Game “review” – Dragons Dogma: Dark arisen

Old steam review copy-paste

So a quick “review”. PROs and CONs first. Then some comments & random notes I have about the game.
(note, MY #/10 score = MY ENJOYMENT + minimal thought of gameplay+graphics/sound+story etc.. )

PROs:

+Great soundtrack (love menu music)
+Nice world
+Nice story
+Great combat (challenging +ability to climb enemies)
+Variation of weapons/skills/armor (fashion all the way)
+Variation of “classes” (vocations)
+Pseudo-Online system (pawn system, ur-dragon)
+Warp system
+New Game+ impact (difficulty, lot of other changes)
+Many fun enemies (especially boss types)
+Fun DLC zone (creepy eerie dark dungeoneering)
+Speedrun mode (if you into it)
+Many waifus
20.05.22 added:
+BBI is challenging and really unfair at times

CONs:

-Running around the map becomes tedious
-/+Lot of consumables
-/+Inventory/weight management
-English voice acting feels odd
20.05.22 added:
-Once you tire of combat it becomes quite dragging as they last a while
-Pawns can get obnoxious with constant talking + they jump to death now and then

Comments:

What can I say. First 30 hours I purely enjoyed in straight line. Then I became fed of consumables/inventory and weight management and running around the world like moron. Thus I threw in few mods to make game even more enjoyable. (I really hate inventory management/consumables/weight loot limitation in games). Anyhow…. what can I say. Combat was really enjoyable it was challenging and kinda dark souls’esque (more actionish) ability to climb enemies was nice touch. The spell casting method or skills overall were really nicely done. Combat was great. Story was good but I wouldn’t say it was amazing. It was simple dark/medieval fantasy RPG story route. I found the English voice acting a bit janky. The quest variation was quite fun + few unique quests. Though had to keep wiki on the side as you kinda have to do quests in specific order if you don’t wanna miss anything (new game plus anyways to get different route endings). Game had subtle touch of online, which was nice feature, it’s nice to have a little bit of illusion of other people in single player games. Here precisely the pawn system, where you could summon/hire other people pawns in NPC form. (where firing/sending off pawns you could send gift and review along the way). Other pseudo-online feature is Ur-Dragon, which is basically world boss, whose HP is online-linked but not Live. For Ur I mostly waited for his “grace period” to finish him off and get loot/upgrades.

There are plenty of fashion and weaponry options.

DLC zone is really fun place. It’s basically instance with really fun “ganks” and bosses and enemies overall.
Aside that, what can I say. it was a fun game and will eventually return to it in order to properly finish DLC zone and NG+. Gotta do the achievement hunting.will add more text if remember something I’ve forgotten to add
20.05.22 added:
Now that I’m done with game. I can say it’s still one of my favorite games but obviously it has it’s own downsides like every game. Once I got burnout of this games combat, which I did now that I played BBI, it does become a bit tedious. With high lvl gear and equipment BBI battles can really drag on, especially if pawns do fuck all. I liked the BBI dungeoneering aspect a lot, but yeah.. it did become rather bullshit at times. Other than that it was fun. Maybe will play again many years later.. Oh and played this time in Japanese, had great cast and great voice acting.

9/10 + favorite

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *