Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen Catch-All

My first playthrough was on 360 buy I've bought it four times (PS3, PS4, and PC).

I've done two playthroughs without any wikis, and it was a blast! I find in games like these, not knowing makes for a far more interesting game than knowing all the secrets - especially in a game like this, that relies heavily on discovering hidden stuff.

As a first time player, I also suggest discovering things for yourself. It can be a very strange game, but the sense of space is incredible.

Is this the game with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon? Also think Chris Rock voices a dragon or something.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

That's interesting that you recommend a wiki or a guide, so far one of the things I've liked about it is that it doesn't seem to punish me for being suboptimal or missing things, but I'm early game yet so I don't really know what I've missed out on.

It's going to depend a lot on your loss tolerance. How willing are you to forge ahead with your game knowing that you may miss something? How much will it bother you to find out that you have already missed something?

It's like the umbilical cords in Bloodborne. You can get most of the way through a blind playthrough of Bloodborne and find out that you've irrevocably locked yourself out of the moon ending, or you've managed to kill a major NPC, or you've missed your chance to see Eileen's story through to the end.

There are no signposts for what you'll miss in Dragon's Dogma. There are no clearly delineated moments of decision where you will know that you have chosen one outcome over another, renegade or paragon, chaos or order. You'll just stumble into it or past it and not know.

Personally, I found that made for a very compelling experience, just as it does in the From Software games that so clearly inspired this one. But not everyone is going to have a tolerance for knowing that they've missed out on something or for a character they like to go missing and never be found again. It's up to you.

The From games have done a lot for teaching me to accept the sub-optimal. I used to restart these kind of games multiple times and get really completionist about everything. Once I let go of the need to look everything up and just let the experiences wash over me, I've found I enjoy playing games a lot more. They also give me practice doing that in my own life. (Actually, might write about this - there's a lot to mine there.)

I think it has a lot to do with both how From games incentivize exploration and how builds don't matter all too much in them. I used the threaded cane in Bloodborne not because it was the best weapon, but because I enjoyed using it. Dragon's Dogma has a map and quest markers, which would seem to mitigate some of the internalization of the surroundings and make exploration less of a driver, yet somehow it feels like a light enough hand that I get similar feelings walking around. On the way to Gran Soren, I found a little side trail that lead to a mountaintop view. It was such a delight and gave me that same a-ha feeling that From games do when you see how the world is built and how it communicates scale.

I'm sure there are all sorts of ways to optimize your character here. Take X levels of thus and such/ Nab augment so and so. Switch to other vocation exactly on this level, etc. As it is though, going in with no plan, I've found the game to be quite manageable and it has been fun discovering how the progression system works and how the game rewards you for changing your mind frequently just as much as it seems to reward you for making a rigid choice and sticking with it. Even with my (I'm sure) sub-optimal character, I took a mission that was above my pay grade and won it one go. It ended up feeling like a desperate night time chase through the woods, pursued by wolves and the sustained tension was glorious.

What's interesting here is that builds aren't that important because, like a Souls game, it's about how you use the character and less the stats underneath. It's an action game at its core in an RPG and not the other way around.

Pawns also help mitigate any subpar builds, assuming you've chosen ones to support your class.

Really, builds are only important in the "end game" of DD, which is Bitterblack Isle (the original expansion to the game). If you want to be super OP for the hardest content in the game you can absolutely follow a build guide, get OP weapons and armor early on and steamroll most everything. I don't believe that's the sort of play you're looking for.

DD, for me, is a journey game. Enjoy the journey, don't sweat the small stuff. Until your third time through.

I followed a very specific build so that I end up with equal strength and magic by lvl 200. It ended up at around 600 for each. But when your end game armor adds 1600 to either stat, it doesn't really matter. Follow your heart.

Pun intended.

Holy crap, Harpo. I lied. I didn't buy this on PS4. I bought it on 360 and then PS3.

Grenn wrote:

Holy crap, Harpo. I lied. I didn't buy this on PS4. I bought it on 360 and then PS3.

