Dragon's Dogma Previews
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GameSpot:
Our quest began inside a cave. Initially flanked by just a single other team member, after we had come to grips with the controls, we located a stone that doubled as both a summoning portal and a squad manager. Though the game was pre-set for our demo purposes, the full version of the game will let you trade and equip any associate (Capcom calls them pawns) you've met along your journey to kill the namesake beast at the centre of Dragon's Dogma. A strider and a mage joined our merry team, the latter helping out by buffing the group with area-of-effect auras during combat, and helping to heal when things weren't going so well.
As we wandered deeper into the bowels of the mountain, we warmed up our steel inside the bodies of goblins and other mythical creatures dumb enough to cross our path. Jumping down a steep rock embankment, we picked on something a bit more our size: a Chimera--a monster with the head of a lion, half the body of a goat, and a tail made from one hissed-off snake.
Our AI counterparts offered their advice on the best approach to take in slaying the creature, and the enemy's health bar at the top of the screen indicated with two extra notches that the encounter would contain three phases. We began by attacking the tail, jumping onto the rear of our target, and after several hacks, we severed it to leave a bloody stump. Goat proved to be slightly more difficult because he was raised high on the midsection of the animal and used his psychic goat powers to incapacitate members of the team--rendering them unconscious temporarily. While we didn't appear to take any additional damage when downed, the spell did leave us knocked out and pressing buttons wondering what was going on for an extended period of time.
GamesRadar:
Playing as the Warrior class, there's a pretty ridiculous amount combat variations to pull off with the simple combination of the shoulder button. Not only can you put a little extra stank on light, heavy and grab attacks, your shield's got moves that can be tricked out as well. And since everything about Dragon's Dogma screams (open,) there are numerous ways to take out vicious monsters as dramatically as you see fit. It's got all the elegance and polish of something linear, but there's no one way to do anything in Dragon's Dogma.
My favorite example was fighting the Harpies, the evil shrieking flying creatures with female attributes (B00BZ!) I'm told the Strider class will have a bow and arrow to dispose of airborne enemies, but my selected class works much better face to face. What's a melee warrior to do? Well, with a quick variation of my block, I loudly banged my sword against my shield to taunt, which was frighteningly efficient at getting the Harpies' attention. Once they swooped in, I timed a modified heavy attack into a devastating sword uppercut that I'm sure would make Sagat nod in approval.
1UP:
Combat takes place in real time and the demo allowed me to issue basic commands to my team -- help, attack, and fall back. I had two basic attacks at my disposal and a four special attacks that could be accessed by holding down the right bumper. The left bumper raised my character's shield turning him into a walk impenetrable fortress.
I soon stumbled upon a magic stone that allowed me to fill out my party by summoning two new AI partners (appropriately called pawns.) from the ether. The partners do their job admirably and they are fairly intelligent, healing, attacking, and falling back at the right time. However, the game is single-player only. An odd choice considering the game revolves around fighting giant monsters as a team, and Capcom's biggest series is Monster Hunter, a multiplayer game devoted to the same thing.
