This is THE masterwork. You can't go wrong.

Little something-something:

-On the first times you play, just try everything! Part of the fun is to be able to play as you like. I loved playing healer and just look my buddies wage war as I enchanted their weapons.

-There is min-maxing, so if that is your thing, you'll wanna read the optimal routes. It's not hard to do. This just a heads up, so you know beforehand.

-To the others who don't care about min-maxing OR wanna do it afterwards, it doesn't really matter, I've done the most unoptimal playstyles for everything and can tell, it doesn't matter that much in the end. Once you know what others do, you can melt the hardest boss easily. The difference is mostly there to just to give you a reason to replay and min-max if you like that..

-You can max level FAST in the expansion dungeon. There are arena(s) for basically that and for fun (materials are a bonus).

-The black cat sells some really nice weapons, so you might want to look them up, unless you're like me and like to go with "regular" looking armor.

-Speedrun is rather fun, highly recommend trying it.

-Once you finish the story, you keep your stats (and items, they are in the bank / storage, ask your local tavern keeper), if you want to NG+, so don't worry about playing it through multiple times. There multiple ways for quite a few quests to end. Not in the scope of more story focused games, but still.

-Give plenty of presents to the people you like. The NPCs too, definitely the NPCs. You'll be happy later.

-If you want to do lots of "make overs" with the character creator, Jonathan at the encampment has a nifty little tome for you. Seek him out once the skies grow dark. Save 10k rift crystals for that. >:D

-Wolves are weak to fire and they hunt in packs. There's nothing wrong in feeding your pawn to a chimera after you get tired of hearing those lines. Let the intrusive thoughts win. I did.

First of all, this game is on sale for €4.79. If you are keen on trying it or collecting it, just get it. If you have doubts, maybe my opinion will help you.

My main issue with this game is the absolutely awful menu, inventory, and options design. It's worse than some older titles like Skyrim, Oblivion, and Dragon Age, to list a few. You can't bind the map, so you have to open it through the menu. The same goes for the quest journal and your equipment. The map is not connected with the journal, so you have to go back and forth through the menu to click on one quest at a time (you can only track one at a time) and check where it is on the map. The inventory is hard to look at and sort out.

The main story feels bland; it's basically: you are the main character, go and fight. Side quests are not fun and lack depth; it's just kill x amount of creatures, collect x amount of items, escort a character, and so on. Your companions are called pawns, and they are basically soulless husks. They exist only to serve you as combat companions; they don't have a story of their own. In the world, pawns are treated as NPCs; actual NPCs acknowledge them as such. Between the bad story writing and this weird companion system, the game feels very empty and soulless.

On a positive note, this game has some fun combat and cool-looking combat animations. You can climb onto the monsters you are fighting, which is a unique feature I haven't seen in any other game.

Hope this helped. Have fun. ☺

if you pick up a rat and throw it at your pawn they will catch it and throw it back 10/10 literally what more could you possibly want

dragons mogma

Game doesn't hold your hand at all and feels strangely empty.
I tried to play for few hours but I couldn't enjoy much in it.
Sometimes games made by Asian devs don't make sense.
Visually very dated for 8 year old game, and it shows.
Minimal story, washed out environments, empty map.
Enemies constantly respawn, no progression feel.
Maybe will revisit in future but really doubt it.

P.S. After checking videos on youtube, didn't find the pawn system appealing.

this is an okay game so far. only 10hrs in but i can shed some lights on a couple of key things about Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen.

1. the game is quite unpolished and the RPG system is just as it is--i wouldn't say almost nonexistent, but it's spread on the game in a very thin layer. think of something much much simpler than Skyrim. you start the game with 3 basic classes such as fighter, mage and rogue/assassin called strider. you'd get access to more classes as you progress further through the game.

2. enemy difficulty is okay challenging unless you play in easy difficulty. however, this game lacks in enemy variety.

3. not a big deal but your followers/companions called pawns are essentially just soulless NPCs. i get it, that sort of like the lore of the game, but that's kinda it. there's an okay amount of interactions but across the board, all pretty much reacts to things the same, although the game offers its own modifier to your followers (talk more, be aggressive/less, etc). to me, not a big deal because they offer great assistance for your adventure.

4. you can have a total of three pawns in your party. two of which are recruited for free/hired and the other one is your main/loyal pawn. only the latter will scale with you and level up as you progress. the other two will not! so you might want to find higher pawns to scale up with you otherwise they might die everytime you encounter enemies. you can edit your main pawn's character, change class/vocation, etc but not the other 2 hired pawns.

5. the combat is unique and cool. it's not just mindless button-mashing. there's some careful judgement required whenever you're up against a monster and there's certain ways required to fighting certain types of enemies (i like fighting ogre and cyclops and just climb to their shaboingboing, hanging there and slashing my way through the fights).

6. enemy types, though isn't much, might proof quite challenging, especially in the early part of the game. for an example, you'd squeeze out higher damage output fighting the undead only when your weapon is imbued with either fire or holy. otherwise, you are doomed. they come in hordes. if you are running non-mage build, i'd recommend taking with you one or two mage pawns so that they can always give such enchantments to your weapon. things like this is good because it incentivizes the player to think different approaches to attacking a certain monster.

7. the world is, sadly, empty except for monsters. nonetheless beautiful. i think

8. also, the story is more or less nonexistent. i couldn't care less, man, can i just explore the world with my band of loyal servants?

9. last but not least, one dude pointed out that the game feels more like an MMORPG than an RPG and i second that claim.

despite its flaws you may find in other reviews, this game is worth the try and there's a lot of things to do here. if i may recommend though, get it on sales. also, the game might be challenging so you better prepare, stock some potions and gears.

Unless you're roleplaying Guts from the hit manga and mediocre anime Berserk, this is a somewhat positive review.

For a game heavily influenced by Berserk, roleplaying as Guts was the biggest mistake I could've made as a fan of Berserk. Do NOT roleplay as Guts AKA The Black Swordsman from Berserk for extended periods of time! Change your vocation as soon as the saddest moveset in the game starts to bore you and save your playthrough!

Other than that: Game is the definition of a diamond in the rough - incredibly solid ideas surrounded by lame bare minimums. Switching to Mystic Knight was fun.

Arguably an unpolished gem that in my opinion aged like wine anyway.

First and foremost: it's an old game. Think Skyrim type of old; of course there's gonna be some jank but it's not as bad as Bethesda's classic, since i didn't actually stumble upon any bugs during my playthrough. I mentioned Skyrim because that's the first thing that came to my mind when i started Dragon's Dogma, and the appearance and maybe even the foundations are pretty similar, however it didn't take long for me to realize this is a very different game that manages to be pretty unique despite the typical facade of the fantasy/medieval setting.
I can't really explain it, but the vibe was very Souls-like to me despite DD and Soulsborne games having no similarities between each other except for the fact that the story is rather irrelevant. But you're not gonna play this game for the story anyway, as combat is the main drive and strong point of the series: it's fun, diversified and you can climb onto the big monsters such as cyclops, griffins and even dragons. The classes system works well and the skills that come with them range from mildly useful to outright gamebreaking, and thanks to this being an old game, you can create loopholes capable of trivializing most bossfights.

In conclusion, if you liked Skyrim you're also gonna like Dragon's Dogma, just don't expect much story-wise, although the blend of build variety, combat and NPC interactions make for a unique experience you're not likely to find anywhere else.

a must play for sure

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