Dragon's Dogma

Yeah, it was a bit... mashy. I'd hope the full game would better explain the purpose of the additional moves you access with the shoulder buttons, otherwise they feel like the'yre there to add variety for the sake of it, because it sure as heck doesn't feel like it.

SimianWonder wrote:

Just tried the demo, and while the overall atmosphere was pretty cool the combat felt like it was missing a lock-on function. It also didn't seem particularly tactical, a shame given all the options the game throws at you with regard to your pawns and your own skills.

Kaede wrote:

SimianWonder wrote:

Just tried the demo, and while the overall atmosphere was pretty cool the combat felt like it was missing a lock-on function. It also didn't seem particularly tactical, a shame given all the options the game throws at you with regard to your pawns and your own skills.

I agree. Hitting that griffon in the air was a pain, and the goblins sometimes as well. I also thought it got a bit mashy.

Play Dark Souls.

As I'm wont to do, I bought this after seeing some very positive reviews. I'm glad I did. The demo does an utterly woeful job of showcasing the actual feel of the game, as if they expect you to be wowed by the really big monsters alone.

In essence, it's a very old school game in a lot of ways. The job system is a lot like Final Fantasy of old, where unique traits of each of the classes rub off on each other so you can never just settle for one class, and the combat is genuinely great fun; fight a cyclops for instance, and you may wish to attack it's right arm first, forcing it to drop the twenty foot cudgel it is trying to hit you with, or you can climb up it's back and try to knock off the helmet protecting its eye and allow your archer to blind it. Failing that, you can of course just ignore such strategy and hit it with everything you've got in a full out brawl. It's less strategic, but still viable.

The other really, really cool thing is how it handles the online aspect. After around an hour of gameplay, you get to create your own "Pawn" who will be a permanent addition to your party, and you can have them be whatever class you wish. They have no back story other than that which you choose to imagine for them. The rest of your party is made up of two other pawns, but these are not yours - they are other people's pawns which you can choose to aid you in your game. For instance, my main character started off as a mage (healing / buffs / basic damage spells) , my Pawn started off as a strider (pretty much a rogue class, dealing with knives and daggers for close up work, and having a bow for long distance). Both are quite squishy, so I need something to help draw aggro. Head into the Rift - essentially an online shop accessed via a stone in most major towns and cities - and you can view and recruit the pawns that other players have made, with me opting to hire a couple of warrior types to stand up and get hit while my AoE spells take down the bad guys.

Basically, if one of you guys were to buy the game (though I did buy the 360 version) you'd be able to recruit my Pawn to help in your own games. Not only that, but she'd come with all the knowledge gained in my game. So if I had already completed a quest that you had not, my Pawn would be able to guide you as to how best to complete said quest in your game as well as warn you about any impending surprise attacks whilst wandering the huge game world.

This is more important than it sounds, because part of the reason it feels quite old school is that it's punishingly hard. The larger monsters can take huge amounts of damage and can kill you in only a couple of strikes, so having a pawn on hand who has already overcome them and is able to offer tactical advice mid fight is a godsend, and makes keeping your inventory sell stocked with curative items essential. Night time is also rather terrifying; at night, away from the well lit cities the countryside gets dark. Very dark. So dark you really can't see anything without the aid of a lantern, which grants you visibility a few feet around you but also draws monsters like a moth to flame. DId I mention monsters are more numerous and aggressive after sun down? No? Well they are. It takes the much-used day / night cycle in most games and has it genuinely make a huge difference.

Graphically yes, it's a bit rough around the edges, especially when compared to the likes of Skyrim, but it's great, great fun and I'd be amazed if it doesn't become a cult hit at the least.

SimianWonder wrote:

As I'm wont to do, I bought this after seeing some very positive reviews.

First sentence you ever wrote that i literally have no clue what you mean , old age kicking in?

You really have sold this game to me, I'm actually interested in getting this now. So is there an actual online component? Or is the online just this pawn thing you mentioned?

So is there any more depth to the combat than was shown in the demo? Locational damage doesn't mean shit if you're just spamming square at a different part of a monster.

Yeah, some monsters get affected on certain parts. Like those badass large Golems where you have to hit different glowing spots on 'em. They're fun.

What I mean is, in the demo, it didn't matter which part of the monster I was attacking, even though they would lose different bits of themselves I was still just mashing square and never saw any reason to do otherwise.

I'm asking/hoping this has changed as, to be blunt, I thought the combat in the demo was garbage.

Also is the game still weirdly letterboxed?

Pennywise wrote:

What I mean is, in the demo, it didn't matter which part of the monster I was attacking, even though they would lose different bits of themselves I was still just mashing square and never saw any reason to do otherwise.

I'm asking/hoping this has changed as, to be blunt, I thought the combat in the demo was garbage.

It's different. The damage you dealt in the demo was pretty powerful no matter what the hell you did. In the game itself, as you're now struggling an uphill battle leveling up, you'll need to take more caution, take advantage of weak spots and use your skills.

If there's one big issue with the game, though, it's the lack of fast travel. Well, there is one sort of fast-travel, where you use items called ferrystones to take you back to the main city, Gran Soren(although there are these rare items called portcrystals that you can set up almost anywhere on the map and you'll be transported to them instead after using the stone), but they're pricey and rare.

I know that some people defend the lack of it, but I'm pretty far in the game now, and backtracking the same old places over and over while having your character lose stamina and stopping every few seconds is tedious as hell no matter how much you sugar-coat it. Sure, "it's part of the journey", but when I think of having a journey, I think of adventures where you go and find new places, not god damn backtracking a million times to the same damn place.

