I have mixed feelings about this game. On one hand, the first 20ish hours of gameplay really sucked me in. The world felt big and immersive. The lack of a convenient fast travel system caused me to wander the world more. Eventually I got a Ferrystone that could be used infinitely and from that point on I started teleporting. Didn't miss the long walks anymore. The main reason for this is the sheer amount of back tracking. You will revisit the same dungeon and area over and over again for multiple quests. Making those long walks back more tedious than immersive.

Still the game has a really fun and engaging combat system that feels great pre-post game. The fodder enemies remained pretty easy and simple (they get more complicated in the late game) and bigger enemies with more mechanics and weak spots you can exploit to weaken and stun them. These larger enemies are where the combat really shines. It creates a sense of scale and desperation as you cling onto the enemy and climb clunky towards the weak spot while your endurance steadily drops. Combat is weighty yet still has a fast pace for the early to mid game. Unfortunately the classes don't feel well balanced. Ranged, in particular archer based classes, feels substantially more powerful and efficient compared to melee. Ranged don't need to move nor climb to target weak points and have insane DPS. Once you figure this out, it's tough to go back. Sadly the warrior is pretty terrible even though he looks rad wielding a giant 2 handed weapon. The Strider, in contrast, owns. Switching between melee and ranged seamlessly and adapting to the combat. It is also kind of a bummer how limited the type of support classes are. I never felt I could swap my main pawn away from Mage. Just for the heal and buffs. The late game my feelings about the combat started to sour.

The post game dungeon is a decent spike in difficulty but still felt reasonable. Some of the bosses in this area could take me about 30 minutes to kill with constant firing. This didn't result in a tense and engaging boss. Instead it just felt tedious since you see everything the monster has within the first few minutes. The rest is just filler. I moved to the DLC after I progressed to the final boss of the post game. I figured being level 44ish would be plenty for this dungeon. I was very wrong. So very wrong...

Bosses took even longer. I even was using end game weapons I got from beating the "main boss:" Fights took over an hour each (this is included deaths/multiple attempts). At first the Gazer was a fun challenge. Having the different phases and being able to manipulate his behavior by keeping at least one tentacle alive... But if you make one mistake, you die and you have to start the whole fight over again... Once I finally progressed past this boss I hit a wall. The difficulty kept going up as I progressed deeper into the Bitterblack isles (BBI). This might sound great on paper, but the way they handle difficulty isn't enjoyable. They instead inflate the enemies attack and defense stats making you hit like a wet noodle. The way defenses work is linear. I think it basically subtracts your damage number by their defense number and the remaining is the damage done. I could be wrong, but that's how it seemed to work. Thus you had to grind A LOT to be able to beat this dungeon. I eventually hit a wall in an area with a Minotaur that likes to knock you off the narrow walkways and threw windows... Possible to beat but would take like 30 minutes of playing perfectly and the pawns would 100% die.

I looked up quick ways to level and found out about the Death exploit and how broken Throwblasts were in the dungeon. These items seem to ignore enemy defense and kind of do true damage. Thus a boss that I was doing 0 damage to, I suddenly could beat by throwing 40-60 Throwblasts at him. I just needed to not get hit! So I dismissed all 3 pawns, strapped myself with the Throwblasts (200 of them) then marched back into the dungeon.

I still died a few times to some bosses, such as the Arch Bishop (had to learn his moveset). Then you get a t2 weapon (Dragon's Ire from one of the moongem doors at the Tower), swap to blast arrows, keep popping XP buff items. Then bait Death into teleporting over a cliff and blasting him with the arrows til he falls to death... rinse and repeat until you are the desired level...

After getting to about 105ish I decided to try the last boss. But first, one more boss with an exploit where you bait him to a ledge and let him swing himself off the cliff... then the last boss. I had roughly 200 blast arrows and thought i would be good. Wrong.... even after leveling up 70 levels from the post-game I didn't have the damage nor blast arrows to stun lock the boss to death. Then died. Because I could only do damage to him with the blast arrows or with a charged attack. The charged attack isn't that fast and the boss has an aggressive move set. Doable but would take a long time and be very tedious.

