Dragon's Dogma

Dogmatic in its insistence toward mediocrity

Platform	Presentation	Controls	Variety	Audio	Depth	Value & Fun	OVERALL
PlayStation 3	4.00	6.50	6.00	8.50	6.00	6.00	6.07

General Information

Played on a 32" Sony Bravia 720p. Played as a Mage initially, then a Magical Archer.

Gameplay Description

Dragon's Dogma's gimmick, as it were, are the pawns. Pawns are basically AI-controlled characters in your party. You have your own main character that you control, a main pawn, and two more pawns that you can recruit from the world. Largely these pawns act on their own in battle.

Battle is a bit more action-oriented, allowing you to overcome underlevelling a bit more than potentially other RPGs in the same vein. Primary abilities are available holding R1 and using the face buttons, and secondary abilities are accessed through L1. What options are available will depend on your class.

Dedication Meter	25.00
To get something out of Dragon's Dogma, not a lot is required in terms of investment. It's easy to jump in and out of, and there isn't much to worry about for story. It's also relatively short, considering.

Presentation

4.00

The best thing that can be said about the presentation in Dragon's Dogma is that it looks pretty as a screenshot.  Flashy effects really make the game visually look really nice in still-frame.  Problem is that it approaches still frame when those effects are on-screen, as the frame-rate drops dramatically from an already stuttered rate.

There is a lot of pop-in through the environment, which includes enemies, which can occasionally be a pain.

From the story and cinematic side of things is where Dragon's Dogma really comes up short, though.  The story is nigh non-existent.  Cinematic cutscenes are so sparse they feel almost out of place.  And what story is there never even attempts to make sense.

In terms of gameplay, there is often a lack for a sense of power and improvement as the game progresses.  You can see lifebars of enemies, but leveling up rarely feels like an improvement or something celebratory.  It happens, and things feel the same.  You don't get a sense of who's doing what damage.

Controls

6.50

The controls in the game are satisfactory. They get the job done, but little else. A common theme, particularly if you use a ranged class, is that it will often be difficult to target the desired enemy. Proximity seems to take precedence over your cursor on the screen, so sometimes it is impossible to avoid and not worth the effort.

The camera for the most part is fine, and mostly self-controlled. Instances where it becomes a problem are when you're fighting airborne enemies, as you can only look so far up, so it's easy to lose them

Variety

6.00

There are two sides to the variety coin in Dragon's Dogma.  The sidequests are relatively varied and in good number throughout the game.  The classes are also fair in number and well-executed.

The flipside to that is that the actual enemies you encounter are very limited.  There are effectively orcs, harpies, wolves, phantoms and bandits for basic enemies, and cyclopses, griffins and manticores for large enemies.  That's it outside of a few bosses.

Attempts to incorporate social elements with "affinity" -- you can court love interests by gifting favoured items -- falls completely flat.  It's not introduced by the game, so if you're not looking for it, you won't find it, and it does absolutely nothing other than have a very minor and non-sensical effect at the end of the game.

Audio	8.50
The voice-acting in the game isn't the greatest in the world, but it's far from the worst. Add in an occasionally epic score and the audio fits well with with the game.

Depth	6.00
Ultimately, the depth in combat is lacking. There are some tactics to battle, but they will largely be repetitive in nature and come down to simply this enemy is weak to this element, and otherwise hacking or shooting away. Outside of battle, there isn't much variety in preparing strategy either. Get the best equipment you can afford and go, pretty much.

Value & Fun

6.00

Despite the relative simplicity to battle, and repetitious nature of it due to the recurring enemies, the game generally manages to stay within the dumb fun category.  Where things slip severely is in the backtracking.

The fast-travel option in the game are ferry stones.  These are items that you can purchase for large sums of gold.  Later in the game you can get it down to around 9,000, but earlier it's 15,000 and if you don't do a quest in a certain way, it's upped to 20,000.  For reference, the most gold I've had in the game at any one point is approximately 200,000.

Ferry stones can warp you back, when used, to a port crystal.  There is one in the main city of Gransys, and you can pick up at least one other in the world to place where you wish (I found one throughout the whole game).

Largely this encourages the player to play the game in a more boring way, as it is detrimental otherwise.

An example of the problem of having to basically walk everywhere (10+ minute treks are not uncommon), is towards the end where you are basically told to go to the top left corner of the map, then told to go to the top-right, just to be told to go back to the top left.  There is no story development during this, mind you.

Dragging the game out in this fashion does two things: One, it diminishes the desire and enjoyability in pursuing sidequests, and two, it adds more focus to the simple, repetitive combat.

Overall	6.07
Dragon's Dogma is lacking direction. Pawns do not work as a hook, so we're left instead with a generic WRPG with little to offer.

Posted by Ellyoda Tue, 24 Jul 2012 01:14:21

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edgecrusher

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 21:38:30

My name is Edgecrusher, and this is my favorite review on The VG Press.

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