Review: Dragon’s Dogma

Dragon’s Dogma – Where to begin? From the start of the game, well at the beginning cutscene for me, I had to put the controller down and go outside of my room for something, so I put it on pause and it skipped it, so when I came back and unpaused it, it started me off in some pre-made party fighting a Chimera, I myself had no idea what was going on. After you kill it, it kicks off to the real story, you create your Character and starts you off with a cutscene, then you fight…well, a big ass Dragon, and it kills you, you can’t win. Another cutscene plays, you’re on the beach, dying and bloody, the dragon digs his talon in your chest and steals your heart and, somehow, you’re still alive, because of this, you are now ‘The Arisen’. Basically this game in my opinion, is a mixture of Monster Hunter meets Dragon’s Age, it doesn’t have the amount of difficulty that Monster Hunter has, but it’s still pretty damn hard.

I didn’t get that far in the game, I got to Gran Soren and did the quest to liberate the Castle from the goblins. I really liked the game but just haven’t had the time to play it more. Throughout the game you just do quests, and from what I’ve seen, the quests objectives, are far, far away. It takes a lot of traveling to get to the quest objectives, and along the way, you may encounter some big enemies, Chimeras, Giant Cyclops’, Giant Armored Cyclops’, Regular Cyclops (that enrage when low on HP and go crazy if you have a female in your party, they may not be giant, but they’re fast and still hurt) and even a Dragon (if you come across one, DON’T fight, just RUN…I learned from experience).

This game has a vocation system, you have your basic vocations; Fighter (Sword and Shield), Strider (Dual Wields Daggers and uses a Bow), and Mage (Buffs, Heals, Damage). Advanced Vocations; Warrior (2 Handed Weapons), Archer (Dual Wields Daggers and uses a Long Bow), and Sorcerer (very strong damaging spells, but no heals). Then, you have your Hybrid Vocations; Assassin (Can either use a Sword or Dual Wield Daggers, and use a Shield or Bow), Mystic Knight (Uses a Sword, Mace or Staff and can use a Magick Shield. Deals damaging spells, and can buff the whole party), and Magick Archer (Can Dual Wield Daggers or use a Staff, and uses a Magick Bow, they can enchant their Bow to make sure they always hit their mark, they can also enchant their Daggers, making them deadly far away, and up close.

As you kill monsters you get Discipline Points, which are used to learn new skills. You also get Pawns, AI controlled players in your party. As your Main Pawn (which you can create once you get to the first Rift Stone) levels up, they become smarter in battle, and more aware of their surroundings when you revisit areas you’ve already been in. As you play, you’ll notice that it changes from Day to Night, you can rest at the Inn and change to whatever time of day you want, but when outside of the towns at night, stronger monsters spawn, mainly from what I saw was Undead but they didn’t give me too much trouble, but I also ran into a couple Cyclops that I just couldn’t beat. Also a tip, always save, all the time, trust me; when you see a giant monster and try to take it on, before you start the fight, save, before going into a dungeon or cave of some sort, save. It’s also important to know that each monster has a weakness, Goblins/Wolves/Harpies/Undead don’t like Fire, Lizards get weakened when you cut off its tail, Cyclops are weak when it comes to getting hit in the eye, when fighting a Chimera, cut off its Snake tail, then climb on its back and kill the Goat head, that’s mainly what I’ve fought so far, there’s without a doubt many, many more monsters I’m sure. If you haven’t played this game yet, I’d definitely recommend it.