So I came back with a full team of pawns. I loaded up on mushrooms, gave all 3 pawns a ton of blast arrows, then gave the boss another go. It still took about 5-10 minutes, but having the allies (all striders) blasting the boss was pretty hilarious. After that I didn't have a desire to do more runs. I would need to keep doing these silly exploits until I hit a critical mass from dozens of hours of grinding then I could finally play the game proper! So yeah, I think the concept of the DLC is really cool, but it was executed very poorly. Requiring absurd levels of grinding to try it properly, or using silly game exploits (throw blasts and blast arrows) to effectively cheese every boss... I wish they had made it more challenging by having the enemies get more complicated. For example, they gave the fodder goblin a spell that casts protect on it's allies, substantially boosting their defenses and making you need to use special abilities or items to take them out. They should have added more mechanics like these that cause you to change how you play. The Gazer fight is a good example though it's pretty similar to the Behoulders you fight in the post-game dungeon just bigger. Instead they rely on inflating statistics to pad out the content.

Also despite being a linear level that's always the same layout each run, they still recycled a lot of rooms you walk through. Making it feel more tacked on. I think with proper difficulty tuning and a bit more time with it's development, the DLC would have been pretty amazing. It leveraged what the game was best at, dungeon crawling and big monster fights. I liked the design, the short cuts you unlock. The checkpoints with summoning stones, an Inn, a fountain and vendor. It really created a sense of scale and stakes. It's just a shame that the combat kinda ruined it for me, and that's like 95% of the content.

I haven't really mentioned the story or lore because it's not really told effectively and is kind of generic anyways. The ending I think loses a lot of it's weight due to the game being meandering in structure and narrative. It's hard to tell the difference between a side quest and a main quest. They all kind of boil down to fetch quests or kill quests. And key story moments rarely change the game world. For example, you can save the princess from the Duke trying to kill her. You get branded an assassin and arrested, but then you just get let out by the princess. She apologizes and that's the end of it. You can immediately go talk to the Duke and he's just ambivalent towards you... In addition, there's a romance element to the game that is never explained to you. I didn't even realize until the very end of the game when a random NPC I did a few quests for showed up as my "Beloved." It's built up as this "moral" choice but I didn't care at all. The last time I talked with the NPC our interaction was ambivalent as well. It just kind of ended and I moved on... I ended up rejecting the offer from the main boss just so I could see the last boss fight. It had nothing to do with protecting my "Beloved" who I barely even knew. The game does also strike a weird balance between being hardcore and casual. It's checkpoint system feel clunky. The game will periodically auto save and you can save at almost any point you want to by pausing. Then if you die you go back to the last time the game auto-saved or you manually saved. If you select "Go back to checkpoint" the game will warp you back to the last time you saved at an Inn... I lost a ton of progress multiple times due to this. Almost made me quit.

I did run into some clunky aspects to a few quests as well. The Watergod's altar quest bugged where a pawn died who had a slate... then I had to go to my bank back in the capital city just to take the slate from my bank and then run all the way back to turn in... aggravating.

Also for chasing shadows quest... I failed instantly towards the very end of the stalking after he rounded a corner... literally impossible for him to see me and I was moving slow... got to love bugs and how the stealth doesn't really operate in a realistic way.

In conclusion, I don't regret my time with the game, but it did start to wear out it's welcome with the post-game and BBI DLC. The DLC is optional but the post-game is mandatory. I didn't think the Post-game dungeon was that bad in terms of difficulty but the DLC is a giant leap up even after clearing the post-game.

I never played this game until this year, and I'm glad I did. My motivation was because Dragon's Dogma 2 looked interesting. While playing the game, I was getting frustrated at times because there is no quality of life, such as mounts or better ways to get around. After a while, it got a bit better if you were lucky enough to set the teleport stones in the right places, and sometimes it was enjoyable to just travel and fight the enemies at the same time. I especially enjoyed the escort quests or the expedition ones; it made the journey less boring.