50 points will be taken from Gryffindor. 10 points for lying. 40 points for not saying "Holy carpo".

All good.

Much like this game, which I can’t stop playing.

I bounced off it after playing for about an hour a few months ago, but I find myself craving a meaty RPG for the holidays. Gonna give it another shot

Are you guys playing on PC or Switch?

If it's PC and I'm not your steam friend, let me know.

Hey! I just bought this on Xbox, starting in tonight. I'm interested to see the semi-recent discussion here about the pros and cons of guide usage. On the one hand, I prefer to explore and discover on my own. On the other hand, I hate when I feel I have stumbled into negative plot outcomes that I couldn't have known to avoid, which I see some suggestion of being possible here. So, I dunno. I'm going to start looking up general tips guides and will dive in and see how I feel. If anyone wants to call out any guides or tips articles they found especially useful, I'd appreciate it, but I'm sure google will find me plenty of options regardless.

For the first playthrough, mrlogical, just play it. The game is built around New Game Plus, and if you end up really liking it, you will probably play through a number of times. Each time, you keep everything but a few plot-based items from your prior session, and continue at the same level you left off.

You can wait for one of your later games to get everything 'just right' as far as plot outcomes go.

DD is a weird game. It's not a very good RPG. It is, however, an extremely good fantasy combat simulator. I put about 200 hours into it, and felt they were well-spent.

I concur in just playing without a guide unless you get stuck on something or want to figure out a more arcane aspect of the game.

I had a blast with the game. Give it a bit Of time and I hope it casts its weird spell over you.

There are guides for stat growth that have no spoilers. Basically, every time you level, your stats grow based upon your current class. So if you want to min/max or if you want middle of the road, there are guides for that. That said, end game weapons and armor will more than make up for any deficiencies.

If you have the Bitterblack Isle version, then feel free to plumb it's depths for all it's corrupted goodies. Just don't be surprised if you slam into a wall (meet enemies that one shot you all the time). That just means that you need to head back to the mainland and do more questing. BBI is not meant to be conquered early.

When you're done with the post-game and go for a NG+, then the wiki is hella helpful for quest hunting and looking up all the stuff you missed because there's no real road maps for them.

I wouldn't worry about the stat growth guides. The game is equipment based. Your stats will really only affect the margins. This is an RPG that is very playable even when your character is "sub-optimal."

Malor wrote:

DD is a weird game. It's not a very good RPG. It is, however, an extremely good fantasy combat simulator.

This is well said. The quests and story are half-baked, at best. However, the combat and world are really great. It might be the pinnacle of party-based combat that really does feel like D&D come to life. Its dungeons can be very cool, too.

DD is one of those tragic situations where the game should have had an improved sequel or, if the original developers simply couldn't see what they were doing wrong, should have inspired superior evolutions of its ideas from other devs.

Imagine a cross between DD and The Elder Scrolls - that would be a hell of a game.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Imagine a cross between DD and The Elder Scrolls - that would be a hell of a game.

Or a cross between DD and the story and character sensibilities of a Falcom game (Trails of series). The combat systems of DD with a rich world, characters, and story would be amazing.

I'm maybe 5 hours in now. I'm not sure how I feel. Although I enjoyed the initial combat sequence, things really ground to a halt for me when it had me build my own character.

The initial grouping of quests I received were kind of hard to process. One of them was from a woman who needed certain plants to care for victims of the Dragon attack. She advised me to talk to townsfolk to learn where to find those plants. I did, and learned one was near a big tree and the other was on the beach. The town I was in had trees and a beach, so I kept searching for the stupid flowers, but couldn't find any. The quest that appeared to be my main quest wanted me to leave town, but given what if heard about some quests closing off based on your progress, I was concerned that the patients these plants were needed to cure might die if I left town first. Finally I just said screw it and left, and of course then found all the plants out in the world and came back and completed that quest. I guess an early lesson in not over-thinking things? But still, frustrating.

