The buildup to this game was immense. I had seen it hyped on the internet--the awesome game where you get to climb your enemies and kill them. A game for fans of Skyrim, Dragon Age, and Dark Souls. And then it went on sale for less than $5. "Surely this is my lucky day" I thought to myself as I purchased the game. I was wrong.
After 5 grueling hours* I finally uninstalled the game. The experience of playing Dragon's Dogma was something in between a chore and a torture session. I finally had the revelation that if I kept wanting to look up other things while playing the game, this was a good sign that I wasn't enjoying the game and needed to stop playing it.
What are the problems with Dragon's Dogma? They are almost too many to count. Let us start by giving an overview of the game. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is an action-RPG in a high fantasy, Medieval Europe-style setting featuring real-time combat and exploration. While Dark Souls and Skyrim might seem like obvious comparisons (and rivals), the gameplay is actually most similar to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (not a good sign). You have a quick attack, a heavy attack, and a shield or parry; you can also use special attacks by holding a bumper and pressing one of the buttons, similar to the spells in Kingdoms of Amalur. These specials are unlockable and can be switched out. You have typical RPG elements such as gear and consumables, as well as a stamina bar that is depleted by running and using special attacks. Gameplay on the meta scale is typical RPG fare--explore, complete quests, gain experience, upgrade abilities and gear. The main difference between the gameplay in Dragon's Dogma and another action RPG (say, Amalur) is that you can recruit up to three "Pawns"--members of a humanoid race who basically function as AI party members--think the Companions from Skyrim, but with less personality. You can level these Pawns, give them equipment, etc. There's also an online component that involves using Pawns created by other players; I did not use this so I can't comment on it.
What follows is a long laundry list of the problems with this game.
1) Combat is boring and repetitive. It lacks the cerebral quality of Devil May Cry, the lightning-fast pace of Devil May Cry 3, the power fantasy of Blades of Time, the masochism fantasy of Dark Souls, the open-ended nature of Skyrim. Other than the fact that you can climb on top of large enemies, there is nothing that makes this combat feel unique or interesting or fun. Let's try to break down why it feels this way.
a. No combos: Devil May Cry had a relatively simple moveset. In fact, the simplicity of the moveset kept me from initially wanting to play the game--why bother with a game that felt like a stripped-down version of Return of the King. I'm glad I stuck with this game, as the simplicity was deceptive and the game actually has a lot of depth. Part of this involves the fact that many of the attacks can be chained together to create combos that you can use to stunlock or juggle the enemies. For example, you can use a sword attack to launch an enemy into the air, then keep them suspended in the air by shooting at them with your pistols (yes, this is not how the laws of physics work, but who cares?). Another good example of combos in hack-n-slash games is Lord of the Rings. The combos in this game were more like fighting game combos, where a specific set of inputs would result in a more powerful attack. For example, quick attack > quick attack > heavy attack was a combo called "Orc Hewer," and the final heavy attack in the sequence would be more powerful than a regular attack (and would also fill up your style meter, or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Dragon's Dogma doesn't have any kind of combos, whether scripted or emergent. In my five hours of gaming, I was never able to stunlock enemies. I never saw a good reason to use the quick attack over the heavy attack or vice-versa. Other than one special attack that was useful for striking flying enemies, none of the special attacks were particularly useful, and more importantly, none of them could be easily chained into another attack for a devastating combo. This is the big issue. Devil May Cry and DMC3 had special attacks of varying quality, but they could be chained into a larger sequence that would allow you to deal a lot of damage and sometimes stunlock your opponent (for example, Stinger into basic attack, Stinger into shotgun into Stinger, or something). Every attack in Dragon's Dogma feels self contained, and if there's no internal logic to how I need to string these attacks together, then the combat feels like mindless button mashing.
