Dragon's Dogma Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on May 18th, 2012

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This makes Dragon's Dogma one of the most hardcore, rewarding, and authentic role-playing experiences on consoles. But the difficulty can be obstructive at times, and we found ourselves regularly quitting in frustration.

There's a distinct lack of direction, and you'll often waste your time trekking halfway across the map, only to discover the quest you're on is at too high a level for your party to handle.

So while the utterly merciless difficulty and lack of signposting does make the game tense and unpredictable, it can also be massively annoying. How this affects you depends entirely on your temperament as a gamer. If you want quick thrills and (relatively) easy accessibility, stick to Skyrim.

The open world in Dragon's Dogma isn't all that varied, but the consistent style gives it a real sense of place, and the meticulous attention to detail brings the world to life. Mostly. The weak spot is the hub city: out in the wild, it's memorable and exciting, but the city feels like an empty shell. It's a problem made worse by technical glitches which mean enemies and characters take too long to load and pop in a few seconds later than they should. Capcom says, plausibly, that installing the game to the hard drive will reduce this - but we couldn't test it on our review version.

These missteps will infuriate those obsessed with consistency, but underneath the messy bits there's something deep, fascinating and exciting. Dull bug-bashers won't abide the rough edges, but they'll be missing out on one of this year's best RPGs. Put up with the shortcomings, and the rest is superb. With a terrible name and a dull-looking aesthetic, this is proof that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. It's too difficult and esoteric for many, but fans of the genre need to play this game now.

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