Capcom Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Damned Registrations]

Pretty much. The only thing I look for in a fighter pawn is scather, that shanking move (which is really fucking OP) and not being nexus (which is annoying as fuck if you're ranged, they stand on top of you while taunting the enemies.)

 

[polo]

Sooooooooooo, been playin it for a while, and i think this could've been awesome save the endless backtraking with endless repetetive respawning enemies and endless stupid pawn talk. Also, my character can't run a mile without getting exhausted.
I feel it had the potential and they completly fucked it.
Oh, also everything mentioned before, like inventory, and the lack of rolling. I keep jumping to avoid attacks, lel.

 

[Mozg]

Yup. Great core combat design stuff and enemies (although fairly limited in number). Everything else is a huge mess. I think they looked at Oblivion fans and were like, "these poor benighted people don't know combat doesn't have to be burning garbage" but then a combination of unreformed console shit like incredibly slow inventory management and tons of shitty high level design decisions constantly strangle the pleasure out of it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah I hate the part where guards don't murder you for picking up an apple inside a store or where quests have unforeseen consequences later on. Stupid high level design decisions ruin everything. It's like Fallout 2. It'd be a great game except the only people to talk to are fucking savages and all you can do is explore a shitty temple, some empty wilderness, and backtrack a lot. They should have at least had another town or something.

 

[Heresiarch]

Heh, I think I care more about my main pawn (a hawt redhead mage) than my main char (a Dante/Nero looking like fighter dude). In fact in most games I would play as the female mage myself...but it feels funny interacting with and shaping a character and see how she grows and fights like a pet organic person.

 

[Reinhardt]

Named my scarred blonde elf loli cleric waifu Aerie. I will see her rise to power.

 

[Mozg]

Yeah I hate the part where guards don't murder you for picking up an apple inside a store or where quests have unforeseen consequences later on. Stupid high level design decisions ruin everything. It's like Fallout 2. It'd be a great game except the only people to talk to are fucking savages and all you can do is explore a shitty temple, some empty wilderness, and backtrack a lot. They should have at least had another town or something.

No, I'm not holding Oblivion up as good design. In fact, I'm pretty sure they put in one of the most brutally stupid design decisions - time stopped inventory healing - because they figure people like it in Oblivion/Skyrim etc. even though it obviously gives you infinite HP and stamina and they'd pinch their design nose while they did it.

Or: stuff like monsters and chests respawning every X in-game days (and it seems like hours for petty annoyance enemies like harpies and goblins). Like, good design would be: Most monsters never respawn and always drop their monster hunter items, and chests don't respawn. It really intensely produces the offline MMO feeling for no reason at all. Or: the way item enhancements work is '90s JRPG strategy guide fodder in a game that has a brutally shitty console interface where I have to haul shit to the store to see what I need to enhance it, then in amazement I look it up and find out that item spawns on some enemy that there is two of in the gameworld once every X gamedays.

Or having a massively backtracky open-world... where it's really easy to just run past every enemy. I dunno what people were talking about saying it is tense at night. It's not, because nothing can stop you blowing past. This crap is why they put in the everlasting ferrystone as a gameplay hack, because they accidentally made a travel game where travel is completely trivial yet takes hours.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Dude, it takes like less than 5 minutes to get anywhere on the entire map from anywhere else, even without the ferrystones (which were in the game and affordable to begin with.) And you don't need to backtrack at all, you're just being a fucking autist trying to genocide the entire world for no good reason. There's like two spots you need to visit twice in the entire game besides the capital, and you technically don't even need to visit one of those twice (though it's admittedly hard to avoid doing so.) Nobody is forcing you to run around collecting respawning chests and fiddle with your inventory every 10 seconds. I dump all my materials at the inn with like 4 button presses every hour or so, and a few more for the weapons/armour. All the management I need. It's obvious that you've spent hours dicking around in the fishing village doing every quest you can find and looting every piece of scrap you see. That shit's fine for someone who enjoys that, but if you don't enjoy it and do it anyways, you're fucking retarded.

