Dragon’s Dogma, an underrated cult classic, is over a decade old now. With time you’d think that the feats that Dragon’s Dogma accomplished would seem ancient, now outdated and reiterated/improved upon. However, many things that Dragon’s Dogma did for the RPG genre back then feel forgotten, left behind, like they didn’t improve upon the genre in anyway. With the upcoming release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, we’ll again see these features, but put in the spotlight, as if they were inventive, new, bringing attention to what was already solved over a decade ago.

Many RPGs were inspired by ‘Dungeons & Dragons’. A game that thrived on imagination and telling your own story. However most games didn’t give you the freedom that DnD did. If you wanted to pick up and throw an enemy, you couldn’t. If you wanted to climb upon a dragon, be taken up into the skies, as you slash the wings to try bring it down – you couldn’t. If you wanted things like weight and height to matter, you had to rely on mods. The ability to mix and match classes, swapping between weapons of other classes mid battle; skidding down terrain; stabbing out the eye of a Cyclops, tearing off his armour, and toppling him by hacking at his feet; creating your own fast travel locations, and needing a currency to teleport between them; quest able to be completed in a multitude of ways, with each outcome leading to different events happening later down the line; multiple status effects, such as being drenched, blinded, poisoned, slowed, and many more; needing a light to see through the dark of night or a dark cave, with enemy spawns changing depending on time of day; enemy types having certain immunities or weakness that need specialized classes to deal with them; a whole party that fills different roles: a mage that uses magic to deal with ghosts, a ranger to fight off flying enemies and bring them down for melee units to finish them off, with each member picking up materials for you, carrying your load, and helping you up in a downed state... All of this, and I mean all of what I’ve talked about, is in Dragon’s Dogma. If you want a game that is immersive, dynamic, and is true to a classical fantasy setting, similar to that of ‘Lord of the Rings’... This is your game, and there is not many games like it.

Monster Hunter has similar features, like being able to latch onto giant enemies, but even features like this are tied to jumping or clutch claw mechanics, and only have a few spots to cling onto... Dragon’s Dogma on the other hand is one of the only games I know where you can climb on every surface of a monser: from the toes of a giant creature, to the head, arms, torso, you name it. This is one feature, among many, that set Dragon’s Dogma apart from any other RPG on the market. While some games have some of these features, there is no game out there that currently has all of them (until Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes out). Dragon’s Dogma feels like the ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ of its time. A game that did things differently, and was extremely experimental, creative, and tried to bring RPGs back to their roots.

However, despite all of this, Dragon’s Dogma isn’t perfect. Most of the open world feels overly barren, and it takes a ludicrous amount of time to get anywhere due to the unbearable stamina depletion and recovery rates. The UI, inventory, and map feels cumbersome to use, and there is no quick menu for health/stamina recovery items, lantern, or other features that you pause the game to use regularly. The combat, while good, doesn’t feels as good as Monster Hunter or the Soulsborne games, or other successful games that copied their formula (examples: Nioh, Lies of P), due to the hack ‘n’ slash nature of it. The crafting side of the game is so weirdly useless, as you can buy practically everything you’d need anyway, with no shortage of currency. The repetitive nature of enemy types, loot, and environmental visuals, makes exploration a bore at times. The quests and story is quite frankly boring as well, with only some high points during big cinematic moments. On-top of this, the game crashes every time I alt-tab, with no borderless-windowed mode natively supported.

I think you get the gist. Dragon’s Dogma is a flawed game, and despite being a cult classic, with a dedicated fanbase, and many YouTuber’s that will refer to this as the best game of all time, it’s hard to say that what it does good completely overshadows what it does bad. I find myself in awe of certain locations and set designs, and then I’ll spend a couple hours roaming through nothingness, finding locations that at first are exciting, until I realize it’s just the back-end of a dungeon I’ve already explored. I think that because of how long it takes to traverse in general, and the amount of times you’ll just keep fighting the same enemies, in areas that look the same as other areas, the game past a certain threshold starts to feel like a dementia simulator. Maybe its partly my fault for not placing fast travel spots more wisely, or not doing quest in a proper order, but this seriously weighed down on how much fun I was having.

There was a time when Dragon’s Dogma genuinely amazed me, and became one of my favourite games within a heart beat. However now, picking it up again 5 years later, I feel discouraged to call it that. That being said, with the sequel close by, I feel confident that Itsuno (the lead director) will finally succeed in creating the game he envisioned 20 years ago.

