Dragon's Dogma [multi]

[Prophecy2k]

I do find the comparisons to Skyrim pretty funny. That game garners universal acclaim despite having awful writing, a tacky design sense, terrible combat and catastrophic bugs. But in the case of Dragon's Dogma they've done a lot of hedging, as if worried about being too critical or praising, perhaps fearful of being caught on the wrong side of Demon's Souls type fan reception.

I'd disagree with all of this personally.

I didn't find Skyrim's writing to be all that horrendous. Although i admit I have a pretty high threshold for such things. It's only when a game has writing and voicework as bad as the Bionic Commando (3D one) game that I really can't enjoy it.

Skyrim's design i thought was pretty good and enjoyable too, and i felt the combat was able to serve it's function (wasn't terrible, but I agree it wasn't amazing). I'm still at a loss as to why Sony didn't push to get them to implement a Move patch for the game with 1-to-1 controls. Something more akin to Dead Island with location based damage too would have been excellent. Eitherway what was there didn't take too much away from the game.

DD on the other hand seems to be another victim of western-slanted reviewer bias to me. If a reviews' criticisms are purely made up of poorly articulated, overused and completely unqualified statements like, "such-and-such is generic", "controls feel clunky", "Story is bad" etc etc, my alarm bells instantly start to ring. Too many western reviewers make me sick with how utterly close-minded they are, i.e. "if it's not from one of my favourite uber hyped devs, it won't score more than a 7.5".

I'll be picking this game up and seeing for myself. F@ck the gaming press.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I don't think that's true really. I think game journalists of all critics are usually the ones all too eager to turn a blind eye on a game's problems. Just compare book or movie reviews to game reviews. There are probably more 90+ game reviews on metacritic every year than there have movie reviews in well over a decade. The problem is that most games are really scored on a 70 - 100 scale, especially when it comes to major releases. Game sites are awfully dependant on the mercy of publishers.

From what I've read so far, most critics had issues with the world of Dragon's Dogma because it doesn't feel alive or meaningful. NPCs just run around aimlessly, and there's no lore to discover either. The world is just big for the sake of being big. It also looks incredibly bland, and from what I've seen so far I can't really disagree with any of that.

Maybe some of that holds true for Skyrim as well (although I think the world was really fun to explore, bad writing or not), but this is Dragon's Dogma and not Skyrim. Lower the Syrim score if you must, but for god's sake don't raise the score for DD just because you mercifully overlooked similar problems in previous games. That'd be twice as dishonest.

And since DD is an RPG, it should absolutely be reviewed by someone with experience in the genre, and it should be compared to other entries in the genre. That's how reviews work. Games don't exist in a bubble, and that's especially true for a game as DD which borrows heavily from other prominent rpgs.

I would agree with this in the main part, but it's painfully obvious with the huge fluctuations in scores that the main scoring method is personal taste and not objectivity. It's in situations like this that reviewing system itself needs reviewing.

And even removing the fear of publisher lash back wouldn't resolve the saturated opinions of most reviewers. That's why player reviews are important.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I would agree with this in the main part, but it's painfully obvious with the huge fluctuations in scores that the main scoring method is personal taste and not objectivity. It's in situations like this that reviewing system itself needs reviewing.

Reviews are opinions and anyone who claims they're objective is fooling himself. There's very little you can quantify in a scientific manner when it comes to game reviews. They will always differ. Sometimes dramatically so, but this doesn't really seem to be the case here anyway. Most reviews are coming in around the 7- 8 mark, with the odd one or two lower ones.
There's also no reviewing system. There's just people with opnions. Reviews are merely a guideline, and you're supposed to seek out as many as possible before commiting to a purchase. Any halfway decent critic will tell you that.