b. Simplistic combat: one of the fun elements of RPGs is the ability to use a variety of different tactics against the enemy. An isometric RPG like Dragon Age: Origins or Divinity: Original Sin 2 allows you to use a variety of tactics against an enemy by letting you control multiple characters with different abilities. Similarly, a game like Skyrim allows you to give your single character multiple abilities and places that character in a fairly dynamic game world where you can finish off your opponents in multiple ways--you can shoot them with arrows, burn them with a flame spell, smash them with an axe, or summon a dragon to kill them. Dragon's Dogma, on the other hand, does not let you have multiple abilities with one character. It does let you have party members or pawns, however, these pawns have the most basic AI in the world and can't be scripted like in Dragon Age Origins (or even like in Tales of Symphonia, an old Gamecube game). Want to set one Pawn as a healer, one as a tank, and one as an archer? Tough luck. Your pawns will just run around aimlessly. Sure, you can use the D-pad to issue them commands, but these commands are vague things like "Go," and your pawns are even less responsive than your squad in Gears of War.
c. No dodge roll or decent parry: OK, so the pawns aren't helpful and the attack options are basic, but it could still be fun, right? Well, there is no dodge roll or decent parry option. This makes the fights far less fun, as instead of having to alternate attacks with dodges or parries, your options are reduced to just attacks. Yes, there is a shield (and I presume a parry if you have nothing in your shield hand), but it is so useless and unresponsive that I never used it.
d. Enemy movesets aren't particularly interesting. Don't expect something like Dark Souls, where you need to use pattern recognition.
e. Enemy vulnerabilities aren't particularly useful. "Goblins are weak to fire," my pawns shout as I'm easily wasting every goblin in sight with just my quick attacks.
f. I got hit with an enemy arrows and was not just staggered, but literally flung backwards at least five feet. This was the exact point that I decided to uninstall the game.
g. Enemy levels aren't telegraphed, which means you can end up fighting enemies who are massively overpowered, yet you don't realize it. Part of this is due to the fact that overpowered enemies are spongey and healing is easy--I spent a good 5-10 minutes fighting a troll and only took off about 10% of his HP. Since there are no numbers on the screen to give me a good grasp of how powerful I am vis-a-vis how powerful the enemy is, I end up getting stuck in combats with overpowered enemies. Am I doing well? Don't know.
2) The storyline is utterly drab and boring. You are placed in the unenviable position of playing a protagonist who is both silent and also supposed to be involved in the story in some deep way. The gist of the story is that the Dragon is bad, and you're the chosen one and have to defeat him, and somehow the game takes something generic but workable and twists it into something utterly boring. I did not care about any of the characters I met in this game...
3) ...least of all the Pawns. I've already talked about the useless AI, but one thing I didn't mention is that the Pawns never shut up. Nor is their chatter particularly witty or interesting--they tell you the most basic facts about the game. "You can die from falling off a cliff." Thanks Sherlock, I could have never figured that out on my own. This banal chatter never ends. "Goblins are weak to fire," shouts Pawn McBorington as I run across a troupe of Goblins for the 25th time.
4) There is no fast travel in this game. Nor are there any horses to ride. Nor are the environments particularly interesting to walk around. Nor can you just run everywhere, because you have a stupid stamina system that locks you into walking at a snail's pace everywhere. Have fun "exploring" this dull world that doesn't have anything interesting to do in it.
5) Every menu in this game is awful. There are separate menus for items and equipment (why?), meaning you can't equip, say, a sword from the items menu (why?). Not since I played Solasta: Crown of the Magister have I encountered such bad menus in a game. Navigating the map is absolutely dreadful, as you can't just move your cursor around like in Skyrim or, I don't know, every game ever? Setting quests as active and finding them on the map is unnecessarily obtuse, and I don't know how many times I tried to find a quest on the map only to unintentionally switch the map from local to global view and somehow lose the quest marker.
6) The mini-map is always oriented north, unlike the mini-map from every game ever, which will have North marked, but orient itself to follow the direction the player is facing.
7) The dialog consists of terrible pseudo-King James English that isn't even correct. Whomever translated this didn't understand how to use the word "aught." Just putting "aught" and "tis" in the game does not make it sound elegant if you don't understand how to use the words.
In conclusion, this game felt like a chore to play, and if you're playing a game and thinking to yourself "This is boring and I hate it and I want to quit and read bad reviews of the game," then it's time to play a different game. Fortunately, I only spent $5 on this game, so I didn't lose too much.
