74 hours, 0 minutes. Did nearly every quest and beat Bitterblack Isle once. I could've beat it at the 50-hour mark, but I farmed for better loot.
a lot of last gen restrictions in this game. Loading between areas, loading between towns, console UI that needs too much back-and-forth pressing just to equip shit or open a map to set waypoints.
Fighting Cyclops is fun though especially with jumping and grabbing on them, feels less of a gimmick than Monster Hunter, fighting lots of trash mob wolves isn't. So far leveling only allows you to buy skills not pick stats. Bandit mobs are strong as fuck by being sponges of health. One save files already deleted my initial save so I restarted the game. So far all quests are fetch quests or "go here kill X spiders/bandits/cyclops". It's fun fighting things and running around, hopefully, it doesn't get boring.
Unfortunately, events led me to restart the game again and it finally clicked with me.
It's like risen with better combat, a prettier world, and a more diverse bestiary and it even has lizard men carrying weapons.
I stumbled upon one dungeon called the water gods alter and it was pretty good but I couldn't complete it because there was a locked door with an incision.
So far the bosses & pawns have been quite interesting. I've fought 4 cyclops, one with an armored head. I didn't realize until the third that there are actual benefits to grappling this one-eyed fuck. If you grapple the hand and damage it enough, the cyclops will drop his club and only use his arms for a while. My pawns kept screaming to attack his face, so I didn't know how until I jumped from grappling one body part and then grabbed his head shadow of the colossus style. Attacking his eye causes him to cry in pain and slow down his attacks and you can break his tusks for loot. The armored-faced cyclops was too protected for me to do this.
Do these enough and he'll fall to his knees and leave himself open. Once the bosses get down to their last health bar they get frenzied and start attacking wildly.
It was cool fighting a cyclops but hopefully, it isn't used too frequently. They seem to be best friends with every group but the player. They help bandits, goblins & harpies.
The chimera is much wilder and more complex. Three heads. Snakehead spits poison and covers the area around the chimera with poison. Goat head casts ice & fire spells. Lion's body is very quick, lunges, and pounces on the player with a roar that knocks everyone back.
You can grapple and cut off the snake's tail removing the poison opportunity. Kill the beast head which reduces its use of spells and eventually knocks down the chimera. Finally, you have the lion's body who I found as I was fighting is especially weak to fire around its head. My main pawn covered my sword in fire and I set attacked the lion's face when the lion roars to throw me and my pawns off the fire exploded on his mane and the entire body catches on fire damaging like 30% of its health bar.
The pawns are a mixed bag. I've realized that you have to keep switching pawns because they don't level up. I was a level 12 at the time and my shitty level 6 pawns kept dying.
Luckily pawns your level or lower don't cost a thing to recruit so I didn't mind. My big problem with the pawn system is the lack of control.
Even if I sit in the chair and answer the questions about what my pawn should be like, it still doesn't perform as well as I like. I want my dumbass mage to always hang back away from the enemy but that doesn't always happen and she keeps getting damaged. I'd like the recruited pawns to use the healing herbs I give them but that never happens at all.
Worst of all when I entered the water god's dungeon, a saurian was in the water so my pawns were hostile and tried to attack even though they couldn't hit it. My main pawn apparently fell into the water behind my back and I got a message saying I should go to a rift stone so I reloaded my save. The same shit happens but luckily she didn't fall, this time she just didn't help at all against the cyclops boss in the dungeon. She just walked around watching us fight.
I understand that it would slow down battle but so does going into a menu to heal.
I hope as the game progresses there are bit better rewards. So far all I get are some animal parts that can be used to upgrade gear and no weapon loot and only one metal boot after about 6 hours of play. I did get 100,000 gold from one of the notice board quests.
I had some really good starting armor in my item storage and fully upgraded its the best thing I've gotten even in Gran Soren, which sucks because I spent 60k on armour that was worse just to end up selling it. In gran soren more armor popped up in my item storage which was odd, it gave my main pawn some good mage clothes though.
I've also found one fast travel stone but it says it's one-time use so I'm saving it. I'd hate to keep running back and forth everywhere.
Finally, this game has random loot and very quickly respawning mobs. The former has already made me lose some good loot, the latter means really annoying wolf/ bandits/ goblin fights. It's cool that goblins change positions and camps at night but fighting them, in general, is bad.
Overall, I like the game now and it's caught my attention and made me play it more than I've played nioh. Let's hope for a dragon's dogma 2.
