I feel like I wrote off Dragon’s Dogma for many years. I recall seeing mentions of it many years back around the switch release and Christmas sales of the game with people recommending it off the great gameplay, systems and world attached to it. That said, the presentation and a few gameplay videos didn’t do much on selling me the game and what makes it so special as an action RPG, a style with many games that didn’t really work for me despite liking the genre. Additionally, titles like Skyrim and the recent Fallout entries didn’t really click for me either and considering those games were direct influences and mentioned constantly in conjunction with Dragon’s Dogma in recommendations, I kept putting it off until a few months back when it came to playstation plus, and the footage of the sequel did look intriguing so why not. I really wished I got into Dragon’s Dogma sooner because damn...

The gameplay is so enthralling, and the influence of various games like Devil May Cry and Monster Hunter feel so familiar in the moment to moment action while still being its own thing. The starting vocations are pretty standard fare but open up to even more interesting advanced classes like a mystic knight and magick archer that mix two divergent classes in a shockingly satisfying way. I chose strider as my starter because of my love for quick, high octane action with a lot of movement variety, and found myself falling so comfortably into this role for a long while. It’s so seamless going back and forth between being a mid/long distance archer and then facing off in the frontlines in melee with daggers. Also adding to the experience are passive abilities within the class and others that crafted my unique build and kept progression interesting throughout the game; the other vocations feel just as exciting, fleshed out and varied from one another while still being integral to encounters. Even with my time being focused in melee combat through the strider/fighter/assassin vocations, I dedicated some time to being a sorcerer to set up a potential build for the magick archer and mystic knight and it was still such a blast being in this alternate role wiping off foes with miasma, fire and necromancy. What’s here is unique and satisfying in a way I struggle to find in many other action RPGs and it’s no surprise it comes from the mind of Hideaki Itsuno and the other developers at Capcom that worked on DMC and other titles that make the action feel in sync with the RPG mechanics without one or the other being siloed.

What further sets Dragon’s Dogma apart from many others in the genre is how interactive it is with giant monster encounters and how open it is to player freedom. The prologue smartly showcases the mechanical depth of these encounters in a final battle with the chimera. The chimera can be scaled by grabbing and climbing onto it, and specific parts can be damaged or torn off to weaken it such as the snake tail to stop poisonous attacks or the goat head to stop spell casting. Additionally, the chimera has elemental weaknesses that can be exploited by the mage/sorcerer or by picking up and throwing nearby explosive objects; other actions can be part of your play like dousing it in oil and setting it on fire, kicking it off edges if present, freezing it, stunning it, and various other means. These aspects carry on to other giant creatures like the cyclops, drakes, and griffins and they make battles feel very dynamic and fresh like Monster Hunter does with its own giant monsters. Scaling a cyclops blew me away the first time I did it because this kind of option was supported in fighting big enemies rather than being restricted to one part to whittle down or even having to ‘stagger’ them before pulling off cool moves, not to mention actually seeing enemies react to getting hit in specific ways rather than getting no feedback at all. It just feels so good having these avenues available and consciously being thought of by the developers.

The pawn system is possibly the most enticing hook of Dragon’s Dogma when first experiencing this game. It’s strange in a similar manner to the social, online features and interactions ushered in the Souls games through notes and bloodstains left in specific areas to give context to the space. The pawns are similarly a creation of other players with their knowledge and decisions wrapped up in them. They make encounters and excursions even more interesting based on not just their class/stats but also the quirks and characteristics they inherit from their Arisen such as staying long distance in battles or even confronting foes head on. It is fascinating how much influence the pawns take from the Arisen’s lived experience and the battles and quests checked off in the journey, and how remarkable the AI acts for the most part in tackling creatures or leading you to certain locations in quests based on their previous knowledge. It’s a job well done seeing my main pawn stand down against the enemy aggressively and call out to target specific parts as they took away from my previous actions of climbing and attacking a past creature.

I was also vastly surprised with how much I actually enjoyed the mechanic of weight and encumbrance for my character. The amount of stuff you carry on your person matters here and character creation even adapts this through the height and weight you select. The encumbrance of your character affects how fast they move and their stamina recovery rate. You can change this through running back to storage at save points to dump items, but also allocating materials between pawns. as well. It’s a similar play to Resident Evil in managing inventory and weighing decisions of whether you want to bring specific materials with you or not and how it affects your own character's movement in the world and battles, though a bit less tense than classic Resident Evil’s inventory management.