 

[poopypoo]

Bravo, Siegfried. Game reviews are built to sell, or perhaps just written by permanent adolescents. Either way, the unwritten maxim remains "never admit that games might waste your time", because yeah we've all heard it and yeah we're all over that... but... face it, 90% of the time, games are a total fucking waste of time. Sometimes a waste is fun or necessary. I'm not gonna lecture anybody. I love games. However, it's precisely because of that that I hold them to a higher standard. Games should probably hover around 4.5, with a small handful really pushing the envelope each year and seemingly fewer and fewer games being completely broken, but plenty of games being basically wastes of time. There, I said it, in the course of your lifetime, Skyrim may be a solid 8 (or, assuming gaming improves, less) if you're not really into dialogue, and all the other 9s this year are probably 5.5s. Which is not to say you shouldn't play them -- hey, we all have different needs -- they're just probably games you'll forget all about in a couple of years.

 

[tuna]

I would agree with this in the main part, but it's painfully obvious with the huge fluctuations in scores that the main scoring method is personal taste and not objectivity. It's in situations like this that reviewing system itself needs reviewing.

Here are the most objective reviews you can find: http://www.eurogamer.net/?topic=digital_foundry

 

[Cornsnake]

Got the game yesterday. I'm about 4 hours in now. I'm playing as Strider, and I have a Fighter main pawn. I really like the pawns. They are very active, always breaking stuff, picking up stuff, giving advice.

The game is finally opening up some more. Although now what keeping me from exploring further are the enemies. They can scale up in difficulty really fast, and easily outnumber you. But it's nice to see that the right moves can still make some difference.

 

[poopypoo]

sounds promising! :9

 

[Sigfried1977]

So there's no RE Demo in the PS3 version, but 100 free dlc quests instead. Interesting (just received my game in the mail)

 

[Cornsnake]

I decided to try and kill a cyclops just as the sun was about to set. Most of light available actually came from when one of the mages had set it on fire. While I switched between shooting it's eye with my bow, and stabbing it's head with my daggers when it fell down. Very impressive fight, and I was very happy to see it's still smoldering corpse collapse onto to the grond, almost knocking my character over. And that, as it turns out, was the easy part. I still had to make it back to safety, a long walk through the darkness, not being able to see more then 5 meters ahead me. The game really comes alive at night. Wolves hauling in the distance, or the not so distant soon enough. Jumping out of the darkness to attack, only to disappear back into it while you're are still trying recover before being attacked again by another wolf. I also came across the bandits I could easily defeat during the day. Now they were in much larger numbers, and much stronger. I'm not sure how many I killed, but I went through a lot of recovery items before it was all over. After that I finally made it back to the encampment. I got a lot of DP out of it, and hopefully something good from all the loot I picked up.

So there's no RE Demo in the PS3 version, but 100 free dlc quests instead. Interesting (just received my game in the mail)

Are you from germany? I heard something about the 100 dlc quest included with the game for germany. I've got the PS3 version here in the netherlands, and it came with RE6 demo code.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I like it. A lot. It wasn't love at first sight, but sticking with it for a while proved very rewarding. It's a tough game, with death lurking around every corner, and it gets even tougher during the night, because unlike in Skyrim, night time in Gransys isn't just an esthetic change. Same with caves and many dungeons. A light source isn't a matter of convenience here, it's an absolute necessity if you want to see anything. Think Tomb of Giants in Dark Souls.
What I enjoy the most about the game is the powerful combat and the slight randomness which brings the world to life. Yesterday I accepted an escort mission. Turned out I had to escort an NPC character all across the map and I didn't even know how I was supposed to get there. Stumbled into a cave which lead to a dead end, and guarded by a Cyclops no less, got ambushed by Chimeras and even encountered a big ass dragon. Since I was severely underleveled, my only options were running most of the time. After about 3 hours I finally arrived at the NPC's target destination. The whole thing involved lots of cursing and reloading on my end, but in the end it was a memorable, tense and awesome journey.
The Pawns are really impressive as well, and they generally act smart enough to feel like halfway intelligent real players. Not like smart player maybe, but not like idiots either. You can even give them human-like asshole character traits like looting chests before you even get the chance to do so yourself.
Visually the game is a little bland at times, at least when there's not a whole lot happening. There are some nice little flourishes, though. The way the trees sway in the wind looks really nice for example, and though the "god-rays" look a little tacky I still like them. As soon as you start to get into fights the game looks pretty awesome though. Lots of great, powerful and fluid looking animation (the creatures are super impressive, and even bigger ones like trolls are surprisingly mobile. Lots of neat little touches too, like trolls getting incensed and losing their shit when you have females in your party) and tons of pyrotechniques on display here. It's sort of the anti-Skyrim in that regard (lovely in stills, but rather archaic in motion).

