This past thursday Capcom released a changelog of what they're calling the juicy changes made to the original game.

So here it is:

Player


-Various attacks and skills for all weapons have been rebalanced for all weapons.


Enemies

-Made the Ur-Dragon corpse's collision boundary smaller so players can now pick up drop items more easily.


-Undead enemies will now come out of the ground with higher defense stats (super armor mode).
-When Saurians die after being knocked down, they will now use a special death animation for when they are on the ground.


-Goblin Shamans will appear in the Witchwood.


-Eliminators will appear on the Tainted Mountain.


-Pyre Saurians will appear on the Tainted Mountain.


-Golden Knights and Silver Knights will appear in the Everfall (before the destruction of Gran Soren).


-Gorecyclopes (condemned type) will appear in the Shadow Fort.


-Living Armor will appear in the Catacombs.


-Wyverns (strong type) will appear at Bluemoon Tower.


-Wyrms (strong type) will appear at the Watergod's Altar.


-Drakes (strong type) will appear in the Everfall after the destruction of Gran Soren.


Pawns

-Adjusted how often pawns will talk by spacing out less important lines; in effect, making them seem to talk less.


-Adjusted and balanced the equipment and skills of all of the high-level pawns that are available to a player when they're playing offline.


-Adjusted how much it costs to hire a pawn that is higher-leveled than yourself down to a more realistic scale.


-Added a Monthly ranking to the pawn's Top Ranked section.


NPCs

-You will not gain Affinity with Assalam simply by talking to him anymore.


Items & Equipment

-Adjusted how much Ferrystones cost and how much they sell for. (Purchase price: 20000 >5000 | Sell price: 3500>1250)


-Adjusted how much Premium Rings and Premium Earrings cost. (Purchase price: 1,500,000>150,000 Rift Crystals | Purchase price 3,000,000>300,000 Rift Crystals)


-Tweaked stat increases for weapon upgrades (increases weaker upgrades, decreases ones that were too strong). Tweaks affect 68 different weapons.


-Dramatically increased base stats for 12 weapons obtainable by defeating the Dragon.


-Improved base stats for 10 Magick Bows

World

-A Portcrystal that allows players to return to Cassardis has been added just outside Cassardis's gate


-A character/warp point that allows players to travel between Bitterblack Isle and Cassardis has been added to Cassardis's pier.


-Added a removable Portcrystal to the following areas: The Gran Soren Everfall (before a certain plot point. . . .), The Shadow Fort, The Witchwood, Hillfigure Knoll.

Having not played the original I can't speak to most of those changes, but less chatty pawns is probably a good thing judging from the demos and all the videos I've seen. Also, holy shit them some serious price cuts.

Oh Thank God.

Heh, yeah I ended up getting Max affinity with him on my first run through the game by accident. Needless to say... I was screwed for the remainder of the game. Which really... sucked. I'm glad they changed this.

I was lucky enough to have caught onto the mechanic before endgame, but I was getting really sick of going to the Inn for regularly scheduled beatings to make him like me less. Only later did I learn there was a less violent way to break affinity (I think it was just draw and sheath your weapons repeatedly in front of him). But yeah Dude would relevel to max affinity pretty quickly, very annoying.

Nice guy for an Innkeeper, but not who I wanted to romance.

These changes are pretty fantastic. The simple ability to warp somewhere other than Gran Soren will make a large chunk of the game far less tedious.

what game is this for

Is this a re-release of the original with new content like all the other cap com re-releases or is it a standalone expansion I'm kinda interested in the main game

Re-Release.

Have your pick, any you like! What will it be today? They're masterworks all you can't go wrong! Take awl the time you like.

So why couldn't this be released as DLC?

@bocam: Because there weren't hooks in the original game code to allow for this large of an expansion to work. All of the previous DLC stuff was all things that were on the disc already. So it was either release it on a disc or scrap the entire expansion.

@demoskinos: I mean these specific fixes.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

The new HD texture pack helps too. I am not sure how "HD" it is, you wont be mistaking it for Crysis.... but it is noticeable, especially on some of the weapons. Particularly the shields.

For the hd pack. Do you install the game first or the pack first? Or does it not matter?

@karkarov: @the_laughing_man: This may be a dumb question but how do I install the HD texture pack? I am playing the PS3 version and didn't notice any options to do so (though I didn't even know it was a thing so I wasn't exactly looking for it).

Haha, a HD pack?? Wow that's... a first? I think. It's certainly not a common practise for console games at least. Still, the textures in Dragon's Dogma were pretty rough, though, so it's cool that they'd add this too alongside Dark Arisen.

On the 360 its on the second disk.

What new quests are there?

I played roughly 25% of the game. Got to Gran Soren, and then the niggles with the game really set in. I just kept dying over and over and stopped playing.

Will definitely pick this up, because the first part of the game I actually really enjoyed.

According to Kevin VanOrd's review, the new Bitterblack isles portion gets frustratingly difficult nearing the final third. Sad to hear, since a lot of his complaints mimic certain experiences of mine during the ending Everfall section in OG Dragon's Dogma. Constantly having to revive your pawns over and over in particular.

What part did you have issues with? The biggest issue I had was figuring out what was where in Everfall.