To be completely fair, the music is pretty good, though oddly jazzy for a high fantasy setting. Listen to the soundtrack, but skip the game.
After 5 grueling hours* I finally uninstalled the game. The experience of playing Dragon's Dogma was something in between a chore and a torture session. I finally had the revelation that if I kept wanting to look up other things while playing the game, this was a good sign that I wasn't enjoying the game and needed to stop playing it.
What are the problems with Dragon's Dogma? They are almost too many to count. Let us start by giving an overview of the game. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is an action-RPG in a high fantasy, Medieval Europe-style setting featuring real-time combat and exploration. While Dark Souls and Skyrim might seem like obvious comparisons (and rivals), the gameplay is actually most similar to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (not a good sign). You have a quick attack, a heavy attack, and a shield or parry; you can also use special attacks by holding a bumper and pressing one of the buttons, similar to the spells in Kingdoms of Amalur. These specials are unlockable and can be switched out. You have typical RPG elements such as gear and consumables, as well as a stamina bar that is depleted by running and using special attacks. Gameplay on the meta scale is typical RPG fare--explore, complete quests, gain experience, upgrade abilities and gear. The main difference between the gameplay in Dragon's Dogma and another action RPG (say, Amalur) is that you can recruit up to three "Pawns"--members of a humanoid race who basically function as AI party members--think the Companions from Skyrim, but with less personality. You can level these Pawns, give them equipment, etc. There's also an online component that involves using Pawns created by other players; I did not use this so I can't comment on it.
What follows is a long laundry list of the problems with this game.
1) Combat is boring and repetitive. It lacks the cerebral quality of Devil May Cry, the lightning-fast pace of Devil May Cry 3, the power fantasy of Blades of Time, the masochism fantasy of Dark Souls, the open-ended nature of Skyrim. Other than the fact that you can climb on top of large enemies, there is nothing that makes this combat feel unique or interesting or fun. Let's try to break down why it feels this way.
a. No combos: Devil May Cry had a relatively simple moveset. In fact, the simplicity of the moveset kept me from initially wanting to play the game--why bother with a game that felt like a stripped-down version of Return of the King. I'm glad I stuck with this game, as the simplicity was deceptive and the game actually has a lot of depth. Part of this involves the fact that many of the attacks can be chained together to create combos that you can use to stunlock or juggle the enemies. For example, you can use a sword attack to launch an enemy into the air, then keep them suspended in the air by shooting at them with your pistols (yes, this is not how the laws of physics work, but who cares?). Another good example of combos in hack-n-slash games is Lord of the Rings. The combos in this game were more like fighting game combos, where a specific set of inputs would result in a more powerful attack. For example, quick attack > quick attack > heavy attack was a combo called "Orc Hewer," and the final heavy attack in the sequence would be more powerful than a regular attack (and would also fill up your style meter, or a reasonable facsimile thereof). Dragon's Dogma doesn't have any kind of combos, whether scripted or emergent. In my five hours of gaming, I was never able to stunlock enemies. I never saw a good reason to use the quick attack over the heavy attack or vice-versa. Other than one special attack that was useful for striking flying enemies, none of the special attacks were particularly useful, and more importantly, none of them could be easily chained into another attack for a devastating combo. This is the big issue. Devil May Cry and DMC3 had special attacks of varying quality, but they could be chained into a larger sequence that would allow you to deal a lot of damage and sometimes stunlock your opponent (for example, Stinger into basic attack, Stinger into shotgun into Stinger, or something). Every attack in Dragon's Dogma feels self contained, and if there's no internal logic to how I need to string these attacks together, then the combat feels like mindless button mashing.