If you like Darks Souls or Demon's Souls and manage to look past some of the blander visual aspects of the game, this is the game for you. I think Capcom's stab at the genre is fairly unique, works really well most of the time, and having a big budget game without a 2 or a 3 in the title this late into the consoles' lifespan is absolutely praiseworthy.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Are you from germany? I heard something about the 100 dlc quest included with the game for germany. I've got the PS3 version here in the netherlands, and it came with RE6 demo code.

I am. I thought the RE6 demo was an Xbox 360 exclusive.

 

[Cornsnake]

Are the 100 DLC quests any good? There seem be a lot of filler quests in the game already. All the kill X amounts of monster Y. I can't really see them making 100 good quests for DLC.

 

[Cornsnake]

I maxed out the rank for both my Strider, and Fighter main pawn. Changed my vocation to Magick Archer, and my pawn's to Warrior. The Magick Archer has a nice lock-on for easy targeting. And I just bought a sweet spell that lights up the whole area, making fighting at night a lot more manageable. I wasn't planning on using staffs, but the levitation spell is good for exploration, letting me reach places I couldn't before.

I'm still having a lot of fun with the game. The day and night cycle together with limited fast travel options really force you to plan ahead, something most RPG's don't do anymore. I also like how the story isn't pushing you forward. No only you can save the world hanging over everything, making it seem like everything you do that doesn't involve saving the world isn't the right thing to do. I always thought that was rather counter productive. Open world RPG's should be about what I want to do, not what the game wants me to do.

 

[3dcgi]

I tried the demo yesterday and it started slow for me, but by the time I finished off the griffin I decided to buy the game. I enjoyed playing the archer part of the demo more than the fighter so this magic archer sounds interesting. One time when fighting the griffin it go so dark I could barely see it. I'll probably pick up the game this week.

 

[Cornsnake]

Man this game is absolutely nuts. I just fought an ogre in the tunnels of a mine. That thing is almost too big to fit into that place. Yet it went completely berserk, running around swinging it's arms around, doing dive kicks, grabbing party members and running off with them so he can eat them. And then trying to climb him so I can stab him in the head.

 

[Sigfried1977]

Climbing Ogres is not a very sensible thing to do. They have a tendency to throw themselves on their backs, crushing your poor Arisen under their weight.

 

[Cornsnake]

Climbing Ogres is not a very sensible thing to do. They have a tendency to throw themselves on their backs, crushing your poor Arisen under their weight.

Yeah I know. It was quite funny the first time it happened. Well not the being crushed to death part. But there are ways to safely climb them. Either by staggering them, or knocking them over, or jumping onto them from a higher position. The double jump works quite well for that. The game allows for a good amount of creativity in how you approach situations.

 

[Sigfried1977]

So far Ogres are the only creature in the game which don't seem to lend themselves to a particular combat tactic. I usually end up wailing on them until they are dead. Works well enough, but takes a long ass time and isn't particularly flashy. There was a single time when one of them fell over and my Pawns decimated him in a matter of seconds. No idea what went differently. Usually they lose a sliver of health, get back on their feet, and then the whole wailing things starts all over.

 

[Cornsnake]

That's why I usually go for the head, it does the most damage. I also had one fall down a cliff. It didn't kill him, but it did a lot of damage. I haven't had much problems causing them stagger or fall over if they haven't gone completely berserk. Are you using enhanced weapons? Enhancing them greatly increases their ability to stagger. Some combat moves are also good for causing enemies to stagger. My main pawn is using a greatsword, which probably helps a lot.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I sent the Ogre located in the dungeons under the Pawn guild over the edge as well. It died. Was pretty cool. I believe there was even an animation for it (but I might be wrong) Yet another one of the many awesome DD moments. Haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time. (since Dark Souls basically)