Have you played Dragon's Dogma? Can you answer a question?

Didn't log into D3 since I got this game last week. Having your pawn highly praised by online players is very satisfying for me

The Pawn knowledge system is useful, which offer advices on quests and mob weakness if the pawn you hired have already experienced it.

It can be difficult at first, since weapon/armor are harder to come by, but that make you value every piece of usable items you pick up here and there.

Exploring is very rewarding, since there are always some chests tacked away at odd corner.

The bane of all new players are probably human type mobs like bandits, since they can perform most of the moves you can and they usually hang around in groups.

Does the game explain what pawns are? Are they spirits of some kind or something like that?

Java2 said:

It can be difficult at first, since weapon/armor are harder to come by, but that make you value every piece of usable items you pick up here and there.

Exploring is very rewarding, since there are always some chests tacked away at odd corner.

The bane of all new players are probably human type mobs like bandits, since they can perform most of the moves you can and they usually hang around in groups.

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That sounds really good. My birthday is coming up and be able to get one game for perhaps a few months, and I'm torn between Dragons Dogma and Risen 2, and maybe Witcher 2 (but I honestly didn't like one very much). I think I'm leaning toward Dragons Dogma.

Pawn system is explained at the beginning and also intergrated into main story.

Yep, the pawn behavior makes sense in the context of the story.

Also, it's a mistake to compare this game to Dark Souls, Skyrim and the like.

The reference game, when it comes to game design and mechanics, is Monster Hunter. With semi open world, IA companions and medieval fantasy looks, but it's Monster Hunter.

Been playing this for the last few days. I like it a lot. Very interesting ideas, but I don't really like having to ditch and recruit new pawns all the time. I understand the reason for it, but it makes it hard to have an attachment to the game, other than you and your main pawn. And just about EVERYONE makes a sexy female pawn... It's really hard to even find a male Mage, for instance.

It's not nearly as hard as Dark Souls. You can still get killed if you are reckless, which is great. I've died about 5-8 times in the 15 hours or so that I've played. But there's tons of tinkering to be done, so it's not at all all combat. Fun stuff can happen like when I was fighting a monster way above my level, I jumped on his back and he went into the animation to flip over to crush me, and he fell off the edge of a chasm. I jumped off just in time and lived.

It's very atmospheric, especially the dungeons. Has a (slight) Japanese vibe that I really like. Tons of stats/items, crafting, skills. The graphics are fine, not great. Environment design is very good though. Character creation is just plain awesome, even if everything turns out slightly weird. Some bad clipping issues. But overall it's been plain fun to play.

Not sure how long I'll be enthusiastic about switching out 2 characters every few hours though. This is a game that I like, but I can tell already the sequel (if there is one) will be much, much better.

This game really should be covered here. I recommend it to any of you.

I have been following this one too lately. The one thing that put me off is that I got an assasins creed 1 vibe from the screenshots, which is quite negative as AS1 was quite a hollow game imo. Though from the comments here, it seems there is enough to do in the world.

ilm said:

I have been following this one too lately. The one thing that put me off is that I got an assasins creed 1 vibe from the screenshots, which is quite negative as AS1 was quite a hollow game imo. Though from the comments here, it seems there is enough to do in the world.

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Did you just cite Assassin's Creed 1? Ok, now you can thorw it out of the window and think more of Dragon Age, Dark Souls & Monster Hunter please.
Try the demo and you'll agree with me .

Sounds pretty damn good... I'll be getting this soon

Ovenall said:

Fun stuff can happen like when I was fighting a monster way above my level, I jumped on his back and he went into the animation to flip over to crush me, and he fell off the edge of a chasm. I jumped off just in time and lived.

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I know exactly which encounter you mean and something very similar happened to me ... only I didn't get off in time so I took the plummet down chasm with it. Of course I landed first, died and THEN that huge monster fell on top of me just to add insult to injury

Obviously I didn't shelf it like I said I would previously in this thread (got booted once more from Diablo 3 so I thought I should give Dragon's Dogma another go while waiting for the Battle.net server to get fixed). Arriving in the capitol and thereby gaining access not only to merchants with decent weapons and armour but more importantly gaining the ability to improve you weapons and armour made all the difference for me. Yes, I can still get 2-shot killed by many opponents but now at least I can hurt them as well.

