(release date: May 22, 2012) COMPLETED. 3/5. For a game that leaves such a weak impression overall, there are a surprisingly large number of individual components that are impressive about it. Most notably, the combat depth and variety is pretty excellent and the ‘pawn’ system really allows you to complement attack strategies between player and NPC(s) in a way that surpasses other games in the genre (with perhaps the exception of Dragon Age).
The art style is uninspiring but the environment design is highly competent with a lot of verticality and opportunities for traversal that are supported by the well-animated and fluid movement mechanics. Pop in for environmental detail can sometimes be a little jarring but generally speaking this is offset by the impressive retention of detail in terms of draw distance. The lighting and magic effects are also really very impressive and again, far surpass other open world RPGs in the genre.
So why isn't this a 5-star game? Basically the narrative and the characters are weak to the point that they feel completely inconsequential. The few attempts at developing characters are desperately poor.
Fournival the wealthy landowner-come- artifact collector whose fate depends on your collection of evidence for his trial. The Duke and his various entourage from whom you receive half of the game's quests. Mercedes, the knight sent from a neighboring kingdom to meet the dragon threat whom you meet in the early game. All are introduced as if they might have some bearing on the threadbare story or at least that they might develop into characters that give you a reference point for understanding what the motivations of your character might be...?
But no... Nothing ultimately comes of these few NPC characters and perhaps the most common way that context and setting are communicated to the player is via the 'pawn' game mechanic. Pawns are quite a novel idea whereby your 'pawn' (that is to say, your slave-NPC, whom you create near the start of the game and who follows you around everywhere you go) can also be loaned out to other players as party members in their games. When your pawn returns to your game (every time you sleep) they bring the knowledge that they acquired in other game worlds (but not XP) with them.
The pawns are quite talkative and will give a running commentary throughout the game about gameplay and the environment. Generally this advice alternates between useless and irritating but on rare occasion the pawns do convey vital information about what to do next. This is fortunate because some quests are very unclear in this regard.
For instance, one quest required me to acquire an item to give to an NPC to unlock new things to buy in his store inventory. However, the item in question was described only as an 'idol' with absolutely no information about where in the world to begin looking for such a thing. No NPCs were forthcoming with any information and no pawns in my group could tell me as none had completed the quest in another game world. As such I wandered around for hours with absolutely no idea about how to find this idol (and, crucially, no way to find out within the game). Eventually I switched-in a pawn to my party who had some information but it was long after there might have been any significant usefulness derived from completing the original quest.
An open-world fantasy RPG needs a strong narrative and/or interesting characters and lore. Going from A to B to fight something and then back to A again to report it to a quest giver, without an engaging context for doing so, gets dull fast and feels like an MMO mechanic that has long had its day.
Compare Dragon's Dogma to a game like Dark Souls, which has even fewer characters with even less dialogue. Dark Souls is about the struggle, it is about the failure and the learning from the failure, so that eventually you improve and overcome. That's the real story in Dark Souls. Your journey. Dragon's Dogma doesn't give the same experience even though it has similar layered systems of crafting, buffs, and magic/melee/range strategies. What it doesn't have is the drama and high stakes gambling of the Souls system.
Which would be ok except for the fact it also doesn't have the story, lore, and characters of a Bethesda game either. So in the end it comes out as lesser than either, very much failing to carve out something memorable in their shadow.
