Dragon's Dogma

[takenoko]

So the game has been free on PSN+ for a few weeks. It's pretty fun. Not only is it Monster Hunter meets Dark Souls meets Skyrim, it's also got A LOT of interesting system ideas. There's a few annoying aspects, but for the most part the combat is rather fun. The story is a bit sparse, but it's serviceable. Hint, something interesting happens with the character you have the highest affinity with.

Battle with a cyclops AKA why Dragon's Dogma is awesome
http://www.twitch.tv/takkynoko/c/3224635

Fight with a Beholder AKA the most awesome monster design. One of the most fun fights to boot
http://www.twitch.tv/takkynoko/c/3315042

Spoilers

Spoiler

Fighting the dragon
http://www.twitch.tv/takkynoko/b/483562647

The duke is a dick. Let's abuse his ass
http://www.twitch.tv/takkynoko/c/3315034

The "multiplayer" component of the game is weird too. You can't play together, but you can swap Pawns (AKA slaves). Pawns can learn monster info, terrain info, and quest info. In game, you have your main character and your main pawn. Plus you can hire two more pawns from other players.

Hiring pawns between people on your friends list is free. So if you want to hire mine or if you want me to take your pawn out for some jolly cooperation, my psn account is takkynoko.

Anyway, it's worth checking out. I can't imagine it costs very much right now with it being free on psn plus.

[Revorse]

That game has been sitting in my shelf for 6 months. I dunno why but it's sorta hard to get into.

[takenoko]

I didn't like the demo of it, but it gets more fun as you get different skills for your class. I won't lie, there are a lot of annoying parts at first. Bandits will be your bane for a good portion of it, because they can quickly outnumber you, and that can mean losing progress sometimes.

But once you get to fight some giant monsters, it gets to be much better.

[Revorse]

So yeah, I popped this bad boy in to try to keep playing.
It's kinda fun. But I' m getting more frustrated than anything.
Most importantly everything is ridiculously strong and the pawns ain't worth a squirrel fart. Always dying and shit.
It's a bit "too open" if that can even be a thing. There is no indication, at least from what I've seen, of the difficult level of quest. So I'm accepting things that I'd believe to be manageable but nope, not so.

[takenoko]

Yeah, that's definitely how it is at first. The bandits will kill you pretty quickly, and most the pawns you hire will be around your level range. I'd recommend against picking escort missions, since they suck, and your escorts will die pretty quickly.

I'd recommend trying to find the main city Gran Soren as soon as you can. (Just make sure you finish up Lost and Found before you do any quests there, since progressing the main story can invalidate previous quests) The inn there will allow you to switch character classes, which could help. You'll get more skills for dealing with those pesky enemies, so just hang in there. Worst case scenario, you usually can just run away from monsters if they're too strong.

[Catastrophe]

I have it. Had a bit of fun with it but it didn't last very long. I don't know, I just didn't enjoy it very much to keep with it.

[takenoko]

That's what a lot of people seem to say. They probably could pace it better with cooler boss battles in the earlier levels.

[Revorse]

So I've been pluggin in some hours on this game trying to beat it, (I hate having unbeaten games on the shelf) thinking it was going to be a chore, but it's starting to pick up a bit.
Learning some skills and actually remembering I had to take care of my main pawn as well makes things a lot more manageable and fun.
I still think how open the world is kinda fucks me up too much. I dislike wandering into places where I'm just going to get my ass kicked. And it's hard to tell whats a story mission and what isn't.
BUT I just did this one mission that took place at Fort Shadow, or Shadow Fort and that mission I had hella fun with. Storming a castle, fighting all those goblins and taking out the 3 cyclops that was just so much fun. The fact that it changed from day to night during the battle made the battle seem so much more important or something. Haha I dunno but I just liked the atmosphere.

[takenoko]

The story missions will become more apparent with time. Basically any mission given to you by a major NPC is a story mission.

It's easier to define the side missions. Those are the missions you get from random NPC or from the boards. They're good to do for XP, money, and building character affinity, but not necessary. You might also want to work on maxing out your affinity with a character that you really like.

By the way, there's a few boards in the game. None of them are essential, but it's good to know where they are:
-In Cassidus there's one in the Inn
-There's one in the fort (where you first get your Pawn) in the top right corner
-Gran Soren. There's a board in the inn
-Gran Soren. There's a board next to the ale house
-Gran Soren. There's a board in the pawn guild upstairs
-Gran Soren. There's a board in the pawn guild downstairs

[Revorse]

I beat the game about 2 days ago. I was glad I toughed it out because it got really interesting.
The story toward the end was pretty interesting. I didn't really expect it. Although it felt like it came out of nowhere it worked pretty well with the rest of the game.

[takenoko]

Yeah, I like it too. But it's hard to sell people on a story plot that happens at the very last part of the game.

I'll be discussing it in my game trivia stuff, but there's a very buddhist theme of reincarnation and stuff that the game hints at.

If you want a challenge, do the DLC. I'm just wrapping that stuff now, and it's both interesting and too hard.