Reviews of Dragon's Dogma - Xbox 360

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Dragon's Dogma is an interesting hybrid. With Japan's game industry languishing in the wake of newly risen Western RPGs like Skyrim and Mass Effect, developers of the Far East have been scrambling for a way to catch up. Dragon's Dogma may not be the first attempt of East-Meets-West the industry has seen, but it's certainly one of the best.

After a non-sequitur tutorial beginning which sees you filling the role of a presumably ancient warrior, you're eventually given the reins to craft a hero of your own. Here is the first step of the game's quiet brilliance, providing a staggering buffet of customization options. Not only can you set such minutiae as the angle of your hero's brow, or even choose two differently colored eyes, but you can set the big things as well: gender, height, girth, muscle, even the length of your character's limbs. Each of these things has subtle effects on gameplay. Add a few inches to your stature, and you can carry more items without being burdened, but your stamina replenishes slower.

Once you've crafted your avatar, that's when things start to get interesting. A dragon strikes your village and literally steals your heart, setting up the crux of the game's plot: The serpent, by robbing your pulsing organ in a splash of blood, has marked you as its rival, an Arisen, destined to challenge it in a far-off battle. But between you and that far-off fight stands an enormous, living world to explore.

The demo Capcom released for this game prior to launch does not do the world justice. It is a coy place, filled to the brim with shining hidden things that, in similar vein to Capcom's own Monster Hunter series, can be combined into ever-better items, or sold at shops for a premium. The quick and functional inventory menu helps turn this system into a true avenue for experimentation: Every item's properties are explained in full detail, giving you clues as to what materials might be compatible, and when a match shows up in your inventory, or the inventory of your party members, you can easily and faultlessly combine at will.

And what a party you will amass. Unlike games like Skyrim or Dragon Age that have a set pool of companions who will walk at your side, in Dragon's Dogma the legion is limitless. For in this game we have an exultant twist in the form of Pawns, who are the sidekick creations of other live players.

An hour or so into the game, you'll have the chance to craft your own Pawn--using the same breathlessly deep customization as for your own hero--who will stay loyal by your side throughout your entire adventure. As you explore the nooks and crannies of Gransys, the game's world, and tackle all manner of enemies and quests, your Pawn will learn alongside you. Later, when you rest at an inn or travel into the smoky realm of the Rift, your Pawn will be uploaded to the world amidst thousands of other players' companions. And that's where Dragon's Dogma shines.

Gransys is not a world easily tamed. When night falls, the fauna grow vicious, and the only way to prevail over the mightier enemies such as Griffons, Chimaeras, and Cyclops is to have extra hands at your side. You and your Pawn will make an unshakable pair, but the other two spots in your party are open for hire, and that's where other players' Pawns come in. Step into the misty veil of the Rift, and other players' Pawns will approach you. Through a slick menu system, you can immediately see what skills and knowledge they have at their disposal. Bring along a Pawn that's already completed a quest you're about to begin, and he or she will dispense tips about treasure and enemies. The game even offers a search option to narrow down exactly the kind of help you're looking for.

Other players' Pawns don't level alongside you, however, so there's the rub: You'll want to constantly switch out your party to make sure you're in prime shape for the challenges ahead. It's a wise move on Capcom's part, encouraging you to make the most of the Pawn system and see what concoctions fellow players have made. For those of you without Internet access, don't fear: the game comes pre-populated with a bevy of developer-made Pawns as well. Also a boon: none of the online features require Xbox Live Gold. You can get by with the free version and still make full use of other players' Pawns.

In all, Dragon's Dogma stands as a testament to the strength of hybrid sensibilities. The combat is meaty, fierce, and distinctly Japanese: as you level, you can learn ever-more-vicious moves, assign them at will, and devise bloody combos to take down your foes. Larger enemies can be clambered upon, encouraging you to go for the weak spot and hold on for dear life when you're bucked about, while smaller enemies can be grabbed by you or your party members for satisfying finishers. In fact, the grabbing mechanic adds another layer to battles: throw rocks, explosives, or jars of oil at enemies to afflict them with all manner of debilitations. The sheer tactical possibilities only emerge once you start peeling away at all your moves, items, and party combinations, and it can have you number-crunching for hours.

