Dragon's Dogma

[Viero_Berlotti]

So I downloaded the demo for this, not really expecting much from it. During the first play through of the demo I'd had a few drinks and thought it was confusing and a bit all over the place, a dog's dinner of a game. I was also still under the spell of Dark Souls and have been stupidly comparing every RPG since to it's unique and high standards. However the next day I tried to give it another go, but this time tried to have more of an open mind about it.

So after a few more play throughs of the demo levels, I started to get the hang of it and began to enjoy it for what it was. Since then I've been out and bought the full game and I haven't regretted it. It's certainly not perfect and not without it's faults, and it surprisingly lacks the presentation and polish you'd expect from a big name company like Capcom. I've become thoroughly absorbed by it though. Last night, whilst wandering lost with my party through a dark forest being attacked from all directions by ghosts, goblins and giant spiders it gave me what I expect from a decent RPG, that feeling of complete engagement and involvement with the game world.

The online 'Pawn' system is a unique feature too and makes the party based game-play more interesting than just hiring in-game NPC's to join you as has been the standard in RPG's for many years. I really look forward to resting at an inn to see if another player has been using my Pawn, and it's a tiny joy on the rare occasion when somebody sends your Pawn back with a decent piece of equipment. Also the little hints and tips the Pawn gives you when you are on a quest they have done with another player are an interesting addition and are balanced enough not to spoil the game. In a strange way it pushes you to spend resources and make your Pawn more attractive to other players, as the more use your Pawn gets, the more in-game experience it will bring back with it. It really is a clever piece of online innovation that deserves more respect and attention than it will probably get.

I don't think it's going to be a game for everyone, and it's faults may be too much for some people, but I suspect the price on this game will have dropped quite a bit in the next six months, and it's certainly worth a try if you can pick it up cheaply.

[Acceptable]

I have this conspiracy theory that Dragon's Dogma was originally supposed to be an MMORPG or at least a co-operative RPG. Between the dearth of narrative material, the user interface flooded with bars and numbers and pop-ups, the miserly progression system and bizarre micro-payment market; it seems like at every turn Capcom made the design choices that made the least sense for a single player game.

The Pawn system is the biggest problem I have with the game, it's the sort of feature nobody would choose to put into a game if they had an alternative. In a single-player RPG the protagonist is usually a blank slate and it's up to the secondary characters to fill in the narrative; except Dragon's Dogma replaces your party with what are essentially randomly generated followers. I suppose it's 'innovative' in the sense that it's new but it just bleeds all sense of purpose out of the game and I can't understand why it exists.

Dragon's Dogma is Rogue for consoles.

[Viero_Berlotti]

Well I suppose you could say Dragon's Dogma is an MMORPG for people like me, who like the idea of an MMORPG but don't like the reality of playing it with annoying and impatient 15 year olds. So you get the option of playing with lots of player generated characters, but have them controlled by AI instead of the annoying 15 year olds.

The Rogue comparisons are close as it has the similar feature of food spoiling if you don't eat it quickly enough that is in a lot of Rogue-like games.

Fighting the large creatures is a blast as well, it's not a deep game, it's an action RPG after all and the emphasis is definitely on the action. I'm probably in the minority here but for me it's a lot more fun than the chore that was Skyrim. It reminds me of playing Gauntlet, it has an arcade feel to it in that respect.

[Big Jack McBastard]

If anyone noticed I disappeared for a few days: It's cos of this game.

Much like Viero I got the demo of this and found it a bit wanky at first, I also thought they were taking the piss with the name which didn't help it's case buuut...

I picked it up on Friday along with Ninja Gaiden 3 (which hasn't even seen the disc drive yet) and I've already spent an unholy quantity of time playing it, I'll have to check if there's a in-game clock/counter to know the hours for certain, but, 'more than is sensible in 3 days' that's for sure. One of the achievements is 'Visit 150 Areas', I've just hit 50 and get the feeling I'm nowhere near a third of the way in, I've only just gotten permission to investigate the Dragon stalking these lands.

It's bloody great fun, I've built a 3ft tall magic bow wielding rouge who bounds into battle darting from foe to foe slashing the sides of enemies up and hacking away at their backs while my bespoke[nb]or near enough[/nb] posse clobbers, slashes and magics all over their asses.

Climbing up ogres and cyclops' legs and all over their bodies to attack their eyes or other weak points is a joy, especially if you loose an explosive bolt into the spot you're going for first, climb up the bugger and give it a wallop to have it explode and stun/floor them. Watching/hearing the big enemies hit the deck is awfully satisfying, they often get back up though, enraged and fit to go ape-shit, you can try hanging on if you've got the stamina, but you'll have to dodge their flailing arms and try to avoid their arse lest they drop to a sitting position to crush/dislodge you.

It's tough going once you're out of the first wee town, a few poorly timed moves and you'll be on your back, you'll probably quickly realise the benefits of doing a bit of grinding to get some experience and materials together as a fairly extensive crafting element is hidden under it's skin, I've got a crapload of stuff stashed at the inn that I've harvested from the world that have hidden properties (can be combined with something else to make new items) on the off chance that whatever lies under those question marks are cool.

To assist with the grinding the enemies/locations refresh over time (though thankfully once the tunnel route from the capital to the Shadowfort is cleared it gains a human population and a shop[nb]I've taken to giving each of my followers a pick-axe so they can do the boring mining in there for me and so I don't have to micromanage my inventory every 5 minutes to keep myself 'Light'[/nb]) little did I realise this applied to the Chimeras as well, after killing my first one in a hard fought battle, pitting it with oiled arrows and setting it ablaze, chopping the snake-head tail off and holding on to its back for dear life while it rolled and thrashed about finally stabbing it in the head from the back, I decided to open up a bit more of the map and explore the southern coastline, we spent about a day and a half scouring besieged by wolves and goblins every 10 seconds at night and with everyone in my team hauling a ton of stuff by the time I was done I decided to take them to the camp in the north rather than risk the journey back to the capital (this was before I knew about the portal-stone thing) and ran smack bang into another bloody Chimera flanked by a pack of Saurians (lizard-men) who laid down a vicious portion of smack and killed my mage before they went down. The important thing is I've got hold of their delicious 'Freakish' Manes and scales to upgrade weapons and armour.

I'm quite fond of the pawn system and it works well as long you don't take the piss and hire nothing but the 0Cr uber-creations who would doubtless ruin the game, just search for what you're after in a companion (mages and tanks for me) and then review their abilities and looks to decide if you'll hire them. I usually go 4 levels up from where I am as that takes the edge off combating new creatures and serves to make the pawns useful until I've leveled up a bit as often happens when you're out on a long stretch away from home.

Bubs; my permanent companion is a giant, metal clad, black Hulk Hogan-lookin' loon who fills the big hitter role in my team but he likes to run in and grab foes pinning them to the ground or locking their arms so I can do em in. He's apparently been out on 5 other sojourns in other players worlds and is netting increasingly large sums of credits for me each time, to then spend on new pawns. He raked in 3 and a half grand in Rift Credits one session last night, that's the most he's ever been hired for, I was so proud.

It's tough but not as hard as Dark Souls, it's more fun than Skyrim, as the fighting mechanics are much more variable since you can retrain and modify your bod fairly quickly without killing yourself grinding levels up and the grand enemies you face are bloody brilliant. It's got the balls that Fable 3 was lacking. Looks like it's a bit of a big bugger too.

Dwarf Fortress is on the back-burner until this is completed.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Still going, just killed the mid game (tries to make you think it's end game) dragon boss and returned to the capital to find half the floor missing so the Everfall has opened up. (I'm about 110 hours in). Now the enemies are fucking rock hard again and the option to do myself in has presented its self.

I've taken to cross-classing my character and pawn to gain augmentations I'd otherwise not have access to which is kinda cool and something I probably should have done much earlier as starting out as a piss weak mage now would almost certainly be utterly ruinous for me. That said, someone took Bubs to another big dragon fight while I was offline and gained me 11 grand in RC so I might hire a kickass mage and strider and work up my levels in the background for a bit. I still feel like I want to ramp this character up into insane levels for some reason and there's still a lot of shit left to do, only just cleared the first few floors of the Everfall.

Ok one thing about the pawns, I wish they'd shut the fuck up. You can set them to be less chatty by having an instructional chat with them, but they never clam up to the degree you're after and still repeat banal, victim-of-severe-head-trauma-amnesia shit, endlessly.

I'm thinking the 'suicide' choice I'm being offered is unlikely to end it all, it'll doubtless do something weird, not looked it up yet, but still, the idea of a 'suicide' ending is something a great many games of this ilk could do with (and something I'm sure I've rattled on about before) since there's rarely a definite ending once the big bad is out of the way the only sense of closure you usually get is when you decide not to put the disc back in the drive again, so I like the idea that there's something actually built-in to bring that about.