Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Capcom be trolling. Dragon's Dogma main game was great, but they easily blew that away with Dark Arisen. Yet everything else they've done in the last few years makes it seem like they are middling developer that can't rise above 'good for what it is.' I only hope Team Troll strikes again with Deep Down, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

Yeah I get the feeling that Dark Arisen being as good as it was is a fluke, but I could be wrong.

 

Oh the Assassin class, how you never bore me!

Powder Charge/Blast/Barrage (Will refer to it as Powder Charge) is such a fun skill.



The damage is determined by your physical stat mostly (small amount from magic). You place the charge and then it will detonate on the next time you press the skill button: the time it takes depends on how far you walk. Note that zigzagging will cause it to follow your exact path, which will cause the charge to take longer to explode. The damage is quite significant: the first rank can easily stagger and annihilate those god damn bandits early on. Even on hard mode you can force a Cyclops to fall forward with 2-3 blasts. Some fun things that can be done with this skill:

Powder Charge + Shield Summon: place the charge at your feet, bang your shield until the enemies herp-derp over to you, then blow the charge.

Powder Charge + Rusted Bow rank 3+: Shoot at your big target until it's slow, run over to its crotch and spam charges until it falls over.

Powder Charge + Sleeper Arrows: If they can be put to sleep, fire some arrows and have them take a nap! Since they will be considered out of combat, the Powder Charge will be explosively powerful!

Powder Charge + Grabs/grapple: Knock an enemy over and bring them on over to your charge. If a pawn is holding one down, feel free to blow it up.

 

So apparently the Mystic Knight's Great Magick Cannon ability plays nicely with skills that multi-hit. Specifically, Miasma and Fulmination.

Well, it actually won't play nice if you stack too many cannons and miasmas/fulminations as it can crash the game and corrupt your save file. Will post more details once I get my Sorc and MK properly leveled.

 

I fucked up my MK build, sort of. I put too much emphasis on melee classes to find out that MK melee isn't all that interesting. His GMC does alright damage in most situations, but I've seen some serious boss-killer builds with that ability. Mine had a harder time (meaning drawn out) with the last boss and Ur-Dragon than he should have. I did put quite a few levels into Sorcerer before hand, just not enough for the cannon build.

 

I don't think leveling as Sorc for a MK build is worthwhile. You lose a lot of health and defense to do that: he's still quite good in melee with Abyssinal Anguish and the extra defenses are nice for not dying.

As for the Great Magick Cannon, make sure to use both Demon's AND Conquerors Perhipts: GMC, along with some other Mystic Knight skills, pull 40%/60% from Attack and Magic Attack respectively. Get the highest damage Mace possible, buff with the element the boss is weak to, and wail away at the GMC.

 

Fun fact: Abyssal Anguish and maximum height lets the MK reach a high dragon's heart with simple jump attacks. Throw in a enchant into the mix and they become trivial.

 

Btw, I meant last DA boss, Daimon.

Can you reach the wing tips like that? I'm down to one and a half rounds for him. Half a round is for the wings which I usually don't get before he flies away the first round.

I will try this for the second Daimon encounter, both forms. Melee with CP isn't fun to me.

 

I own this game. I played up until the first village, at which point I was underwhelmed and put it down. I acknowledge this may have been a mistake, as RPGs need time to develop, but I was put off by many things:

1. Pawns. I need not say no more.
2. Music. Where is it? I should have heard at least one memorable track by this point, but I expect too much from modern games perhaps.
3. Quests. Typical fetch quest filler bullshit.
4. Uninspired first town. Dull as fuck.
5. RPG systems, they just didn't seem very meaningful, but certainly way too early to judge.
6. Combat. Ties into pawns. Another aspect that's too early to judge but first impressions do count. In fact there's not much to judge when my pawns are slaying them all and healing me constantly on hard difficulty that I was put off from summoning them at all.

About the only thing that impressed me was that there were secret areas and jump functionality, though that's not really impressed so much as pleasantly surprised, as it's a modern game. I think I'll stick with Dark Souls,Castlevania: SOTN, Onimusha: DOD, or even to a lesser extent Ninja Gaiden/Devil May Cry if I want a J-ARPG fix. This was not a good first impression that's for sure. Oh, I'm forgetting that you could pick NPCs up and throw them, that's hilarious, but for some reason this is limited to some humans in the town, not all...

 

You can pick up humanoid-size enemies and throw them to cause damage.

 

Which means you can throw your pawns off a cliff and solo if you dislike them.

