Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[kane_magus]

Just want to pause for a moment before I go to bed to say that Dragon's Dogma is a pretty damn good video game. Yeah, I know, I'm behind the times on this by around five years or so, but whatever. Better late than never.

Watch on YouTube

(Yes, I know it's a Capcom game, but still. If you've got Capcom on your shitlist these days, as I do, for the most part, I'd still recommend potentially making an exception for this. For what it's worth, I didn't pay attention to the fact that this was a Capcom game until after I bought it on a dirt cheap sale on Steam.)

Comments

[owsf2000]

I have to agree with you on this. Dragon's Dogma was an exceptionally awesome game. I got Dark Arisen as a free rental[1] on PS3 and it was one of the few freebie games I actually played through and enjoyed - in fact played through the story mode like 3 times and was in the middle of my 4th when I moved on. When I get plus my ps account again I'll probably go through it and try another couple of runs.

I do have Dragon's Dogma (original release) as a physical disc on PS3 as well. So there's nothing really stopping me I guess from playing it, but not sure if it'd force me to start from scratch or not. Where the save game is DA. I think it's mostly the bonus dungeon that's added to DA over the original, plus at least on the PS3 there's a bonus for rebuying DA if you already had the original game. You get a permanent use portal stone or whatever they're called.

That being said, the PC edition is suppose to be superior to the PS3 if only because Capcom wisely upped the resolution so PC gamers can take full advantage of their monitors for it. Seems there's a lot of PC ports from consoles that lock PC gamers into the often inferior native resolutions of the console it came from.

(Mind you, I think Capcom had considered a sequel to this series a few years back but I don't think anything came of it - and probably for the best as I think they were aiming at MMORPG territory... *googles* oh wait, that ended up being "Dragon's Dogma Online". So a DD2 that's faithful to the original is still technically possible.)

[1] Part of the Monthly Freebies that stop working if you're not PSN+, which I currently am not but will probably be again later.

[kane_magus]

It's sort of like "Skyrim meets Dark Souls," but the thing that really sets it apart for me is the pawn system and how the pawns can be trained to act how you prefer them to act. If it had just been yet another solo "adventure guy" doing a solo "adventure quest" to save the world by himself, solo, or whatever, I don't think it would be nearly as interesting to me[1]. As of now, my main pawn is set to first attack ranged/magic users and then go for any weaker mobs while I focus on whatever I want. Since I'm playing offline, I'm only getting the randomized offline pawns for my secondary pawns, but even they are pretty useful, especially since I usually fiddle with the search feature in the Rift to find more useful pawns rather than just taking whatever.

I'm almost 60 hours in, according to Steam, and I think I'm like around level 45 or so, and I haven't even taken any of the Wyrm Hunt quests yet. I've just been wandering the land, uncovering the map, and looting loot, for the most part. Recently, since I only just stumbled upon the notice board for them in the bottom floor of the Pawn Guild yesterday, I'm doing the "From a Different Sky" quests (i.e. just travel to a marked place on the map and find a tiny gold medallion thing).

Also, the spells (since I started as a mage and later switched to sorcerer) are so much cooler than in most other games (including Skyrim and Dark Souls). It's nice to be able to just fucking wreck a distant horde of goblins or bandits by dropping a gigantic tornado on their asses.

[1] - Well, to be fair, there are companion NPCs in Skyrim and you can call in assisting phantoms (player or NPC) in Dark Souls, but none of that is nearly as in depth as this thing with the pawns in Dragon's Dogma, in my opinion.

[owsf2000]

I'd have to agree with you about the spells and all that, although ultimately I think the thing I loved most about the game was taking down the larger monsters like griffins, dragons, etc. As a mage I'd have to stay back a lot, but when I played as a warrior class there was the fun thing about climbing on the monsters and hacking away.

Even if the buggers tried to take flight. (make sure you carry extra stamina restoratives!)

I played it offline as well, so I generally made sure I had a well rounded party. Regardless of the party formation I made sure I always had at least one healer onhand other than myself.

My current favorite class was the Magic Warrior or whatever it is. mystic warrior? Either way, it was like the best of both worlds.

[kane_magus]

I'm just about maxed out on the skills on my Sorcerer, and after I switch back and top off the Mage skills that aren't cross-class, I'll probably give the Mystic Knight a try. I was leaning toward either it or Magick Archer or Assassin. As I'm playing now, I'm usually hanging back and casting High Lassitude followed by high damage shit, but it might be nice to mix it up with melee. I'd probably switch both my secondary pawns to be a Sorcerer/Mage combo at that point.

My main pawn started as a Strider and then I switched her to Ranger, but now I'm trying her out as a Fighter (and later will try her as a Warrior). Up until then, the secondary pawns were always Fighter and Mage (mostly for healing and Fire Affinity, though the additional occasional High Comestion or High Ingle is pretty nice too), but now that the main pawn is a Fighter for the time being, it's secondary Ranger and Mage.

[kane_magus]

After finally maxing out Mage and Sorcerer, I switched to Magick Archer, as I'm not quite ready to try a full melee class yet, but even playing as an archer after being a wizard-type for so long is hugely different. It's much faster, for one thing, as I was used to hanging back and waiting anywhere from 5-20 seconds or more for one big attack to come out, and now I'm hanging even farther back and peppering fools with lots of hits every 2-3 seconds or so. Also using maxed out rusted daggers (torpor is pretty great) on the rare occasion something gets close.

Pawn setup is now main as Fighter (almost maxed, at which point I'll switch her to Warrior), secondary Mage for healing, and I just switched out the secondary Ranger I was using for a Sorcerer with most of the same high hitting shit that I used to be using myself. Though with me as archer, with fighter, mage, and ranger pawns, I just killed the Drake that wanders around to the west of the city without too much trouble (and that was just with the shitty first tier Magick Archer skills), so I might switch the sorcerer back to ranger if that doesn't work out. (EDIT) Yeah... I'm switching out the sorcerer for the ranger again. ¬_¬ (/EDIT)

Only real issue with switching to archer is that since I'm no longer using a staff weapon, I have to keep remembering that I can't levitate anymore. ^^; Haven't died yet because of it, but I fully expect to do so multiple times.