Platform: Xbox 360 (also on PS3)

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

# of Players: 1

ESRB Rating: M (Mature)

Official Site

Score: A-

After a lengthy and rewarding partnership resulting in loads of treasure, experience and some deadly dungeons being cleared out, you take stock of your traveling companions and see that the two pawns you’d hired some 15 or so hours previously are no longer suitable for the tougher enemies ahead. As much as you hate dismissing them, you absolutely must in order to progress further onward. Touching a Rift Stone, you dip into the void and discover that you probably should have replaced them a few levels ago with two much stronger and better equipped allies. As you’ve socked away more than enough points, you decide to add two pawns that are about five or so levels higher than your level just to keep them around longer. However, before you make your final selections, you decide to look at a few more pawns before choosing a pair that’s even stronger. Satisfied (and after saying goodbye to your former traveling companions), you set out for new territory, knowing that you’ll see your old mates on the road at some point in passing. After enhancing your gear, crafting handy items from gathered loot and learning some new skills, you and your new team take on an escort mission into uncharted territory, unsure of what awaits, but more than confident you can defeat anything…

And so goes just a tiny fraction of Dragon’s Dogma, Capcom’s new open world high action RPG that’s one of the nicer surprises of the year (so far). While the game isn’t quite perfect, the level of immersion, excellently fluid movement and combat system plus the massive game world insures those who like this type of game will be hooked in for quite some time. While you can follow the main quest in a mostly linear fashion to the endgame in about 30 – 40 hours, the land of Gransys is big enough to spend much more time exploring and adventuring in. That and the fact that this is a game where multiple replays are a must just so you can experiment with different character builds and party formations as you take on the many dangers the game throws your way.

The main story is about your character’s quest to recover his stolen heart after a dragon steals it, which amusingly enough, sounds like a medieval romantic fantasy if you twist things slightly askew. Of course, given that the cinema that details the event shows said dragon poking a claw into your body to remove that heart, it’s clear that this isn’t THAT type of game at all. Somehow, you survive this injury and when you come to, you’re seen as an Arisen, a mystic warrior sort revered by some, feared by others and more or less a class A bad-ass monster slayer you get to take for a spin for the long haul. The dev team was obviously inspired by other open world western and European RPGs, From Software’s work on Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls while adding their own fresh elements to the mix. The best way to enjoy all their hard work is to dive in feet first, explore and experiment with the game’s systems and see how well they fit the end result. Wasting brainpower comparing every single element to other games means you’re missing the point and missing out on a great deal of effort put into the fully realized game world on the disc.

There’s a great character creation system that allows you to make your hero or heroine look like just about anyone imaginable. You’re also allowed to create a Pawn who will be your permanent traveling companion and I’d recommend making him or her a healer unless you’re playing a Mage pr planning to always hire a pawn for healing purposes. If you’re unhappy with your looks (or just want to change things around after dozens of hours playing as the same guy or gal), there’s a barber in the game where for a fee, you can get a total makeover. Pawns you hire can’t be altered in terms of looks, but you can absolutely equip them with new and better gear if you craft it up for them and don’t mind losing an expensive item permanently in solo play (more on that later). The game throws a great deal at you and it can be a bit much unless you take the time to read through the History section on the options screen to go over things you may have missed. You can make it through the bulk of the game by simply paying attention to your surroundings and making sure you’re set for some tough fights, which only get better as the game progresses.

With talent from the Resident Evil and Devil May Cry series working on the game, the combat is solid and character movement a lot more dynamic than certain other open world games, but there’s a nice sense of “realism” here that drives the action. Archers and Mages need time to draw arrows and cast spells and even a strong fighter’s charge move needs enough space away from an attacking enemy so it’s not disrupted. Even if you’re playing as a heavy hitting Fighter class, simply running into a pack of goblins or wolves will get you killed off particularly quickly during the first few hours. Enemies will attack from all sides, often leaping out of bushes or dashing past you so they can whip around and jump you from behind. Bands of thieves along the roads or in half-destroyed former fortresses can be incredibly tough to deal with, and expect to feel the pain when you first come across your first group of Saurians, nasty lizards who can’t be bested by frontal assaults. Running away from a fight isn’t the worst thing you can do in this game, as it will often save you and your party’s lives when you make good your escape.

