Story/Plot: There is something innocently attracting about the way this story goes. A nation distraught from the menace of an ancient dragon who recently woke up from its slumber. In times of despair, fate takes play part and a chosen one known as the Arisen will be summoned to lead hope into victory. Aside from his/her prowess to aid the Arisen in the strenuous road, s/he will also have the skill to extrapolate the means of summoning 'Pawns', warriors with no humanity despite them having external of such. Through the Arisen's endeavor of slaying this juggernaut of a beast, s/he will encounter politics, betrayal, innocence in need of helping hand as simple as an errand, diabolical ploys of cults, and glory awaiting to be held! Beyond all the mishaps, the Arisen must find it in him/herself to endure and accomplish what s/he is born to do and that is be the dragon slayer!
Simple and cliched of a story. This theme had been used many times before but again, redundancy CAN be enticing if done right. Dragon's Dogma doesn't exactly bring something elating to the whole concept however it doesn't exactly falter completely. It has a good twist and turn here and there that gives it a noteworthy score. The story and the way it unfolded wasn't my main concern truth to be told when I was playing the game, but again, it didn't make me cringe. There is in fact a few twists(cliche still) that plays part in this game but in my opinion holds a bit of zest that I can't exactly discharge. This game tried in the plot and it isn't THAT bad. I've played worse stories and plot in the past.
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| Though pawns and side characters(NPCs) Have very little difference. Their roles aren't the zenith of RPG character ordinance! |
7/10
Gameplay: So this is where this game makes it stand! Dragon's Dogma has a very unique sense of gameplay that reminds me of a hack and slash genre(something like the older Devil May Cry perhaps) and Dragon Age II(with the RPG elements and such). The term 'action RPG' really does apply to Dragon's Dogma, and to those who are dissuaded by MANY bad criticism from this game may want to take a chance at it simply out of gameplay. Now I'll be the first to admit that in the beginning it starts out slow and getting used to the rhythm of the control wasn't entirely elating for the first hour(and there were factors as well that I will talk about such as the graphics and the voice acting). But once the hours roll on by the exuberance of this game is more than apparent; least for me.
Now the norms of a lot of RPG is being able to create one's character to however one's mind can fathom(with limitations of course). Dragon's Dogma has your standard like Skyrim but a little bit more. Height, weight, more various hair style choices(DLC offers more too if one has the buck to spend), as well as voices are all in the palette which Skyrim, Dragon Age II, Mass Effect, etc. don't usually have. If you are very avid with character customization like me this is a major plus! Armor and apparel also makes a LOT of difference in how one's character's aesthetics would turn out to be and depending on the class, the clothing options of course varies.
And a common thread found in the majority of RPGs are 'job classes'. The generic ones are of course the Warrior(melee, juggernauts, or what nots), the Wizard(spell casters, healers, etc.), and the Thief(fast, agile, physical long range fighters, and so forth). Dragon's Dogma provides that and they have renamed them as 'vocations'. Now the interesting thing is that the fancy word for 'job/class' isn't the only thing that is unique but some of the classes one is able to pick as well! Magic Archer and Mystic Knight may not be original but it's not an aberration that is commonly used and they do indeed make a difference in gameplay! And the great thing is that the player isn't bound to that ONE vocation. S/he will be able to shift(for a cost) their vocation, thus changing their skill any time they are at an adequate place to do so! While I mostly explored the 'Thief' based class, mages and warrior were also available for me on the whim if I chose to do so.
Now that we have dictated what our character would look like, sound like, and how s/he will do battle within the realm of Gransys, getting into the meat of the combat gameplay is very similar to a hack and slash game that is highly influence with
some RPG elements. There is two melee buttons which are light and strong attack, a jump button, and depending on the class there will be an alternate weapon that is activated by the L1 trigger(for ps3). Combinations aren't that intricate so don't expect light, strong, strong, light(etc) combinations. For the class I picked, it was mostly a lot of light button continuation and occasional hard hitting attack. Now that doesn't make the combat innovating, I know and the beginning I was starting to feel like it might have that fault that Dragon Age 2 'had' that most people had qualms about and that is button mashing. Now I can't exactly refute that I didn't do a whole hell of a lot of mashing, however as the game progressed and I learned more skills and changed vocations, the game diverged a bit more.
