Vulgamification [Dragon's Dogma]: An honest rundown

Every gamer has their specialty right? It’s a type of game or genre which they tend to migrate to, and utterly adore. My specialty is RPGs, or as the nerds like to call it- “roleplay”. I’m not entirely sure why I migrate to RPGs most, maybe it’s because they provide me with a true escape into fantasy realms I’ll never visit in reality. Who fucking cares, right? They kick ass, and that’s all that matters.

You can understand my excitement and pleasure then, when I started playing through Dragons Dogma. It features giant ass beasts, a pretty expansive world, loads of action RPG gameplay, and pawns. Unfortunately, the pawns are pretty much the bane of your existence in the game, but that’s alright. No one expects anything out of the ordinary from a group of AI controlled companions, right?

Now, the developers and publisher of the game did something pretty remarkable with Dragons Dogma. After the game was out for some time, they started working on engine and mechanic improvements in addition to an expansion for the game. They changed so much, that they had to re-release the game in a standalone package, because apparently the new improvements just couldn’t be added through a software update. In addition, they included the massive expansion pack with the re-release which is now called Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. Pretty fucking stupid if you ask me, but hey we’ve seen worse from a lot of other companies. Naturally, because I loved the original and I wanted to experience the new content and updates I purchased Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen when it released.

I’ll be perfectly honest, I haven’t been able to experience the new game content yet and that’s why I’m just reviewing Dragon’s Dogma right now. I’m much too busy to be gaming all day and night, cut me some fucking slack.

Thank you.

Anyway, I’m going to handle this Vulgamification a little differently. Instead of droning on about the game itself, I’m just going to tell you what’s pretty awesome about it, and what fucking sucks. Keep in mind here that I personally love the game, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without its quirks.

So, without further ado…

Dragons Dogma: What’s pretty awesome about it

You can grapple onto giant ass beasts and climb them Shadow of the Colossus style. It’s an important mechanic when fighting large beasts too. It’s pretty fucking rad when you climb onto the back of a Griffin and it vaults into the air. Of course, when that happens and your stamina runs out you’re pretty much fucked if you don’t jump off in time, but that’s part of the fun.
There are plenty of quests, but they don’t offer anything innovative to the genre. That’s okay, it’s still a lot of fun beating the shit out of monsters and taking down huge bosses.
The visuals are pretty stunning even if the world has a general washed out look. Make sure you download the HD content pack onto your hard drive!
You can customize your pawns, and you get one tailored specifically for you. The rest you can recruit by meeting them in the game world, or by joining the online lobby and downloading someone else’s pawn. To download them, requires a unique type of currency used only in DD, so you’ll have to play the game for a bit before you can get the badass pawns.
Yep, you can hurt people and go to jail. I wouldn’t recommend doing so though, because getting out is a real pain in the… well, you get it.
You can take screenshots of shit right from within the game, and post stuff to Twitter.

Dragons Dogma: What fucking sucks about it

There is no way to fast travel, at least not in the traditional sense. This really fucking sucks because the world is quite large, and you have to manually travel -on foot- everywhere. The only exception is that you can use an infinite ferrystone and port crystals in Dark Arisen to quickly return to your most traveled areas. Some say this makes the game more realistic, I say it’s fucking tedious.
The pawns aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. They’re not terrible, and they do a pretty good job at keeping aggro sometimes, but that’s about it. Unfortunately, their repetitive dialogue is fucking abhorrent. You’ll hear them talk about the same things over and over. It gets especially annoying when one of them claims three times in a row, “did you see that?” Yes I fucking saw that, shut the fuck up!
The combat system is a bit shallow. There are a lot of skills and customization options for your characters, but the combat itself reduces to mere button mashing in the moment. Sure, you can use some skill to dispatch lowly enemies, but it won’t be any different than if you’re just mashing the attack button with your thumb.
The story is pretty dull and can be hard to follow, but who cares I want to spill MOAR BLOOD!
The quest tracker is a fucking pain in the ass, enough said.
If you buy the original game and not Dark Arisen, you’ll miss out on a lot of content. So, don’t do that.

Well, there you have it. Those are the most important elements of the game. Dragons Dogma does offer a pretty enjoyable experience if you love action RPGs with an open world. I will give you a tip though, stick with it. The opening portion of the game is quite difficult and the world is very unforgiving. Don’t give up, and you’ll be rewarded when the game blooms later on like a flower.