I loved the Monster Hunter aspect of the game. Encountering a random Lich in the wild and getting absolutely rocked by it over and over again really made the win all that more satisfying for me (easily my favorite fight). There was also this Chimera I fought out in the wild that was a really fun fight to overcome.

The combat was amazing with how you can climb on the enemies and hit specific parts of the body to injure that part. Energy drain was a constant pain.

The vocation system was pretty interesting. It can make for a very diverse playstyle. Once again, I didn't change my vocation too much; I mainly stuck with two of them, but I can see the potential had I explored it more.

The weapons can make you feel very weak (that might have just been me though; I didn't exactly explore and was only doing the story). I didn't get a chance to explore the crafting system, so I can't really say anything about that. Oh, I loved the mechanic to use the Black Cat shop to duplicate Items, and that really created some unique options in the game because there really was no limit to it.

I enjoyed the Pawn system and the use of AI with them. They feel pretty natural (except their voices sound pretty metallic at times). I got my butt saved more than once. Even when you have an over-leveled Pawn, such as a wizard or a mage, its cast time is so slow and rare that you can still take the monster out. When you encounter a really tough fight that takes forever and are in a tough spot, they do use a really powerful spell to give you breathing room or end the fight entirely. This helped me out SOOO MUCH in the after story. I was getting super frustrated with the quest that makes you collect 20 wakestones. The level 147 wizard pawn helped me once in a while when it nearly one-shot the boss monster.

The story started a bit slow but really picked up around acts 6 and 7. I loved the cutscenes, and the voice acting was done so well. Though I really hated the dragon fight at first because of how long it took to actually get to fighting the dragon, and the whole love interest thing was a gut punch. I DID NOT EXPECT THAT!!!!!!! Wish I knew that beforehand. It really dampened my victory with that. Story/cutscenes get a 10/10 from me.

The way the new game + works and plays into the story is brilliant because it's a never-ending loop.

Overall, I'm going to give the game an 8.5/10. I enjoyed the combat and the story a lot but needs some quality of life changes.

If I missed anything, do let me know.

When the sequel was announced, I waited til the original was on sale to pick it up. I never finished it when it first came out. Barely remembered much of it. And I wanted to give it a fair shake.

I remembered why I gave up the first time. However, those things weren't so damning this time around and I've been taking on this game in small chunks. I also remembered what it was I enjoyed about it. So, we're gonna bullet point this.

Bad:

• No organization with the quests. A game like this needs at least Main Quests and Side Quests. In this case, we could also use a Tasks/Notice Board list.
• Fast travel. Now, with the Dark Arisen edition things have gotten a little better. We get a fast travel stone that can be used infinitely, and we can also find the portcrystals needed to set up our own fast travel points. Before, the stones were one use items, and the only fast travel was the main city and your original town. Still, the portcrystals are few and far between unto themselves, and you'll end up using them for the far corners of the maps most likely.
• Finding the right pawns can be time consuming. The sorting options could be much better. If you want a mage with certain spells or a pawn with certain traits, then you're going to be looking for awhile.
• The story is...eh? It starts you off with a pretty strong goal: kill the dragon that stole your heart. But the execution has been, thus far, underwhelming. Part of that is likely the lack of direction when looking at quests. I am just not invested in what's happening.

Good:

• The graphics are still pretty solid after all these years.
• Enemy and pawn AI is impressive. Pawns learn how to better deal with the large variety of enemy types in a very believable way.
• Leveling up is quick and you can easily explore the variety of vocations to find the one that fits your play style.
• The crafting system is pretty simple, and you can get into it as little or much as you want to. Collecting things out in the world isn't just junk to sell, but is also useful to leveling up your gear or making new items.
• Combat is fun! You're rewarded for clever play and thinking outside the box. Actions like climbing enemies can be a bit janky, but when it works, boy is it a blast. Learning how to best deal with each enemy type makes each encounter both challenging and engaging.