Yeah, the game throws too many cyclops at the player. I've beat 10 now. The Chimera too keeps respawning at the same place. I stumbled upon a dragon and it kicked my ass even though I'm level 23. I found the weak point on its chest but it still takes little damage, at best I only damaged 20% of just one health bar out of 6 health bars. So shit. I need new weapons, but Gran Soren isn't selling new shit and I have looted most places in the game and they don't have good shit.
I haven't. I've actually just been exploring the world. Looking at the world map, I've covered about 80% of it. There are some woods with a freaky old woman that I haven't gone to yet because I did that on my first try of the game. I just went back to Gran Soren and got the everfall quest but haven't started it.
things didn't pan out for getting DLC weapons. I got sidetracked and explored the north of Gran Soren because I was tired of looking for Jaspar and he didn't spawn.
I switched to the assassin class. The bow is somewhat useful but the double jump and rolling are better than the fighter, and I kept most of my armor and can still use swords.
I killed more trash mobs until I stumbled upon Soulflayer Canyon. The dungeons in DD can be linear but they tend to have good traps, bosses, and atmosphere. Putting a cyclops on the bridge with the threat of instant death from falling is different from the usual forest encounter.
The mine near gran Soren was my first encounter with an ogre. They're pretty much a smaller more agile cyclops that can block. This was one of the better dungeons just due to the variety of standing on the plates to activate different cages.
I made it to an encampment north where the dragon is near according to one of my pawns. The guy with a store had good new weapons and armor.
There was a cool flying wizard that summoned the undead. I've been looking more closely into what abilities other pawns have before I get them. I got a sorcerer that has a meteor spell. This shit pretty much kills cyclops, chimera, and the wizard but for whatever reason the pawn always takes his time before using it, usually waiting till the enemy is almost dead.
Why don't enemies interact with each other and the world around them?
I'm playing this completely offline. The pawns are still dumb, one fell off a cliff and needed help so I jumped off the cliff and died losing a good amount of progress.
Anyway, I found the fort of women. When I made it to the top, their leader immediately attacked me so I massacred all of them. The guy at the great wall encampment didn't allow me to withdraw items so I couldn't check if I had anything to fool them as my pawn recommended.
I eventually made it to the Catacombs, another good dungeon that lead me directly back to Gran Soren. The game might lack easy fast travel, but there are shortcuts here and there. I went to the DLC shop because I have 350k gold and all the DLC items are worse than what I currently have, so I have money to do whatever with.
The shitty Jasper quest doesn't spawn Jasper until you wait outside Gran Soren for like 5 minutes. This is really annoying in general because both monsters and NPCs will spawn right in your face when you don't expect it. The faggot even asked for 30k gold to help him.
With this done, the rest of the dozen quests I have are to go here and kill x enemy for money and XP which I don't need nor will I trek to those places and beat on trash mobs since I'm level 33. I'm just gonna move on with the main quest of everfall.
Quest design and the open world isn't very good in this game just due to how they don't even interact with each other.
Remember how I said I went to the water gods alter and cleared it minus one locked room? Said Locked rooms key was inside a cyclops that I previously beat only this time it spawned with the key only because of the quest.
I returned to maul's bandits and he gives me two quests and I can only do one: slay the female bandits in the north or confront a deserter. The thing is, I already slayed the female bandits and their leader but maul doesn't recognize it at all.
It would've been much better if the game was more open and had extra dialogues/rewards for doing things ahead of time instead of locking them and spawning them per quest basis. Iirc risen did this much better.
On the topic of random scenes. I advanced enough that the griffon appeared as I was leaving gran soren and interrupted some soldiers defending their carriage from goblins. Why doesn't this happen more?
Defeated the drake. Fought the Griffin until it fled to a far tower. I thought my comrades would lead me there as they led me to the first encounter, but they just walk to Gran Soren and teleport away.
At this point, the game has truly stretched its enemy variety thin. The golems I saw in the woods are here in the pass to the tower, and they have the exact same movesets as cyclops except they're made out of rock and they only get harmed in the specific gems around their body. I really do not like this specific design of a monster taking most of the damage on very small gems on the body while the rest of the body receives only 10% or 0% damage.
