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Posted by Giant Bomb May 25 2012 01:00 GMT
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The game is at its best when fighting and climbing beasts.

You have to admire Capcom’s ambitions with Dragon’s Dogma. Monster Hunter, a series that’s single-handedly kept the PSP alive in Japan, just hasn’t caught fire anywhere else. Dragon’s Dogma feels like Capcom taking the most outwardly appealing part of Monster Hunter--big, meaty fights against monstrous beasts with a team of friends--and putting that into a sprawling world that goes on and on for miles.

The bummer: Capcom built this huge place to run around in but didn’t fill it with anything interesting. The saving grace: Capcom’s expertise in building robust, customizable, and super fun combat systems pays off.

The game opens with a promising enough premise. A dragon has suddenly appeared in the land of Gransys, and attacks your quiet, idyllic waterfront town. Pretty stupidly, you pick up a sword and “attack” the dragon, who responds in kind by tearing your heart out keeping it for himself. You’re still alive, though, and are now one of the Arisen, which means you're special and technically alive but not quite whole. The dragon says your heart can be reclaimed if you defeat him, and so your journey begins.

You gain some pretty sweet powers by becoming the Arisen, including access to Pawns, a human-like race of beings charged with following the Arisen. Pawns are AI support characters, and their roles are crucial in dealing with the game's endless supply of mobs. It’s probably possible to solo Dragon’s Dogma, but I wouldn’t recommend it--you need these guys and girls. You have one main Pawn, who you design early in the game. The other two are (largely) created by other Dragon’s Dogma players, which makes for some goofy allies (I had a high level mage named Ladypants with me for most of my 37 hours) but makes the experience enjoyably personable. For me, my daggers-n-arrows focused archer was balanced out with two support mages--one attacking, another buffing--and a fighter who largely focused on drawing aggro. All of the Pawns can be customized with equipment, but since all but the Pawn you created does not level, it’s not worth it--it’s better to just recruit new Pawns every few hours.

The system is perfectly set up for other human beings, but Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t feature multiplayer. It’s an unfortunate omission, especially since you have very little influence over the Pawns themselves. This leads to more than a few frustrating scenarios where, say, healing spells are badly needed but everyone is focused on casting lots of fireballs. There are some built-in solutions to help address this, such as potions that temporarily change the attack patterns of your Pawns and the ability to set some generic action recommendations ahead of battle, but there’s nothing as simple and elegant as pulling up a menu and asking Ladypants to cast a holy spell on your daggers to help in crippling the undead.

The real core of Dragon’s Dogma is combat. Thirty-seven hours later, a pile of bodies the size of a mountain in my wake, I was still having fun slicing up goblins and direwolves. The game has a terrifically fun and dynamic combat system that constantly encourages players to experiment. Tapping shoulder buttons brings up adjustable modifiers that give you plenty of options in battle. You gain experience and level, but rather than worrying about assigning points to strength and other attributes, that’s in the background, with the focus on earning and assigning new skills. Like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls, many of the skills lock players into animations (though there is a skill for some classes that can actually break the animation), so combat becomes a shifting risk/reward proposition. Do you enable your supremely powerful dagger attack but chance missing and being stuck flailing in the wind for a few seconds?

Dragon's Dogma's world is certainly big, but big isn't enough.

And though you choose a class upfront, it’s only a few hours before you can swap to something else. There are even advanced and hybrid classes, such as the magic archer I ended up playing, that aren’t available upfront. It’s easy to switch classes, and if you come to regret the change, it’s a simple matter to go back or try another one. Some skills are even compatible across classes, which means you can begin to craft your own super hybrid that brings the best of several classes under one roof. By the end of my 37 hours, I’d maxed out two classes for both myself and my Pawn, opening up a robust set of skills. Combined with the other Pawns that have their own powers and magic and combat options are vast.

The big payoff is when Dragon’s Dogma introduces its slew of screen-filling creatures--dragons, hydras, griffins, ogres, etc. It looks a little goofy, but the key to defeating them is climbing on their backs and stabbing them in the face/neck/eye. It’s a brutal, bloody Shadow of the Colossus, and it’s intensely satisfying. There’s nothing quite like hitting a griffin mid-air with fire-infused arrows, watching it crash to the ground, straddling its neck just before it manages to take off, being lifted thousands of feet into the air and stabbing the hell out of it, as it maniacally tries to shake you off. It’s these moments, with you and your Pawns working in tandem to take down these towering enemies, that Dragon’s Dogma shines. It never gets old, and the ability to perpetually switch around your set of combat skills means fighting the same enemies manages to feel fresh, since your approach to it changes.

