Dragon's Dogma
Review
Pawn stars
by Nataniel Hohl
reviewed on X360
The Most Important Piece On The Board
Dragon’s Dogma’s introduces a unique gameplay mechanic called Pawn System. Pawns are extra-dimensional beings that can be summoned from the ‘Rift’ using Rift Stones. Pawns are loyal to whoever summoned them and are like the friends you always wished you had in high school; they’ll follow you wherever you go, offer praise and helpful advice and they will always have your back in a fight.
A party in Dragon’s Dogma consists of your own character, one ‘main pawn’ and two ‘support pawns’. You can create the main pawn yourself, choosing everything from gender, appearance and vocation with as much depth as you are given creating your own character. Support pawns are handled a bit differently. Using the Rift Stones, players can summon pawns to fill their support roles as they see fit. Pawns of any vocation can be summoned so if you want you can either go with a balanced party of casters, tanks, and damage dealers, or you can just rock four mages and blast enemies with a storm of fire and ice. The choice is yours.
If you connect your game to the internet, you can even summon pawns from other people’s games and send yours to help others. Don’t worry though, he will still remain at your side when he’s supporting someone else. Pawns that return from their extracurricular adventures can bring back valuable information on creatures and quests as well as xp bonuses and items. As you can see, the Pawn System is the key feature that separates Dragon’s Dogma from the pack, offering a unique way for players to connect and socialize without actually interacting with each other.
Tripping Over Itself
Dragon’s Dogma isn’t without its flaws. Navigating the various menus and inventory screens can be a confusing ordeal. The game lacks a reliable fast-travel system which means that you will be doing a lot of jogging in the overworld between the game’s various outposts and dungeons. In addition, its checkpoint and save system is confusing and is likely to frustrate both gamers who rely on checkpoint saves and those who prefer to save manually.
Unless you pick a character with a large body type - which affects your starting health - and the fighter vocation, you will likely be in for a rough time during the earlier stages of the game. Dragon’s Dogma has a fairly steep difficulty curve and while I’m not talking Dark Souls-esque situations here, some of the starter enemies such as goblins and harpies will two-shot your character if you aren’t careful. Since there is no way to change the difficulty setting, it is wise to save often during the game’s opening hours.
Dragon’s Dogma also lacks the depth and variety that triple-A RPG titles are known for. The crafting system is so bare-bones it could hardly be called one, the story is mostly forgettable and the quests rarely deviate from the formula of “talk to this person”, “go to this place” and “fight this monster”.
An RPG For The Rest Of Us
Even with the aforementioned shortcomings, Dragon’s Dogma is still a fulfilling experience that you can lose many an hour to. This is mostly due to a large number of optional quests and there are tons of places to explore outside of the main storyline. It may lack some of the refinement and polish that RPG fans have come to expect from triple-A titles but the game does deliver on the fun. This is in no small way thanks to its unique and strangely addicting pawn system, its emphasis on stylized and cinematic combat and its vast world that manages to be equal parts dangerous, breathtaking, terrifying, and immersive. It may be a bit of an odd trail for Capcom to blaze, but if Dragon’s Dogma is their idea of what an RPG should be, I wouldn’t be inclined to disagree.
9.0
fun score
Pros
An immersive and engaging experience featuring addicting cinematic combat.
Cons
A rough difficulty and confusing story might turn off more seasoned fans of the genre.