Depending on how you play, after a few cut scenes and a short boss battle, for a good chunk of the game the story is almost non-existent. Granted, any open world game does the same thing with its narrative in order to allow players freedom, so this is nothing new. Fortunately, the land here is well worth exploring from one end to the other, above and below ground. Dungeon layouts are magnificent overall, dark, dangerous and well worth coming back to for a few reasons. Some have areas that are blocked off by rubble or are otherwise inaccessible until certain quests or side quests are completed, and a formerly deadly mine becomes a very handy enemy-free shortcut with a helpful shop where you can net some cool gear and other items.

The first time through any dungeon and in fact, the entire game world will be a nightmare if you’re not prepared and the game tells you this whenever it has the chance to. Monsters are more numerous and often stronger at night than in the daytime and darkness is used excellently throughout the game. You’ll need to carry a lantern and spare oil for it at all times, as at night, your vision is realistically limited and even with a lantern, your field of view is as short it would be in the woods with an actual lantern. This adds an great element of fear when you hear a sound (or one of your pawns yell something) and turn around to see a few angry skeletons running at you full tilt with swords drawn or worse, a dreaded Saurian or four, all set to kill.

Of course, that will only happen if you’re not paying attention to the warnings given at nearly every turn on load screens or from your pawns. The game gives you ample opportunity to craft healing and other stat-boosting/repairing items right from the start at any time (even during combat), so unless you’re stupidly not collecting plants and other materials when you find them just so you can carry more loot (a huge mistake, mind you), you should be fine against most enemies… for the most part. One area where the game does extremely well is how it pits you against some huge and deadly enemies, usually at random while you’re perambulating about the overworld. You’ll face off against many a Cyclops, three-headed Chimera and other huge beasts that will be a challenge to defeat until you learn how to take them down as quickly as possible. If a pawn goes down in battle, you can run up to him or her and tab a button to revive some HP. This keeps the gameplay flowing unless you’re too far away from them and trying to stay alive yourself.

The game only lets you keep a single save slot, which was fine by me, but as a longtime RPG fan, I know this will make a lot of people upset that they can’t have that roster of potential files to choose from. That said, provided you save in the right spots, dying here is a bit painless, as you’re allowed to retry from your last save (if you were smart enough to save right before that band of bandits wiped you out), but the game has an oddball quirk where if you manually reload your save game during a quest, you’re sent all the way back to the place you took the quest from with no progress saved. This will be really annoying if, for example, you hoofed it from Gran Soren all the way to Witchwood or the areas past it and died, only to have to redo that whole trip, tough battles and all. The only good thing about this is it gives you c chance to try new strategies out and hope for a better outcome. If you save and quit, however, your progress is saved exactly where you left off.

Once you get hooked into DD, it will take some time to get to the capital city of Gran Soren where the plot spools out through a series of Wyrm Hunt missions, but it’s impossible not to want to explore Gransys a bit before tacking those quests. Like other open world RPGs and yes, solid hack and slash favorites, there’s a definitive, addictive quality to preparing for, then setting out on a quest. I started the game as a Strider (an archer with a nice set of ranged bow skills with twin daggers for up close work), switching class to a Magick Archer to complete my first play through once I’d maxed out every skill available. My permanent pawn started as a Mage and I switched to a Sorcerer, not knowing she’d lose all her healing spells (oops). This forced me to drop one of my two strong pawns for a new healer with powerful support and damage-dealing skills, tracking them down in the Rift using the game’s pawn selector. With it, you can choose pawns of any level, check their stats and skills out, then summon up to five at a time. You can even narrow your choices down to sex, class, skills used and more (or less) using a simple checklist.

The nice thing about the pawn system is how deep, yet subtle it is. Pawns who’ve been with you for a while know a bit to a lot about some of the areas you’ve explored, even going as far as to run ahead to lead the way when certain quests are selected. If you’re heading into dangerous territory, you can toggle this action off by deselecting the quest marker from your journal, a wise choice if you prefer to handle enemies at your pace. Pawns can also learn about monsters by defeating them or through scrolls you find in your travels that when read, give everyone new insights into defeating creatures quickly. You’ll actually hear your pawns calling out their new tips as they gain knowledge about monsters, so it’s entirely possible to take down some enemies without them laying a finger, claw or paw on you. If a pawn dies while in your service, he or she isn’t gone for good, nor is the stuff they were carrying. You’ll need to pay a fee to revive them and anything they had in their inventory is sent to your storehouse, which you can access from an inn or one of a few camps located in remote spots in the game world.

