Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Hyperion]

Let me put it a different way. One way I could see it going is basically something like Dragon's Dogma Mount & Blade/Kindgom Under Fire/Nobunaga's Ambition. Something where they expand on the idea of some of those larger battles you could get into by letting you have control over armies. So something where you can get into big battles in open areas between the smaller party of four dungeon stuff. Expand on the idea of clearing mines out to become working mines, (like with the Abandoned Mine in this game) it'd be better if you could just run mines as opposed to only mining yourself. Maybe run a town (or towns) yourself; there's that bit at the beginning of DD where someone says something about improving the road out of Cassardis, now the game does that itself, but it'd be interesting if you actually had control over that; in the GDC Dragon's Dogma video Hideaki Itsuno does say he wants to make a sim game, and talks about how he's playing a lot of SimCity and A-Train. Add in some ways to get around faster like horses and ships.

Please God no. Anything but this. Dragon's Dogma doesn't need its combat on a larger scale, it needs it in larger variety. The combat should be added upon, not needlessly ballooned.

The totally opposite way I could see it going, that'd still be in line with the openworld day/night cycle hack and slash of the orgianl game is, is you've just got one city and you've basically got a way bigger Everfall in the middle of it. So there's one giant open dungeon you're going down into, with more tightly packed enemy encounters like a normal hack and slash, (like a Diablo has) with more normal dungeons to go into within it

All the game needs is a wide variety of monsters beyond palette changes, with more character development that doesn't revolve solely around gear / levels. Hopefully tied to the endgame, with greater and greater challenges to prevent boredom. Similar to what NioH did with the Abyss, but without the ridiculous tiers of equipment. I wouldn't mind seeing gear enchants, 'elite' abilities, of which you can only have 1 equipped to your action bar at a time (think Guild Wars 1), pawn-exclusive bling like monster trophies to show what kind of badass he is, upgradeable skills with branching effects (i.e. choosing between higher freeze chance, more damage, or more tendrils for High Gicel, or something), and even armor upgrades / attachments, again, for endgame farming as well as visual badassery.

The game excels above all others in its combat, and utilization of darkness - build around it. Dragon's Dogma night / day system on the fucking Moon would be majestic. Again, given the success of Monster Hunter, we'll probably be seeing more of that, less of DD.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Please God no. Anything but this. Dragon's Dogma doesn't need its combat on a larger scale, it needs it in larger variety. The combat should be added upon, not needlessly ballooned.

Larger scale battles are a big part of a pretty good chunk of Berserk, and Dragon's Dogma pulls quite a bit from Berserk. So I wouldn't exactly be surprised to see bigger battles added. You've also already got some bigger battles in a few places in Dragon's Dogma already, like in the Bandit camp, and at that one Keep you have to take back; fighting humans in big groups is about the only way fighting humans is even interesting in Dragon's Dogma.

All the game needs is a wide variety of monsters beyond palette changes, with more character development that doesn't revolve solely around gear / levels. Hopefully tied to the endgame, with greater and greater challenges to prevent boredom. Similar to what NioH did with the Abyss, but without the ridiculous tiers of equipment. I wouldn't mind seeing gear enchants, 'elite' abilities, of which you can only have 1 equipped to your action bar at a time (think Guild Wars 1), pawn-exclusive bling like monster trophies to show what kind of badass he is, upgradeable skills with branching effects (i.e. choosing between higher freeze chance, more damage, or more tendrils for High Gicel, or something), and even armor upgrades / attachments, again, for endgame farming as well as visual badassery.

The game excels above all others in its combat, and utilization of darkness - build around it. Dragon's Dogma night / day system on the fucking Moon would be majestic. Again, given the success of Monster Hunter, we'll probably be seeing more of that, less of DD.

Them adding a wider variety of monsters if ever another one happens seems like a given, just like adding more vocations. Forget just fantasy monsters in general, there's still a number of fantasy monsters from other Capcom western fantasy games that haven't shown up in Dragon's Dogma yet.

I'd imagine a new one would add a number of proper bosses too.

 

[Cross]

They wanted to make their own bad-ass Skyrim, but realised half-way through that a Skyrim with so many interesting gameplay systems would blow the budget, so they released what they had. Now they're milking it and that's it. It sold well, but not well enough to justify funding of a proper sequel.