The open world of Gransys and its cities and dungeons are fulfilling with getting the sense of adventure across. Though unfortunately very few, the cities of Cassardis and Gran Soren feel alive and offer a good amount of rewards and secrets through exploring and platforming. This extends outside the cities and into the open fields, forests, and caverns in Gransys with a small number of landmarks overall but still impactful in their own right. The few caves in the game feel wholly unique from one another and involve different ways of traversing them with specific creatures appearing; the Soulflayer Canyon plays on verticality very well and pairs a cyclops on a small rock crossing over a cascading ravine that could mean you or your pawn's death or even the creature’s by knocking them off of it. Past this encounter are several pathways through water sliding that lead to valuable loot, rewarding you for that earlier encounter while also leading back to the main path of the cave to continue traveling. While it would have been cool to have some element of environmental storytelling in some spaces to fill in the emptiness, what’s here feels rewarding and meaningful with explicit choices that showcase the fun level design of specific caverns and forests and have benefits to clearing them out and even returning with chests respawning after a time.

I touched on tension earlier when talking about encumbrance and management, but this comes into play heavily in traversing the open world and its day-night cycle that shakes up the exploration. There’s various paths to follow that lead to major places around the region and they lead you there in mostly the safest way possibly, even the pawns themselves state that straying from the designated path could spell danger and this is very real for quite awhile in the game. Gransys isn’t overwhelming large, but the slow traversal and lack of fast travel options until later through portcrtystals gets that feeling across, next to the enemies you encounter by going off the beaten path, especially at night. Encountering an ogre during the nighttime in the open fields as a low level Arisen scared the shit out of me as I spammed for my pawns to run away with me, but I eventually came to love nighttime traversal as I got stronger and faced down with what awaits during the night, even with the pitch black landscape setting the ominous atmosphere.

The quests are the only aspect where I take some issue. Most of them, including the main quests, are pretty simple from a gameplay perspective and the stories and characters within are pretty alright and do their thing for the runtime, even with their signature speech style. The affinity system is similarly underdeveloped and obscure that I almost forgot about it until a pivotal story moment where the main villain steals a special person to the Arisen that surprised me with what the game chose for me since I didn't care much for anyone. The main traversal can be an tedious for some since the only way of getting across Gransys is by foot outside of placing portcrystals in specific spots for fast travel and using a limited number of ferry stones (or just using the eternal ferry stone in this version of the game), but I didn’t mind this much over other aspects. The half-baked nature could also be applied to the world and enemy variety, though I do feel what they have in the final game, with even more in the post game and Bitterblack Isle expansion, still manages to be fulfilling and interesting unlike the majority of the quest design and characters. I can’t fault these issues too much on the developers as these probably came from development and budgetary constraints and the higher ups wanting to get the game out there.

Even with the complaints, I do appreciate how the main quests don’t railroad you towards a specific path or limit exploring certain areas until you get to a specific quest that adds context and availability outside of one or two “end game” areas that make sense. The forgery mechanic comes into play in great and hilarious ways with certain quests such as being tasked with recovering a special ring for the Duke and giving back fake copy to keep the real one for stat bonuses; the developers even go out of their way to construct scenes and situations for this like with the aforementioned one showing the king try to open a chest with the fake ring but failing to do so, giving you the opportunity to sneak in the castle at night and take the reward in the chest yourself with the real ring in hand. Also thankfully, there are not a huge amount of side quests here and they are even missable too though specific choices you make during the game, something I feel many games and open world games in particular today shy away from for the player to know everything and all in the first play through. Even with the rote quests, they still offer an element of fun in the freedom found in some and the interesting lore that comes from completing the quests that further unravel the mysteries surrounding pawns, Gransys, the Arisen and many other details in the world. The Bitterblack Isle and postgame complements the lore of Dragon’s Dogma so well, but I’m still progressing through it as I write this.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 looks to be my most anticipated game releasing this year and in two months I cannot wait to unravel what the new world has in store. Even with this bigger budget and possibly even more ambitious sequel coming out, the original Dragon’s Dogma still and will continue to hold a special place for me in these months leading up to and beyond the sequel’s release in future new game plus runs and combing through more of the expansion. Maybe Action RPGs aren’t done with surprising me in great ways.