Dragon’s Dogma, an underrated cult classic, is over a decade old now. With time you’d think that the feats that Dragon’s Dogma accomplished would seem ancient, now outdated and reiterated/improved upon. However, many things that Dragon’s Dogma did for the RPG genre back then feel forgotten, left behind, like they didn’t improve upon the genre in anyway. With the upcoming release of Dragon’s Dogma 2, we’ll again see these features, but put in the spotlight, as if they were inventive, new, bringing attention to what was already solved over a decade ago. Many RPGs were inspired by ‘Dungeons & Dragons’. A game that thrived on imagination and telling your own story. However most games didn’t give you the freedom that DnD did. If you wanted to pick up and throw an enemy, you couldn’t. If you wanted to climb upon a dragon, be taken up into the skies, as you slash the wings to try bring it down – you couldn’t. If you wanted things like weight and height to matter, you had to rely on mods. The ability to mix and match classes, swapping between weapons of other classes mid battle; skidding down terrain; stabbing out the eye of a Cyclops, tearing off his armour, and toppling him by hacking at his feet; creating your own fast travel locations, and needing a currency to teleport between them; quest able to be completed in a multitude of ways, with each outcome leading to different events happening later down the line; multiple status effects, such as being drenched, blinded, poisoned, slowed, and many more; needing a light to see through the dark of night or a dark cave, with enemy spawns changing depending on time of day; enemy types having certain immunities or weakness that need specialized classes to deal with them; a whole party that fills different roles: a mage that uses magic to deal with ghosts, a ranger to fight off flying enemies and bring them down for melee units to finish them off, with each member picking up materials for you, carrying your load, and helping you up in a downed state... All of this, and I mean all of what I’ve talked about, is in Dragon’s Dogma. If you want a game that is immersive, dynamic, and is true to a classical fantasy setting, similar to that of ‘Lord of the Rings’... This is your game, and there is not many games like it. Monster Hunter has similar features, like being able to latch onto giant enemies, but even features like this are tied to jumping or clutch claw mechanics, and only have a few spots to cling onto... Dragon’s Dogma on the other hand is one of the only games I know where you can climb on every surface of a monser: from the toes of a giant creature, to the head, arms, torso, you name it. This is one feature, among many, that set Dragon’s Dogma apart from any other RPG on the market. While some games have some of these features, there is no game out there that currently has all of them (until Dragon’s Dogma 2 comes out). Dragon’s Dogma feels like the ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ of its time. A game that did things differently, and was extremely experimental, creative, and tried to bring RPGs back to their roots. However, despite all of this, Dragon’s Dogma isn’t perfect. Most of the open world feels overly barren, and it takes a ludicrous amount of time to get anywhere due to the unbearable stamina depletion and recovery rates. The UI, inventory, and map feels cumbersome to use, and there is no quick menu for health/stamina recovery items, lantern, or other features that you pause the game to use regularly. The combat, while good, doesn’t feels as good as Monster Hunter or the Soulsborne games, or other successful games that copied their formula (examples: Nioh, Lies of P), due to the hack ‘n’ slash nature of it. The crafting side of the game is so weirdly useless, as you can buy practically everything you’d need anyway, with no shortage of currency. The repetitive nature of enemy types, loot, and environmental visuals, makes exploration a bore at times. The quests and story is quite frankly boring as well, with only some high points during big cinematic moments. On-top of this, the game crashes every time I alt-tab, with no borderless-windowed mode natively supported. I think you get the gist. Dragon’s Dogma is a flawed game, and despite being a cult classic, with a dedicated fanbase, and many YouTuber’s that will refer to this as the best game of all time, it’s hard to say that what it does good completely overshadows what it does bad. I find myself in awe of certain locations and set designs, and then I’ll spend a couple hours roaming through nothingness, finding locations that at first are exciting, until I realize it’s just the back-end of a dungeon I’ve already explored. I think that because of how long it takes to traverse in general, and the amount of times you’ll just keep fighting the same enemies, in areas that look the same as other areas, the game past a certain threshold starts to feel like a dementia simulator. Maybe its partly my fault for not placing fast travel spots more wisely, or not doing quest in a proper order, but this seriously weighed down on how much fun I was having. There was a time when Dragon’s Dogma genuinely amazed me, and became one of my favourite games within a heart beat. However now, picking it up again 5 years later, I feel discouraged to call it that. That being said, with the sequel close by, I feel confident that Itsuno (the lead director) will finally succeed in creating the game he envisioned 20 years ago.