And yet this fast, visceral, and stylish core is wrapped in a world that wouldn't be out of place in an Elder Scrolls game. It's a perfect marriage of two distinct and complementary styles: the obsessive depth and detail of JRPGs combined with the epic sprawl of the West. Much has been said of how Japanese development needs to step up to the plate, and step up they did. And yet, perhaps it's less of how much Japan can learn from the West, and more of how both sides can learn from each other.

If you are any sort of fan of either genre, you owe it to yourself to pick up Dragon's Dogma.

-----Quick Points-----

* The game runs terrifically well on Xbox 360, even without an install. Load times when moving between the overworld and towns seem even faster than in Skyrim, and I was pleased to find that there are no loads when entering and exiting buildings in town.

* While the game doesn't offer true multiplayer, it does have online features. These can be accessed even without Xbox Live Gold, and if you don't have Internet access, you can still use developer-made Pawns. There is no online pass.

* If you played the demo, you can seamlessly and easily import your created characters into the full version of the game. I'm glad to report that this worked flawlessly.

* While fast-traveling isn't as free and easy as in games like Skyrim, you have an extremely fast sprint that can be used to cover a lot of ground. Your sprint is limited by your Stamina and carrying weight.

* You can combine items from any of your party members without requiring those items to be in your own inventory.

* When upgrading equipment, you can use your stored items without first needing to place them in your inventory. This is a big time-saver.

* Money is rather easy to come by, so it's worth experimenting with new equipment and items.

* Your pawns are fairly autonomous. They'll often find items on their own that you can then take from them. They are also fairly smart in battle. However, you can also issue simple commands with the D-pad to influence their behavior.

* Pawns don't die immediately; they get knocked unconscious, at which point you can run over to them and press a button to revive them. This doesn't use items and is instant. Pawns can be revived as many times as needed. If they're unconscious for too long, however, they'll become "forfeit" and return to the Rift. If you die, it's game over. Pawns don't revive you from death, but they will heal you.

* After you return a Pawn to its owner, you can review the Pawn and leave a pre-selected comment for its owner. You can also send along a gift item when releasing another player's Pawn from your party.

* The world is absolutely filled with goodies. Search for shiny stumps, barrels, plants, and treasure chests everywhere.

* Items can weigh you down. You can place items in storage at inns, or you can distribute your inventory across the rest of your party.

* You can pick up and throw a variety of things--even your Pawns and enemies. Thrown jars can damage enemies with debilitations, or you can find hidden items in broken-apart containers.

* While there's no dedicated lock-on system to target enemies, it seems like there's a sort of invisible smart targeting system anyway. I found my hero "sticking" slightly towards the closest enemy I was facing.

* Striders have unlimited arrows! You can also purchase special arrows tipped with all manner of poisons that are limited.

* Your starting class and your Pawn's starting class aren't locked in stone. You can switch classes later in the game, multiple times.

* You can save anywhere.

* When the game gets dark at night, it really gets dark. There's a real sense of danger here, and it's vital to keep a lantern or torch on your person. Alternately, you can set enemies on fire and try to walk by the light of their flames as well.

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Dragon's Dogma has a lot of things going for it. I think that's why the more I played it, the more frustrating its negative aspects were. Because there were many things I really liked about it, the fact that there are such serious flaws were heartbreaking. Before I get to the meat of the review, let me say that overall I really enjoyed Dragon's Dogma. That being said, if the game is never patched, I will probably never play it again. So on to the review...

