I wanted to see what hard mode was like, bearing in mind that this is my first playthrough of this game. I went up to a goblin and got one-hit killed. I thought to myself "Oh no..." Then I manage to kill a few goblins and one of them dropped 10,000 gold pieces. I then thought to myself "OH NO...!" Since that meant I would not revert to normal mode ever. I continue to bash my head against this wall for 60 hours, all the while a perfectly functioning door is right next to me, but damnit there's double experience points on hard mode and I'm not missing that.
I then continue to play this game "wrong" by going the Bitterblack Isle, the DLC area added with "Dark Arisen", as soon as I was able to, and slowly but surely began chipping away at it. A weakness I have in games is that, if there's a high level area in a game I shouldn't go to yet, but I could go there, then I will. I like seeing what I can get away with, finding loot and items way before I should normally have them, or maybe gain, like, ten levels from killing a high level enemy. This got to the point that I manage to clear the DLC when I was not even halfway through the main game.
I liked the action gameplay overall, throwing goblins off a cliff was never not amusing. Climbing large monsters to precisely target weak points is really ambitious and cool; but the camera going ballistic for the more extravagant monsters, and the fact that I've had many times where I had no clue what direction to move the analog stick to move where I wanted to, while on the wildly flailing chimera with a snake tail, made it more of a pain then I wanted. Speaking of chimeras, it was really cool and fun when I saved in the middle of the forest, not realizing there was a chimera right next to me. I then suffered close to twenty deaths as this beast would just one hit kill me with the slightest touch, plus it was my first time fighting one and I kept either trying to run or pray I had enough strength charms to out damage it, plus it was nighttime and sometimes I couldn't even see the godforsaken thing. After many failed attempts I finally slayed it... then three minutes later I got caught by a second chimera. The whole time I thought "God I wish there was a fast travel option", not knowing that I was one main quest away from that feature.
And then there's the vocation system. Any game with a class/job system is an immediate hook. I always love mixing and matching party compositions, doubly so if its one of those games that allows you to carry over abilities and skills to your other jobs, like this one (what a coincidence!). It is strange though that your pawns, which to put it extremely basically are your party members, only have access to 6 out of 9 vocations, which I honestly don't get. I don't see a reason to limit them. Regardless I found the vocations to be decently varied, even if I feel this game really favors vocations with range capabilities. I mean, Warrior hits like a dump truck but it wasn't fun trying to reach certain bosses and enemies that took their sweet time in the air. I stuck to Assassin personally, highest strength growth plus a bow. Fit my play style well.
Lastly I wanted give kudos to having a character creator that actually allows you to adjust your weight and height to a pretty significant degree. I know the argument for why this doesn't happen more often in games is the worry of it adjusting your hurtbox, but at least the tradeoff in this game is that the heavier character can carry more in their inventory. It's just something you see so rarely even today (in a action game that is).
That's all well and good, but here's the thing: By the end of my playthrough the thing I thought about the most was "Man, Dragon's Dogma II could be absolutely incredible". And I was thinking about that a lot since... going to be honest I had plenty of instances where I thought to myself "I want to be done with this". I'm not one to stop playing a game till I finished it, but there were a lot of moments of boredom and annoyances. It didn't get "frustrating", but things piled up.
Firstly, I didn't like exploring the huge open world. Well, it isn't quite an "open world", but it certainly is big. It got irritating having to manage my stamina when I'm traveling to my destination, since the usage and recovery of it is dependent on how much you carry in your inventory. I honestly don't care for this, at best a penalty should only apply when over-encumbered. And even with a light inventory, I found that stamina recovery was way too slow for my liking. What they could do for the sequel is what they did with Monster Hunter: World and Elden Ring, where you have infinite stamina unless you're in combat. Doesn't help that your regular walking speed is painfully sluggish as you wait for your stamina to recover. Regardless, anytime I had to travel a great distance, it always took way longer then it needed.
I know its a 7th gen game, but the environments and humans look really rough. Another factor to why exploring was really boring to me is that I wasn't that impressed by what I was looking at, even when I tried to have a lower standard for playing a ten year old game. Though the big monsters still looked really good admittedly.
But even then, some fights weren't that fun. Mostly relegated to the higher level monsters found in the DLC and the end game. How about goblins that will knock you onto the ground and stomped you to death, as they're also stomping your other party members to death and thus can't save you. Or monsters with ridiculous levels of defense that take forever to kill. Or any monster that inflicts petrification since your party members aren't that great at avoiding those attacks and can't be revived if they turn to stone and crumble. Or giant wolves that keep running outside the camera, and there's no lock on so you're constantly adjusting the camera with your right thumb (which is annoying, but really only bad under pretty specific circumstances). Or any enemy with a grab that forces you to spin the left stick like crazy, bearing in mind that I'm on the Switch and rather not want to buy another joy-con. There's a lot more, but this is more then enough.