It works in Shadow of the Colossus because the Colossi there are much much larger than the monsters here. Here, you get stupid things like trying to hit a drake's chest that is practically on the ground meaning most of my dagger hits fail to hit the actual gem and instead just register as a chest hit. Even worse is the golem who has a gem on the palm of his hand and can't be harmed anywhere else on his body, so you have to try to hit that ridiculously small target with a sword or dagger while it's flailing all around. Mounting the monster doesn't even make it easier. How disappointing to cast a meteor and multiple crashes down on your opponent just to do zero damage because it hit its back and not its palm or knee gem?
I wish it had a far better UI. Please give me a list of everything I've crafted so I don't have to sift through my materials/tools to find specific items to then combine with others for crafting. Give me a trash can to put everything I don't want.
Really early on I had no clue what the points meant because the game doesn't explain but it became apparent as it went up new moves became available. I've now maxed out assassin and fighter and I'm playing sorcerer at level 44.
It's rather different. You have to press r1 + x square, triangle, or circle and keep on holding r1 to target a specific person or group and then let go of the spell to work. Too bad there was no tutorial but it's rather easy and quite shitty that the pawns don't attack more often because it's quite powerful.
I'm pretty much working up to get bolide & fulmination since those kill the shit out of monsters when I picked pawns using them.
My pawn now is a max mage but I don't want to switch and lose the healing spells. Full sorcerer party.
I got taken to jail for dumb shit. I stood in front of the guard in the castle at night and the screen turned black and I'm in prison. I was only there to do a quest for an important person.
I sure love the sorcerer but it has one grave flaw. You can't manually lock on. It is really annoying when you want to target a spider in front of you, or a Griffon above you, or ward on a tree and the game just won't do so with its auto lock.
Other than that the vocation is great and really opens up when you get some spells rolling in. Fuck, if only the pawns were as competent as I am. Pull back, let the tank fight, and cast bolide or fulmination.
It also hit me that V from Devil May Cry 5 could easily fit into the game with proper summons. Capcom handled the controls and moveset slightly better in DMC5 by giving manual lock-on, greater moveset, and allowing you to choose to make your familiars auto attack on the fly with better ai than the pawns.
The Griffin is also pretty great as a random encounter. So far, it's definitely been the best creature of the game next to the chimera because it doesn't appear as frequently and takes better use of the grappling mechanic of the game. Partners weighing it down so it doesn't fly high and it crashing down due to too much damage is always a visual treat. If they can take it a further step like monster hunter and allow you to damage its wings to the point it can't keep flying, that would be great for a sequel.
The Golem is just pure shit and turned me off from a full magic party. I went to find Selene in the woods and ended up fighting a golden. 2 sorcerers, 1 mage, and 1 strider. This shitty fight took 20 minutes because golems don't take damage anywhere else but the discs on their body and those discs are only harmed by physical attacks. Every single fucking spell was useless and did no damage while my dumbass strider pawn was just running around or not attacking. Once we destroyed all the other discs the final one, was again, under the foot of the golem so we had to wait for it to fall on its knees to actually damage it. We had to do this twice because the pawns don't even attack immediately they see the weakness.
This just forced me to be picky and look up a bit more about pawn inclination. Pretty much I'm only picking certain pawns that attack on sight or use items frequently. It's not perfect but their performance is better than previous pawns.
Pawns knowing info about quests have been mostly useless. They primarily give vague info or directions on quests that have quest markers so they're less useful for those quests.
The only quest its been useful is Valmiro leaving the village and my pawn telling me what type of meat he wants and where I can buy pendants for him.
On a more positive note, nights and fast travel are pretty great. It's dark as it should be, you have a lantern instead of carrying a torch on your off-hand, reducing your combat potential like every other RPG. Goblins/wolves/bandits spawn day and night but in most areas undead, skeletons, wights and phantoms spawn instead of changing how you approach those areas. Phantoms were annoying when I didn't use magic because pawns suck and can't use their spells right but as a magic user they're feasible to fight now.
I beat Grigori, it was a bit easy after all the QTE and scripted stuff were done. I was getting pissed that my pawns kept falling to their deaths so I reloaded the save a bunch which didn't matter anyway because she materialized for the finale.
Arguably the gayest thing in a video game happened. Grigori gave me a choice between saving a person or fighting, obviously, I chose to fight. Do you know who the game chose as my closest person? Valmero. What would even lead the game to believe my character liked valmero? The game was ready to make my arisen kiss him and he now follows me.
Anyway, the ending is climatic, to say the least.
