Grimgoblins Arisen!

I loved this game, the combat is unmatched, but it's bogged down by weird design choices. I hate going into menu's to heal, give me on the fly access like assigning healing items to the D-pad. Let me register armor sets or give me a good sorting tool. Just get rid of unnescessary items and submenu's. I disagree rorie, pawn a.i. is child-like, especially in the DLC, they jump off cliffs ffs.

This game needs a fully flegded sequel, cause this is the game that would topple games other games unworthy of mentioning in the presence of Dragon's Dogma.

I love these articles but I can never make it to the end due to the distractingly cute pictures.

@rorie if you think the game is too easy, hard mode is for you.

You should be able to pick it as you NG+.

This is the only game in recent memory i have played, where the physical appearance of your character actually matters. You can carry more if you're heavier and sprint faster if your smaller, you get longer reach if you're tall and so on.

Also, i think people make the non-pawns for solo runs, where you just throw your pawn off a cliff and solo for more of a challenge and higher dmg as assassin.

Is there any way to play without pawns? because that is the one aspect of the game that has kept me from playing it. I want real companions in RPGs, not some soulless magical slave.

@geraltitude said:

One of the few open world Fantasy games that let you wear cloaks. That was worth my 40 hours alone.

@scampbell Get your pawns killed and then never revive them is the only way I believe.

@seppli: Yeah, I beat the game. It was interesting, I guess!

@scampbell: throw your pawn into the drink, or the brine or whatever they call it.

Yeah, I've been going a bit deeper into it over the last couple of days, and it's getting pretty tough. I keep having these nine-health-bar monstrosities just spawn in on top of me and wreck my face. Oh well, I'll keep working at it. Time to save up for some of these 1.5 million gold weapons, I guess.

Dragon's Dogma is one of those games that truly has a lot to love about it, but my God is it flawed. From the way the world never changes and is completely static, to a story that seemingly goes nowhere for the longest time. Terrible menu navigation, poor pawn AI with only vague commands to give them (and not to mention their highly repetitive dialogue), and Dragon's Dogma has the dubious honour of featuring some of the worst escort missions I can recently recall. God, and it was even worse in the original version! You practically had no choice but to run everywhere, while you're also constantly taking quick breaks every 20 seconds to recharge your stamina. That's not entirely different from how it is in Dark Arisen, but rift stones were significantly more expensive, and there was only one teleport crystal you could find for your first playthrough. That, and the game didn't originally come with a Hard mode, so when you started it over again, you returned as a Demi-God that could kill practically everything with one hit...

And yet despite all of that, I've completed it about 5 times across both versions! It's such a wonderfully creative disaster that I've grown to both love and hate in equal measure. Dragon's Dogma is most assuredly one of those games that demands a sequel; it needs that extra something to iron out all of the rough edge, so then it's easier to appreciate everything that's so damn fantastic about it. Also, Chimera mounts... C'mon, Capcom you know you have to!

I guess that is a solution and at least the game gives you the tools to make it easy, though I guess you'll be forced to listen to them whine afterwards.

If only it was on PC, modding makes everything better.

With how many credit rolls the game throws around, one never knows. I could well imagine people tuning out after the big Dragon fight, and never discovering what lies beyond.

That's a really good description. I probably would have never bothered finishing it if I had played it before Dark Arisen dished out more Port Crystals and cheap Ferrystones. I'm looking forward to seeing what they can do with the budget and time to polish things up for a sequel.

And mounts would be an awesome way to deal with the travel problem. I need a mountable Griffin pawn like now please.

There is aught here!

Yeah I was pissed off when I saw the credits rolling, but I always make sure to get to the end of them to make sure that something else isn't lurking. Surprising amount of content to hide behind a credits sequence; I'm sure some people rage quit and never look back.

I'm with you on that one as I hate spending hundreds of hours in an rpg only to have the same enemies that waxed me earlier still waxing me later on. I have no problem switching out my highend gear if needed to give me the type of combat challenge I'm looking for.

Stop playing Dragons Dogma and play Aaklash Legacy. In fact, that would make for an interesting discussion seeing how much different they are in their approach to the RPG genre.

Great write up. Hey Rorie, wolves hunt in packs.

Anyway, I finally found myself giving the game a chance on a sick day from work and 10+ hour later I no doubt understood why so many people love this game. It was interesting to read your take on it and I agree with most of your criticisms.

My only other criticism is that there is no way to roll new characters (one save slot), the funnest part of Dark Souls-like games is starting a new character and theming the playthrough. But this game seems like it is not meant for that. I'll just have to play dress up with my existing character and pawn.

Wouldn't it be possible to roll multiple characters by using different storage devices for each character? Or does the game have some clever way to prevent that?

@rvone: No, that is definitely an option -- least it is on 360. I don't know if it'd work the same way on PS3.