I found myself relying on skills that would be adequate for situations and enemies/situations would dictate which skill is most important. As a Magic Archer, I had elementally imbued arrows and some enemies are weaker to ice than others. Of course there are those who are completely immune to the said element so I may have to depend mostly on my other skills that don't concur with Ice, or whatever it is the enemy is against/for. Some skills transition rather well so jugging or combinations are existent! Now skills and hack and slash aren't the only things that would make things a bit easier and raise the fun factor a bar(or two for some). Enemies can be grabbed by the player or his/her pawns and be helpless for a few moments to be mauled with melee or magic with no ramification for the grappler. Gargantuan enemies like the griffin, the chimera, or a dragon(or THE dragon) are obviously a bit too large to be subdued so grabbing would result in scaling the said creatures which also allows the player to slash away without harm to health but stamina decreases.
Like I mentioned earlier, I pretty much just used the Thief based vocations(Strider, Assassin, Ranger, Mage Archer) so I might have less experience on the gameplay because I'm sure that the other vocations play a bit more differently. However I got to see a bit of the 'feel' with the pawns that joined my ranks(on side note, the player is allowed to create one main pawn whom I made into a Warrior; one how uses a gigantic blade that requires both hands to be wield it). Magic casting Mages/Sorcerers and Sword wielding Warriors who joined my rank are able to display the joy and the effectiveness of magic and sword joining the fray of Dragon's Dogma's erratic RPG gameplay. The art of magic seems to delve a lot into charging while melee of course just has a lot of button mashing with some timed skill button input; Pawns as an AI may have less than prudent actions half the time, however when the mages imbues the player's weapons with element, or when the sword wielders keeps an enemy distracted while the player tries to regain his/her composure, the justice for their frequent incompetence is somewhat refuted.
Again the gameplay is where this game exudes its potential in its entrance in the gaming world. While still somewhat premature and not entirely the most innovative, it does has its own flare that gives it enough a fun factor that started out mediocre and eventually became addicting for me. Players who is searching for a game with an RPG ambiance but trying to stray away from the usual tactics of turn based or what not, this game is worth a peek. With sidequests a plenty, creatures who are as meek as goblins and bosses who are colossal like Dragons, combat that can be mindlessly fun as button mashing to the seldom QTE responses, this game for sure is noteworthy as an RPG if we are speaking gameplay wise.
8/10
Graphics: I put this game in and felt like I was playing ps2 in its pinnacle in regards to graphics. Suffice to say, that does not sound very good; in truth, it does set this game lower on that bar. First I'll cover the opening cut scene with the prominent Red Dragon that the Arisen will have his/her inextricable fate with. That part wasn't impressive but it was to the point of expected caliber. The in-game graphics is what shunned me out a bit since it really did remind me of my ps2 gaming days. Now sadly I may be a graphic-whore to an extent, but to my defense, I have to visually be able to say 'okay, that's a goblin not a pixel', and by no means was Dragon's Dogma that bad, but was merely just making a comparison. Basically I'm not looking for almost always cut scene caliber, but what I do want is 'standard' in this day and age.
It took sometime for me to really not mind Dragon's Dogma's aesthetic appeal. Grainy areas, mundane special affects, repetitive monster designs, and the atrocious NPCs kills the games credibility, but overall I managed to look pass that. As I mentioned in the previous two sections, there was something enamoring about the story despite it being bland at first and the gameplay offered a lot of saving grace that the graphics didn't stay potent in what it lacks. At least the facial designs could have some potential visage unlike Skyrim where female elves are almost always too masculine.
7/10
Difficulty: I'm not going to try and exonerate myself from my frequent deaths in my first few hours in this game. It wasn't my brightest gaming moment! I would like to blame the said deaths through my inexperience and the fact that I feel as if the level wasn't entirely evened out; at least not the player versus the world in the first few hours or so. Strategy would be prudent; knowing how to pick off enemies would also help a whole lot; knowing what areas to walk into also had something to do with decreasing deaths, and for me, once I got the rhythm of enemies and how to take advantage of their sometimes lacking in AI intelligence, then things got a bit easier. Gaining certain skills that when in sync with my combat preference also helped a whole hell of a lot as well! Being the dual wielding melee and archer, I found that times were easier from afar(and required to be from a safe distance) then there were those moments were there WAS NO choice but to be up close and personal! Still, the transition was fluent and suffice to say, fun.
