, but there's very little repetition or fluff. The same is true with the enemies in the game - there isn't a massive variation, but the stuff that's there is remarkably well crafted. You'll start to get tired of fighting the same enemies once you hit the 25 hour mark, but class variation and cool boss encounters still kept us interested right up to the end. Without wanting to spoil too much, the game also holds back a few tricks for the end: Don't think you've seen it all until the developer credits roll...
Have you come across any /minor/middling/glaring bugs?
Dragon's Dogma on Xbox 360 is plagued by a major technical problem: The game can't load enemies and characters quickly enough, which results in some major pop-in problems. Installing the game helps a little bit, but many will still find this hugely problematic. Dragon's Dogma's rough edges are mostly charming, but this particular issue is spectacularly bad. It wasn't enough to stop us from absolutely falling in love in the game, but we can imagine that some people won't be as forgiving. If you absolutely refuse to tolerate bugs, it might be wise to approach this one with caution.
There is a New Game + mode, which lets you carry over all your experience and items. It might have been the case that we'd levelled up too much, but we personally found NG+ rather easy, especially in contrast to the brutal end-game enemies that we'd faced before it. NG+ is still fun, but some might prefer to just stay in the end-game. We didn't get to test the semi co-operative Ur-Dragon stuff, but it's worth having a look before you decide to start over.