It’s a good thing the combat holds up, too, because that’s the biggest thing Dragon’s Dogma has going for it. Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t do much with its premise until the very, every end, at which point the game unloads an hour of completely unexpected, totally batshit crazy exposition. It almost makes the entire story better in retrospect, but such feelings only come after the insane revelations the ending brings, and not a moment sooner. Prior to crazytown, the story is utterly banal. None of the quests have captivating stories behind them, and add zero color to the world at large. Characters are introduced but never given any substance. Bizarre plot twists are wedged in and then completely forgotten, as if they never happened. At one point, you’re jailed for witnessing something very bad, but moments after escaping, the world forgets you were ever jailed. Even when you talk to the character that put you in jail--no response. The utter lack of consequence is littered throughout, and applies directly to the game world, too. Nothing has permanence. The same set of goblins and bandits just outside the main capital are there every time you leave. Every. Single. Time. There is no variation. No matter how often you kill them, they all come right back. Building a world that feels as alive and random as Bethesda Game Studios did with Skyrim certainly isn’t easy, and while it’s easy to respect Capcom’s ambition in what it tried to create with Dragon’s Dogma, the bar has been set so high, and Dragon’s Dogma isn’t close.

The most imposing enemies can take you out in a single swipe.

Compounding the issue is how often Dragon’s Dogma asks players to experience the same locations over and over again. There is fast travel in the game but it’s not very useful. Players can purchase magic stones that enable teleporting back to the main capital, though it’s not until halfway through the game that it becomes possible to transport out of the capital. Even then, you can’t choose a location and be whisked away--you have to physically go to a location and lay down a “portcrystal.” It’s especially infuriating when the game asks you to spend 20 minutes running to a quest location, then come back to the capital, and immediately asks you to head to that location again. It’s one thing if the game had dropped a “hey, maybe you should drop the portcrystal here--wink!” hint but it never does.

There’s so much to like about what Capcom gets right with Dragon’s Dogma that it makes the missteps utterly heartbreaking. The combat has enough depth and variety to keep you interested for the duration of the story and beyond, but in terms of what might have been, what should have been, Dragon’s Dogma falls gut-wrenchingly short.


Posted by Joystiq May 23 2012 22:00 GMT
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We had some issues with Dragon's Dogma. Ok, we had more than a few issues, calling it "50 or so hours of mundane drudgery" in our review. That doesn't mean our opinion is the only one that matters. There's a whole internet out there with glowing reviews. Maybe not "glowing," but certainly more accepting.
  • Game Informer (85/100): "Combat feels like a necessary part of the game's design, rather than something that was begrudgingly added to provide interaction between cutscenes. I left the game feeling that I made my mark on Gransys the way I chose to, instead of being escorted from plot point to plot point. When you're talking about an open-world game, I can't think of higher praise."
  • Destructoid (75/100): "Should you play Dragon's Dogma? Yes. The high points are so very worth getting to, and while the main game will be cleared in a number of hours, there are lots of monsters to battle and a dose of end-game content to clear, providing more than enough to rival the Skyrims and Diablos of the world."
  • Eurogamer (70/100): "Expectedly, coming as it does from an action game developer, its jewels are to be found in the dynamic combat, stat-tweaking party-building and defining boss battles. In this way, the game echoes the adventurous, dragon-hunting spirit of its (second- and third-hand) literary influences: that sense of unpredictable peril that could be lurking in every cave and thicket. "
  • OXM (60/100): "Dragon's Dogma has its merits, but for every great idea there's a design fumble that just leaves you scratching your head. Though it's technically sound, the game lacks the spark to elevate it beyond a "sometimes fun, mostly mediocre" experience. Much like the main character's chest cavity, this RPG ultimately feels hollow, with no real heart."