The whole pawns gaining experience of how to deal with quests and monster before you encounter them yourself and can therefore provide help/tips on how to proceed is, at he core, pretty cool ... but the implementation is not always perfect. For instance, if a pawn knows the way through a dungeon by having gained knowledge of it from others they tend to do like Marcus Brody from Indiana Jones 3: "Follow me, I know the way" and then charge ahead drawing all kinds of heat down upon themselves if there be monsters about

Pawns charging ahead has happened to me several times. I didn't know it was because they knew the quest. I was able to call them back and never got killed because of it, though I can certainly see that happening.

Was cruising around the outside of the capital city, killing bandits (which can be really tough) and finding ingredients, just generally exploring. Came upon some reptilian humanoids which absolutely destroyed me. I haven't yet been one- or two- hit killed yet. But I'm only level 18 or so.

Great exploration in this game so far. Hidden stuff all around. I've heard all the landscapes are sort of the same though, so maybe it gets dull after a while. But really, this game is definitely an RPG, or an ARPG to be more accurate I guess. PC snobbery will likely keep it being overlooked by some here, but it's their loss. Not sure I want to change vocations, though that might screw me in the end... apparently learning different vocations opens up skills or augments that work across vocations. I'm old school and never got into the whole multi-class min-maxxing thing though.

Well, as far as I can tell the skills are unlocked based on vocation affinity progression and not levels so I can easily see myself evolving my strider to a ranger which should allow most if not all of my skills to be accessible to the ranger vocation (still daggers but standard bow is exchanged for a long bow).

The 2-hit kills are mostly if you're caught by a bandit leader or one of the bigger monsters (2 swings of a cyclops' club without healing in between and I'm done for) ... or when giants throw you down chasms.

There are indeed a lot of details in this game that will either appeal or appal so to speak. The fact that nights or utterly and completely dark and you can't see jack without a lantern and even so you can only see a couple of meters ahead, will probably make some of you realism fanatics start clapping your hands ... but playing as a archer it is just really annoying and I find myself seeking and inn every time the sun starts to set. Of course it can also lead to novel ideas like when you're exploring a cave and you see something in the water and bend down to pick it up ... and you get soaked and your lantern goes out leaving you in total darkness until you dry enough to be able to light it again.

The nights are pretty intense. So far I've stuck to the roads and have only had wolves (lots of wolves... ugh) and goblins attack me at night, so it hasn't been so bad. Like I said, I haven't found the game to be really all that difficult. Though I do have a long way to go and I'm usually a really cautious player. The day/night dynamic does make for some tense planning of journeys.

Do you have to use pawns?

At the very least you have to use your own main pawn. You do not need to recruit additional ones. Prepare for a challenge though. I play with my pawn and the maximum 2 additional pawns.

You can also lay down basic behavior for your own pawn, like guardian, attacker, etc. But I haven't gotten into that much yet.

And, if you really feel like it, you can just toss your main pawn off a cliff and go totally alone. The pawn will be back with you whenever you touch a pawn rift, so you don't lose him/her.

Then again, pawns are fun to run around with, but the possibility to ditch them is there, effectively altering the difficulty of the game.

After reading this thread and checking few gameplay vids, I´m finding this game rather appealing, maybe even moreso than Dark Souls.
Since I´m not buying a console because of it, I came to the conclusion that the game needs a PC version .

DeepO said:

After reading this thread and checking few gameplay vids, I´m finding this game rather appealing, maybe even moreso than Dark Souls.
Since I´m not buying a console because of it, I came to the conclusion that the game needs a PC version .

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That probably will never come out because Capcom said that "implementing the pawn system is too difficult" on a PC version: I know, a pathetic excuse, but this is it (for now).
Anyway, if you have a Xbox360/PS3, you shouldn't miss this game imho .

DeepO said:

Since I´m not buying a console because of it, I came to the conclusion that the game needs a PC version .

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Have you sat down a made of list of games you're not going to buy a console for recently?

I used to feel the same way but then one day I sat down and made such a list and by the time I had added the 15th game on the list I realised that the only party that was missing out due to my stubbornness was actually myself.

fatBastard() said:

Have you sat down a made of list of games you're not going to buy a console for recently?

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Yes, currently there´s one game on it .
Really, I´m saturated with PC games alone already so I don´t feel any need to extend my portfolio of options.
PC version would be a welcome surprise, but, well, I´m ok with missing out once in a while.