I'm going to keep plugging away at this bit by bit - I can only play so much before I get frustrated with it. Will update more as I go.

Dark Arisen had been languishing in my backlog for the longest time, and by all accounts, it shouldn’t have. On paper, it boasted a lot of what I like in a game: a sprawling action RPG set in a medieval fantasy setting, a massive open world to explore, flashy and satisfying combat mechanics, a highly interesting follower system and a day/night cycle that directly impacts enemy difficulty are more than enough reasons to get me hyped. Looking back, I guess what always kept me from jumping in sooner was the fact that I’d always heard Dragon’s Dogma’s world was on the bland and generic side, and that the game was much more focused on gameplay feel rather than providing an engaging flavour to narrative, characters, lore or even deeper RPG mechanics.

In preparation for the sequel, however, I decided to take if for a spin, ending up spending about 55 hours with it until I finished the main story. And I’m really happy I did, because Dark Arisen truly is one of those games worth experiencing for any fan of the genre, even though it comes with some seriously frustrating aspects attached.

Let’s get the most talked about thing out of the way first. Combat really is the absolute highlight of Dark Arisen. It’s fast paced and exciting, and it can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be. Few things in action RPGs are as satisfying as an interconnected magic system or the ability to climb up monsters and stab them to death. Dragon’s Dogma handles both with aplomb, and whether you go down the melee or ranged route, you’re bound to have a hell of a time with its battles. The vocation system is also worth mentioning here. While you initially only get to choose between three standard fighting archetypes, as the game progresses you can pick from several pathways called vocations, which you can easily go back and forth between. This effectively impacts how you interact with combat and opens the door for some really cool moments, especially in the more rogue/mage-inclined combos. It’s a very attractive design approach, one that brings with it a significant deal of gameplay freedom that I wish a lot more games like this would adopt. It is a bit jarring to feel underpowered from going to a fully maxed vocation to the starting point of a different one, but this was nowhere near enough to stop me from experimenting. Tied to the combat aspect, monster behaviour is phenomenal: all of them have very competent AI and feature great animation work, even though it is easy to temporarily disengage with most combat by moving away from the enemies. Both design and variety are plentiful, though mob enemies especially end up feeling a bit samey after a while.

There’s also a fair a bit more Dark Arisen does well besides this. The main one, of course, is the pawn system. Now I do have a problem with the fact that there’s a clone-like feel to followers that never goes away, even if this is directly explained within the game’s lore. But I love how their AI works in battle, how different their combat can be, how you can effectively recruit other players’ pawns and volunteer your own, how they interact with you, and especially how they not only guide you to specific places of the map if they’ve been there before, but also offer helpful advice on how to beat certain enemies or how to go about certain areas if they’re experienced with them. It’s a highly immersive feature that I hope more open world RPGs implement in the future. Plus the way in which they express themselves (something that extends to all NPCs in the game) is so quaintly medieval that it’s hard not to find it charming.

Other aspects I enjoyed in Dragon’s Dogma: both the story and the start of the game are actually more interesting than I was led to believe, even though yes, this was clearly not the main focus and there are a couple of narrative inconsistencies that become apparent as you continue your playthrough; there’s a cool variety of quests on display, and even if some devolve into the usual fetch type, the inclusion of notice boards is something I’ll always welcome, especially in titles that fully allow you to role play more deeply; I’ll also always welcome a day/night cycle such as this, which features a clearly more dangerous world for the unaware traveller after the sun sets - if you ask me, every open world action RPG should come with this; the way the game coaxes you to engage with endgame content is quite interesting, and though I’ve only scratched the surface on Bitterblack Isle, I definitely want to go back; finally, this is a minor detail but I love the look of the book at the end detailing pawns and their stats. It’s awesome and pretty stylish.

