Game: Dragon’s Dogma, Dark Arisen

Dragon's Dogma: Dark ArisenFinished Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. Puhh, this game is the far worst of all games … I like.

It’s very difficult to judge this one. There are so many interesting ideas integrated into the game, yet at the very same there are so many RPG 101 flaws, it makes one cry. It’s basically a Skyrim, Witcher 3, Two Worlds, Dark Souls cross-over, with huge boss monsters and the ability to climb on those while fighting.

* Pawns: you can create a bot to join you and you can add two more of these bots. They act as party members and accompany you throughout the land, which is cool. But the AI is rather poor and then: these pawns never shut the fck up! One nearly goes nuts of at least one of this idiots commenting on the scenery. Nearly every 5 seconds. Once, all my pawns jumped off a cliff into their death – which they do from time – and there was silence! My God, this was great! It nearly felt like Dark Souls… Also Pawns: when you think about it, you having basically cannon fodder at your disposal, which is acting like humans, talking like humans, pretending to be inferior to you and you basically act on them like they are trash… viewed with this perspective, it’s a little disturbing.

* Crafting: there’s crafting with a lot of different ingredients to do, yes. But most of the “treasure” you find, is just plain junk. Seldom you find a weapon or armour of good use and crafting take the route: you crate “from” not “to”. Meaning: you have X, let’s see what Y you can create with it. I think it should be the other way round: I want Y, let’s see if I have all X to create it and what’s missing. The approach in Dragon’s Dogma is just wrong.

* Only 1 save game. As an Open World game. No further comment needed.

* No mount or fast travel on a large map, but stamina depleting while running the landscape. No further comment needed too. This is stupid.

And there are some really bad ones, like the artificial wait states in the game menu, the pseudo-philosophical gibberish of the dragon and world’s lore, the endless backtracking and repetition and the very, very dull quests.

Still, it is not a fully bad game and there *are* some moments of enjoyment.

Light, with many, many shadows.

Nearly not to recommend, 6/10 6 out of 10