Posted by Kotaku May 23 2012 17:30 GMT
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#ondiscdlc Dragon's Dogma, Capcom's open-world fantasy RPG that released yesterday, has been the subject of some controversy that Capcom fans are now well familiar with. On-disc DLC was the cause of consumer uproar when it was learned that Street Fighter x Tekken contained locked content on the shipped discs that could be purchased on launch day. More »

Posted by Kotaku May 23 2012 14:00 GMT
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#review Reading about Dragon's Dogma, Capcom's latest title that ventures into open-world fantasy territory, is like viewing the game through rose-tinted glasses. Capcom is clearly trying new things that seem inventive. I want to love Dragon's Dogma. I want to be able to support a game that tries its hand at something new, and hope that other developers take notice of the potential for success that comes with being creative. More »

Posted by Kotaku May 23 2012 02:00 GMT
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#dragonsdogma It takes a strong party of adventurers to take down a dragon, but an even stronger party to dissect a game as massive as Capcom's ambitious action role-playing game Dragon's Dogma. Do these six brave heroes have what it takes? More »

Video
Posted by Giant Bomb May 23 2012 01:45 GMT
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Patrick and Vinny tackle Capcom's expansive fantasy game, as well as the world's weakest griffin.

Posted by Joystiq May 21 2012 16:20 GMT
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I have slain a dragon. I have walked the coasts of this land more times than I can count, treading upon the lives of creatures most foul. I have felled the beasts of the forest with arrows and steel and pillaged their leavings for aught. I have died, thousands of times, as have those who have adventured with me. And, in the end, I think back on almost none of it with fondness, or the nostalgic recollection given to hard fought, hard won battles. I am no hero.

Listen now, as I play for you the song of my heartache. Let me spin you a tale of confusion, anger, humility and bona fide bewilderment in the face of abject mediocrity. Let me tell of Seraphina the Arisen, her loyal pawn Josephine, and their stupid, stupid quest to save the kingdom of Gransys. Let me tell you of Dragon's Dogma.

Posted by Kotaku May 18 2012 04:45 GMT
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#capcom In 2009, a twenty-something female joined Osaka-based game developer Capcom. The new employee was assigned to a couple different games, before becoming a member of the team developing Dragon's Dogma, Capcom's upcoming big budget title. More »

YouTube
Posted by Kotaku May 13 2012 19:00 GMT
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#dragonsdogma We've been circumspect about Dragon's Dogma, coming May 22 from Capcom. Totilo and Chris Person, the site's video editor, have grown attached to it despite also calling it "one very messy, clumsy game, full of bad dialogue, cumbersome menus and annoying supporting characters." But there are legitimately good qualities, they insist; this simply isn't so-bad-it's-good irony. More »

Posted by Joystiq May 13 2012 15:46 GMT
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Most people may not know this, but starting your day off with dragons, burning ouroboroses and cheesy, overwrought voice acting is just as important as eating a well-balanced breakfast. It's something to do with fiber, and having your humors balanced ... Look, we're not nutritionists, okay?

Posted by Joystiq May 09 2012 18:15 GMT
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Dragon's Dogma will feature a dragon so big, so dogmatic (why not) that it'll take the collective efforts of everyone playing to kill it. The "Ur-Dragon" is an event in which every player party will be able to fight the giant beast in their own games, with all damage dealt to it worldwide contributing to the depletion of its health.

The person to strike the final, decisive blow will get the "maximum reward," but players who cause damage will also receive item drops. Of course, if hacking away at a big old dragon weren't rewarding enough on its own, nobody would ever play Dragon's Dogma.

YouTube
Posted by Kotaku May 09 2012 15:00 GMT
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#dragonsdogma Meet Dragon's Dogma's Ur-Dragon. He's sort of like a video game kickstarter, except that he doesn't need tons of gamers to fund him. He needs tons of gamers to kill him. More »

Posted by Joystiq May 07 2012 21:00 GMT
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"I wanted to create the biggest world in any Capcom game so far," director Hideaki Itsuno says about Capcom's upcoming RPG, Dragon's Dogma. The other big goal was creating a game where players are able to finish the game in many different ways - an experience shaped by choices.

Posted by Kotaku Apr 25 2012 13:00 GMT
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#dragonsdogma Here at Kotaku, we've fallen in love with the possibly-broken-but-who-cares-because-it's-awesome video game Dragon's Dogma. We have hopped on the bandwagon despite or because this is the kind of game that lets you fight a goblin who asks "who let the dogs out?" More »

Posted by Kotaku Apr 24 2012 20:30 GMT
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#dragonsdogma We've been skeptical about Capcom's upcoming knights-and-magic game Dragon's Dogma for about a year. And then Capcom sent me a near-final copy of the game so I could play it. My skepticism increased. More »

Posted by Joystiq Apr 23 2012 22:15 GMT
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Given the Xbox 360's niche status in Japan, it takes more than a shiny exterior to lure customers to a new controller. For the Japanese release of the eye-catching new "chrome" Xbox 360 controllers, Microsoft and Capcom have bundled bonus Dragon's Dogma content. We bet deadly dragon fire looks lovely reflected in the polished surface of the new controller.

