Dragon's Dogma Review - Xbox 360

 

Dragon’s Dogma, developed and published by Capcom, is a brand new ‘Action RPG’ developed by the minds behind Devil May Cry, Resident Evil and Breath of Fire. As before, I’m going to leave story details out for your own enjoyment, and review from a gameplay and first-person standpoint. 

Introduction Scene

At first I was very excited for Dragon’s Dogma; the gameplay they showed at previous events looked outstanding and resonated deep with my love for Shadow of the Colossus. Many people claimed it was the HD-Monster Hunter people were looking for. Others also claimed it was a risk from Capcom to bring a new form of Action RPG to the market; a mix of east and west RPGs to create a blend of something ever-so-unique. Popping the CD into the tray, I watched the intro play out, calm-soothing music played, and everything felt just so right-... guitars burst into the forefront accompanied by a vocalist, screaming English lyrics and pounding away onto their instruments. Rather taken aback I quickly starting the game; that certainly wasn’t expected from a fantasy RPG, routed firmly in the medieval time-period. It reminded me of an incredibly cheesy anime-intro, though each time I play Dragon’s Dogma I always pause on the Main Menu to listen, it seems to have grown on me.

A quick tutorial level begins the game followed by a deep Character Customisation, filled to the brim with both pretty and bizarre options, an example being eyes similar to Brock’s from Pokémon and much more. The player starts life in a small fishing port known as Cassardis, in the world of Gransys, which is soon devastated by the attack of a recently appeared Dragon. A chest ripping and heart-chomping moment later, the character awakes as an Arisen, destined to fell the Dragon in order to re-claim their heart, and thus begins Dragon’s Dogma. Tasked with this mammoth quest, the player must journey the world, meet pawns and NPCs-alike and fell beasts of various sizes in order to become the one-true-hero that Gransys deserves.  However, not everyone is so keen to see this task complete, and you’ll meet many-a-twist, turn, and adversary along the way, however, don’t expect a narrative thick with plot-points and a plethora of characters. The story is fairly light and although the narrative keeps up pace (through a variety of related side-quests and main quests) some quests can be missed and locked out due to missing out on an earlier event; this is a frustrating pain as a player, especially when narrative lore, as well as the ever-so-beautiful-yet-materialistic Achievements are missed.

A closer look at my Character

The world of Gransys is rather small in size, especially when compared with that of Skyrim or Cyrodiil. But part of the reason for this is you will be hoofing it on foot through the whole world. While there is a fast-travel to capital option available when it becomes affordable, the game possesses no mounts and no form of vehicle travel. Initially this was an issue and I felt that my time was wasted running so far a-field for a quest, perhaps this is a habit from years of being spoilt in RPGs; fast travel and mounts being a staple and must-have of games with an open world. After sometime I began to appreciate the world of Gransys, and I could tell where I was just by looking at my surroundings, ultimately the world felt small yet still unique and varied, if fast-travel had been thrown into the option I wouldn’t have taken the time to appreciate the world for what it is. 

Viewing a Hill-Figure

Aforementioned was the Pawns; a rather intriguing system and one that is fairly unique to this game. Pawns are NPCs from a world known as the Rift, they look like humans yet possess no emotions and only comment on your progress; quite a interesting lore comparison to the artificial intelligence of the system.

In the same manner as creating your own character, you are tasked with creating a companion. This companion will journey with you through the game and level-up alongside you. Though most interestingly is the ability for other players to rent your Pawn online for Rift-Crystals, a form of currency, in order to be one of their four man group. Creating a balanced party is important in Dragon’s Dogma so quite a large part of my time was spent looking through other player’s pawn’s stats and abilities in order to choose the right one. I oft went with a party of females, just for the eye-candy. Impressively is the ability for pawns to learn of enemie's weaknesses, and learn of areas and dungeons when used in another world. They then navigate on their own, letting you know of chests, levers and various routes within specific areas.