b. Simplistic combat: one of the fun elements of RPGs is the ability to use a variety of different tactics against the enemy. An isometric RPG like Dragon Age: Origins or Divinity: Original Sin 2 allows you to use a variety of tactics against an enemy by letting you control multiple characters with different abilities. Similarly, a game like Skyrim allows you to give your single character multiple abilities and places that character in a fairly dynamic game world where you can finish off your opponents in multiple ways--you can shoot them with arrows, burn them with a flame spell, smash them with an axe, or summon a dragon to kill them. Dragon's Dogma, on the other hand, does not let you have multiple abilities with one character. It does let you have party members or pawns, however, these pawns have the most basic AI in the world and can't be scripted like in Dragon Age Origins (or even like in Tales of Symphonia, an old Gamecube game). Want to set one Pawn as a healer, one as a tank, and one as an archer? Tough luck. Your pawns will just run around aimlessly. Sure, you can use the D-pad to issue them commands, but these commands are vague things like "Go," and your pawns are even less responsive than your squad in Gears of War.
c. No dodge roll or decent parry: OK, so the pawns aren't helpful and the attack options are basic, but it could still be fun, right? Well, there is no dodge roll or decent parry option. This makes the fights far less fun, as instead of having to alternate attacks with dodges or parries, your options are reduced to just attacks. Yes, there is a shield (and I presume a parry if you have nothing in your shield hand), but it is so useless and unresponsive that I never used it.
d. Enemy movesets aren't particularly interesting. Don't expect something like Dark Souls, where you need to use pattern recognition.
e. Enemy vulnerabilities aren't particularly useful. "Goblins are weak to fire," my pawns shout as I'm easily wasting every goblin in sight with just my quick attacks.
f. I got hit with an enemy arrows and was not just staggered, but literally flung backwards at least five feet. This was the exact point that I decided to uninstall the game.
g. Enemy levels aren't telegraphed, which means you can end up fighting enemies who are massively overpowered, yet you don't realize it. Part of this is due to the fact that overpowered enemies are spongey and healing is easy--I spent a good 5-10 minutes fighting a troll and only took off about 10% of his HP. Since there are no numbers on the screen to give me a good grasp of how powerful I am vis-a-vis how powerful the enemy is, I end up getting stuck in combats with overpowered enemies. Am I doing well? Don't know.
2) The storyline is utterly drab and boring. You are placed in the unenviable position of playing a protagonist who is both silent and also supposed to be involved in the story in some deep way. The gist of the story is that the Dragon is bad, and you're the chosen one and have to defeat him, and somehow the game takes something generic but workable and twists it into something utterly boring. I did not care about any of the characters I met in this game...
3) ...least of all the Pawns. I've already talked about the useless AI, but one thing I didn't mention is that the Pawns never shut up. Nor is their chatter particularly witty or interesting--they tell you the most basic facts about the game. "You can die from falling off a cliff." Thanks Sherlock, I could have never figured that out on my own. This banal chatter never ends. "Goblins are weak to fire," shouts Pawn McBorington as I run across a troupe of Goblins for the 25th time.
4) There is no fast travel in this game. Nor are there any horses to ride. Nor are the environments particularly interesting to walk around. Nor can you just run everywhere, because you have a stupid stamina system that locks you into walking at a snail's pace everywhere. Have fun "exploring" this dull world that doesn't have anything interesting to do in it.
5) Every menu in this game is awful. There are separate menus for items and equipment (why?), meaning you can't equip, say, a sword from the items menu (why?). Not since I played Solasta: Crown of the Magister have I encountered such bad menus in a game. Navigating the map is absolutely dreadful, as you can't just move your cursor around like in Skyrim or, I don't know, every game ever? Setting quests as active and finding them on the map is unnecessarily obtuse, and I don't know how many times I tried to find a quest on the map only to unintentionally switch the map from local to global view and somehow lose the quest marker.
6) The mini-map is always oriented north, unlike the mini-map from every game ever, which will have North marked, but orient itself to follow the direction the player is facing.
7) The dialog consists of terrible pseudo-King James English that isn't even correct. Whomever translated this didn't understand how to use the word "aught." Just putting "aught" and "tis" in the game does not make it sound elegant if you don't understand how to use the words.
In conclusion, this game felt like a chore to play, and if you're playing a game and thinking to yourself "This is boring and I hate it and I want to quit and read bad reviews of the game," then it's time to play a different game. Fortunately, I only spent $5 on this game, so I didn't lose too much.
To be completely fair, the music is pretty good, though oddly jazzy for a high fantasy setting. Listen to the soundtrack, but skip the game.