1. Arrestedevelopr

   9

   Multiplayer would have been nice (a must for a sequel) but the AI companions do a great job. Don't underestimate how fun climbing on top of a cyclops and stabbing his eye can be.… Expand

   • Helpful? 7 of 8 users said Yes.
2. Scourge626

   6

   This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Dragon's Dogma is a bold, new, and adventurous game that exceeds expectations but then dashes set expectations due to its many, many shortcomings and flaws. It's like a middle child that tries to get attention from its parents but succeeds in mostly ticking them off instead of being praised by them. From the rocking but rather unexpected J-Rock opening theme song to the most ridiculous ending that I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing in my life as a gamer, Dragon's Dogma is filled with surprises both good and bad. Unfortunately, this game is only for people who are willing to stick on their blinders and are willing to endure (as many people will say, but they really mean blatantly ignore every flaw as if they don't exist) the overflowing problems. The character creation is the most extensive selection I have seen that may rival such games as Skyrim. However, despite how extensive it was, I felt that they were pretty boring. That doesn't mean it’s bad because this character creation was made for everyone, not me. After that came perhaps the best scene in gaming history: A dragon plucks out your heart and eats it. Your character gets eviscerated on screen and left for dead in the first 5 minutes of the game. How awesome is that! You come back to life as the Arisen, get a pawn, do some quests, get your main pawn, and then get into a fight with a Hydra, one of the most dangerous mythical creatures in any myth. The game just starts off on point and hooks you in an instant like a pro fisher. But this pro makes too many amateur mistakes and this fish gets away with ease. The world to explore is vast for a small country/kingdom, but it gets tiring seeing the same bridge with the same enemies lying in wait on it as you go back and forth between destinations. Couple this with no fast travel and the main character only being able to sprint so far before getting tired, and the travel is just slow going. The quests aren't bad but also mainly unnecessary. Unlike Skyrim it, does not make me give a damn about helping the people so much as I'm just getting money. And the worst type of quest there was, but there was an overabundance of protection quests. Any gamer will know such quests are the hardest because the person you have to protect generally has no self-preservation qualities in the slightest. There are only a few quests with a some sort of payoff besides money, like how if you get one guy the Grimoire he wants, he'll come out of nowhere to help you out with a griffon quest. If there were more like those, the quests would have been worth doing. I hardly needed to do quests other than the main ones because I was never in need for money. All I had to do was standard RPG money-maker tactic: go into a dungeon, kill everything that moves, loot them, sell it, repeat. I will point out that the dungeons do look different from dungeon to dungeon, but there is hardly a reason to in to them other than for money or quests. The scenery is stunning to experience the first few times, but because you have to go to the same areas over and over again, it just gets old. The same with the voices. The dialogues are poorly done, often unnecessary, and random, and hardly do anything but make me want to punch the characters. The main city, the place you will spend the bulk of your time at, is one step from being a ghost town. You hardly see anyone in the street even during the day and it's fairly small for a place that houses a castle. Even the castle is small. And often the cut scenes that are supposed to tell the story don't really tell it until the end of the game and even then, everything just feels random. The cut scene happens and it just doesn't explain anything. Like at the supposed end of the game where you fight the dragon that stole your heart. He ransoms the world in exchange for the Duke's wife whom you fell in love with after only two encounters, one of which she got you thrown in prison and whipped. It all seems interesting, but it just doesn't get explained. This is an RPG people, story is paramount. The best part about this game is the fighting and even that has problems. While it was fun to be able to climb on giant enemies, throw smaller one off cliffs, and receive assistance from your pawns, they just got old. Because once you found a way to beat an enmey, it was impossible for them to be a threat. Sure you could change your fighting style but once you wear out a fighting style there is no reviving it just by not using it for awhile. And just about every enemy was weak to the same thing; fire. Some enemies had multiple weaknesses, but everyone was weak to fire. The main dragon boss fight was without a doubt the best fight in the whole game and was the high point of the entire story. The worst is the pawns. Their voices were annoying, they were majorly useless, and didn't learn as well as I hoped. I wanted to like this game but there are too many flaws to overlook.… Expand

   • Helpful? 3 of 6 users said Yes.
3. Onomatopoeia

   4

   I just want to say at the outset that I respect Capcom as a company and their decades of experience in the game industry. That said, here's my review: The TLDR version: Score: (21/50), a 4.0 ranking Decent graphics. Small world. Dull story. Unique elements for genre, but fall short of potential. Companions are extremely limited and annoying, actually very annoying. Small pool of unique monsters. Bosses enjoyable except final battle, which I couldn't wait to just be over. Liberal use of 2 second cut scenes followed by dull dialogue and followed up by another 2 second cut scene. Literally. Graphics/Art: I found the landscapes attractive, especially the grassy areas where vegetation moves with the wind. With a more critical eye, however, there was no variation in the movement rate. Perhaps I'm asking for too much. The lighting effects were well done. Dark areas were pretty with a lantern in hand. The external walls of various Castle-like buildings were awesome for me. 7/10 Map: At the beginning of the game, the map shows only areas that have been explored. This makes it feel like there are vast areas to explore but that's not the case. The map is a good deal smaller than other open RPG games released in the past couple of years. The requisite dungeons were pretty cool, even though multiple plot elements kept sending me back to them. There were probably lots of mini-caves etc. that I missed but I was so bored by everything else in the game that I didn't bother. 4/10 Enemies: Limited number of enemies, always spawn in the same place, in the same numbers, and defeating them requires no planning or strategy beyond anticipating that they are there (again). The bosses were modeled well and had good animations. When a boss stuns you, you may be stunned at the very instant you find your feet again. Double stun. Not fun. 3/10 Pawns: A fresh idea for the genre. The problem is that the idea wasn't developed enough to impress beyond its initial introduction. The Pawns were annoying. Always. There is absolutely no reason for a pawn to remind the player (let alone all three simultaneously) that "the INN should serve as a hub for our adventure" before the final battle of the game and "you cannot only rest here but you can manage inventory and skills as well." 5/10 Story: I was bored. I just didn't care about any of the characters including my own. This was the weakest element of the game. The voice acting was not bad, but I just didn't care. The main character has his/her own heart ripped out by a dragon at the beginning of the game. This would seem to serve as an anxiety provoking and emotional event to drive the player onward, yet it doesn't resonate anything of the sort during the game. People greet you, indifferently, as The Arisen, rather than something like "I can't believe that you still live even after the Dragon took your heart. Bless your soul for saving us during these hard times. What can I do to help?" 2/10… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.

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