Some of these grievances are probably because I played it on hard mode... including the stamina usage with sprinting now that I think about it, but then that means hard mode wasn't balanced well. Hard mode has the unfortunate thing where the beginning is more difficult then the end game, for the most part. Again, goblins were one hit killing me, but they were far from the only enemies. But by the end game I could actually take, like, five or more hits before dying and had more then enough revives and healing potions. Because of this poor balancing, I'm pretty sure half my deaths were from one-hit kills; and it starts to really wear on you when your chipping away at this mob of enemies but then "oh look a arrow flew from off screen and now I'm dead". Yes, I was too stubborn to turn the difficulty down, but I knew if I stuck with it then I wouldn't need to grind as much later in the game with how much money I've accumulated.
Then the story, it wasn't doing anything for me... at first. Sadly I was most engaged only when I reached the end game. I know it's a ten year old game, but I'd rather not spoil why. Despite that, the lore and setting just were not capturing my attention and I really didn't care for the characters, which is usually a death sentence, personally. I'm someone who can tolerate a bad story if I love the characters and their interactions with one another, regardless if what they're actually doing is confusing or boring. The Dark Arisen DLC was at least a little more interesting, but I don't know, I was tempted to skip the dialogue and cutscenes at many points. Glad I didn't by the end, but it was yet another thing that drained me of this game.
I was not expecting this game to be one of my longer reviews, but that's what happens when a game has a lot of stuff I really love and has equally as much stuff that I'd rather not deal with. I didn't even get to how much going into the inventory to use items really hampered the combat flow so much for me, but now this is starting to get too bloated for my liking. A thing I tried my best to do was to not compare this game to other games, especially to games created after it. It's not fair to it at all, even if I honestly feel many of its best features have been done better by so many other games. Not all of it mind you, and Dragon's Dogma still has quite a vibrant identity to this day, despite the drab environments... ok, that last one was uncalled for.
This is why I'm excited for Dragon's Dogma II. A first game in any franchise is going to have some hard-to-ignore blemishes, and I can see a game here that would be one of my all-time favorites. It has so much for me, now here's hoping the next one can deliver something immaculate
I then continue to play this game "wrong" by going the Bitterblack Isle, the DLC area added with "Dark Arisen", as soon as I was able to, and slowly but surely began chipping away at it. A weakness I have in games is that, if there's a high level area in a game I shouldn't go to yet, but I could go there, then I will. I like seeing what I can get away with, finding loot and items way before I should normally have them, or maybe gain, like, ten levels from killing a high level enemy. This got to the point that I manage to clear the DLC when I was not even halfway through the main game.
I liked the action gameplay overall, throwing goblins off a cliff was never not amusing. Climbing large monsters to precisely target weak points is really ambitious and cool; but the camera going ballistic for the more extravagant monsters, and the fact that I've had many times where I had no clue what direction to move the analog stick to move where I wanted to, while on the wildly flailing chimera with a snake tail, made it more of a pain then I wanted. Speaking of chimeras, it was really cool and fun when I saved in the middle of the forest, not realizing there was a chimera right next to me. I then suffered close to twenty deaths as this beast would just one hit kill me with the slightest touch, plus it was my first time fighting one and I kept either trying to run or pray I had enough strength charms to out damage it, plus it was nighttime and sometimes I couldn't even see the godforsaken thing. After many failed attempts I finally slayed it... then three minutes later I got caught by a second chimera. The whole time I thought "God I wish there was a fast travel option", not knowing that I was one main quest away from that feature.
And then there's the vocation system. Any game with a class/job system is an immediate hook. I always love mixing and matching party compositions, doubly so if its one of those games that allows you to carry over abilities and skills to your other jobs, like this one (what a coincidence!). It is strange though that your pawns, which to put it extremely basically are your party members, only have access to 6 out of 9 vocations, which I honestly don't get. I don't see a reason to limit them. Regardless I found the vocations to be decently varied, even if I feel this game really favors vocations with range capabilities. I mean, Warrior hits like a dump truck but it wasn't fun trying to reach certain bosses and enemies that took their sweet time in the air. I stuck to Assassin personally, highest strength growth plus a bow. Fit my play style well.