Pennywise wrote:

Also is the game still weirdly letterboxed?

Yeah, but you get used to it. Although, you can turn that off in the options I think.

Ah ok, it's good to hear that the demo characters were a bit OP.

Have you had a chance to try out the mage class yet?

Nah, I've been using the fighter, warrior, and assassin classes. I made my Tobias Funke pawn a mage and sorcerer, though. Magic users can get pretty powerful. In fact, admittedly, the other pawns I've been hiring, which are also magic users, pretty much carried some of the larger monster fights early in the game before I got to level up.

Superbuu3 wrote:

First sentence you ever wrote that i literally have no clue what you mean , old age kicking in?

You really have sold this game to me, I'm actually interested in getting this now. So is there an actual online component? Or is the online just this pawn thing you mentioned?

It just means that I'm easily swayed.

There's no online player-vs-player, just the pawn system. I'm also glad to see I'm not the only one who took a chance on a flawed gem, so congratulations Sora, you have fine taste.

Quote :

What I mean is, in the demo, it didn't matter which part of the monster I was attacking, even though they would lose different bits of themselves I was still just mashing square and never saw any reason to do otherwise.

As I alluded to earlier, the demo isn't a very good reflection of the game. The demo gives you only basic, un-upgraded skills with no clue as to how best to use them, other than making your character artificially strong. In reality, where a strider class to try and simply hack at a griffin, he'd be dead in seconds. Combat is tough and tactics play a real part. The lack of lock on isn't that big a bother either - the game has an auto lock on function that does a pretty good job of aiming your attacks at the required target and you can use the right analogue stick to switch between targets manually if you wish, a bit like Saints Row or GTA.

I'm with Sora on the lack of fast-travel though. I'm happy to have to walk to new destinations, but having encountered and beaten untold monsters, completed numerous quests, to then have to walk back to the main city again (which can take twenty - twenty five minutes) is a bit of a chore.

Well that's good to hear Simian, cheers for re-igniting the part of me that was really interested in this. One of my friends bought it, so I might see if I can borrow it for a bit to see if I want it.

Good man. The first couple of hours is a bit slow, as is traditional for RPGs, so don't let that put you off.

Where are you up to now, Simian?

Spoiler:

I'd probably be farther if focused on the story, but I've been pretty much spending my time doing as many quests from various boards as possible.

For some reason my level is only 40, though. DSK's doing the same and he's in the freaking 60s despite being around the same spot I'm in during the story. I think he told me it's because he just went around taking on the larger foes and such, but I've been doing that from time to time and they don't give that much EXP. It's possible that it could be because I've been hiring high lvl pawns throughout the whole game and they're lowering my EXP gain. =/

You're obviously a ways ahead of me.

Spoiler:

I'm around level 33, currently playing as a Sorcerer. I waited until my mage vocation was fully levelled until I switched, but I wish I'd done it earlier. Yes, the casting time on the big spells is huge, around fifteen seconds if charged all the way, but they don't half make boss level fights a bit easier. A single spell can take a whole health bar off a cyclops, and can almost one-shot ogres.

How is the mage/sorcerer class anyhow? Worth being one yourself or allocating to a follower? The plan I had was always to be a ranger and have a bro sorcerer, and then maybe a warrior or something if you can have more than one pawn regularly.

Mage is pretty weak, you're a support class so unless an enemy has a particular elemental weakness, you'll be healing / buffing rather than doing real damage. Sorcerer has lower support abilities, but can dish out huge damage.

Pawn wise, you can hire up to two more pawns but only your MC and your own Pawn will actually level up. Once the other pawns become ineffective, you'll need to enter the Rift to select two more a little nearer your level.

Ah I see, well in that case my plan should work out well then. I can have my main bro give me magical buffs as a mage and keep getting new and better people to charge in and take damage.

Uh, wow. Just wow. Just beat the game and uh...

Spoiler:

I've just started the second set of quests in Gran Soren, those you get from Aldous. I did the quest to take down the Griffon - annoying more than anything else, the fight itself took around thirty seconds, the journey to Bluemoon Tower took about half an hour - and I've now gotten the quest for Fournvil's trial.

I'm around level 36 now, still waiting for my Sorcerer to reach his final vocational level. It's taken ages; in the time it's taken me to get from level 1 to level 8, my main pawn has maxxed out her Fighter vocation and is up to level five in the Warrior class.

Oh, and I forgot to mention I finally beat a Drake. First time I fought it it wiped me out in seconds, but at level 35 I took another crack at it. It was a very long fight, around forty minutes all in, but eventually I won. The sheer satisfaction of the victory was offset by the rather crappy exp awarded, which was rather out of kilter with the difficulty of bringing the creature down, but I did manage to fully upgrade half a dozen armour pieces.

Took down the offline Ur-Dragon. He wasn't that hard. Although, the awful camera didn't make parts of the fight fun. =/

I got it off my friend the other day, he was quite happy to relinquish it since he's majorly stressing out about exams and doesn't trust himself with it around.

I've basically played up to the first cyclops you kill, it's certainly not a bad game but I'm not sure if I want it or not yet.

The first cyclops is still very early in the game, you'll barely have touched things like vocations and pawns yet. The meat of the game doesn't really start until you hit Gran Soren. Keep going, give it another couple of hours, time enough to appreciate the pawn system, the vocation system... as with most RPGs, the more time you invest, the greater the rewards will be.

The best part is when you have to run around/backtrack all over the place and needing to catch your breath every 20 seconds. That is the true meat of this glorious game.

Seriously, do yourself a favour and always carry loads of mushrooms in your inventory.