 

[Mozg]

Aggregate pointless hours, not one hoof to one place. I'm just doing the main fucking quest. You know damn well everything I just wrote about your game is fucking apt. These are terrible systems burdening a good core game, because they tried to weld a bunch of poorly conceived shit systems hastily borrowed from other games onto what Capcom's best competencies are - which still shine through and still make the game playable.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Literally nothing you wrote about is apt. The main quest requires no significant backtracking; 10-15 minutes tops, if you didn't have the foresight to place a portcrystal anywhere remotely sane. The only way you've spent hours moving from place to place is if you were either fighting everything you saw or you were doing a million unnecessary sidequests. The speedrun of the game is 40 minutes ffs.

 

[Haba]

Yeah, you can just sprint past fights that don't interest you.

 

[Zombra]

11.6 hours into the game and only now do I hear that there is a button to sprint. Thank you RPG Codex!

 

[Mozg]

The speedruns of a lot of games are like 45 minutes; it has nothing to do with playing the game normally. You're assuring me that 90% of the game's systems and natural structure are to be avoided and I should run past most fights. You've patched the hell out of your game by blocking off most of it. I'd probably agree with your edits now that I have a fairly magisterial view of it instead of being a mostly blind player. I hold the unpatched state of the game against it.

 

[Suicidal]

Fat and single ready to mingle

 

[Haba]

Kinda looks like you. Just get the circlet and you are set!

 

[Suicidal]

Hey you're right, a shame about the skin color tho. I'm going to make a full party of disgusting fatasses so if any of you have a disgusting fatass pawn tell me how to find it.

 

[Haba]

Really hard to find ugly pawns really, everyone makes pretty bois or gurls.

Talking about ugly fat-assess tho, Circon is streaming Dragon's Dogma atm.
http://www.twitch.tv/circon

What a scrub

 

[Suicidal]

Just had the fight with the hydra. I reached the point when the military commander lady threw me an explosive barrel and my character threw it inside the hydra's mouth. After that I assumed I needed to attack the head that was swallowing the barrel to detonate it but as I jumped on the hydra's neck it just died by itself. What happened? Was that a glitch or something?

Also before that during the cyclops tutorial fight after getting oneshotted 4 times on the 5th time the cyclops fell down the cliff while I was killing the goblins and died. I guess after all this is over I will be remembered as the luckiest adventurer in the land who didn't need to lift a finger and all the shit around him sorted itself out.

Also seems to be no way to replay the battle because of how saving works. Wanted to try it again to see if this happens cause I refuse to be told that I won without actually doing anything.

 

[tsiforb]

Learned something today that I never realized despite spending a fair bit of time with this before on console - apparently left sided pawn help command prioritizes buff and right side prioritizes healing.

 

[hivemind]

Restarted on hardmode and threw my pawns into the water.

Annoying trashmobs got ever so slightly more fun.

wonder how will this work out against latter bosses

 

[Strayed]

Just had the fight with the hydra. I reached the point when the military commander lady threw me an explosive barrel and my character threw it inside the hydra's mouth. After that I assumed I needed to attack the head that was swallowing the barrel to detonate it but as I jumped on the hydra's neck it just died by itself. What happened? Was that a glitch or something?

That only happens if you take too long and the hydra moves too deep into the camp. You can beat it pretty quickly if you focus on one head the entire time until it comes off.

I just got trolle so bad by this fucking game

Spoiler

I took on an optional quest from a dude in the Castle, who asked me to retrieve some shit from The Greatwall location. At the same time I completed the investigation and griffin fight main quests, I completed them first and then decided to go look for his stuff near Greatwall, and since I forgot to put down the portal crystal, I had to get there by foot, which took me forever, and when I'm almost near the quest destination, my main pawn falls to his death, I port back to the city, summon him back and decide to turn in completed main quests and goddamn game cancels my optional quest that I almost completed
No warning or fucking anythin either

Even better is that there's a riftstone at the Greatwall itself

 

[Fairfax]

Restarted on hardmode and threw my pawns into the water.

Annoying trashmobs got ever so slightly more fun.

wonder how will this work out against latter bosses

Wait until you find your first drake...

 

[Puukko]

I tried fighting my first drake at lvl 20 on hard mode.

Yeah no.

 

[Inspectah]

So is specializing as a ranger worth it? the archery is pretty fun, but I don't know how good it actually is at killing shit

 

[Declinator]

So is specializing as a ranger worth it? the archery is pretty fun, but I don't know how good it actually is at killing shit

It's pretty good. You'll be spamming ten arrow burst all day and all night though so don't expect excitement.