| Author | Review |
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Spellers
41,125
TA Score for this game: 1,578
Posted on 11 June 12 at 09:06, Edited on 12 June 12 at 11:25 |
This review has 10 positive votes and 9 negative votes. Please log in to vote. |
Games over the past few years have arguably become somewhat lacking in innovation with countless 3rd and 1st person shooters flooding the market.
Last year we saw Dark Souls which broke the mould and won acclaim across the industry. Capcom now step forward hoping to achieve the same with their newest creation Dragon's Dogma.
The game starts in similar fashion to most action RPGs, firstly designing your hero. While the character creation is a mixture of presets and a couple of sliders it is well put together and offers you enough choice to feel like the character your creating is fairly unique, options such as split eye colours show a good attention to detail where many other games fall short.
Again following the usual RPG theme, you start in a small village as a seemingly ordinary person. Shortly afterwards the town is attacked by a massive dragon. Seemingly this brings out the hero in you and you are forced to fight. The dragon makes light work of you however it soon becomes apparent he likes a challenge, and promptly rips out and eats your heart before telling you if you want it back you'll have to go through him.
Fortunately not having a heart seems to only be a minor setback for our hero, he soon wakes and you can set off on your epic journey.
Just before leaving the first town, a mysterious character falls from the sky and insists on accompanying you. You are informed he is a pawn however for now this makes little sense so we'll catch up with that later.
Leaving the first town you'll find the controls fairly straight forward. Movement is with left stick, camera on the right. there is a slightly unusual element of skill attacked being selected by holding a shoulder button then choosing x,y or b. Although slightly unusual the skill system is fairly intuitive and takes little time to get comfortable with.
Moving forward you soon arrive at the next town, here you are challenged by a voice to prove yourself as the arisen. Once this is achieved the voice is appeased and you are granted your very own pawn.
This is the single most innovative part of this game and what truly sets it apart from others in its genre. A pawn is a secondary character that will follow you to the ends of the earth. As you did for yourself you are offered a full character editor to customise them how you please.
After this is done it is explained that other heroes in other worlds are able to hire the use of you pawn to help them in their quests. This is similar to the summoning situation in dark souls where you can get assistance but actual online play is limited you will not see hundreds of other players running around for example.
Once you have your pawn setup you can access an interface to hire other peoples yourself. There is a variety of search options and you can choose how you think will best suit your team using rift crystals which you can find, or gain from others renting your pawn.
Your team can consist of a maximum of 3 pawns (your own and two others) adding an element of final fantasy esque team battles, but obviously in real-time.
Further to this Pawns also are quite the scholars; they will learn from experience both in how to fight enemies and how to complete the quests you undertake. While the second might immediately seem of little use, hiring a more experienced pawn that has completed your missions can easily save you some running around as they are quite vocal and will help guide you as best they can.
Occasionally after you rest at an inn you will be informed your pawn has returned for helping another hero and you may find yourself receiving gifts as well as new knowledge, a brief review and some rift crystals
** Mild Spoiler alert look away now**
Once you are all set you progress through the story with challenging missions and enemies which could use a little more variety but just about enough to not get too boring, this all comes to a final climax which gives you one of the most epic final battles you will have played in any game.
Then if that wasn't enough once you've reclaimed your heart the game throws an extra little twist and offers you both some more missions for a second complete ending followed by the chance to play an ever more popular new game +.
** You can look again now **
One thing to point out, currently NG+ doesn’t scale with character level and as such the second play through will seem easy which is a shame.
Beyond that there is little to say, this game is one that is at risk of being missed by many despite great creativity and innovation. It is solidly built with great visuals and attention to detail.
For me this should be considered a big challenger for game of the year. And a highly recommend buying it if you can find a copy.
NB. A short point to note, some people have compared the difficulty of this game to Dark souls. I feel it is worth saying that with the exception of a couple of places in the game this is not the case, which mistakes are punished with a good team the difficulty is never beyond the reach of the player and certainly not something to put people off.
Edit: couple of changes to address potential spoilers.
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