The map in Dragon's Dogma is pretty big and you will be running around great distances encountering many foes along your travels. If you've played Skyrim you probably used fast travel A LOT! That map was massive. In Dragon's Dogma you have these stones that are pretty rare and expensive that will let only let you return to a main castle to a Port Chrystal which you can place anywhere. There are no horses to ride and your stamina is limited so be wary that you have enough before engaging in battle. There are going to be some huge enemies and which you can climb and attack them at certain points or weak spots. Even creatures like griffons you can grab on to that will take you into the air while you slash away at it. much like Skyrim you have a companion you can take with you except you can have up to 3 to take with you. One is your main pawn that you create and customize. The other 2 that you hire are pawns made by other people so you can hire mine while im using him and he'll gain knowledge and experience from traveling with you. This becomes quite helpful when my pawn returns with knowledge of a quest I'm doing and can help with some insights, clues or even lead the way. Its not a multiplayer in a sense that others play with you. It's a single player game with a community of other peoples pawns walking around the cities for you to hire. From a station called Rift Stone you can enter and search what kind of pawns you're looking for to set up your ideal team. Be sure to vary your team's abilities as situations may require range or magic or physical. This adds a nice tactical touch to the pawn system.
Now the best part of the game. The COMBAT!
There's alot to say about the combat. Its pretty deep. It has a class system that starts off with 3 classes, or as they call it vocations, and when you get to the main city of Gran Soren you can change your vocation back and forth from several other that also mix up classes like a strider and mage to be a magic-archer which im using. You'll also be in charge of your main pawn's vocation and abilities. You have a main weapon and a secondary. There's alot of moves to learn that you map to your buttons. You have your light attacks and heavy attacks and then 3 moves you can change around with your main weapon along with your secondary with 3 moves as well. There are moves you can do like hit your sword to your shield to taunt enemies to come to you. There's also moves that you or your pawns will do for a combo where they can will hold an enemy and tell you to to strike while they have them. Another is my pawn will signal me to run at him so he can launch me into the air so I can grab a flying enemy. That being said I absolutly love the combat in this action rpg.
Health is pretty crazy that you don't heal fully when damaged and keeps getting smaller the more damage you take until you go to an in and rest or find a healing. I think it's pretty interesting and gives it a nice challenge. Night time you will constantly run into trouble due to the constant barrage of enemies. Another thing I like is all the types of fantastical creatures like hydras, chimeras, cyclops and griffins which are huge and scalable like Shadow of the Colossus.
The negatives. Yes there are glitches. Some animations just aren't that smooth. Sometimes running place to place it might take a short while before everyone appears. The graphics aren't as good as the Witcher and Skyrim but there were some pretty ugly inhabitants in Skyrim. When you talk to people its kind of annoying to have to click next, next, next after each sentence. I rather they just talk it all out while I take a bite into a snack. The quests sometimes don't really give as much information as I like which leave me leaving it until I run into it along the way. As I mentioned in the beginning fast travel is expensive so its taking me forever to get to my quest sometimes so if you have a few quests near by I urge you to do them.
Summary:
In short this is quite an ambitious game that Capcom set out to make. Even though I don't feel they've hit it out of the ball park I had a lot of fun with this game. If you like an open world fantasy game with tons of customization and a deep fighting system I recommend trying out the demo to see if you liked it.
Verdict:
8/10 - Try It/Buy It
Update: Finished the game!
ReplyDeleteEpic boss battle!