Editorial | Dragon's Dogma: A forgotten gem you should play.

By Sam Coles:

Games can go two ways, they are successful and are talked about for years to come or they are quickly forgotten and left to the void. Dragon’s Dogma is one of those games that people don’t really talk about, now it does get brought up in certain conversations but after seven plus years after its release there has been no sequel and only a re-release of its debut game. Now I want to talk about why it is a great game (mostly) and why you should play it, just to preface this piece I would like to thank Capcom UK for supplying me an Xbox One code for the remaster of the game! Let’s get into it!

The story of Dragon’s Dogma is rather simple you are a peasant living on a coastal town, where things go wrong when a dragon attacks. However the dragon takes a specific interest in you where he rips your heart out, but due to strange events you survive the endeavour because you are an Arisen. You are tasked with taking this dragon down with the help of Pawns, who are at your command. The story is not anything spectacular as it just serves as basic context for the quest ahead, it’s the gameplay and world that stand out to me and I remember it enthralling me back in 2012 when it first release.

Now I can hear shout from the hills “Sam what is so special about the gameplay”? Well it takes elements form several different games, think of it as an experimental smoothie where they take bits from Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Shadow of The Colossus, Devil May Cry and The Elder Scrolls to make this unique and fun fantasy adventure.

The gameplay was something that grabbed me immediately especially combat, unlike Skyrim which it was compared to straight away combat feels like you are doing something. The problem with combat in Elder Scrolls games it lacked finesse because all you did is wave your sword at something until it was dead, however in Dragon’s Dogma combat is fast and you have to time blocks coupled with being able to climb on bigger enemies. This is where the Shadow of the Colossus comparison comes in, you can climb on larger enemies and this gets really tense especially when you are on the back of a dragon it decides it’s bored of the fight and flies off with you clinging for dear life. Not only that the combat in general just feels great as it takes the fast and flashy approach from Devil May Cry, you can pick from the standard warrior, rogue and mage which the rogue is my favourite as you can flip around like Spider-Man.

Now let’s get into the Pawns, these act like your companions on your adventure but they are made by other players from around the world. You can choose various Pawns who will be different levels and vocations, but like any mercenary they cost money to hire which are rift points in this game. When you use them and want to swap them out you can rate them as well as give other players feedback, this is also the same for you as your Pawn will bring items back to you from different playthroughs which always seem to be rocks the thanks guys!

The game wasn’t perfect in fact it had a lot of issues with its initial launch back in 2012, for one the visual presentation was a bit of a mess not the graphics themselves which were okay, but the black bars on screen and the mess that was the UI. Fortunately in the remaster on PS4 and Xbox One the black bars are gone, which is great as you can witness the beauty of the world. The framerate in the original Xbox 360 and PS3 release would tank all the time, it was almost unplayable especially when explosions happen and just moments that involved fire. Other problems stem from the pawns, what I mean is that they never shut up it is the equivalent of a child constantly asking “are we there yet”? You can tell the Pawn you have created to shut up, but the other Pawns carrying on by stating the obvious such as “Fire is effective against them”, really fire against a fleshy mammal is effecting you don’t say!

Dragon’s Dogma is a game that has almost fallen into the void; it’s a game that no one really discusses these days. Outside of a remaster for the PS4 and Xbox One there has been no sign of a new instalment yet, it is pushing on 8 years since its original release and that saddens me. It is an utterly unique title borrowing elements from otheer games, while it forges its own identity. If you haven’t I highly recommend picking this game up, just get the remastered version as the 360 and PS3 versions are a bit of a mess.