I’ve been a bit irresponsible when it comes to Dragon’s Dogma. I had my first taste of the game a couple months back while at Captivate 2011. In lieu of there being any Mega Man titles, Dragon’s Dogma was easily my favorite of Capcom’s offerings (and this was still the case at E3). I fully intended to report my impressions on the game back then, but I sort of just… let it fall by the wayside. It would be a travesty to make the same mistake twice, so I’ll now, finally, regale you my impressions along with data I picked up from Captivate.

Dragon’s Dogma is a completely new game from Capcom, which we were told at Captivate has been in development for the past four years. It’s an action adventure title set in a Tolkein-esque world of mythos. I’m not quite clear on the game’s story, but you essentially play as a warrior tasked with hunting down and killing a mysterious dragon with the power to threaten mankind (and naturally, as seen in the trailers, there’s an evil culty guy wanting to use its power). On the other hand, said dragon has a bond with the main protagonist (since it kinda ripped out the main protagonist’s heart), and speaks to him telepathically and gives him tasks to fulfill, hence the name Dragon’s Dogma.

Some have been noted to consider this game Monster Hunter for westerners, or Monster Hunter if it were made by BioWare. To an extent I have a hard time disagreeing. You essentially run around in an open world taking quests and hunting various big monsters like hydras and griffins. You can be joined in adventure by up to three AI controlled heroes called Pawns, and issue them basic commands in battle like “attack” or “fall back.” While not perfect, Pawns can be surprisingly efficient, and in most cases my smothering defeats were due to my Pawns getting wiped out (you can revive them if they’re felled, and vice-versa, but I just wasn’t paying attention).

Another factor that makes it similar to Monster Hunter is that there’s no RPG-style skill system. Every means to improve yourself is based on finding, buying or making new equipment. Even the magic based mage class doesn’t have stats like MP or such; the effectiveness of the spells they use is based on how long they chant its incantation. Thus Dragon’s Dogma becomes a lot more focused on skill and action rather than balancing statistics. Big monsters are also similar in that you have to learn their attack patterns to get an upper hand on them, and certain parts of their bodies are more vulnerable than others. However, there is a system in place unlike Monster Hunter that lets you grab onto virtually and part of the monster and climb around on it, as well as attack it while attached.

There are three classes available. Fighters, who specialize in brute strength. They wield a big sword and shield, but it sounded like they might even have elements of hand to hand or unarmed combat as well. I’m not certain how this would work, but it would be awesome to just punch a griffin in the face. Striders are they light and swift class. They are armed with short swords as well as bows. Mages, as I mentioned above, use magic spells and incantations. While they seem to have offensive ability, they are just as useful in support since they can heal you and imbue your weapons with special attributes in the midst of action.

The game is wrapped in an over-arching story, but as I said it’s open world and you can seemingly follow events at your own pace. You’re free to wander the land, which we were told at Captivate would take roughly an hour to traverse on foot. Events are always taking place; you might come across a town being attacked by a big monster, for example. It’s to your discretion whether you jump in and help or keep on walking. The outcome of your decision may affect later events. There is also a day and night cycle that affects the availability of some events and such. Towns themselves are customizable, although it wasn’t explained how this worked exactly. But the option is available to have a town attract certain classes above others. All NPCs in towns are fully voiced, have their own attributes, and are capable of being potential Pawns. Your own character is also customizable, and even attributes like the weight of his weapons and the length of his legs will have an impact on his performance. However, since the game does have an implicit story in the background, I’m unsure if it will put limitations on character customization (if you can make your character a woman, etc).

The original demo at Captivate had a fight with some orcs, which quickly sprawled into a battle with a griffin. This demo was also available at E3, as well as another that had you surviving an attack from the dragon, making your way through some catacombs and then fighting a chimera-esque beast (which I think they called a Wyrm). Everything is pretty dynamic in what can happen in a battle. Your Pawns can grab onto smaller enemies and hold them down for you to kill, and you can then use their carcasses as bait to attract bigger beasts. The fighter class can launch you into the air to grab onto flying enemies. Mages can imbue your weapons with fire, and then attack a monster will set them aflame. It was pretty impressive to see the griffin get hit with a flaming arrow and come crashing to the ground in a blaze. The big monsters get noticeably deformed and banged up as you assault them.

There are some setbacks. The controls can be a bit cumbersome to get a handle on, as pretty much every button is utilized. Outside of jumping, your main buttons are also used for different attack types, but I found myself usually sticking to just one button. Also like I said, Pawns are pretty helpful but they’re not perfect. Every time a Pawn does some assist move, such as grabs an enemy or prepares a spell to help you, the action slows down and the camera pans over to where the Pawn is. I can understand why they made it do this, but it really pulls you out of what you’re currently doing. Pawns also have a tendency to talk a bit too much and say the same lines over and over. Then they can just sometimes do silly things. In one instance of the griffin battle, the mage kept climbing onto the griffin where he was useless to everyone. Admittedly, I noticed most of these things more from the Captivate build; the E3 build was a bit better. They also gave monsters plenty more health, giving big boss monsters stacked health bars. This was great because the griffin got ridiculously easy to beat at Captivate.

I was also bummed that I couldn’t carve parts off the griffin after killing it, but that’s an aspect I think I’ll have to live with.

The guy I chose to tape here wasn’t quite getting the hang of the demo, so this is not the most exciting footage around.

One of the things I really look forward to in Dragon’s Dogma is its online capabilities. As fun as the game is looking so far, I can see it being many times more fun by replacing the Pawns with your online friends. Capcom has yet to get into details about the online mechanics. While it was announced at Captivate it would make use of online, they wouldn’t reveal anything more than “it will have a twist,” to paraphrase.

Dragon’s Dogma is set to release for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, expected sometime in 2012. I can tell you that I’m definitely looking forward to this one, and if you have a taste for open world action games that are full of depth, I think you should be too.

Tags: action, adventure, capcom, Dragon's Dogma, E3 2011, hands-on impressions, Open World, Playstation 3, preview, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2011 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.