Each ¥5,775 ($71) controller will include a code for eight "special" downloadable quests. Both the game and the controllers (in red, blue, and silver) will be released in Japan on May 24.

Posted by Joystiq Apr 22 2012 15:30 GMT
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The latest issue/episode of the Dragon's Dogma digital comic details the narrative justification for the game's "pawn" system, which allows players to borrow NPCs from another user's single-player game. Obviously, that involves giant glowing rocks and murdered people in front of castles.

Posted by Joystiq Apr 18 2012 09:00 GMT
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Protip: If you're an ordinary man, just like those before you, and you love your dad a whole bunch, you should expect to get your heart stolen by a dragon. It's just a fact of life, revealed in this latest Dragon's Dogma trailer.

Posted by Kotaku Apr 16 2012 15:51 GMT
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You will be able to download and play a demo of Dragon's Dogma on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 on April 24 if you live in North America, Capcom revealed today. Wait one day longer if you're in Europe. More »

Posted by IGN Apr 16 2012 15:50 GMT
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Capcom has announced that the demo for upcoming open-world RPG Dragon's Dogma will hit Xbox Live and Playstation Store on next Tuesday, April 24th in the US and April 25th in Europe...

Posted by Joystiq Apr 16 2012 16:30 GMT
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We know there are dragons, and pawns, and repetitive dialogue, but Capcom's Dragon's Dogma remains surprisingly mysterious for something that's due to hit next month. It's a good thing, then, that Capcom announced plans to release a downloadable demo in North America and Europe next week.

You'll be able to get the demo from PSN in North America and Xbox Live worldwide on Tuesday, April 24, with the European PSN release following one day later. The character and Pawn you make in the demo will transfer into the full game, should you decide the three of you are having a good enough time to make that commitment.

Posted by Joystiq Apr 10 2012 19:00 GMT
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Dragon's Dogma, the game that will be bundled with the beta for Resident Evil 6, has broken free in a pair of trailers from the Captivate event. If you're still unsure what the game's about, check out our preview from late last year.

Posted by Kotaku Apr 10 2012 15:30 GMT
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#dragonsdogma Bundled with the Resident Evil 6 demo this May is Dragon's Dogma, a game as brown and green as Skyrim and, Capcom execs surely hope, just as interesting for fantasy game fans. More »

Posted by Joystiq Mar 31 2012 00:00 GMT
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Character customization is an important part of Dragon's Dogma, both for your character and for the AI-controlled "pawns" you can summon and share with other players. That concept is extending to the Capcom Store's pre-order bonus, a "Bobble Budd" toy that you can redesign as you see fit.

The Bobble Budd, exclusively available from Capcom's online store, comes with a blank Budd, four weapon/shield accessories, and two sheets of decals for eyes, mouths, and other features. We don't want to sound too down on the game when we say this toy looks way more fun -- it's just that the toy looks really, really fun.

Posted by IGN Mar 20 2012 17:13 GMT
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Capcom has high hopes for Dragon's Dogma...

Posted by Joystiq Mar 06 2012 07:00 GMT
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Yes, we do mean that in Dragon's Dogma you fight dragons in the sky -- just in case that wasn't clear. You should probably make things even clearer by watching one such dragon get totally stabbed in mid-air in the trailer above, preparing you for the upcoming undated demo on XBL and PSN.

Posted by Kotaku Mar 05 2012 14:45 GMT
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#dragonsdogma Publisher Capcom sent us this new video today to show off one of the battles in Dragon's Dogma, an action-roleplaying open-world game that it will release on May 22 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. More »

Posted by IGN Feb 16 2012 19:50 GMT
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If you went in fresh, not knowing anything about it, you could easily mistake Dragon's Dogma for an American or European action RPG. It just has that look. "We really wanted to make a game that would be accepted in Japan as well as abroad," says Hideaki Itsuno, director of Dragon's Dogma. "Our i...

YouTube
Posted by Kotaku Jan 30 2012 14:00 GMT
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#dragonsdogma Yes, it's the most tiresome practice in all of hype-dom: the clip that promotes another clip. Still, Capcom's been very quiet regarding its Japanese-developed, Western-styled action/RPG so any new look at it is worth paying attention. More »