Should there ever be a sequel, I'd expect every single aspect to be worse (and some dropped entirely), except graphics of course.

Dragon's Dogma came out half a year after Skyrim. Triple-A games take 3-5 years to develop. It's impossible for it to have been a reaction to Skyrim or influenced by Skyrim in any meaningful way.

Oblivion on the other hand...

 

[Shinji]

Please God no. Anything but this. Dragon's Dogma doesn't need its combat on a larger scale, it needs it in larger variety. The combat should be added upon, not needlessly ballooned.

Agree.
Even though I enjoyed all the chaos of fighting against a large mob of different enemies, adding large scale battles such as those found in Dynasty Warriors or Mount & Blade would weaken the combat and make it less varied. The more enemies you have, the more dumb and generic they have to be.

To some extent, I like to think of Dragon's Dogma as a "modernized" Sorcerian.



So give us exploration, companions, combat and adventure

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Dragon's Dogma came out half a year after Skyrim. Triple-A games take 3-5 years to develop. It's impossible for it to have been a reaction to Skyrim or influenced by Skyrim in any meaningful way.

Oblivion on the other hand...

It was pitched back in 2000, so this game as been kicking around Capcom in some form since before Morrowind. Only took this long because Hideaki Itsuno got moved onto DMC2 to help them fix it and has been on DMC ever since.

Agree.
Even though I enjoyed all the chaos of fighting against a large mob of different enemies, adding large scale battles such as those found in Dynasty Warriors or Mount & Blade would weaken the combat and make it less varied. The more enemies you have, the more dumb and generic they have to be.

To some extent, I like to think of Dragon's Dogma as a "modernized" Sorcerian.



So give us exploration, companions, combat and adventure

Yeah, Dragon's Dogma wouldn't become anything like Dynasty Warriors even if you were fighting as many people as Dynasty Warriors throws at you. Your attacks in Dragon's Dogma don't do things like juggle everyone in front of you. You mess up on the road to the Ruins of Aernst Castle where all the bandits are you can end up fighting something like 15 enemies at once, the gameplay doesn't suddenly change into something else because you're fighting more enemies than normal at once.


Capcom has something that looks like that:



It's a arcade game, so the only way to have a group of four is if another person is also playing.

A number of enemies, or how classes seem set up seem like they're from Magic Sword, their Dungeons and Dragons games, and The King of Dragons. First boss in Magic Sword is also the first big monster you fight in Dragon's Dogma.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Capcom has something that looks like that:



It's a arcade game, so the only way to have a group of four is if another person is also playing.

A number of enemies, or how classes seem set up seem like they're from Magic Sword, their Dungeons and Dragons games, and The King of Dragons. First boss in Magic Sword is also the first big monster you fight in Dragon's Dogma.

Capcom ported Magic Sword to the SNES, but not only did they make a few minor deletions they also removed the second player.

 

[Shinji]

the gameplay doesn't suddenly change into something else because you're fighting more enemies than normal at once.

It doesn't, but it would *have* to.

This is a matter of design. If suddenly it focused on large scale battles, that would become the norm, and every encounter would *have* to be a large scale battle. In Mount & Blade, for instance, individual combat (i.e. 1v1) is the exception, not the norm, and one could argue that Mount & Blade is at its best on large scale battles.

Dragon's Dogma combat is focused on small scale battles, and that's why it works the way it does. If they were to add way too many enemies and not change the design, it would quickly become overwhelming and not work (because it was designed for small scale battles).
It compensates this lack of quantity by providing bigger enemies (i.e. mini bosses) that take longer to defeat, that you can climb on, and that usually are "smarter" than common enemies.

In other words, imagine Dark Souls combat, and add 100 enemies to fight the player at once -- it wouldn't work.
It would require a design change.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

It doesn't, but it would *have* to.

This is a matter of design. If suddenly it focused on large scale battles, that would become the norm, and every encounter would *have* to be a large scale battle. In Mount & Blade, for instance, individual combat (i.e. 1v1) is the exception, not the norm, and one could argue that Mount & Blade is at its best on large scale battles.

