Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Catch-All

LobsterMobster wrote:

"Dressed a male party member in women's clothing."

I think the name is even better, haha. "A Queen's Regalia."

Someone on GB has the Game Informer review.

Score's an 8.5. The full review text and bullets are in the link, somewhat more easily read if you download the image.

Also, this youtube user has a LOAD of footage he's taken from the preview build. At least 3 hours of unedited gameplay there. Interesting bits I was not aware of include duels, stealth kills, crafting, the ability to change classes at will (!), and apparently there are subclasses? One of the videos is "Mystic Knight Chimera Battle," and it's the warrior's skillset but all magically charged.

Cool finds, Blind_Evil. I'm really looking forward to this now.

I really don't understand why they didn't go co-op here. Not having it means there's no pressure to buy it at launch, and they're in the teeth of Diablo 3 as it is. I foresee a lot of people paying $20 - $30 a few months from now, myself likely among them.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

I really don't understand why they didn't go co-op here.

It's not par for the genres (neither open world RPG nor character-action), online play is not a Japanese forte, and Capcom is hesitant to host servers for their games. Those are likely the reasons.

Maybe not the best reasons, but alas

Actually #1 is a pretty good reason IMO. Didn't see any serious bellyaching about a lack of co-op in Skyrim, Amalur, The Witcher 2, or the Dragon Age games. In fact, in a lot of cases a game doesn't get the co-op right and gets points taken off for it. Fable 2, for instance.

Not to say I wouldn't enjoy co-op if it were available, but I might not. I always feel rushed in open-world games when I am playing with someone else, pushed away from my own precise playstyle. I think Borderlands was completely ruined for me by my roommate who I played the entire thing with, he just went too fast.

A cool alternative IMO would be an arena-style co-op mode, where you import your character to fight bosses. You could get into the combat with someone, without having them muck up your world or personal narrative.

When I first saw the trailers I thought it would be a multiplayer co-op based RPG myself, though I can't really tell you why I thought as much. So yeah, I'm disappointed in the lack of co-op as well, but I'm going to try and play the game as it is and see how it measures up.

Is this game coming to PC at any point? It looks interesting, but I'm not much of a console gamer...

Hasn't been announced. Kind of a crapshoot, really. Capcom is one of the more PC-friendly Japanese developers but I'd say it's a 50/50 proposition, based on their track record this generation. I suspect if DD is a hit it will make it over in October.

You guys are making me feel like an antisocial old man, not wanting co-op.

If it makes you feel better, I long for co-op modes in every game, and never use them. I think the last time I co-op'ed outside of WoW was Crackdown 1, and then only once. I mean to, but I often want to keep my campaign playthroughs pure.

Oh, I played some of Red Dead's co-op specific missions, I guess that counts. Planning on co-oping a lot with Diablo 3.

And I'm also an old man.

I'm more excited when I see that a game is just pure single player. But I'm pretty sure that I'm in a shrinking minority of players that see Co-Op or Multiplayer as being a negative on the features list for a game.

Infyrnos wrote:

I'm more excited when I see that a game is just pure single player. But I'm pretty sure that I'm in a shrinking minority of players that see Co-Op or Multiplayer as being a negative on the features list for a game.

I think you just have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. Some games wouldn't be half so good without co-op, some are lessened by it, IMO.

Syndicate might be my GOTY so far this year, and it wouldn't be half of what it was if not for the amazing co-op. Portal 2's was also very well done. On the other hand, I felt co-op added very little to Fable 3 and the resources put toward it would have been better spent fleshing out the final third of the game.

I don't see the logic of blanketing multiplayer as a negative, though.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I don't see the logic of blanketing multiplayer as a negative, though.

Having a small pool of friends to draw on, or matching up times to play, play styles, buying games at different times, etc, is far more frustrating then fun, based on past experience with trying to play Co-Op. Nowadays, when I have time to play, I just want to play, which makes me exclusively single player, would love to play some multi, but it just doesn't work out. If my experiencing the 'full' game depends on the multiplayer aspects, then I do consider it a negative.