I made better progress in the next few sessions. I'm now at the first big city. I think I like the combat. It feels a bit mashy and kind of MMO-y, at least for now. I am struggling with sensing the strength of opponents. Sometimes I see my player madly whirling and slashing and stabbing...and yet the enemy's health bar seems totally unchanged. And then one more hit and suddenly the enemy is at like 5% health. It is confusing.

The game looks much worse than I expected. It looks like a 360 game--which, of course, it was, but I thought this XBO version would look slightly nicer. The UI reads very Souls-y to me, especially the fonts.

I'm going to keep playing, but I am a little wary. I am definitely going to focus more on just plowing ahead, even if, now that I'm in the city, I feel like I should be exploring the shops and upgrading equipment and stuff. But the more time I spend in menus the more likely I am to lose the thread altogether.

Yeah, the beginning is rough, especially that plant quest. Even on replay I end up looking up a reminder for where I'm supposed to go and do.

Def play until you have Pawns. That changes things for the better.

Malor wrote:

DD is a weird game. It's not a very good RPG. It is, however, an extremely good fantasy combat simulator.

I like the relative lack of traditional RPG gameplay elements. The story here is bizarre but interesting, and it doesn't throw a lot of faction quests, dialogue stat checks, or shallow branching quests up in your way. Playing this game and The Outer Worlds fairly close together really cemented for me how tired I am of the mechanical tropes of traditional RPGs.

This game is what I thought The Witcher would be before I actually played The Witcher. I strongly prefer this one.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Imagine a cross between DD and The Elder Scrolls - that would be a hell of a game.

If the Elder Scrolls didn't have awful, tedious combat, would it even be the Elder Scrolls anymore?

Oh, also, it is maddening how the writers/localizers clearly thought: you know what is a fantasy-ass fantasy word that every fantasy character should use in every sentence? "Aught"!

The story in DD starts intensely then basically disappears into nonsense. At the end getting so weird it was awesome again. Much like the game overall.

This may have been stated many times, but I don't care. If you are a Berserk fan, try to count the easter eggs and outright homages to that series.

mrlogical wrote:

Oh, also, it is maddening how the writers/localizers clearly thought: you know what is a fantasy-ass fantasy word that every fantasy character should use in every sentence? "Aught"!

And they used their semi-medieval vocabulary words wrong, too. It was frustrating. I think they used "aught" exactly backwards to the true meaning, which of course I'm confused on now, because I've listened to 200 hours of them using it wrong.

edit for mrlogical: I didn't feel like I had my feet under me in DD for fifteen or maybe twenty hours. It was a constant struggle before then. Use the environment to kill things, early on, if you can. Throwing enemies off cliffs is always a good time, for instance.

But once you've got that base built and you start really developing your character, it turns into almost pure crack. There's just never been a game that does what Dragon's Dogma does.

It's got a list of thing wrong with it as long as my arm. Any criticisms you see of it are probably valid. I don't think I've ever seen anyone beat up on it that I felt was wrong to do so, because a great deal of it doesn't work very well.

Yet, for all that, it remains an amazing game, and a superbly immersive experience. I just played it a couple of years ago, and loved it to death.

Malor,

Well put! I committed to giving DD 10 hours before giving up because of the reverence this game commands. I’m glad I did. Great game.
I last played DD a year of so ago. I completed the main quest line and saved my game on that expansion island. Maybe I should go back and see what that part of the game has to offer...

Malor wrote:

I didn't feel like I had my feet under me in DD for fifteen or maybe twenty hours. It was a constant struggle before then.

Same here. I didn't understand climbing at first so the fight at the camp was a slog. And then that escort mission to Gran Soren just really killed the pace for a bit.

Things started clicking bit by bit after that, especially once I settled on a preferred class and unlocked some skills.

DD's crunchy melee combat might be the most satisfying I've ever experienced. It makes all the jank endearing.

Also, I think Capcom did a disservice by dropping "Into Free" as the title music in the Dark Arisen edition. It perfectly sets the stage for the odd yet awesome incongruities to be found within.

I think that was more licensing issues rather than a deliberate choice. They also lost the Berserk armor you could buy as well.