Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen - FAQ

You can have multiple saves, it just involves more than a key press. Game is good enough that one forgives bits which aren't so good.
 
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Usually I finish every game I buy.
DD is one of the few games that I've bought but didn't finish. I just din't like it. For me it's just a too shallow game when it comes to atmosphere and story. I somehow didn't feel motivated enough to carry on. Perhaps I haven't listened or read well enough, but I had difficulties understanding what the protagonist now exactly has to do and why.
I kept going until I reached the big city in hopes that it would change but the city for me was just grey and dull as well. Boring visuals, boring atmosphere, boring NPCs, boring quests.

Besides that the UI is just awful. It has been said that DD is a great PC port in this regard. If that's true I never want to see a bad port for sure.
Character development and combat felt unintuitive as well (played as a mage).
And while the pawn concept is quite original, these "companions" just don't feel alive.

Apparently it's just not my type of game.
 
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I really don't know why I liked this game as much as I did. I was prepared to piss Brumbek off by criticising it AND I could name quite a number of things which were wrong but, for some reason, it just didn't matter as much as I thought it would.
 
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I played it for a while but it got so boring I stopped.
Some already mentioned horrible single checkpoint in openworld. This can be modded.

I'll add too much of grind. Also, if you don't finish some sidequests, they will disappear if you progress too much - and to finish those in time you need to pass through huge area filled with mobs that just refuse to die.
This can't be modded.

The game was praised everywhere, but I just can't understand the hype. Maybe I got spoiled too much with ideas Gothic set for openworlds on PC decades ago.
If you don't mind grinding and care only for main quests, buy it. If you can't stand grind and are turn-every-stone type of a player, look elsewhere.
 
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Boring visuals, boring atmosphere, boring NPCs, boring quests.
I'm currently experiencing this feeling with Dragon Age: Inquisition. I got sucked into picking it up cheaply recently and yet after a couple of hours, felt so utterly bored by the weak combat, dull hamster wheel MMO-stylings and horrid control scheme that I didn't feel motivated to continue. Like yourself though, I want to finish all games that I buy, but I almost dread trying to get into this. Given my enjoyment of the first game, I'll eventually persist and hopefully find something to enjoy (banter/interactions perhaps).

On topic, I've got Dragon's Dogma for PS3 but currently no actual console to test it more extensively on. I'm looking forward to trying it though and will be curious to find how my evaluations compare with the general Watcher view.
 
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I'm currently experiencing this feeling with Dragon Age: Inquisition. I got sucked into picking it up cheaply recently and yet after a couple of hours, felt so utterly bored by the weak combat, dull hamster wheel MMO-stylings and horrid control scheme that I didn't feel motivated to continue.
While DA:I had its flaws I never thought about abandoning it. I've really enjoyed it despite collect-quests and mediocre combat.
Different strokes for different folks I guess.
 
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I've yet to play very far into DD because of my backlog, but I've found what I have played enjoyable. It doesn't seem like there's much in the way of C&C, and the writing is just so-so, but the combat is fun, and it has some truly epic battles.

Given the choice, I'll take the game with fun combat and mediocre writing over a game with good writing but boring combat.
 
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Given the choice, I'll take the game with fun combat and mediocre writing over a game with good writing but boring combat.

It's funny you say that, I was deciding between DD and PoE :p. Am currently downloading DD.
 
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Just pay attention to your pawns guys. One second they will warn you that "fall can kill as surely as any monsters" and the next they will jump off the cliff :)
 
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I've yet to play very far into DD because of my backlog, but I've found what I have played enjoyable. It doesn't seem like there's much in the way of C&C, and the writing is just so-so, but the combat is fun, and it has some truly epic battles.

Given the choice, I'll take the game with fun combat and mediocre writing over a game with good writing but boring combat.

This is true, unfortunately after the first 20 hours you've seen most of the epic battles and will just repeat them the rest of the way. Also the difficulty doesn't hold up. It's pretty easy overall but gets ridiculously easy in the mid to late. Not sure about the end game lost steam and never finished. It's made worse by the sheer number of HP"s that creatures have.

There's a dragon for instance with 6 health bars. It never came close to killing me as it's easy to dodge but it took 45 min. to kill it. simply hack,hack, hack, dodge, repeat for about 45 min.

Too bad, I was very positive about the game in the first half but the more I played the less fun it got.

Having said that I did put 90 hours in to it with several restarts, so if one doesn't habitually restart and can handle the HP sponges and mid to late game repetition then there's some fun to be had.

This comes from someone that favors combat over pretty much anything else but It didn't hold up over the course of the game.
 
There's a dragon for instance with 6 health bars. It never came close to killing me as it's easy to dodge but it took 45 min. to kill it. simply hack,hack, hack, dodge, repeat for about 45 min.
Yep, it's the same on a lower scale in the early game with cylops. They're not difficult to beat but it just takes time because of 3 (I think) healthbars.
 
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Yes, I agree, I've stopped at mid 40s I think my character is. I found the game most enjoyable in the teen to twenties level range. The game could, in some respects, benefit greatly from a slower leveling mode or mod. Whilst it's great to get the Meteor and Tornado spells it doesn't take that long and they make many fights trivial encounters once attained. That said I get the impression it's expected to swap your vocations around to give you some variation - perhaps I should have swapped as I went instead of going directly to maxing out the Sorcerer line before switching to Mystic Archer or whatever it's called. Might have stretched out the skill trees and retained some of the difficulty. I'm not really sure that's ideal tbh but maybe if I ever play it again I'll try this.

And yes save often, if only to recover from your pawns doing dumb things like plummeting to their deaths as they decide to vault over a chest next to a cliff.


-kwm
 
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The second half of the game seeming less fun is a problem that's endemic to RPGs in general. I could probably say that about more than 90% of the games I've played over the years.

Not quite sure why it's such an issue in RPGs compared to other genres, but it probably has a lot to do with their length. I also think many games lose a bit of their luster once you've learned their system.. as learning the system is often one of the best parts.
 
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Yep, it's the same on a lower scale in the early game with cylops. They're not difficult to beat but it just takes time because of 3 (I think) healthbars.

Lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt...if they plan a sequel, they really need to up the AI, and cut down healthbars.
Though getting the stupid eyeball to be impaled by it's own tentacle, again and again, was pretty funny.
 
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