For me, the thing that made Dragons Dogma special was how raw it was. In a world of incredibly user-friendly high fantasy narratives and safe, padded RPG systems, this extremely unorthodox approach to design and Capcoms weird lil brand of combat behavior made for a surprisingly engaging experience (even when it kind of sucked). Something sort of accidentally brilliant, a diamond in the rough.

Things like user-sourced NPCs to populate the world and community-pooled boss fights are obviously avant garde on the network side, but I have a fondness for even the much-aligned Portcrystal system. Personalized fast travel means making decisions about where /you/ care about going and nesting in these parts of the game world. I would put Portcrystals inside tents next to merchants and it was almost like taking ownership of those places.