Games usually work best at acknowledging that less is more. Making a simple dialogue box with a scarce message will leave abstraction to fill the blanks better than the common poor staging of having a high detail 3D character lip syncing its dialogue, resulting in the usual videogame ugliness of trying to look genuine. And in games where, like Dragon’s Dogma, resources didn't seem to be plentiful, it only looks worse.
It isn't that bad that every character is the worst cosplayer of a medieval human from the robot world, everything is an excuse to go on an adventure after all. Even the initial premise, create a character, see how their heart is taken by a dragon, see the character survive, kill the dragon, is somehow totally lost before you step out in the field, not knowing the amount of hours that such a direct premise will take to move to its next obvious point.
The combat is sometimes there. In the more open areas, it can be easily ignored, no group of enemies will ever figure out what to do if you run in a straight line away from them. Perhaps the never knowing, though thankfully always teleporting, companions may get caught in their urge to kill anything on their view. Supposedly, traps are prepared on the way to catch you off guard. Realistically, these traps, already inoffensive when first encountered, are turned on their heads when noticing that the game obviously respawns the same enemy placement every time. You are the one expecting them. This is why escaping is so intentionally easy, repeating the same fights is tedious, and from a certain point they will not be worth to repeat because of any loot, experience, gold, quests or, impossible to imagine, joy for action.
Dungeons are better received since their close and tight spaces, sometimes even interesting to navigate, don't allow for such easy escapes. Instead, you can contemplate how most attacks provoke the same physical response as punching a wall and will reach to the conclusion of what Dragon's Dogma is really about. There is no force in the action, no world to adventure, no companions to unmute, no real characters freed from being quest giving robots, there are only levels to up, money to gain, equipment to upgrade and quests to complete. Just a number check to advance. Even the premise of the adventure driven by greed gets lost in the constant recollection of worthless nonsense. Finding gold is finding a treasure. Finding a pile of trash that may or may not contain gold that you don’t even know what to use for anymore is just finding a pile of trash.
The same as our main character, a moving body without a heart, just because. It is Dragon Quest 1 but longer and with the sporadic bits of charm lost. And that one was already bad.
It isn't that bad that every character is the worst cosplayer of a medieval human from the robot world, everything is an excuse to go on an adventure after all. Even the initial premise, create a character, see how their heart is taken by a dragon, see the character survive, kill the dragon, is somehow totally lost before you step out in the field, not knowing the amount of hours that such a direct premise will take to move to its next obvious point.
The combat is sometimes there. In the more open areas, it can be easily ignored, no group of enemies will ever figure out what to do if you run in a straight line away from them. Perhaps the never knowing, though thankfully always teleporting, companions may get caught in their urge to kill anything on their view. Supposedly, traps are prepared on the way to catch you off guard. Realistically, these traps, already inoffensive when first encountered, are turned on their heads when noticing that the game obviously respawns the same enemy placement every time. You are the one expecting them. This is why escaping is so intentionally easy, repeating the same fights is tedious, and from a certain point they will not be worth to repeat because of any loot, experience, gold, quests or, impossible to imagine, joy for action.
Dungeons are better received since their close and tight spaces, sometimes even interesting to navigate, don't allow for such easy escapes. Instead, you can contemplate how most attacks provoke the same physical response as punching a wall and will reach to the conclusion of what Dragon's Dogma is really about. There is no force in the action, no world to adventure, no companions to unmute, no real characters freed from being quest giving robots, there are only levels to up, money to gain, equipment to upgrade and quests to complete. Just a number check to advance. Even the premise of the adventure driven by greed gets lost in the constant recollection of worthless nonsense. Finding gold is finding a treasure. Finding a pile of trash that may or may not contain gold that you don’t even know what to use for anymore is just finding a pile of trash.
The same as our main character, a moving body without a heart, just because. It is Dragon Quest 1 but longer and with the sporadic bits of charm lost. And that one was already bad.