After maxing vocation for Sorcerer, I switched back to Assassin just due to greater control and to rack up level-up points to later switch back to Sorcerer and get the rest of the spells I wanted. oh, boy was that a bad idea.
So BBI is based on 8 different dungeons inside a big dungeon that is progressively unlocked through keys, correct?
So far, the first two floors have been regular enemies until the grim reaper appeared out of nowhere with 8 health bars, made my partners go to sleep fought for like 20 seconds, and disappeared.
I guess this is the "hardcore" Dragon's Dogma because I'm facing health sponge versions of just about every other base game enemy but with weaker versions of those enemies sprinkled here and there. The same thing has happened in the base game where nearly all enemies I've encountered have been buffed. Bigger goblins, and more drakes are around now, the wolves have been changed to fire-spitting hellhounds, and harpies have become gargoyles.
BBI fucked me when I was inside and saw the cyclops chained to a wall, I went into a cave and came out and an undead dragon spawned with 9 health bars that I barely did any damage to, so I fled. Too bad there was an "Elder Ogre" who is the same as a regular ogre but with 8 health bars and the twist of it going after male foes instead of females like regular ogres. This thing killed me so many times, it was embarrassing.
The problem is that I have two sorcerer pawns and they're too dumb to use their OP magics even when I provide them with an opening. I really fucking hate when a pawn is casting a spell and just stops to start walking around the enemy. So the fight took a good 20 minutes or so, I left BBI, and just switched to a Sorcerer myself. In Gransys we came across a Drake and we killed the shit out of it, by me hitting it with too many spells for it to handle. Gicel is very effective against its heart.
Been in BBI. So far the reaper, cursed dragon, super dogs, the golden & silver skeleton knights, sorcerer goblins, the guardian with a hammer, the dark soul's chest, and giant skeletons are the hardest enemies that magic doesn't roll over.
The most interesting fight was the holy sorcerer that revives a cursed dragon. I killed it in under 5 minutes, I guess it wasn't expecting to fight two sorcerers.
Pretty much I neglected high maelstrom because it seemed weak when I used the regular versions or when my pawns used it. Here, I and my pawn's dual high maelstrom fucked the sorcerer. Like 3 health bars each one. Too bad he'd disappear & revive the dragon when he took too much damage or else it would've been a shorter fight.
The same spell fucked the skeleton knights too.
I tried out exequy because I had no clue how this spell really worked. I used it on a savage cyclops and it took out 7 health bars in one hit. It's a really powerful spell but that took 1 minute and 40 seconds to cast. It leads to a strength of dragon's dogma being that elevation matters in combat.
The giant one-eyed ball was terrible. Overall BBI has had greater enemy variety than the base game.
I fought the hydra after leaving BBI and it easily died. Wasn't as strong as what I'd been fighting.
Gained about 8 levels so far, and now level 68.
I have the fiend luring incense and just remembered I did when going through my storage. I already went through the area so I wasn't sure if I should backtrack and use it again. The downside is that I don't even know what a fiend is because Dragon's Dogma doesn't show the name of enemies.
I guess I should go back and fight the Gore Cyclops because it's chained on a wall and I can just wait for Exequy to finish. The reason I originally ran away was the cursed dragon coming randomly. One cool thing I found in Everfall was a Cyclops attacking a Golem and doing damage, pretty cool.
One huge missed opportunity is the new enemies not making it into the base game.
Wiki says you have to kill 300 of these giant skeletons to get 3 Stars for a pawn. Capcom must've been smoking something if they believe anyone has that patience.
Just completed the game and I have mixed feelings. Bitterblack Isle is an overall disappointment. Nothing is worse than getting a weapon that does nearly triple the damage of your last and it still barely harms a shitty drake. Everything in Bitterblack Isle is done for more and more farming, something I had less patience for. I could've just beat the game 15 hours ago if I knew this was what was awaiting me.
Seriously, the final boss who is a god dies to two hits from my bow yet a shitty drake takes more than 100 hits just to take half of one of his 8 health bars. At that point, I knew I wasn't gonna do this shit twice just to run to daimon and fight him again while fighting almost all the exact same enemies.
I have no drive to replay the game anytime soon because I already fought every single enemy, did every by-the-numbers quest and tried every single class, and maxed nearly all of them within the same playthrough.