As I said, there are a lot of aspects of this game that felt original and fresh. The one that should be first on everyone's list of pros is the pawn system. In the game, once you create your character, you then create your main pawn. In the DD universe, pawns are humanoid beings whose sole purpose is to help your character defeat the dragon that has stolen your heart and marked you as the Arisen. Basically what happens is, you design your main pawn, and then if you are playing while connected to XBOX Live, that character is uploaded to a place called The Rift, a gateway that connects you with a wide selection of everyone else's main pawns to recruit, and where other people can recruit your main pawn into their game. The idea itself is just really cool to me. That any pawn I recruit (you can have two on top of your main pawn and yourself) is something that is purely the creation of someone else. Then, your main pawn adventures with other people during their game, and when they are released from another person's party, they/you can choose to send them back with an in-game gift, and you can rate their performance. In this way, your main pawn accumulates more experience on top of what they are gaining in your game. Everything gets updated every time you rest at a camp or inn, and that's when you can receive the gifts from other players. I think this is the single greatest strength to the game, and without it I don't think I'd have enjoyed the game nearly as much. The novelty never wore off, and I still believe the system is fantastic, and the best usage of single player online connectivity I've ever experienced. If you don't play online, no worries, the game either has a set population of scripted pawns you can choose from, or ones that are randomly generated by the game.

Second, also a huge positive, is the boss battles. As far as combat goes, this is one of the most original things about the game. Even though none of the functions are new in and of themselves, I've never played a role playing game where you can climb onto a dragon and slash at its heart, or climb onto a cyclops' head and stab its eye, or mount a chimera and cut its snake tail off, and then kill the goat and lion. It's fantastic, and there are plenty of them to be had. It never feels too repetitive either, since there are so many different ways to approach battle with them. It's especially fun once you're a sufficiently high level, because then you are be more inventive and experimental with your approaches.

The third noteworthy thing about the game that I loved was the variety and depth of the items. I put 60-70 hours into the game, exploring most of it quite thoroughly, and I know there are probably dozens of items and crafting materials I haven't even found yet. Most enemies drop loot, and there are chests, barrels, crates, plants, minerals, and an assortment of other items to be found, picked up, combined, used to enhance weapons and armor, or just sold for some major cashola. If you played Capcom's awesome Resident Evil 5, you'll be familiar with the inventory and combining system. Except in the case of Dragon's Dogma there are hundreds and hundreds of items to be acquired. It keeps the game feeling fresh when you're interested to find or use various new rare items to enhance weapons and armor. Each weapon and piece of armor in the game has a 3 star tiered rating system. The first tier only costs money to upgrade to. And then the second and third tiers require a specific number of a specific item to upgrade to. The better or more rare the equipment, the more expensive and difficult it will be to find those items.

Another worthy mention goes to the landmass of the game itself. The world of Gransys is quite large, even if it isn't terribly varied. Elevation is used frequently to change things up a bit, and it works well, providing long falls for unlucky enemies (or adventurers).

So on to the bad parts of the game. There are going to be more than four things listed here, but I still maintain that hidden in the mess that is Dragon's Dogma is a truly good game.

There are two main problems with the game, and I could go back and forth about which one is more irritating all night: The (lack of) fast travel, and the way pawns interact with the world.

First off, fast travel is almost nonexistent. There are items called Ferrystones that you can carry with you that will instantly teleport you back to the biggest city in the game world. Aside from that, eventually you will also be able to take what's called a Portcrystal with you, which you can set down anywhere in the world and then your Ferrystones will transport you there instead of the city. And that's it. You get one Portcrystal, and aside from that, you can only teleport to the main city. This becomes more frustrating the more you play the game, unless you're a masochist, because the world is quite large. And not only is it quite large, but since the terrain is so varied, you cannot ever travel any great distance in a straight line, so you end up sprinting until you're almost out of breath, and then jogging while your stamina regenerates, and then sprinting again. And over and over and over to your destination. The game tries to provide a couple of shortcuts between areas of the world, but it's really not very helpful. A lot of your time in game will be spent running from one place to another. Not only does this get really grinding after a while, but enemies also respawn in the exact same places every time, so you will have the exact same fights again, and again, and again. And then some more. To the point where I pretty just ran past them and kept going. Because it got so tedious. And then if you don't have a Ferrystone, you have to run all the way back to where you came from. And not only that, but

