Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

[Jeivar]

This game is on sale on Steam, and I was thinking of giving it a go.

So what's it like?

From what I've seen I like the looks of the combat, but I'm also a fellow who needs story and characters to get invested. Does DDDA deliver on those? And is it one of those super-long games? Because I just don't think I have the time for a 50-hour long playthrough.

[factotum]

According to Steam I've played it for 42 hours--that was enough to defeat the Big Bad in the main storyline and maybe scratch the surface of the Dark Arisen expansion. That isn't technically the end of the *game*, though, because it has a whole load of extra-difficult stuff that happens after the Big Bad's defeat which I just couldn't be bothered with (the extreme level of difficulty is why I gave up on the Dark Arisen stuff, too). The storyline is pretty interesting, all told, although the criteria the game uses to determine who your "beloved" is (which is kind of important at the end) seems a bit random to me. Some interesting characters in it, too.

The only real problem is that you have to do a *lot* of travelling around, and there aren't many ways to speed that up--the PC version gives you an unlimited use teleport stone, true, but that only allows you to mark one location. You *will* find yourself going over the same areas and killing the same monsters more than once.

[Tome]

DD, for all that I love it, isn't the best game for story. It has one, and there's some interesting bits to it, but the dialogue falls flat in a lot of parts. I suspect translation is to blame there. The dragon's lines being the exception.

Also the 'romance' system just completely kills the plot.

Gameplay is really the game's strength, and in that it excells.

[Zevox]

I haven't played the "Dark Arisen" expansion version, but the long and short of Dragon's Dogma from my experience with it: very good gameplay that was well worth playing the game for, but very poor writing. Sometimes crossing into laughable, so-bad-its-sort-of-good territory, at least, but only sometimes. I'd recommend it for the gameplay alone, certainly, but if you really need a story worth seeing for characters you can get invested in, it's not going to do that for you.

[Inarius]

Its a good game for the combat and the monsters but not so much a good game for the story. Game play is sort of like Dark Souls though its more forgiving and the monsters are much more interesting opponents.

[danzibr]

People have already said it, but I'll throw in my two cents. Plot is quite weak, but gameplay is awesome. Especially if you go archery ;)