Dragon's Dogma can be enjoyable but it has a lot of problems, and I certainly didn't like how the later portions of the game boiled down to farming the Everfall or Bitterblack Isle for random loot drops and high-health enemy sponges. So please Capcom, make a worthwhile sequel sometime.
a lot of last gen restrictions in this game. Loading between areas, loading between towns, console UI that needs too much back-and-forth pressing just to equip shit or open a map to set waypoints.
Fighting Cyclops is fun though especially with jumping and grabbing on them, feels less of a gimmick than Monster Hunter, fighting lots of trash mob wolves isn't. So far leveling only allows you to buy skills not pick stats. Bandit mobs are strong as fuck by being sponges of health. One save files already deleted my initial save so I restarted the game. So far all quests are fetch quests or "go here kill X spiders/bandits/cyclops". It's fun fighting things and running around, hopefully, it doesn't get boring.
Unfortunately, events led me to restart the game again and it finally clicked with me.
It's like risen with better combat, a prettier world, and a more diverse bestiary and it even has lizard men carrying weapons.
I stumbled upon one dungeon called the water gods alter and it was pretty good but I couldn't complete it because there was a locked door with an incision.
So far the bosses & pawns have been quite interesting. I've fought 4 cyclops, one with an armored head. I didn't realize until the third that there are actual benefits to grappling this one-eyed fuck. If you grapple the hand and damage it enough, the cyclops will drop his club and only use his arms for a while. My pawns kept screaming to attack his face, so I didn't know how until I jumped from grappling one body part and then grabbed his head shadow of the colossus style. Attacking his eye causes him to cry in pain and slow down his attacks and you can break his tusks for loot. The armored-faced cyclops was too protected for me to do this.
Do these enough and he'll fall to his knees and leave himself open. Once the bosses get down to their last health bar they get frenzied and start attacking wildly.
It was cool fighting a cyclops but hopefully, it isn't used too frequently. They seem to be best friends with every group but the player. They help bandits, goblins & harpies.
The chimera is much wilder and more complex. Three heads. Snakehead spits poison and covers the area around the chimera with poison. Goat head casts ice & fire spells. Lion's body is very quick, lunges, and pounces on the player with a roar that knocks everyone back.
You can grapple and cut off the snake's tail removing the poison opportunity. Kill the beast head which reduces its use of spells and eventually knocks down the chimera. Finally, you have the lion's body who I found as I was fighting is especially weak to fire around its head. My main pawn covered my sword in fire and I set attacked the lion's face when the lion roars to throw me and my pawns off the fire exploded on his mane and the entire body catches on fire damaging like 30% of its health bar.
The pawns are a mixed bag. I've realized that you have to keep switching pawns because they don't level up. I was a level 12 at the time and my shitty level 6 pawns kept dying.
Luckily pawns your level or lower don't cost a thing to recruit so I didn't mind. My big problem with the pawn system is the lack of control.
Even if I sit in the chair and answer the questions about what my pawn should be like, it still doesn't perform as well as I like. I want my dumbass mage to always hang back away from the enemy but that doesn't always happen and she keeps getting damaged. I'd like the recruited pawns to use the healing herbs I give them but that never happens at all.
Worst of all when I entered the water god's dungeon, a saurian was in the water so my pawns were hostile and tried to attack even though they couldn't hit it. My main pawn apparently fell into the water behind my back and I got a message saying I should go to a rift stone so I reloaded my save. The same shit happens but luckily she didn't fall, this time she just didn't help at all against the cyclops boss in the dungeon. She just walked around watching us fight.
I understand that it would slow down battle but so does going into a menu to heal.
I hope as the game progresses there are bit better rewards. So far all I get are some animal parts that can be used to upgrade gear and no weapon loot and only one metal boot after about 6 hours of play. I did get 100,000 gold from one of the notice board quests.
I had some really good starting armor in my item storage and fully upgraded its the best thing I've gotten even in Gran Soren, which sucks because I spent 60k on armour that was worse just to end up selling it. In gran soren more armor popped up in my item storage which was odd, it gave my main pawn some good mage clothes though.
I've also found one fast travel stone but it says it's one-time use so I'm saving it. I'd hate to keep running back and forth everywhere.
Finally, this game has random loot and very quickly respawning mobs. The former has already made me lose some good loot, the latter means really annoying wolf/ bandits/ goblin fights. It's cool that goblins change positions and camps at night but fighting them, in general, is bad.
Overall, I like the game now and it's caught my attention and made me play it more than I've played nioh. Let's hope for a dragon's dogma 2.