Now for the not-so-good stuff, some of which does frustrate over the course of a long playthrough. Some things are easier to explain than others. Only having access to one save file is puzzling. Why would they do this? It makes no sense any way you cut it (especially in an RPG that doesn’t have a survival inclination), and it can actually end up locking you out of ongoing quests for no apparent reason. I’m also not sure why you’re only allowed to sleep at an inn, especially when nights are challenging and it takes ages to travel - it just seems like a strange thing to overlook. Conversely, I found it a bit weird that you’re unable to tell the exact time in the game, meaning you’re never fully sure how close you are to nightfall and therefore to a more dangerous world - this, however, comes with a caveat: I love that the game offers more immersive methods of figuring this out, such as listening out for church bells or trying to track the sun’s position. There’s also the fact that you can’t heal your pawns directly (and they don’t do a great job of doing that themselves), that the hotkey system is a bit convoluted at least on a controller, and that there is some obvious difficulty scaling imbalance punctuating the world.

But it is precisely in the world where I find my biggest point of contention: exploration feels a bit disappointing. There are memorable points of interest scattered throughout, but these are too few and far between to give it a significant imprint. Going off the beaten path is rarely rewarded when it comes to unique locations and loot, and even though I get this was far from the game’s focal point, it is still a letdown in such a big environment. In this strict sense, I found my initial concerns about the game to be well founded.

All things considered though, Dragon’s Dogma, at least in its Dark Arisen iteration, is still a great title. It certainly doesn’t do everything well, but it does enough things particularly well to more than justify its time commitment for fans of these games. And yes, combat is in fact what truly shines here, and it stands above pretty much all action RPGs that had been released up until that point (and in my eyes even a few years past it). You do need to be okay with its most obvious flaws, but if you manage to do so, you’re in for some genuine fun. 8.5/10

To say that a few months ago I’d never heard of this game, it might now be among my favourites of all time.

I completed the main story a few days ago and found myself going into ng+ straight away which is something I don’t find myself doing too often except for the soulsborne franchise, which is 100% due to how much I loved this game.

It deserves so much more recognition, all aspects of this game are just so entertaining. The story has been done before and features a lot of ‘help these people do this’ but that doesn’t stop the game from making hours of gameplay feel like minutes.

The gameplay is especially entertaining, it’s like a monster Hunter game meets Skyrim. You scale huge beasts and hit away at there weak points feeling like a compete badass as you do. The class systems are really rewarding as you can spend time in one class to reap its rewards, to then switch to another in order to use specific weapons with abilities you unlocked earlier.

I am yet to try the dlc as I am trying to finish the game again before I do, but I cannot wait to start it and I have loved my journey in this game so far.

Dragon's Dogma is one of my all time favourite games. I have clocked hundreds of hours on the PS3 version, despite its shitty framerate and stuttering. When I heard that DD; Dark Arisen had been released for PC and was currently in the Steam summer sale, I leapt at it (... I really did. There was bruising involved). I was desperate to see one of my all-time favourite games in HD.

But everything about the PC version of DD just screams that the developers didn't give a shit. The combat is tired and lagging, despite my mapping and remapping of hotkeys. It just doesn't have the same effectiveness as a Playstation controller, and it was so obviously meant to be played on a console. As for the HD graphics, if I hadn't just redid my entire PC, I would be sorely disappointed. As is, I have the capability to run it on highest settings which means... 60 fps. Which looks gorgeous, and is frankly the only reason I got to four hours gameplay on Steam. It's just so... smooth. The Playstation can't compete with that.

But that's where the pretty basically stops. The trees and grass still have the same boring textures, smoke still pixelates if you squint at it too closely. Clipping is still an issue and the run animation is still clunky af. This was excusable for a 2012 console release, not for a 2016 PC version.

Fire is slightly more detailed.

I'm good at this game. I can take down a cyclops within a minute or two on the console version. But no matter how I contort my hands (my left hand currently looks like Chandler's 'claw' in the episode where they got Ms Pacman), I still can't best even the slowest of bandits on the PC. I don't even get angry at being one-hit anymore. I just count that as the end of today's gaming sesh.

I am sad about this. Maybe one day I'll try it out with a controller instead of the clunkiest fecking keyboard mapping I've ever experienced. But that requires a lot of 'ehs', and currently, I'm all out of ehs to give about Dragon's Dogma.