Dragon's Dogma combat is focused on small scale battles, and that's why it works the way it does. If they were to add way too many enemies and not change the design, it would quickly become overwhelming and not work (because it was designed for small scale battles).
It compensates this lack of quantity by providing bigger enemies (i.e. mini bosses) that take longer to defeat, that you can climb on, and that usually are "smarter" than common enemies.

In other words, imagine Dark Souls combat, and add 100 enemies to fight the player at once -- it wouldn't work.
It would require a design change.

It wouldn't have to. It's kind of easy to see you wouldn't have to in the game itself as there are places where you can get into larger scale battles than normal. Now they aren't fighting 100 enemies or anything, but then if they had 100 enemies on screen they're not all going to be attacking at once. Have you ever played Kingdom Under Fire before? The unit sizes are somewhere around what it'd be in Dragon's Dogma if you ran into a few groups of enemies and took them on at once. That game also doesn't have you juggling five enemies in the air with a normal attack, in fact Kindgom Under Fire would play better if its combat was like Dragon's Dogma, as gameplay wise you really only have a couple combat strings and like two special attacks. In Kingdom Under Fire you run around picking off single enemies after you've engaged a group in combat.

Dark Souls combat is so totally different your point with that is moot. Dark Souls combat is intended for one-on-one fights, (although you'll get into bigger fights than that) is much slower, and has way more stamina management to it. Dragon's Dogma combat is so not designed for just one-on-one encounters that they didn't even put a lock-on function in the game. You're never meant to be focusing on one enemy when it comes to normal units if you don't have to.

 

[Black]

Is there a mod that lets me make my own 3 prawns instead of 1? I wanna have my own full party.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Doubtful. There are pretty major mechanical differences between the way the two types of pawns are handled.

 

[Black]

Gaayyy.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Is there a mod that lets me make my own 3 prawns instead of 1? I wanna have my own full party.

If you're playing offline on PC, download a mod called Hired Pawn Inclinations, which will set the primary and secondary inclinations of the procedurally-generated pawns, making it easier to find ones you like. If you're playing online, you should be able to find reasonably-designed human-created pawns easily. The pawn system is designed to encourage the player to frequently switch the two support pawns, not only because they aren't leveling up with your Arisen and Main Pawn but also to have a different mix of vocations and skills in your party, suited to whatever your current objective is.

There's also a save-game editor, but I don't think anyone ever figured out how to do much with it, certainly not to the extent of editing support pawns.

 

[Black]

I know what pawn system is there for and I still would like to make my own party.

 

[Morkar Left]

Dragon's Dogma inspiration is an old MUD (the Pawn-system) and Capcoms old D&D brawlers.

I only wish the world would be more fleshed out with quests (typical rpg quests with dialogue / optional outcomes / riddles, locks and traps) and the char system would be more built on progressing levels and getting new abilities instead of switching classes and lose almost anything from the previous class (so more passives which work in all classes / more flexibility between classes).

The Pawn system could be handled in a better way (maybe they could level with you but lose the progress when released in the rift again) but I get what they were trying to do there.

And I think a coop option would have gone a long way to bring in more sales for DD. 2 players each with his own pawn and addittional difficulty and the game would be a lot more popular. It would even totally fit the old D&D brawlers.

Otherwise the game is a gem because what it wants to do it does really well.

 

[Delterius]

Speaking of mods, has anyone tried this?

 

[Grimlorn]

Pawn Manager allows you to edit your pawns almost any way you like. Inclinations, skills, stats, level, etc. It just doesn't give you the option of editing their augments or eq.

 

[Perkel]

Pawn Manager allows you to edit your pawns almost any way you like. Inclinations, skills, stats, level, etc. It just doesn't give you the option of editing their augments or eq.

If i remember right you can give better equipment to pawns even those who are not yours. So only augs would be a problem.

Can you adjust how they look ?

 

[Grimlorn]

Pawn Manager allows you to edit your pawns almost any way you like. Inclinations, skills, stats, level, etc. It just doesn't give you the option of editing their augments or eq.

If i remember right you can give better equipment to pawns even those who are not yours. So only augs would be a problem.