Yeah, the game throws too many cyclops at the player. I've beat 10 now. The Chimera too keeps respawning at the same place. I stumbled upon a dragon and it kicked my ass even though I'm level 23. I found the weak point on its chest but it still takes little damage, at best I only damaged 20% of just one health bar out of 6 health bars. So shit. I need new weapons, but Gran Soren isn't selling new shit and I have looted most places in the game and they don't have good shit.
I haven't. I've actually just been exploring the world. Looking at the world map, I've covered about 80% of it. There are some woods with a freaky old woman that I haven't gone to yet because I did that on my first try of the game. I just went back to Gran Soren and got the everfall quest but haven't started it.
things didn't pan out for getting DLC weapons. I got sidetracked and explored the north of Gran Soren because I was tired of looking for Jaspar and he didn't spawn.
I switched to the assassin class. The bow is somewhat useful but the double jump and rolling are better than the fighter, and I kept most of my armor and can still use swords.
I killed more trash mobs until I stumbled upon Soulflayer Canyon. The dungeons in DD can be linear but they tend to have good traps, bosses, and atmosphere. Putting a cyclops on the bridge with the threat of instant death from falling is different from the usual forest encounter.
The mine near gran Soren was my first encounter with an ogre. They're pretty much a smaller more agile cyclops that can block. This was one of the better dungeons just due to the variety of standing on the plates to activate different cages.
I made it to an encampment north where the dragon is near according to one of my pawns. The guy with a store had good new weapons and armor.
There was a cool flying wizard that summoned the undead. I've been looking more closely into what abilities other pawns have before I get them. I got a sorcerer that has a meteor spell. This shit pretty much kills cyclops, chimera, and the wizard but for whatever reason the pawn always takes his time before using it, usually waiting till the enemy is almost dead.
Why don't enemies interact with each other and the world around them?
I'm playing this completely offline. The pawns are still dumb, one fell off a cliff and needed help so I jumped off the cliff and died losing a good amount of progress.
Anyway, I found the fort of women. When I made it to the top, their leader immediately attacked me so I massacred all of them. The guy at the great wall encampment didn't allow me to withdraw items so I couldn't check if I had anything to fool them as my pawn recommended.
I eventually made it to the Catacombs, another good dungeon that lead me directly back to Gran Soren. The game might lack easy fast travel, but there are shortcuts here and there. I went to the DLC shop because I have 350k gold and all the DLC items are worse than what I currently have, so I have money to do whatever with.
The shitty Jasper quest doesn't spawn Jasper until you wait outside Gran Soren for like 5 minutes. This is really annoying in general because both monsters and NPCs will spawn right in your face when you don't expect it. The faggot even asked for 30k gold to help him.
With this done, the rest of the dozen quests I have are to go here and kill x enemy for money and XP which I don't need nor will I trek to those places and beat on trash mobs since I'm level 33. I'm just gonna move on with the main quest of everfall.
Quest design and the open world isn't very good in this game just due to how they don't even interact with each other.
Remember how I said I went to the water gods alter and cleared it minus one locked room? Said Locked rooms key was inside a cyclops that I previously beat only this time it spawned with the key only because of the quest.
I returned to maul's bandits and he gives me two quests and I can only do one: slay the female bandits in the north or confront a deserter. The thing is, I already slayed the female bandits and their leader but maul doesn't recognize it at all.
It would've been much better if the game was more open and had extra dialogues/rewards for doing things ahead of time instead of locking them and spawning them per quest basis. Iirc risen did this much better.
On the topic of random scenes. I advanced enough that the griffon appeared as I was leaving gran soren and interrupted some soldiers defending their carriage from goblins. Why doesn't this happen more?
Defeated the drake. Fought the Griffin until it fled to a far tower. I thought my comrades would lead me there as they led me to the first encounter, but they just walk to Gran Soren and teleport away.
At this point, the game has truly stretched its enemy variety thin. The golems I saw in the woods are here in the pass to the tower, and they have the exact same movesets as cyclops except they're made out of rock and they only get harmed in the specific gems around their body. I really do not like this specific design of a monster taking most of the damage on very small gems on the body while the rest of the body receives only 10% or 0% damage.
