Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Zee]

so since there's a fair amount of dragon age and d&d fans, i figure i'd start a thread about this game, especially with the expansion out and all.

this is an open world fantasy game by capcom, and it's actually good. you play as a character called the arisen, and you are connected to a dragon that steals your heart and challenges you to take it back (yes you are literally heartless, but this actually makes sense later in the game).

this game is insanely fun. the combat is incredible, with dashes of shadow of the colossus style gameplay for the bosses. the best thing about the combat is that it actually allows you to use common sense to beat an enemy, so you can rely on your own smarts in combination with your skills. is a troll on the mountainside giving you a problem? hit his knees while he's stomping or charging and he'll lose balance and fall into the gorge below. fighting a golem? climb up on his head to hit his sweet spots. the combat is pretty challenging and feels vastly different depending on your class.

you have the complete freedom to jump and climb wherever you want which is ridiculous amounts of fun. if you're a mage, there's even a spell that allows a chunk of ice to act as a stepping stone for harder to reach areas.

there's in depth character customization -- your character can even look anything from human to elf to ogre if you like. you also have 3 starting vocations; the classic thief, warrior, and mage, that you can eventually upgrade into focused or hybrid classes (psst hybrid classes are the most fucking fun ever MAGIC ARCHER UNTIL I DIE).

your character is accompanied by pawns, who are sort of but not quite humans that are sworn to serve you. the AI isn't bad for them, and you can change their tactics via the pawn guild, but sometimes they won't shut the fuck up.

all in all though, the game has a very pen and paper feel to it, even down to the fact that it's wiser to leave on your quests early in the morning. the game gets almost survival horror-ish at night, with zombies lurking everywhere. it's also DARK. AS. FUCK. even with a lantern you could easily wander into a chimera or bandit camp and get screwed.

okay i'm done talking now but you should check out this game it's fun and it's something to do while you're waiting for DA3 and you need an RPG fix. i'll leave you with some videos

british gentleman jumps on roofs as a mage
assassin takes on cyclops
mages are rad as fuck
MAGIC ARCHERS ARE THE SHIT

 

[X-SOLDIER]

You... may have just sold me on this game. I LOVE Pen & Paper RPGs.

I'm off to watch the gameplay stuff you linked.



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[Zee]

i love that all your skills have a practical application outside of battle. there's one quest where you have to chase down a thief but he's fuckin' impossible to catch up to unless you use a skill that traps him. for my mage this was a spell that had dark tendrils ensnare anyone who came near me. shit was awesome.

 

[Hisako]

I just bought this game last week and I've been having a lot of fun with it. Only issue I'd have with the game is that at night the colors are too washed out for anything to be readily visible without a lantern. It seems like an active design choice and it does
Also, the "HD texture pack"... well, I don't know about you guys but some of the textures were so absurdly low-resolution I wasn't sure if it'd been installed properly at all if it wasn't for the japanese voice tracks I'd installed at the same time.

All in all, though, pretty good game. Hard difficulty is just bullshit one-hit-death though.

 

[Zee]

Only issue I'd have with the game is that at night the colors are too washed out for anything to be readily visible without a lantern.

that's probably my favorite aspect of the game. really feelin' like you're screwed in the middle of the night with 5 herbs on you and a chimera lurking just in the distance.

live fast die hard

 

[Hisako]

But this is the thing, on default brightness it's not even all that dark. It's like just starting at a screen of darkish grey blur and I can barely see my own character through all the desaturation, let alone the track ahead of me to be able to navigate. I'd rather it be pitch black (without turning down brightness so everything in day time is absurdly dark as well), at least.

Is it supposed to be mandatory to carry a lantern? Because if it is, it just adds more of the cba-going-out-to-do-missions-at-night to my game feel.

 

[Zee]

Is it supposed to be mandatory to carry a lantern? Because if it is, it just adds more of the cba-going-out-to-do-missions-at-night to my game feel.

well, yeah, that's kind of the point. it's supposed to be more difficult to navigate at night unless you've got your lantern -- so just sleep at an inn and do missions during the day if it's a big deal i guess.

i've been caught out at night quite a few times, though. i love the feeling of only having a small light source in the midst of a pitch black forest, it feels more suspenseful.

 

[Hisako]

The only problem I have with night-time navigation is that on my television there's an obvious over-the-screen grey filter put on at night that interferes with everything visually in a way that takes me out of the game a bit. It's oval-shaped around the edges (like some poorly implemented vignette filter ) and is most apparent when looking at the sky at night, since it looks less like night-time vision and more like a pair of goggles placed on the camera or something idk.

But nah, it's not a big deal now that I'm getting into the combat system, mostly because I just hold block all day erry day unless I need to counter. I'm playing on Hard Mode because I'm a masochist - but now that I've levelled up a fair bit I'm not always dying of one-hit kills anymore and I actually get a chance to use my healing items

But seriously, I fucking hate wolves.

 

[X-SOLDIER]

My roommate downloaded it, and has been playing through and it's seemed totally awesome so far.


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