Like I said, it's a feature I almost never use, but hope springs eternal.

There's now an iOS app called Pawns Unleashed that is connected to this game. It requires a Facebook account. Anyone try it out? I'm not quite sure what it does.

Aristophan wrote:

There's now an iOS app called Pawns Unleashed that is connected to this game. It requires a Facebook account. Anyone try it out? I'm not quite sure what it does.

Here's a guy's blog post on it.

"The will of a dragon. The heart of a human. For one to prevail, the other must be broken."

So your character dies when his girlfriend leaves him? Is that the Dragon's Dogma? Dragon's game don't set aside for no one?

I think they're speaking more to the "He/she has got heart" sort of heart, not the romantic sort. Or maybe the literal variety?

Ok, I preordered this today. Those videos posted earlier show a lot more potential than the demo showed.

Plus, I created this thread, so it seemed I had an obligation.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I think they're speaking more to the "He/she has got heart" sort of heart, not the romantic sort. Or maybe the literal variety?

Given that the main character has a great big nasty scar across their chest? Kinda hard to say.

There's going to be a 2-hour livestream on this IGN page at 1 EST, if anyone's interested.

Their review is also up. Praise for the combat and character development, criticism of the uninspired narrative and graphical glitches. Neither of those bother me, thankfully, since I've been anticipating this as a Monster Hunter stand-in. Score is a 7.5.

Blind_Evil wrote:

There's going to be a 2-hour livestream on this IGN page at 1 EST, if anyone's interested.

Their review is also up. Praise for the combat and character development, criticism of the uninspired narrative and graphical glitches. Neither of those bother me, thankfully, since I've been anticipating this as a Monster Hunter stand-in. Score is a 7.5.

So the gameplay and characters are good, but an uninspired narrative and graphical glitches knock 2.5 points off?

So using that logic, they gave Skyrim a 5, right?

Jesus I hate IGN.

Eh, there were some good tales in Skyrim. The main story just happens to not be one of them.

Reviews are coming in frequently now, notably Eurogamer gives it a 7/10 and Joystiq gives it a 2/5.

Take note, here's a telling line from the Joystiq review.

Everything just exists, without reason or explanation, which makes it hard for you to connect emotionally with the world around you.

If you've found yourself making that complaint in a game, maybe avoid this one. Personally, I separate games that interest me on mechanical levels (Call of Duty, Monster Hunter) and those with narrative appeals (Dragon Age, many JRPGs). Every game doesn't need to make me a better person, or spin a great yarn. Sometimes, Pong.

When you get a mix of both it is sublime, but exceedingly rare (Legend of Zelda, Metroid Prime).

Edit: that Joystiq review, hoo boy. "yin to Commander Shepard's yang," indeed. I know reviews are subjective but I think a game's aim should be accounted for in criticism. Maybe?

Blind_Evil wrote:

Edit: that Joystiq review, hoo boy. "yin to Commander Shepard's yang," indeed. I know reviews are subjective but I think a game's aim should be accounted for in criticism. Maybe?

Yeah, just read it myself...I get the impression that the reviewer was expecting a hard fantasy RPG and not a fantasy action game with RPG elements incorporated into it. I haven't been led to believe that this game is supposed to be anything other than the latter. If it's good in the way of that, I really don't care otherwise - one less set of narratives to keep track of while I'm chipping away at the pile's current state. I'm mainly interested in the challenge of taking down big creatures.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Edit: that Joystiq review, hoo boy. "yin to Commander Shepard's yang," indeed. I know reviews are subjective but I think a game's aim should be accounted for in criticism. Maybe?

I hate football games. They don't have any interesting weapons.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Edit: that Joystiq review, hoo boy. "yin to Commander Shepard's yang," indeed. I know reviews are subjective but I think a game's aim should be accounted for in criticism. Maybe?

The problem is that you're asking for actual Criticism in that regard, something I don't think a lot of game reviewers are knowledgable enough to dole out. I know a lot of times reading a genuine film critic's opinions is like reading the most pretentious asshole drone on and on about dumb crap, but there's a level of knowledge in there that suggests a film critic actually knows something of film making.