Though this system is highly useful, problems arise when monsters enter the equation. Pawns have an excessive amount of things to shout in mid-combat which often could mean two or three pawns shouting over-the-top of each other at any one time, cluttering the audio spectrum, and sometimes even interrupting themselves, it was an irritating decision and I wish the audio option for muting just Pawn’s Voices were possible, especially when everyone seems to choose the same voice for their companion. I often never rented pawns that had additional elemental buffs other than Fire Boon/Affinity, due to its over-powered nature to 90% of the enemies in the game, not only this, but if a pawn possessed for example, Fire and Ice, a pawn would sometimes choose to buff me with Ice for a fight; against a enemy weak to fire, and then buff the rest of the party with fire. This was frustrating and I would often end up having to remove them from the party due to the damage reduction I would receive on my attacks. 

A player can also send you feedback based upon your Companion’s Appearance, Battle Prowess and Helpfulness in a manner of 5 star ratings, accompanied with a gift from their inventory. This was always a nice gesture though sometimes I couldn’t help but feel people rated default in order to save-time navigating menus.  

Although the Pawn system is surprisingly fun, and it’s always nice to think about a companion as more than a piece of AI; dressing them up, giving them the correct abilities, and so on, I couldn’t help but feel a system similar to Final Fantasy XII’s Gambit, or more Artificial Intelligence work could have benefited the Pawns. My inability to use items on Pawns, or for them to use them regularly, and the mistakes in combat made it a frustrating manner of eliminating the possibility from ever occurring, which meant often choosing pawns with specific ability sets.

Myself and Pawns looking down on Gran Soren

Moving onto Combat, probably the biggest selling point of Dragon’s Dogma, imagine Monster Hunter, but faster, with less large enemy variety, but chuck in a climbing element akin to Shadow of the Colossus, and that’s what Dragon’s Dogma represents. I can’t help but feel like I’m playing a similar version of Monster Hunter, what with the same composer working on the game, as well as it being developed by Capcom. The combat is always exhilarating and fun, regardless of how many times I take down the same enemy. Gripping onto the enemy as it throws me around or flies through the air, thrusting my daggers into its throat, it is a lot of fun, fun which doesn’t let up or become tiresome. The relief and power you feel when toppling a larger foe, the music breaking into a much more forward, fast composition, accompanying your every strike and arrow fired feels fantastic, and it’s only ever-furthered with the wide range of abilities and vocation system on offer. Dragon’s Dogma is a hard game, while not on the same difficulty as the Souls series, it is still good practice to save regularly after each major battle. The first time fighting an enemy can be challenging and daunting, but after a while, much like Dark Souls; you’ll come to grips with the enemy you are fighting and will be able to dodge, swipe and cleave your way to victory.

The vocation system is essentially a class system. The game contains 9 vocations, three which are base; Fighter, Strider and Mage, three which are advanced forms of base; Warrior, Ranger and Sorcerer, and finally three hybrid classes; Mystic Knight, Assassin, and Magic Archer. Each class offers their own form of Weapon Skills, Core Skills and Augments. Weapon Skills use Stamina in combat, and provide a wide-range of attacks, be it a flurry of Dagger Strikes, or firing ten magic-imbued arrows at once. Core Skills add further techniques to your standard Light and Heavy Attack, allowing the stringing and delay of buttons to further add a variety of combos that don’t drain Stamina. Finally, Augments are passive abilities that edit the way your class operates, from allowing further flying arrows, to perfect blocks or curative increases. This vocation system, coupled with the combat system, and pawn system (pawns can also access all vocations except hybrids), allows for a fresh feeling of combat right through the beginning, to post game, and new game+; it’s amazing how a simple class change can change the way the game feels, with many vocations possessing unique aspects, such as Magic Archers with their ability to lock-on arrows within a targeting reticule for all attacks. 

Griffon Combat

Much of the game is spent slaying monsters and opening chests to look for materials, these materials are then applied to weapons and armour in order to enhance their star rating. These upgrades sadly don’t change anything about the weapon visually, but it was always great fun scouring the land for herbs and beasts in order to boost them stats further. Rumours surfaced that the initial crafting system was meant to be similar to Monster Hunter, where weapons and armour are forged from hides and bones, though due to time-constraints with the project this had to be changed, this is just a rumour however, though I can say that a Monster Hunter style version of crafting would have benefited this game due to the sheer number of materials there are.