Can you adjust how they look ?

yeah I just checked there are appearance settings, I suppose you'd have to write down your appearance settings in character creation to transfer them over because it's just a bunch of numbers and sliders. You might also want to back up your save as well when using this as it involves loading the save and the pawns from the save into the editor and then saving it into the save file.

I don't think you can give them better eq, or I remember having some sort of problem with it in the past.

 

[Anomander Rake]

Game worth it or not?

Any suggestion for first playthrough (etc. mods?)

Regards

 

[Grokalibre]

Game worth it or not?

Any suggestion for first playthrough (etc. mods?)

Regards

It's decent if you can find it around 10-15€. It has a lot of padding & running back & forth.
Go for nude mod, rest is shit.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Game worth it or not?

Any suggestion for first playthrough (etc. mods?)

Regards

Avoid spoilers, try creative stuff for solving quests, you might be pleasantly surprised. Don't worry about missing things, game is huge, you'll miss things, it's fine.

 

[Wunderbar]

Game worth it or not?

yeah

Any suggestion for first playthrough?

don't bother with min-maxing character's stats, your gear will do the job.

mods?

nah.

 

[Grimlorn]

Game worth it or not?

Any suggestion for first playthrough (etc. mods?)

Regards

Assassin > Warrior in terms of melee imo. It also helps that the Assassin can switch between melee and bow, and also daggers or sword and board.

If you go Magic Archer you might want to look into the mod that rebalances stat growth for it because they kind of made Magic gain which your damage is based on really low.

After Dragon small tip/spoiler

Spoiler

After Dragon is dead don't do the 20 wakestone quest you see in Everfall. It locks you into ending the game. You can really skip Everfall and just go to Bitterblack Isle. That's where the real challenge and fun starts. Make sure you go through it twice as well as it changes significantly the second time around.

 

[Wunderbar]

Assassin > Warrior in terms of melee imo. It also helps that the Assassin can switch between melee and bow, and also daggers or sword and board.

also Assassin (and other agile vocations) can perform roll and double-jump, which is really nice.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Game worth it or not?

Any suggestion for first playthrough (etc. mods?)

Regards

There are 9 vocations (i.e. classes) available for the Arisen (i.e. the player-character), each of which has a rank that starts at 1 and can rise to 9 as you play that vocation (a higher rank unlocks vocation-specific skills and augments). I recommend switching to a second vocation as soon as you reach rank 9 in your first vocation, and then switching to a third vocation as soon as you reach rank 9 in your second vocation, e.g. fighter --> warrior --> mystic knight or strider --> ranger --> assassin. Augments that have been unlocked for one vocation can be used when playing as other vocations.

It's better not to spoil yourself about the game, but if you're one of the people that hates missing out on content, you can check the wikia's page for Stage 1 and then proceed through the pages for later stages when you reach them, so as to limit your exposure to spoilers.

Also, pawn inclinations aren't explained well by the game, so read the wikia's page on Pawn Inclinations before you get too far into the game. If you're playing offline, then download a mod called Hired Pawn Inclinations, which will allow you to set inclinations for your support pawns.

The game only keeps a single save file, though there is a separate "checkpoint save" in addition to the regular save. The regular save automatically updates frequently, and the checkpoint save automatically updates every time you rest or enter a riftstone (plus some parts of the main quest). However, if you're playing on PC, then you can easily make copies of your savegame. Even on PS3, it's possible to copy the save file to a USB drive and to use this copy to replace the existing save file on the PS3 (I assume this also works for PS4, but I'm not sure).

There is a "new game plus" mode that starts from the beginning but keeps the levels, equipment, items, skills, and augments you obtained in your first playthrough.

Finally, in regard to the "after dragon" spoiler left by Grimlorn above,

Spoiler

when you receive the "collect 20 wakestones" quest for the Everfall, you should pursue it. However, note that once you have 20+ wakestones and talk to the quest giver, this triggers the ending sequence for the entire game. I suggest making a copy of your save file just before this, experiencing the end of the game, and then replacing your save file with the copy so that you can proceed immediately to the Bitterblack Isle expansion dungeon (you might already have entered it and cleared the first area, but shouldn't have gone past the second area where you meet Barroch). Though you could also start new game plus mode and it wouldn't take long until you've reached the point allowing you to enter Bitterblack Isle.