It works in Shadow of the Colossus because the Colossi there are much much larger than the monsters here. Here, you get stupid things like trying to hit a drake's chest that is practically on the ground meaning most of my dagger hits fail to hit the actual gem and instead just register as a chest hit. Even worse is the golem who has a gem on the palm of his hand and can't be harmed anywhere else on his body, so you have to try to hit that ridiculously small target with a sword or dagger while it's flailing all around. Mounting the monster doesn't even make it easier. How disappointing to cast a meteor and multiple crashes down on your opponent just to do zero damage because it hit its back and not its palm or knee gem?
I wish it had a far better UI. Please give me a list of everything I've crafted so I don't have to sift through my materials/tools to find specific items to then combine with others for crafting. Give me a trash can to put everything I don't want.
Really early on I had no clue what the points meant because the game doesn't explain but it became apparent as it went up new moves became available. I've now maxed out assassin and fighter and I'm playing sorcerer at level 44.
It's rather different. You have to press r1 + x square, triangle, or circle and keep on holding r1 to target a specific person or group and then let go of the spell to work. Too bad there was no tutorial but it's rather easy and quite shitty that the pawns don't attack more often because it's quite powerful.
I'm pretty much working up to get bolide & fulmination since those kill the shit out of monsters when I picked pawns using them.
My pawn now is a max mage but I don't want to switch and lose the healing spells. Full sorcerer party.
I got taken to jail for dumb shit. I stood in front of the guard in the castle at night and the screen turned black and I'm in prison. I was only there to do a quest for an important person.
I sure love the sorcerer but it has one grave flaw. You can't manually lock on. It is really annoying when you want to target a spider in front of you, or a Griffon above you, or ward on a tree and the game just won't do so with its auto lock.
Other than that the vocation is great and really opens up when you get some spells rolling in. Fuck, if only the pawns were as competent as I am. Pull back, let the tank fight, and cast bolide or fulmination.
It also hit me that V from Devil May Cry 5 could easily fit into the game with proper summons. Capcom handled the controls and moveset slightly better in DMC5 by giving manual lock-on, greater moveset, and allowing you to choose to make your familiars auto attack on the fly with better ai than the pawns.
The Griffin is also pretty great as a random encounter. So far, it's definitely been the best creature of the game next to the chimera because it doesn't appear as frequently and takes better use of the grappling mechanic of the game. Partners weighing it down so it doesn't fly high and it crashing down due to too much damage is always a visual treat. If they can take it a further step like monster hunter and allow you to damage its wings to the point it can't keep flying, that would be great for a sequel.
The Golem is just pure shit and turned me off from a full magic party. I went to find Selene in the woods and ended up fighting a golden. 2 sorcerers, 1 mage, and 1 strider. This shitty fight took 20 minutes because golems don't take damage anywhere else but the discs on their body and those discs are only harmed by physical attacks. Every single fucking spell was useless and did no damage while my dumbass strider pawn was just running around or not attacking. Once we destroyed all the other discs the final one, was again, under the foot of the golem so we had to wait for it to fall on its knees to actually damage it. We had to do this twice because the pawns don't even attack immediately they see the weakness.
This just forced me to be picky and look up a bit more about pawn inclination. Pretty much I'm only picking certain pawns that attack on sight or use items frequently. It's not perfect but their performance is better than previous pawns.
Pawns knowing info about quests have been mostly useless. They primarily give vague info or directions on quests that have quest markers so they're less useful for those quests.
The only quest its been useful is Valmiro leaving the village and my pawn telling me what type of meat he wants and where I can buy pendants for him.
On a more positive note, nights and fast travel are pretty great. It's dark as it should be, you have a lantern instead of carrying a torch on your off-hand, reducing your combat potential like every other RPG. Goblins/wolves/bandits spawn day and night but in most areas undead, skeletons, wights and phantoms spawn instead of changing how you approach those areas. Phantoms were annoying when I didn't use magic because pawns suck and can't use their spells right but as a magic user they're feasible to fight now.
I beat Grigori, it was a bit easy after all the QTE and scripted stuff were done. I was getting pissed that my pawns kept falling to their deaths so I reloaded the save a bunch which didn't matter anyway because she materialized for the finale.
Arguably the gayest thing in a video game happened. Grigori gave me a choice between saving a person or fighting, obviously, I chose to fight. Do you know who the game chose as my closest person? Valmero. What would even lead the game to believe my character liked valmero? The game was ready to make my arisen kiss him and he now follows me.
Anyway, the ending is climatic, to say the least.
After maxing vocation for Sorcerer, I switched back to Assassin just due to greater control and to rack up level-up points to later switch back to Sorcerer and get the rest of the spells I wanted. oh, boy was that a bad idea.