Dragon’s Dogma presents a great soundtrack that spans a few genres, ranging from epic guitar solos through to orchestral grandeur scores. While the yelling from pawns can be rather off-putting it can still be useful, and the ability to turn down sound effects, music volume and voices does come in handy. Another feature in Dragon’s Dogma is the ability to Photo Share with Facebook. The pictures in this review are taken from my version of the game, and while slow to use, I used it often in order to capture my journey across Gransys and share it with my friends, even encouraging a few to purchase; this is no doubt the idea behind the Photo Share function, more games should have this.

Hydra Battle

The game provides players with a Post Game area , one that ties nicely to the lore of the world and overarching story. This post game dungeon is full of chests and new beasts for the Arisen to slay, in order to achieve a wide variety of new weapons and armour; my first foray into the dungeon and the first boss was met with a crippling defeat as I failed to even damage the beast. Further levelling and strategy were required to fell the beast and I finally had a use for the Holy elemental buff. I foresee myself spending many, many more hours in this dungeon, and I greatly look forward to the range of new foes and bosses that I will encounter. Along with the Post Game function, previously mentioned was the New Game+ function, the enemies in New Game+ do not scale with the character, and I believe it is a mode meant for Achievement Mopping, as all equipment, inventory and counters carry across. While it is a shame that no scaling is present, the Post-Game area should suffice for all your Monster-Felling needs.

Throughout my whole journey in Gransys; I didn’t once encounter a technical or graphical problem greater than the popping-in of NPCs, which was 0.5 seconds at best. Installing the game to the HDD really does seem to solve problems and I have yet to see game-breaking glitches that were hinted at in other reviews; though it is entirely possible that they have been hastily patched. Another thing that is due for good mention is the lighting at night time, while providing a realistic feel to the atmosphere, the sky-box and lightning engine do look poor at night; with large circular dark ringed textures covering the sky, though this is more of a personal complaint than a game-afflicting bug.

Gransys is a great world and one that I look forward to returning to. It’s clear from the reception that this game has taken a risk, and come out the other end mostly unscathed, sales seem positive, and it’s entirely possible that Capcom can meet this reception by producing a sequel. There are many things that the game could improve on, be it crafting, pawns or online play, but I believe Dragon’s Dogma was well worth it, and if you’ll excuse me, I think Its time I loot-grind further in the post-game area.

Thank you for the time taken to read this review. This is my second review and I'll appreciate any feedback on offer, as usual. Perhaps my review can offer insight into places where other reviews didn't.

Thanks again.

Update & Review Schedule!

It has been almost two months since I wrote my first review on Fez; much of this time has been spent catching up on my exceedingly large and well built gaming collection that I amassed and didn’t play. I would just like to post indicating some upcoming reviews:

Dragon’s Dogma: Xbox 360 – Later Today/Early Tomorrow

Diablo III: PC – Sometime this Week.

I have a rather large collection including some recently purchased titles, although some are half a year to a year old. Should I review these? (Games such as; Skyrim, Mass Effect 3, etc) Let me know in the comments.

Fez Review - Xbox 360

You may have heard of Fez for a variety of reasons - some of them may be good and some of them may be bad. The discussion on Phil Fish’s personality and comments on modern Japanese gaming isn’t what this article is about; I'm here to review Fez.

Fez is a newly released game currently on the Xbox Live Arcade; I purchased it on a whim due to its colourful yet pixelated retro-style screenshots. Right from the get-go Polytron’s logo shone brightly on my screen, presented with a whimsical 8-bit tone... and then the game crashed.

A quick re-launch brought me to the main menu; new games, bugs happen. Diving headfirst into the world of Fez, I am presented with a cute white creature, stuck in a lovely looking 2D sprite room, complete with Drum-Kit. It is clear to see that Fez knows what style it is aiming for; the music, graphics, animations and world, everything is a throwback to retro-gaming with a pinch of modern.

Exploring the village and speaking with NPCs, I was presented with dialogue lines such as “My favourite shape is a square, definitely not a cube, definitely not.” The game uses this section to teach the very simplistic climbing mechanics as well as showing us how to interact with NPCs. Proceeding onward Gomez, our protagonist, is teleported into a strange dimension after a short conversation with an NPC. A large 3D cube present above Gomez rotates, seemingly displaced from the 2D space that the game sets itself in, and then something beautiful happens! A Fez descends from the heavens landing squarely on Gomez’s head, whom then immediately erupts into a happy ecstasy.