There were a variety of enemies and for the most part, there were patterns to be memorized to be able to really deal with them efficiently. The more the player progresses through the game, one would realize that there would be beefed up versions of past enemies with enhanced defense and attacks stats and perhaps given a new skill that would pose as a nuisance or at some cases these said skills would be a health killer! Some of these more unique enemies have certain 'weakness' that the player and his/her pawns must focus on or the battle will naught be for the players' advantage.
Healing came in the forms of items and magic, though with how 'slow' some of the spell casters, I found item was a bit more effective more often than not! The 'weight' never did once encumber me to the point where it hindered combat so I was almost always safe in remedies. A norm for any game is that when the player's main character's HP depletes to zero, game is over(a rather rhetoric statement, though games are changing in regards to structure, so I felt the need to say that); for the players' summoned 'pawns', reviving them would be on the whim of a button! Even though some bosses were leaning on durability and are able to kill my pawns, reviving them was almost always NOT an issue. Some did act as bait far too often(yes, it's a skill to be bait) so suffice to say, some pawns died more often than me.
Speaking of Pawns, the player is able to make one MAIN pawn, however s/he will be able to summon two more pawns in addition, so a total of four adventurers altogether! The pawns could be 'AI created' or could be a spawn from another player's game data! And here's what factors in to the difficulty: there is no level inhibitors! One can summon a pawn whose level is higher than your level by five, ten, twenty... etc! One would be able to capsulize that a player who is only level 20 can have a powerhouse sorcerer at level 60 if one REALLY wants to take that route. I never went overzealous with that little loophole in the pawn system but I did summon pawns 3-5 level higher than my own. It did make a difference but not a gigantic chasm to say that I 'cheated'.
Accumulate hours, get the rhythm of how one wants to play through vocations and skills, purchase the proper equipment and upgrade, be prudent in enemy tactics, and hiring the adequate pawns and this game could be a breeze! That doesn't vindicate the notion that there is something broken with the game's AI(both enemies and allies) and that the level equality isn't entirely leveled. Still, the challenge was there, it's just a matter if one wants to make it more prominent.
7/10
Voice Acting/Audio: I don't want to flat out say that the voice acting was terrible. It fluctuated in zest and passion, that's for sure. Some voices were bland and sounded too monotone while there are those ones that are assuaging the not so likable actors. Most games have their good, bad, and ugly actors in regards to voicing, but what I do have qualms about is that the damn pawns are with me for hours on end and they are rather redundant with statements! They repeat the same damn thing! And not only that, they echo each other! So you mean to tell me this pawn that I summoned from this side of the world wide web has the same exact words as someone from this freaking corner?! Are we serious?!
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| Every single actor said the same thing more than once. Shame. |
Moving on to the music. It was probably more appealing than the rather monotonous voices that was serenading my gaming time. There were moments when it was somber and quite illustrative of the somewhat enamoring surroundings, then when it was some colossal beast like a Griffin or the Dragon, the music would shift to something a bit more upbeat and adhesive to the ambiance of the fight. There were a few offbeat things like the opening j-pop'ish them, and then some rather oddball vocals that will almost always be at the very end.
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| Sound effect for monsters were convincing enough despite lacking in aesthetics. |
7/10
Overall:
I came in to the game expecting a new breath of fresh air within the genre of Jrpgs and I entered somewhat abhorring what I got myself into. I then shifted to confusion and ambivalence. That shifted and what was once a thought of mine to think that I wasn't going to be pleased became an erroneous frame of mind because this game actually proved its mettle for the simple enjoyment of the gameplay and the enticing enough story and plot. Again, this game has its major flaws as the scores I had give it would surmise. The story at times was discombobulated and needed a few more things to line up the uneven story telling. While the gameplay was indeed its highlight, there are holes with it and the act of fast travel wasn't entirely suitable for this day and age(one I think they remedied in the second one). I already mentioned the distortions with graphics and voice and such, so suffice to say, I had a few let downs, but all in all it was a great experience.
I won't say steer away from this game for the flaws, but I won't tell anyone to expect the greatest game. It's a pretty decent price now and I believe most copies of 'Dark Arisen' comes with both games(Dragon's Dogma I and II), so I believe it's worth a try!
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| For sure not a game that would make one commit seppuku! |
7.5/10
Side Note: It was good enough for me to buy the second one. Now if only I can find the time to play it!!!