This particular title is an expanded version of Capcom’s ambitious action RPG, bringing the original game plus new content and much-needed refinements. Its standout feature is the fast, weighty combat system, one of the most satisfying in the genre. Battles against towering beasts like chimeras and griffins feel epic, as you can grab onto their bodies, climb them, and strike at weak points, making each encounter dynamic and unpredictable.

Another highlight is the Pawn system, where you create a customizable AI companion and recruit others made by real players through the entire world. This adds a sense of community and variety to party composition, even when playing offline, though honestly speaking I choose to play alone, offline, and only used my own pawns, customized by myself. The expansion content, Bitterblack Isle, introduces some of the game’s most challenging dungeons and enemies, greatly increasing replay value, and I got to admit that I was not able to finish this one, but I highly encourage grinding this one out of you are a fan, it is a very good experience, if you have the patience.

One of it's best features in my opinion, and one that I played around with the most, is the class system. You can mix and match different class skills, creating very unique combos and playstyles. Particularly speaking I like to play melee close-combat characters, but I also like to play non-tank ones, so I went with a mix of the Fighter and the Rogue, which is called Assassin. And these advanced classes are where the power-phantasy begins, you can go crazy on this game, eve in the most challenging dungeons and bosses, outscaling them with your protagonist, or even while performing a party-based approach.

That said, the game’s visuals, interface, and storytelling are dated, and its world can sometimes feel empty compared to other open-world RPGs. Even for standards at the time of it's original release, though particularly speaking, I don't really care much about realistic visuals, but if you do then I consider this a big downside. Still, the sense of adventure, freedom in combat, and rewarding progression make this title a unique and memorable RPG that has built a loyal following over the years. It is one of the best games Capcom has ever made, and a must-play for fans of action RPGs.

This is one of those games that I played for 50+ hours and couldn't tell you why I enjoyed them.

Story-wise, the plot is aggressively bland and vague, the writing is terrible, the pacing is incompetent and the characters are totally non-descript.

Most quest are irrelevant to the story. Why is the great Arisen, who is the only one able to defeat the dragon that threatens the whole existence... running after petty thieves? Yes, every RPG has nonsensical side-quests in which The Chosen one goes around delivering letters or picking up flowers, but in Dragon's Dogma, those are the main quests! It's absolutely embarrassing.

Item management is a chore. To equip armos and weapons to your party-members you need to first "GIve" the item to them and then equip. It has an UI that shows you the change in stats, but only sometimes (for example, if you have a circlet that gives you +5 strength, the UI will not compare that stat with another item that doesn't boost stats). Healing items descriptions don't say how much healing they bestow. And on top of everything, there is a crafting system with hundreds of different items, which means that you are nudged to save every single scrap of stuff you get.

But the combat is solid and layered. Enemy patterns, strengths and weaknesses are complex, with enough variety that I was still learning new strategies up until the ending credits.

And what really sets this game apart is the pawn system. As well as your character, you have a "pawn", which is your main ally that will accompany throughout the game. But you will also hire up to two other support pawn that, if you're playing online, are actually the main pawns of other players. As you progress through the game, pawns will learn information about quests, how to reach some locations and techniques for battling foes. So when you hire a pawn, you are actually importing the experience of another player into your world.

It works surprisingly well. The most interesting moments where when a pawn that new where to find an item for a quest, basically lead me to it. It breaks the monotony of the usual RPG in which your party is always following you, lagging behind.

But sometimes it doesn't. The limited capacity of pawns surfaces up when fighting some particularly tricky enemies. For example, as we encountered a Steel Golem I quickly realised that they were impervious to damage, and that we needed to attack 7 crystals that were around it. However, those crystals were immune to magic and I,a s a sorceress, could hardly put a dent in them. But it's not possible to tell your pawns to attack a specific enemy, or crystal, in this case. All I could do was attack it myself and hope they were quick learners. They are not.

Still, it is a rather impressive system and helped give some personality to this otherwise completely dull world.