Secondly, your main pawn and the two you can also have with you will repeat the exact same lines of dialog when you hit certain markers in the game. The exact same lines, in the exact spots, every single time. It got so annoying I went to the options to see if I could turn off the voice volume for just the pawns. You can't, unfortunately. If I had a quarter for every time I heard the phrase "Perhaps we'll find aught of use," I would be seriously loaded. The main problems in the game all kind of flow into the other, and they make it quite a big mess. Even just describing it, it probably seems to someone who hasn't played the game like it's really not worth it to even give the game a chance. If you like highly polished games, you might want to pass on this one. So yeah, the pawns get really annoying after a while. If they would just change it so they only spoke when you initiate conversation with them.

If Capcom fixed only those two problems, the fast travel and the pawn irritation, the game would easily earn a four star rating from me. However, those aren't the only problems with the game...

As stated, fighting normal enemies becomes tedious after a while, because they appear and respawn in the same places every time. It makes that combat repetitive and very boring, even though the combat itself is pretty fun. There are only so many ways you can kill goblins after the four or five hundredth one.

Texture pop isn't actually an issue that I noticed in the game. What is an issue though, is people pop. From the start of the game all the way through, I'd find myself running into people because the streets would be empty, and then suddenly three appear, and then ten, and then twenty-five, all of a sudden. It's not so much an irritation as it just feels lazy. There's no way they didn't come across it when they beta-tested it.

Lip-syncing is godawful. Which is to say it's laughably bad, or just nonexistent. I don't particularly care if lip-syncing is bad, but this isn't even bad, it's like the already bad lip-syncing wasn't matched the recorded audio, so characters are speaking when their lips aren't moving, and vice versa. Another thing that just felt pretty lazy.

Side quests are extremely boring and unoriginal. Most of them fall under two categories: escort missions, and kill set number of [this creature]. Almost all quests not in those categories are main story-related. Kind of disappointing. I think this might be because there are only actually two cities in the whole game world. And no real villages or just lone houses at all. So there aren't quirky people giving you odd quests out in the middle of nowhere.

One of the most bizarre things to me about the game was the "love interest" aspect. Or lack of, I don't even know. I'm still not sure if it's possible to even have an implied relationship with any of the characters you meet. I think this is one thing that maybe I just don't get, because I'm not a fan of Eastern-style RPG's, and am much more used to there being a clearly defined list of things that can or won't happen in a game as far as role playing relationships. There are a few cutscenes in the game where your character will exchange...let's call them "significant stares" with other characters...and then that's it. It's never revisited or mentioned again or anything. And I'm not sure what the point of it is, or what the payoff is either. It's just kind of baffling to me. Music swells and two digital people are staring into each others' eyes not saying anything...and then it ends and nothing.

The save system is also lacking. The game only allows one save slot. It autosaves, and you can save when you want as well. But it's all one save file. If it corrupts, you're screwed. I imagine this will be one of the first things addressed if and when there is a patch for the game. But poor design in the first place, and pretty unacceptable for an RPG.

The last thing I can mention are the graphics, which I'm only mentioning so I can say that if a game is engrossing enough, graphics really don't matter that much. And in this game, they don't. They are function-only, and it works that way. I'd much rather have this deep and varied universe with pared-down graphics than a gorgeous backdrop with no real substance.