Lastly I wanted give kudos to having a character creator that actually allows you to adjust your weight and height to a pretty significant degree. I know the argument for why this doesn't happen more often in games is the worry of it adjusting your hurtbox, but at least the tradeoff in this game is that the heavier character can carry more in their inventory. It's just something you see so rarely even today (in a action game that is).
That's all well and good, but here's the thing: By the end of my playthrough the thing I thought about the most was "Man, Dragon's Dogma II could be absolutely incredible". And I was thinking about that a lot since... going to be honest I had plenty of instances where I thought to myself "I want to be done with this". I'm not one to stop playing a game till I finished it, but there were a lot of moments of boredom and annoyances. It didn't get "frustrating", but things piled up.
Firstly, I didn't like exploring the huge open world. Well, it isn't quite an "open world", but it certainly is big. It got irritating having to manage my stamina when I'm traveling to my destination, since the usage and recovery of it is dependent on how much you carry in your inventory. I honestly don't care for this, at best a penalty should only apply when over-encumbered. And even with a light inventory, I found that stamina recovery was way too slow for my liking. What they could do for the sequel is what they did with Monster Hunter: World and Elden Ring, where you have infinite stamina unless you're in combat. Doesn't help that your regular walking speed is painfully sluggish as you wait for your stamina to recover. Regardless, anytime I had to travel a great distance, it always took way longer then it needed.
I know its a 7th gen game, but the environments and humans look really rough. Another factor to why exploring was really boring to me is that I wasn't that impressed by what I was looking at, even when I tried to have a lower standard for playing a ten year old game. Though the big monsters still looked really good admittedly.
But even then, some fights weren't that fun. Mostly relegated to the higher level monsters found in the DLC and the end game. How about goblins that will knock you onto the ground and stomped you to death, as they're also stomping your other party members to death and thus can't save you. Or monsters with ridiculous levels of defense that take forever to kill. Or any monster that inflicts petrification since your party members aren't that great at avoiding those attacks and can't be revived if they turn to stone and crumble. Or giant wolves that keep running outside the camera, and there's no lock on so you're constantly adjusting the camera with your right thumb (which is annoying, but really only bad under pretty specific circumstances). Or any enemy with a grab that forces you to spin the left stick like crazy, bearing in mind that I'm on the Switch and rather not want to buy another joy-con. There's a lot more, but this is more then enough.
Some of these grievances are probably because I played it on hard mode... including the stamina usage with sprinting now that I think about it, but then that means hard mode wasn't balanced well. Hard mode has the unfortunate thing where the beginning is more difficult then the end game, for the most part. Again, goblins were one hit killing me, but they were far from the only enemies. But by the end game I could actually take, like, five or more hits before dying and had more then enough revives and healing potions. Because of this poor balancing, I'm pretty sure half my deaths were from one-hit kills; and it starts to really wear on you when your chipping away at this mob of enemies but then "oh look a arrow flew from off screen and now I'm dead". Yes, I was too stubborn to turn the difficulty down, but I knew if I stuck with it then I wouldn't need to grind as much later in the game with how much money I've accumulated.
Then the story, it wasn't doing anything for me... at first. Sadly I was most engaged only when I reached the end game. I know it's a ten year old game, but I'd rather not spoil why. Despite that, the lore and setting just were not capturing my attention and I really didn't care for the characters, which is usually a death sentence, personally. I'm someone who can tolerate a bad story if I love the characters and their interactions with one another, regardless if what they're actually doing is confusing or boring. The Dark Arisen DLC was at least a little more interesting, but I don't know, I was tempted to skip the dialogue and cutscenes at many points. Glad I didn't by the end, but it was yet another thing that drained me of this game.
I was not expecting this game to be one of my longer reviews, but that's what happens when a game has a lot of stuff I really love and has equally as much stuff that I'd rather not deal with. I didn't even get to how much going into the inventory to use items really hampered the combat flow so much for me, but now this is starting to get too bloated for my liking. A thing I tried my best to do was to not compare this game to other games, especially to games created after it. It's not fair to it at all, even if I honestly feel many of its best features have been done better by so many other games. Not all of it mind you, and Dragon's Dogma still has quite a vibrant identity to this day, despite the drab environments... ok, that last one was uncalled for.
This is why I'm excited for Dragon's Dogma II. A first game in any franchise is going to have some hard-to-ignore blemishes, and I can see a game here that would be one of my all-time favorites. It has so much for me, now here's hoping the next one can deliver something immaculate