Interestingly enough, unlike certain other large scale RPGs, traveling here is going to be mostly on foot. other than warping to the main capital via a Ferrystone (a one-use item that’s a one-way warp from any spot to Gran Soren’s Pawn Guild), you’ll be doing a lot of legging it from place to place in Gransys. I didn’t mind this except when I ended up somewhere where I had to take a quest or get an item that had me backtracking instead of moving forward in my exploration efforts, but it’s also the case where going too far during the daytime can leave you stranded and near helpless at night. The game has been designed so that you can find safe havens along the way where you can hang out without fear of being attacked, but other than the aid stations, you can’t camp out just anywhere you like for the night.

As noted earlier, night travel can be terrifying, especially if you’re in a new area and you’re lousy at map reading (although the map here is excellent). It’s bad enough with wolves, Direwolves and entire goblin camps coming at you, but add in harpies, invisible Saurians (which made me think of the lizards from Koei Tecmo’s stellar Trinity: Souls of Zill O’ll), phantoms and other nightmarish beasties and it’s best to hang out in some ruins or in a place you’ve cleared out, put down the controller and wait for dawn. Of course, if you happen to fins one of the few lovely healing springs located around Gransys, you can stay there, collect spring water for use in potions and/or hunt a few deer for food until the sun comes up and move onward. Water like that is your friend. Any trips to the beach or near a deep body of water need to be taken with care, as the game limits your swimming options to zero thanks to The Brine, a sort of “sea monster” that eats away at your hit points as soon as you so much as dip a toe into the ocean, deep stream or some dungeon water sources. It’s a nice way to put a boundary on parts of the game world, but if there’s a sequel, Capcom, it would be nice to see water travel using some of those boats seen in the game.

As noted, character movement is quite fluid and your avatar is even nimble enough to leap and climb up rocks and scamper around the rooftops like in the Assassin’s Creed games. This adds another layer to the gameplay, as you’ll find hidden treasure chests and other goodies in out of the way spots and hell, it’s jut fun to see a big old city like Gran Soren from more than ground level. You can climb ladders and rocks and leap up to any ledge you can grab, but forget about scaling trees, although you can shoot apples out of them or grapes from smaller bushes. The bulk of the items you collect (save for quest and certain usable items) can be combined into a wide range of other items or used to enhance your gear quite easily, but the system is so easy to use that it can be paradoxically confusing if you just start throwing materials together. Once you see which potions are the best to carry around (anything that heals and/or restores stamina to the entire party), that’s what you’ll be making.

You can also craft a nice variation of damage dealing and status affecting items, but all you really need for many enemies is Dragon Spit or Throwblast, a few different arrow types (if you’re a non-Magick Archer) or anything you can throw or use to take down a boss fast. There are a couple of magic scrolls and tomes that can wipe out some bosses in about a minute or so once you knock them down with magic attacks, and some ranged weapons or spells can make formerly hard bosses drop faster than Facebook’s stock price (yeah, shame on you if you got suckered into that crap). Yes, the game gets “easier” as you get stronger, but there’s always a surprise or three lying in wait when you least expect it and it’s great that the level of challenge is there if you want it rougher. If you’re finding the game too easy because you’ve got a level 60 party blowing through enemies, simply buy and equip weaker, non-enhanced weapons or swap out your powerful skills for less effective ones. I don’t know about you, but I like being able to blast homing arrows down a twisted dark cave and see XP rack up in the corner from all those bats, snakes, harpies and occasional giant brutes I don’t need to get up close and personal with.

For the most part, the game world is beautiful with a great draw distance that allows to to see grand mountains and crumbling ruins in the distance. However, there are also some rough technical issues with objects and people popping into place, a few awkward animations in spots as well as minor to moderate screen tearing that’s much more noticeable if you play on a standard definition TV at 480p. Also, expect to break out the reading glasses if you only have a SDTV and it’s smaller than 26 inches, as yet again, we get a game that has no fonts scaled for users who don’t own a HDTV. Other than that, the game runs just fine. I experienced no crashes, freezes or other major problems and that’s almost unheard of for a game this huge. You do get used to the visuals doing their stuff after a short time because the game is so compelling that it’s hard to find fault with a world that keeps you so busy while it’s trying to kill you off.