So, with so much working against a game, how can I possibly still actually like it? The honest answer is I don't know. I think because the things I like about it outweigh the things I don't like about it, and because I see a ton of potential for this to become a really good franchise if certain simple changes were made. Towards the end of the game I was really reminded of playing Alpha Protocol, which is another highly flawed game that I really liked. So much was wrong with it, and yet I loved it, and saw great potential for it to grow into something really great. That won't happen now, of course, but as with it, I think if Dragon's Dogma gets a sequel, it will be far better than this one as long as a few key things are addressed.

If you're on the fence, I would recommend you at least rent the game to see if it's something you'd like. As I said before, I'm convinced there's a really great game buried in this mess. As I did, you will probably alternate between total immersion and utter boredom. In my opinion though, its pros outweigh its innumerable cons.

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Dragons Dogma was a game I've had my eye on for quite some time. Not really getting my hopes up high in case of disappointment yet still anticipating it, the game has finally reached my hands. What do I think? The game is quite frankly hard to put down.

Right off the bat I will just point out that the story is there, yet not very captivating or interesting. There is a very electrifying beginning, except as soon as that exciting start is over the story is just meh. The main attraction of Dragons Dogma is the combat, which is very very fun and addicting. I highly recommend Dragons Dogma for anyone looking for an open world adventure game similar to that of Dark Souls and monster hunter, and maybe even those who enjoyed Devil May Cry. (The game is hard, yet it still is able to be more forgiving than Demon or Dark Souls). The hack and slash combat will feel familiar to those who have played Dark Souls or DmC, probably because people from DmC series actually worked on Dragons Dogma.

Dragons Dogma allows me to forget the story and just simply go out, slay some monsters, beef up my character(as well as my NPC buddies) and just have a blast. There is actually a really cool and unique system to customizing NPC's, or Pawns. You have one permanent one, then two others you can hire from a rift where Pawns from other players are patiently waiting for the next adventurer to adopt them. This is all adds to the addictive nature of the game, where customizing is almost as fun as the combat.

These Pawns help immensely during combat. I chose a ranger as my class, and my Pawns are able to complement me in very effective ways. i can sit back and plug away with my bow, while my companions can do some serious damage up close, and vice versa.

It's not perfect though. Some minor camera problems and graphical issues are present, but don't get in the way of completely ruining the experience. Just minor frustrations at most. The game could've used some more time in the oven.

I've played for about 7 hours now, and besides the first hour or so which was a bit boring(except that exciting start), I've hardly wanted to stop playing. Will probably update if anything significant occurs.

Cheers.

Honest reviews on Dragon's Dogma - Xbox 360

First of all, I have to commend Amazon on the great same-day delivery service. I got this game the day it came out without any problems whatsoever. Secondly, it was a great surprise to know that they were giving all the pre-order folks a $10 gift card. Icing on an already awesome cake.

Now to the game.

Dragon's Dogma is fantastic. What it does right far outweigh its minor flaws (graphical screen tearing hiccups, some clipping and lipsync problems).

The core gameplay is amazing. I haven't had this much fun in an open world RPG setting in a very, very long time. The gameplay and fighting mechanic present in this game is simply top notch. The skill/vocation system gives you such in-depth customizability.

I really appreciate how different the gameplay becomes depending on what class you are and what class your pawns are. You *must* play to your strengths and have a well-rounded party to do well and be effective. Paying attention to what you and your party bring to the table is key to surviving in the world of Gransys.

Speaking of survivability, DD does a great job at making the game difficult without it feeling like a chore. Nowhere did I feel that enemies were being "cheap". If you died, 95% of the time it was your fault. It's not as punishing as Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, but it needn't be. In this game enemies don't scale to your level, so if you end up in a part of the world that's too much for you, it's probably because your level isn't high enough yet (though that doesn't mean you can't beat them. You just have to be more careful about how to face them down and exploit their weakpoints.) Conversely, you feel a great sense of satisfaction going back to areas that gave you a hard time in the beginning. Nothing like decimating that bandit fighter that 2-shotted you 10 hours ago