Everything? I'm playing through OG-DD (teehee...) again now (had to start again from scratch because my save file was corrupted) in anticipation of Dark Arisen, and I feel like I'm under-levelled, but I'm also like level 55 now. This on Normal mode too. But yeah, my attacks do ridiculously little damage--I'm currently a Mystic Knight and I've got its best mace/magic shield courtesy of the original Dragon--and it can take forever just to kill a single hellhound. When I'm thrown into confrontations involving 2 Chimera, a Lich, and a pair of Hellhounds... it's just utter chaos. If I can get killed from a single hit from a lich meteor shower, then there's something wrong here. Plus there are so many enemies that will continually keep on afflicting you with status effects. I can use items, but it happens often enough when going against the succubi that it's often profitable to just deal with it. And of course giving any such curatives to your pawns is a total waste given how expendable they considers themselves -- least according to their AI patterns.

I think that's the problem with DD's combat, though; once it wants to get challenging, that's when the cracks begin to show. It looks flashy and plays well, but it definitely leans into the RPG aspect a little much, with an awful lot of enemies that barely even react to your attacks unless you're apparently up to the appropriate level. Plus, the Pawn AI really isn't up to the task of supporting you. Sure, a mage will heal you, but it's often right smack in the middle of the battlefield where they're just asking to get knocked over or killed outright from an enemy attack. There's literally been occasions where a pawn will shout out how hellhounds are resistant to fire, and yet will then proceed to enchant my weapons with fire. Ranger/Strider pawns are also completely useless as well. When the game was its usual breezy self, I'd recruit one anyway for the sake of some cosmetic diversity amongst my party. But when it comes to the time where you hope to rely on your pawns for combat support, the rogue class types are bloody morons and they barely even use their bows anyway.

Warriors/fighters are perhaps the most reliable if only because they can withstand the most damage. But yeah, an annoying amount of me constantly running around trying to revive my party during my playtime as of late.

@yummylee: You are underleveled. The Everfall is meant for like mid 60's to 70 plus. Meanwhile Bitterblack is stupid hard sometimes. My arisen is level 119, has the dragon forged best bow in the game, and DF best sword in the game (from original anyway) and has spent over 60 levels as an assassin (highest attack stat per level in the game) and even I have a hard time killing things in this place. I am about ready to toss the pawns and turn on autonomy. I would do the night buff too but from what I see Bitterblack has no day night cycle, at least, it always looks the same to me.

Well that's just stupid then. I've actually done an awful lot more side-quests this time around that I had missed my very first playthrough (like, I never even knew you could have a 'rematch' with the hydra until recently) and yet I'm still so under-levelled? I remember Everfall certainly upping the challenge, but not by this much. I've got no alternate quests to undertake as it is too, besides all of the ''kill x of y'' stuff.

My primary complaint still stands, though. The Pawns are complete idiots.

It really sucks to hear about Bitterblack Isle, too. If you're having troubles even at that level, then hopefully Capcom will see about patching up the balance there, because this'll surely be a widespread problem for a lot of people.

@yummylee: Yeah you really have to get the new weapons/gear and "rarefy" your stuff. Rarefying requires bitterblack mats but it can make your gear more powerful than Dragonforged. As for pawns the key is being stupid selective about what pawns you bring. Like the fire example you mentioned... the pawn knows "fire is bad" but the guy who made the pawn only gave them a fire buff so the pawn has no choice but to use it since in game logic says buffed weapon is always better. You just have to be sure they have the right skills and the right gear, sometimes you even have to look at their "behaviour". Depending on how they behave a caster pawn will literally run into melee before they do anything because that's how they are built to work. That isn't the games fault so much as it is the idiot who made the pawn in the first place.

@karkarov: I dunno, I still think the Pawns are pretty stupid when it really comes time to get your act together. Even if there are all these weird systems tinkering underneath, the Pawns AI is still very limited and can't react well enough to a lot of situations and they lack any ability whatsoever from my experience to take some sort of defensive stance. Even Fighter pawns rarely ever use their shields besides to try and aggro with that battlecry or use it as a weapon.

The way they act comes across as like they don't really understand or know when to precisely use a lot of their own abilities, but they still really enjoy using them anyway just for the fun of it. Trying to work with the pawns to coordinate and keep the severed Hydra neck stumps crispy so it won't regenerate was damn near impossible for starters, and I ended up killing it just by attrition and taking down its many many health bars. They try, but it's more down to the level of tech they're working with really. The capabilities of pawns clearly demand a much more sophisticated AI (EDIT: that, or a much more in-depth command system or a tactics menu like in Dragon Age: Origins) than what you'll find in most games these days after all. Hence why a next-gen sequel to Dragon's Dogma sounds like the greatest thing ever.

Even still, I also always find it a little touching to see one Pawn carry another who has been knocked out to me so I can revive it. Pretty basic action, but it definitely evokes a warm sense of camaraderie amongst my party that I wish there was more of. EDIT: However, the knocked-out pawn going through the 'death' animation again once dropped, hereby forcing me to wait a second before I can revive it, is really annoying. God, that's just the thing with this game. Just an endless list of caveats to wade through to witness the possibilities of what could lead into something truly superb.

Sounds like a handful of smart changes. The portcrystal stuff is almost enough to convince me to Gamefly it.

I tinkered with the base game, but I threw my hands up in frustration and quit when I realized I'd unwittingly locked myself out of an entire quest line by advancing the main one by about an inch. That stuff drives me bonkers in any game.

Don't know if I enjoyed it enough to go back, though, even ignoring that.