Gomez and Fez

The game now introduces to us its main mechanic, the reason we’ve all heard of this game... the ability to rotate the 2D world in 3D space. Upon following the tutorial to do this, the game promptly breaks as the cube shatters into 32 pieces, booting into an old BIOS boot-load screen complete with the noises I would associate with a ZX Spectrum crashing. The journey begins here. Collect the 32 golden cubes scattered across the world, along with 32 anti-cubes, a selection of artefacts and treasure maps.

Rotating the 2D world becomes a subconscious, or at least it should do. It lessens journey time when used appropriately and it changes the way you think about the traditional platforming routes. Changing years of hardened tradition isn’t easy, but Fez achieves it with absolute ease, providing new ways to utalise the rotation mechanic throughout the game. One minute Gomez will find a new type of interactive object, the next he will be forced to rotate 2D space on the fly to utalise it in timed situations. Mastering this mechanic is the core of Fez and even after hours of play, I find myself pleasantly surprised how routes and platforms spring up, change and appear to meet me from a simple rotation.

The level design compliments the rotation mechanic, and I can’t fathom the thought that must have went into each and every level of the game, with inaccessible platforms reachable just from a quick rotation. Several varieties of worlds are available to the player with two central hub worlds, each connected via a large number of doors and warp-gates. Puzzles and various objects present themselves throughout the levels, I find myself franticly checking the world-map (which looks astounding when zoomed out by the way), looking for that lovely golden border around my current position, indicating that the room/area is complete and devoid of any hidden objects. 

Gomez, complete with Lighthouse and Fez

Checking every nook and cranny of each room, the levels are covered in writing; cryptic messages and clues, each with their own meaning and connection to the ‘Fez Alphabet’. One corner of the game-world the alphabet is spelled out to the player using an old familiar saying, something that I won’t spoil here, but was particularly useful. Any death that the player may find themselves experiencing (this will be frequent) is recovered by an almost instant respawn where you left of, meaning death doesn’t feel like a punishment, just a learning tool to try out new routes, solutions, or just simply try again.

Fez even goes as far as to make connections to the player, puzzles that are solved through the use of QR codes, and the way Fez used an age old function in controllers that we take for granted, as a solution to a puzzle is something I haven’t seen before. Puzzles that require the player to pay attention to his real-world self or use real-world objects are one of the few things that have truly blown my mind about Fez.

Priding itself on its visuals, the game is littered with moving sprites, be it animals, or people. The game is overcast in a day and night cycle which projects colours of orange, yellow and blue across an already beautifully designed world. From cities, to forests, sewers and ruins, the game never lets up its beauty, and this is only further enhanced with its gorgeous soundtrack.

Orange and pink light the sky as dusk settles in

Throughout the game, composer Disasterpeace provides a wonderful soundtrack that enhances and matches Fez’s visuals. From the relaxing main-menu screen right through to the other 25 additional tracks each is encompassed in a retro 8-bit feel that few games can match. Writing this review to Fez’s soundtrack, I am briefly reminded of Minecraft’s own calming tunes which strike a similar nature.

This is one of the few games that have made me break out a pen and note-pad. Scribbling down combinations and symbols akin to the Fez World, my notepad is full of dots and shapes, reminding me of certain rooms to go back to along with various access doors. The game seemingly puts a lot of emphasis on the player, be it from the real-world connections or the ability for a player to forgo his conceptions about route and platforming in favour of something new and fresh. That is what Fez feels: refreshing.

Moving onto technical issues, there were only a few that I encountered, the aforementioned game crash bug I mentioned at the beginning has only happened twice, and any frame-rate issues only occur when transitioning between stages; this is hardly an inconvenience.

It is a real shame that players will miss out on this game, either because of its limited console release, or because of their views on Phil Fish. I feel that if you can purchase this game at all, you owe yourself to do so. This game is built with love and retro in mind, bringing so much to the table that makes me feel that this game will have a place in my favourites. Hopefully it will see a PC release sometime soon so that even more people can experience it.  I can see this game having its own cult following, if it hasn’t obtained one already.

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Being my first review, I would love for everyone who reads this to give me your feedback. Tell me what is good, what is bad, what I can do to improve, anything at all. 

Send an email to GratedCheeseGameReviews@gmail.com with your feedback, and I’ll be sure to take it onboard.