I think most game reviewers just happen to be better at wording their opinions than most, rather than analyzing actual game design.

Note that I don't actually know any of these reviewers, but there's a reason I don't like them and have found myself generalizing the gaming press. We have a very amateur line-up of "professionals" in a lot of cases, at least in terms of how they write. Maybe they do well with digging for facts and keeping contacts so they have something to write about, but having something substantial to say...well, that's a bit harder to come by.

What we COULD have is an attempt of Capcom to take their Monster Hunter franchise and change it around to what they think Western gamers want, and if Dragon's Dogma fails then perhaps it is simply because Capcom is trying to imitate Skyrim while retaining some of their own ideas to design. The problem is, if the reviewer can't see that, then you're going to presumably get what is above.

However, THAT is conjecture, as we don't really know what Dragon's Dogma as a whole is like yet.

Just about to tear the plastic off my copy and fire it up. I'm off work tomorrow, so I may have some initial impressions to post in a few hours.

You went to a midnight release? Bad! Bad Ian!

What class do you plan to start with?

I'll probably have some played by 11:30 or so tomorrow morning

I was really curious why they were holding a midnight thing, but I guess they had a lot of preorders between DD and Ghost Recon...?

Blind_Evil wrote:

You went to a midnight release? Bad! Bad Ian!

I live three blocks from the local GameStop and I'm off work Tuesdays, though this is the first time I've ever bothered to go to one of these things. My curiousity really got the better of me.

Not only was I the one guy picking up Dragon's Dogma, but I swear, I was the tannest morlock in the joint. Thankfully, there's a 24-hour CVS in the same shopping center, so I was able to buy several boxes of Brillo pads so that I might one day again be clean.

Okay. Time for further shame, of the dogmatic, dragony kind.

I'd wager Ghost Recon was the bigger deal by far.

Okay, so 1.5 hours in and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. My only big gripes so far:

-The lipsync animations with NPCs is awful. No, it's not just off to the dialog, it's strange looking. The upper and lower lips sometimes move up and down but remain closed, then they open, then they vowel up, and so on at seemingly arbitrary intervals. This would be less noticeable if there wasn't a dialog box popping up with the NPC facing you (itself strange, because there aren't dialog really trees, though you do get contextual interaction now and then).

-I haven't gotten a handle on how to deal with the map system re:quests. Yes, I can see areas relevant to the quests just fine, and its easy to toggle between them. I haven't yet figured out how to quickly identify the locations of people for whom I'm fetch-questing. I hope I'm overlooking something obvious here.

What I'm enjoying:

-Combat is really fun. It's basically the same as the demo, but it feels more refined and the sense of movement quite a bit more natural. I've button-mashed some goblins to death, but then I encountered some wolves and very quickly died. I'm hoping this is going to be more, "You have to tread carefully" and less "Just get better stats and better weapons!" Granted, it's not going to be plodding, maddeningly tough ala Dark Souls, but I don't want to fall into the trap of just leveling up or buying better stuff. I'm liking the modal weapon functions with the shoulder buttons.

-The pawns are an in-world conceit of sorts. I have no idea if we'll find more about them or if they're just a given, but as they're differentiated from people (constructs?), it's less weird when they start picking lots of berries after you do it once, or they start destroying crates after your lead.

-The graphics are quite good, particularly the environments. I'm eager to get underground and see what that looks like, but I want to complete some basic quests and have a few more encounters to get a good handle on the controls.

-The "heart" business is amusing. You'll understand when you see it play out. I'm happy to have a game like this start out with the PC having direct involvement in the event that kicks off the story, rather than getting drawn into it and winding up at the center. Another good reminder that this ain't Skyrim, and is definitely based more on going to kill monsters than it is figuring out how you'd like your character to fit into the gameworld.

Only other major thought is that the split of the inventory and equipment menus feels kinda strange, but I haven't had need to use them extensively yet, so it's unfair to badmouth it yet.

Back to informing my opinion further.