So BBI is based on 8 different dungeons inside a big dungeon that is progressively unlocked through keys, correct?
So far, the first two floors have been regular enemies until the grim reaper appeared out of nowhere with 8 health bars, made my partners go to sleep fought for like 20 seconds, and disappeared.
I guess this is the "hardcore" Dragon's Dogma because I'm facing health sponge versions of just about every other base game enemy but with weaker versions of those enemies sprinkled here and there. The same thing has happened in the base game where nearly all enemies I've encountered have been buffed. Bigger goblins, and more drakes are around now, the wolves have been changed to fire-spitting hellhounds, and harpies have become gargoyles.
BBI fucked me when I was inside and saw the cyclops chained to a wall, I went into a cave and came out and an undead dragon spawned with 9 health bars that I barely did any damage to, so I fled. Too bad there was an "Elder Ogre" who is the same as a regular ogre but with 8 health bars and the twist of it going after male foes instead of females like regular ogres. This thing killed me so many times, it was embarrassing.
The problem is that I have two sorcerer pawns and they're too dumb to use their OP magics even when I provide them with an opening. I really fucking hate when a pawn is casting a spell and just stops to start walking around the enemy. So the fight took a good 20 minutes or so, I left BBI, and just switched to a Sorcerer myself. In Gransys we came across a Drake and we killed the shit out of it, by me hitting it with too many spells for it to handle. Gicel is very effective against its heart.
Been in BBI. So far the reaper, cursed dragon, super dogs, the golden & silver skeleton knights, sorcerer goblins, the guardian with a hammer, the dark soul's chest, and giant skeletons are the hardest enemies that magic doesn't roll over.
The most interesting fight was the holy sorcerer that revives a cursed dragon. I killed it in under 5 minutes, I guess it wasn't expecting to fight two sorcerers.
Pretty much I neglected high maelstrom because it seemed weak when I used the regular versions or when my pawns used it. Here, I and my pawn's dual high maelstrom fucked the sorcerer. Like 3 health bars each one. Too bad he'd disappear & revive the dragon when he took too much damage or else it would've been a shorter fight.
The same spell fucked the skeleton knights too.
I tried out exequy because I had no clue how this spell really worked. I used it on a savage cyclops and it took out 7 health bars in one hit. It's a really powerful spell but that took 1 minute and 40 seconds to cast. It leads to a strength of dragon's dogma being that elevation matters in combat.
The giant one-eyed ball was terrible. Overall BBI has had greater enemy variety than the base game.
I fought the hydra after leaving BBI and it easily died. Wasn't as strong as what I'd been fighting.
Gained about 8 levels so far, and now level 68.
I have the fiend luring incense and just remembered I did when going through my storage. I already went through the area so I wasn't sure if I should backtrack and use it again. The downside is that I don't even know what a fiend is because Dragon's Dogma doesn't show the name of enemies.
I guess I should go back and fight the Gore Cyclops because it's chained on a wall and I can just wait for Exequy to finish. The reason I originally ran away was the cursed dragon coming randomly. One cool thing I found in Everfall was a Cyclops attacking a Golem and doing damage, pretty cool.
One huge missed opportunity is the new enemies not making it into the base game.
Wiki says you have to kill 300 of these giant skeletons to get 3 Stars for a pawn. Capcom must've been smoking something if they believe anyone has that patience.
Just completed the game and I have mixed feelings. Bitterblack Isle is an overall disappointment. Nothing is worse than getting a weapon that does nearly triple the damage of your last and it still barely harms a shitty drake. Everything in Bitterblack Isle is done for more and more farming, something I had less patience for. I could've just beat the game 15 hours ago if I knew this was what was awaiting me.
Seriously, the final boss who is a god dies to two hits from my bow yet a shitty drake takes more than 100 hits just to take half of one of his 8 health bars. At that point, I knew I wasn't gonna do this shit twice just to run to daimon and fight him again while fighting almost all the exact same enemies.
I have no drive to replay the game anytime soon because I already fought every single enemy, did every by-the-numbers quest and tried every single class, and maxed nearly all of them within the same playthrough.
Dragon's Dogma can be enjoyable but it has a lot of problems, and I certainly didn't like how the later portions of the game boiled down to farming the Everfall or Bitterblack Isle for random loot drops and high-health enemy sponges. So please Capcom, make a worthwhile sequel sometime.