by Adol The Red » Mon Jun 18, 2012 10:00 pm
So I went and got Dragon's Dogma yesterday. I was mostly intrigued by the Pawn system, where you create a character who travels along with your created character. They don't really have their own will, and you can hire other pawns to be in your party, including pawns other people have created. These pawns learn things as you fight monsters, complete quests, and travel through various regions, and that information can be helpful in your quest. They can also learn stuff when they perform quests for other people.
Anyway, that's as advertised, and I was interested. So far its a neat game. I like the character creator a lot. It starts you off by choosing from a list of presets, but you can go into further detail after those if you wish. Instead of lots of sliders to tweak the facial sculpt, they give you presets of each individual part to scroll through, each of which can be modified to some small degree. This may seem like it would be limiting, but I have to admit that I've created far better looking and more unique characters in Dragon's Dogma than I ever did in Skyrim or Mass Effect. I'm certainly not knocking those character creators; I am a fan of depth of control, but this system just works better for me. What's also cool is that you can tweak their body type, from skinny to fat and frail to muscular, regardless of gender. You can also set their posture, from a timid, face down stance to a more in your face stance. I like to be able to control these sorts of things. Finally, you have six voices to choose from, though so for my main character has never spoken, but your pawns do.
Pretty much its the standard fare. Get quests, fight things, but it has a good feel. The combat is more actionful. You have normal and strong attacks, and can set special attacks. You start out with three classes, which can be upgraded to more specialized classes later. And in combat the pawns are actually very useful. For one they can spot an ambush way before I ever can, and the traversal AI is so far very well done. (Speaking of traversal, you can climb up on things. Now, when I play anything with a big world, I see tall things and want to get on top of them, so having the ability to jump and grab certain ledges is very cool to me.)
Now, if you've seen any reviews for this game, then you know the pawns don't shut up. Normally this doesn't bother me, but when I'm searching the beach I don't need three different people, each about six times in a row, telling me that you can see seamonsters from the shore, and they can see you. And the other phrases. It's not a game killer, but damn it can get annoying. It wouldn't be so bad if each voice actor for the various voices had slight variations in the wording... but they don't. And I'm tired of the word "aught". Maybe there is aught of use up that path, but could you please pick a different favorite word? Just play it, you'll see what I mean. The only other thing I can't seem to do is use healing items on my pawns, or make them use their own items. This is a problem during a long trek because when you take damage you lose some points off your max health. Magic will only heal you back up to your limited health. To restore it you need to rest, or use one of your very abundant healing items. Now, I think this mechanic is kind of a cool way to handle the notion of getting tired over a long trek, and since items can boot you right back up its not ever a big deal. Except that I can't seem to item heal my pawns. And you don't have any direct control of them so I'm not sure what to do. If anyone knows about some obvious things I've missed then please tell me.
Anyway, my last point is on bosses. These are very cool fights in that you don't just beat on them until their HP runs out like any other enemy. On some of them you have to systematically attack certain parts to disable their skills. You also make heavy use of the grab system during these fights. During one I had to grab on to the monster's leg and attack to pull it off balance, which made it fall on its back where you could get at its head and do considerably more damage. My last fight was against a gigantic Hydra. It had about 8 stacked life bars and its scales were nigh on inpenetrable. To beat it I had to climb up a neck and lop one of its heads off. And this only made it run away, so I'm sure I'll be fighting it again at some point.
Okay, I just wanted to give a few thoughts on Dragon's Dogma and I did another freaking sort of game review. Anyway, playing that while on vacation, along with working on some stuff in Journey. Finally did another journery, got some trophies, and got the white robe. And I think I'll stop typing now.
Epic , brah!