 

Of course you do.

 

umm, there is only one village and you start in it... did you play until the mercenary camp or the city?

 

He said he was playing on Hard.

He probably got knocked down by wolves on the way to witchwood and they gangbanged him via ground chew.

 

people, let's not ignore the most obvious explanation here:

 

It's a possible explanation.

 

I agree. Drago may be an undisputed queen of faggotry but he's alright when it comes to Dragon's Dogma.

 

So what you are all saying is I should continue? I won't settle for "decent considering it's a modern game", so it better be top-rate. Standards bitches, you got them in abundance?

 

Surprised I don't see many people mention this Mystic Knight skill. Makes Ogres, Cyclops, Garms, and Elder Ogres cake. Use a Rusted Staff at 3 three or higher and now they get Slow and Sleep.

Game is hard at first, then gets easier past level 25-30ish, then it continues to be easy until Final Boss, then it has a difficulty spike post-game, and then it gets much harder in the expansion.

I consider it top rate.

 

Frankly, no because I don't know a lot about your playthrough. If killing the first Cyclops and the Hydra wasn't an interesting beginning then you probably shouldn't.

As a Mystic Knight I used to deal with giants by stacking those trap sigils that cause damage. Three of those and the ogre drops down quickly enough.

Since I lost that save file, I'd like to know your opinion on the skills that puts a holy aura on the shield. I never bothered blocking attacks since dodging is so easy, but can that ability, say, block a drake's claw or the cyclops' mace?

 

I played the original Dragon's Dogma when it came out but never really thought of buying Dark Arisen. Is it really that much of an improvement? surely it's all the same abilities and largely similar enemies? Also, if you start over do you have to play through the main campaign again?

 

Dark Arisen is much better experience. It shows DD to be one of those games that would have been better off with more focused world design. The environment is more immersive than anything in the original game. There are new enemies, a couple of them new variations of old monsters, and they're all pretty tough. I've seen people start the extra content as soon as they could get to Bitterblack Isle, but you'll at least want to 'unlock' Gran Soren for the merchants there. But I would recommend getting some levels in vanilla as BI is like NG+ in the Souls games. With smart tactics you can survive at low levels. Even better if you know where to get some good starting gear on the island, but that depends on knowing which chests spawn what gear, which you'll need a wiki for.

There is also a new system that makes areas not so safe, even if you kill the enemies...

 

Dark Arisen comes with 3 new classes and quite a bit of content in the expansion. Those classes are hybrid alternatives to what you have in place but have mostly new abilities. The expansion is quite great, its content delivers a much more focused experience on killing monsters instead of aping open world RPGs. Unfortunately, its mostly tuned for characters that have already finished the main campaign and I'm pretty sure you'll have to start over.

On the upside, the expansion also added quite a few more Portcrystals.

There's also Hard and Speedrun modes included. The latter is self explanatory whereas the former consists of greatly amped damage dealing from monsters as well as gains in experience and gold. I wouldn't recommend it for a fresh start though. I reached the Griffon Quest on a fresh Hard Mode start so its perfectly doable, but then again I realized that I just relied more on pawns than ever before. Its clearly meant as a harder version of New Game+.

Fun facts I hadn't noticed before.

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

You can use the Salvation Robes as a third option in acquiring the key for the second catacombs quest. You'll pretend to be a convert and acquire another key to salvation that brings you into the crypts from above. I had always wondered why there was a permanently locked door next to the elevator, now I know.

You can actually save the third soldier from the Griffon quest, the one that dies when you are fleeing from the Griffon through the tower's ramp. In fact, that's what Mercedes asked you to do. By the way, what a stupid name.

 

The hybrid classes are all part of the original DD.

 

You know, having now played most of the classes (haven't touched Strider or Mage yet), Mystic Knight is stupidly ridiculous in retrospect. Cannons stacked on Sigils and then TRIGGERING like some batshit insane feminist slows my game to a crawl and just nukes everything (second only to Ricochet Hunter in a small room). Even with the pitifully low strength gain, Abyssal Anguish + regular attacks/Burst Strike kills enemies stupidly fast on a level comparable to the Assassin. It also helps that Maces have strength levels nearly equal to two-handed weapons: the best Mace from Dark Arisen is only 100 points weaker than the best Warhammer (2001 compared to 2100!).

I may have to knock down Assassin as 2nd most powerful class overall (ignoring silliness of things like Tenfold Arrows with stacks of Blast Arrows).