Dragon's Dogma

So I have a few options for reviews in the coming weeks; Lollipop Chainsaw, The Amazing Spiderman (a movie game, I know, heaven forbid) and Lego Batman 2: DC Superheroes are among the selections. However I've had Dragon's Dogma lined up for some time now, and I feel like it's a game that I need to let people know about, so here we go!

STORY
Dragon's Dogma begins in the peaceful village of Cassardis, where the player character lives out his/her days as an unsuspecting fisherman/woman. One day, however, a Dragon soars through an opening in the sky. As it tears through Cassardis, it approaches the player character and refers to them as "the chosen one", then proceeds to consume their heart.

Waking up later, it's explained that the player is "The Arisen", a powerful being who is destined to track down this Dragon and kill it, retrieving his/her heart in the process.

The narrative sort of meanders for a while until the last third, where things get really crazy. Some far out things happen, and the twist that begins the games new game + is a wtf moment that works surprisingly well in marrying gameplay to story. Aside from the final third revelations, the story is fairly average, with little to keep you on target.

PRESENTATION
For the most part, Dragon's Dogma looks pretty good. The graphics aren't great, but it's pretty colourful, the animations are smooth and visceral, and there's a lot of variety when it comes to character visuals and monster types.

The voice acting isn't bad, but it's not stellar at all. And the dialogue is difficult to focus on, if only because it's all of a medieval fashion. It's easy enough to follow, but can get pretty old pretty fast.

And finally, the music is a mix between orchestral and modern, with intense electric guitar underlining the main menu and your standard fantasy fare providing the backbone of most of your in-game travel time.

GAMEPLAY
Dragon's Dogma is an Action RPG in the best sense of the genre. There are 3 classes to choose from (Fighter, Rogue and Mage), 3 advanced vocations (Warrior, Strider and Sorceror), and 3 hybrid vocations, (Mystic Knight, Assassin and Magic Archer), and they each have their own advantages and disadvantages (for example, the Rogue-ish classes provide high damage output, but have lower defense).

The character creator is really quite extensive, allowing you to make an old lady dwarf, or a Taylor Lautner look-alike, or even a carbon copy of yourself. It's all do-able, and you get to create yourself and your main companion, so you're encouraged to experiment.

The combat is quite enjoyable, with a simple combo system that can be somewhat extended via upgrades. On top of that, special moves can also be acquired, which help to spice things up a bit. But what I always come back to when talking to others about the game's combat, is the Shadow of the Colossus style combat when facing larger creatures.
Having the ability to climb over beasts to assault their weak spots is useful, and always kept me on the edge of my seat, as I managed my character's stamina and position.

The game's almost-open world is fairly large, but feels really restrictive at some points. The biggest downfall is often that there is no quick travel, even to areas that you've walked to before. Alot of the time that you'll spend in this game will be spent travelling, which is a shame, because with less travel time, more quests could have been added in.

Also not working in it's favour is the inventory system, which takes far too long to navigate, and is far too easy to fill, with surprisingly little amounts of items weighing your character down immensely.

All of that said, however, the crappy inventory and restrictive feeling open world aren't enough to detract from the epic combat, or the amazing amount of personalization, in both gameplay and character appearance.

REPLAYABILITY
Dragon's Dogma is a great game if you like replayability, if only because the New Game plus feature allows you to try a new approach to the game without having to redo all the levelling. Other than the opportunity to try new approaches, not a whole lot changes with NG+.

OVERVIEW
Dragon's Dogma has it's fair share of pros and cons, but luckily, the epic combat and high level of customization definitely outweighs the awful inventory and the meh open world. The story isn't fantastic, but the holy shit moments near the end more than make up for it (in my view at least).
So do I recommend Dragon's Dogma? Hell yes I do. At the very least, it's worth a purchase for the damn good combat.

Next week, it'll be one of the above mentioned games (that I said at the start).