The “online” mode in the game is a nifty twist on the one found in From Software’s Demon Souls and Dark Souls. Instead of allowing live players to join other games, you can lend your main pawn out to anyone you wish and get him or her back with items and Rift points you can use in your own game. This is pretty cool, as it’s painless and your pawn actually still stays in your own game while you’re online. If for some reason it’s a slow day and there’s no one around online or you’ve limited your settings to certain people, the game will simulate an away situation online and reward you with items and points despite your pawn not going to anyone’s adventure. It’s a simple solution that may not please everyone until they realize that Capcom wants anyone who plays to get something for their pawn’s efforts, even if there’s no one around to “play” with. For a game mimicking a MMO at times, even offline, it’s a damn sight better than Diablo III mimicking a MMO (but badly) with its restrictive always online requirement. I got DD three days before my copy of Diablo III arrived and guess which has been played MORE simply because it’s no trouble to turn a console on, sit down and PLAY whenever the hell I want to?

Still, I’ll admit that the main theme made me laugh out loud and wonder when I first heard it. It sounds like a Rush cover band doing their own original material and pretty pleased to not have to play Tom Sawyer one more night, at that. If you judge your games by the music that plays when you fire them up, unless you’re a big fan of 90’s corpo-rock, you may feel a “WTF” come up and slap you in the ears until you hit the start button. In-game, the music is a great deal more fitting, but it doesn’t play every second of the game. As paying attention to enemy noises is a key gameplay element, you’ll mostly notice the music kick in when you enter a city, town or other new area. There are a few battle tunes, specifically the ones played during boss battles, but they work well enough so as not to be distracting from your pawns yelling out hints as they get in a few sword whacks, arrow shots or magic blasts.

My only major complaints are few, but need to be voiced, as they kick the game in the head when they shouldn’t have to. As many of you who have played the game know, the Escort quests, or more specifically, the AI you need to get from points A to B in one piece is lousy. In cases where you’re going into unexplored land, it’s next to impossible to keep your client from getting killed by something unexpected because he or she will run right into trouble while trying to avoid it or worse, be targeted by the most powerful enemy in a group and one-hit killed before you can do a thing. You can always retry the mission, but as noted before, if it’s a long trip, you’ll need to go through hell again and probably still fail at the same spot. Also, for whatever reason, unless it’s a healing or status item that affects every pawn, you can’t use items on your party at all. Sure, pawns DO use items you give them, but they’re so slow at it that you’ll think they’re not at all concerned about their low HP at all. Granted, it’s nice that they don’t act EXACTLY like human players who spam potions and spells, but it’s still a pain to have healers only use a spell that heals 3/4 or less of the party’s health or worse, heals your character a bit and them less right before a Golem smashes them in the head.

Additionally, there’s an Affinity system here that’s a bit vaguely explained and has something to do with giving gifts to people you come across in your travels. The problem is even though you find items that have in their descriptions, the names of people who prefer them, unless you’re keeping notes, you’ll find yourself with goodies for someone in the town you just spent two days walking from with no quick way to get back. Having Affinity Item delivery quests along with the Escort quests would have been a nice addition. Finally, the map needed a closer zoom feature, a way to tab views with a quest selected and perhaps a list of people living in the cities so they’re easier to track down when you do have a gift for them. Other than those, the game is again, quite addictive and almost endless once you let yourself get hooked in by the dungeon diving and monster dispatching it offers up.

For the record, I ended up spending a great deal of time with Dragon’s Dogma, more so than I thought I would (101:16, according to the game clock) and I’m going to get back to it for a second play at some point (post E3 and a bunch of reviews and such I postponed for a few reasons). I actually chopped this review down from about 5500 words because I was dropping strategies and telling stories about some of the quests I took before realizing once again that this is exactly the sort of game that anyone who plays will have a completely different set of stories to tell about. This may be Capcom’s first venture into the open world RPG game, but I hope it won’t be their last. Dragon’s Dogma is worth every cent at full price and that’s BEFORE the Resident Evil 6 demo, which goes live on July 3. There’s more than enough game here to keep you busy until then and long afterward. I’ll be one of many hoping for more adventures in Gransys, not only on consoles, but hopefully on a certain Sony portable that happens to NEED a game like this that’s so hard to put down…