So I'm finally playing this game after missing the boat years ago when it first came out. After much online research, I decided a direction to build my character: sacrifice every other stat for min-maxed magic attack. Naturally, I'd be building my pawn the same way. Basically, that means going lvl 1-10 as a mage, and switching to sorcerer as soon as that option opens up since that class gives you the most magic attack per level possible. Since respeccing isn't an option and leveling happens automatically, I knew I'd have to pay close attention to levels and switch the INSTANT I hit level 10. So I made my Terry Crews mage and named him BODYWASH!!!! and made my pawn, also a Terry Crews mage except with his height slider all the way down and his voice octaves all the way up and named him MINIWASH!!!! and together, we set out into the world.

Except, winners carry all the groceries in one trip. So at the same time, I'm also going for the trophy for completing all sidequests...and I'm also going for the trophy for beating the game on hard mode. As both of these things massively buff how much experience you get as you play, inevitably, I wasn't even halfway to the normal point where you could change your class when I hit level 10. I thought I was screwed. Luckily, the main Dark Arisen DLC NPC shows up in your village practically right away, and she can change your class for you too. So at level 10, I managed to make both myself and my pawn a sorcerer so I was set and on my way to becoming the most powerful spellcaster possible.

One problem though: something the Dark Arisen DLC NPC can't do is sell weapons. And you don't get access to the only weapon type the sorcerer can use until that normal class-switching NPC shows up. So, locked out of all my spells until that point, I was faced with a decision.

Option 1: try to make it through with punches and kicks that do basically no damage in a world where thanks to the difficulty I chose for myself, any enemy can 1-shot me

Option 2: invest in a class that raises a different stat when you level, maybe stamina, which is also very useful to magic users. I wouldn't be min-maxed, but my character would be far more balanced.

But there's another word for "balanced": COWARD! So, retaining my honor and dignity, I took advantage of my ability to have a 4-man party, and proceeded to hire two pawns to fight for me while Terry Crews and his botched clone watched from the sidelines unable to do anything other than get hit and revive my two actual fighters whenever they fell in combat. Of course, the game isn't meant to be played that way, so what proceeded was a good 6 hours of save-scumming my way through every single encounter of every quest and sidequest on hard mode. It was a harrowing journey filled with many, many 1-shot deaths. But now, after hours and hours of the game asking if I wanted to retry my last encounter on a lower difficulty, I finally made it to a person who would sell me a damn weapon. In this video game celebrated by many as the best action RPG ever, 10 hours into my adventure, I've finally unlocked the ability to attack things.

Its not the best Action-RPG ever, what are people smoking I want some of that lol. Never listen to the internet my dude.

The game always was filled with "gameplay logic holes" such as certain class picks make the game vastly easier, the gameworld doesn't make a whole lot of sense progression-wise, etc. The game punishes the player unintentionally for being willing to experiment. It happened to me every so often, stretching this game for much longer than I was willing to spend time with it. Still a fun game, but its not the "best x ever".

They really didn't thought the game through but the whole roughness of the whole is what makes the game fun because even though some form of experimentation lead to gameplay holes that you've hit it still encurages fooling around with the game because of such lack in directing the player.

Still, with mistakes like that, they really made a unintentional great game. It kinda reminds me in a way of Quake 3, where the game got 10 times better once people understood on how the physics worked and how to manipulate them because John Carmack put the least thought into constructing it.

Sometimes now exactly knowing what you're doing as a result can help the game and Dragons Dogma is sort of a testimony to that. I'm glad that you sticked with the game, it becomes much better once you reached around level 30 and got some perks to use.

Caxton's Armory in Gran Soren sells some cheap Archistaves for sorcerers. I remember reaching Gran Soren before hitting level 10, and that was also doing the quest in the Witchwood.

Lol, that's one hell of a way to start the game.

It's basically the best action-RPG ever made, but don't take my word for it, read my blog about it.

Seriously though it's one hell of an overlooked game. Dark Arisen does a good job of eliminating a lot of the quirky yet hindering Japanese aspects of the game, so it's now possible the best time to be playing Dragons Dogma. I'm always tempted to jump in and finish the DLC dungeon (which is really cool) but man I dumped so many hours into that game that starting from the beginning seems too much to ask.

Anyway luckily for you have a full party of pawns is the most fun way to play the game. I was especially taken aback when doing a quest, and one of my pawns that had already done it with another player took the lead saying "I know the way follow me!" and he guided me through the dungeon. That was really cool.

@tuxedocruise: That's where I ended up getting two of them finally. I was level 16 by then, and a rank 4 sorcerer after having cast exactly 0 spells in the class