One of my favorite games of all time, and one of the most underrated. Dragon's Dogma feels like a combination of the best parts of games like Shadow of the Colossus, Devil May Cry, Monster Hunter, Dark Souls, and Skyrim, with worldbuilding inspired by Berserk. Basically all of my favorite things were combined into one. Dragon's Dogma is completely bursting with life and passion, despite not getting the time or money it deserved in development. I have probably double my hours here if you include the time I spent playing on Xbox 360. It may not be a perfect game, but it is my favorite.

The combat is amazing. Some of the best in any game. Every vocation feels distinct and fun and immerses you into the class fantasy more than any other game I can think of. Even the default attacks feel good. Classes are split into red, yellow, and blue, for melee, ranged, and magic, with 3 hybrid classes that combine them in different ways. The red classes, Fighter and Warrior, have real weight behind their attacks, with some of the best Big Sword Gameplay in any game ever, chopping through multiple enemies, whacking them into the sky, slapping them across the room. Blocking and parrying is great, and there's even a way to build a Mystic Knight that is basically devoted to parrying as your main attack. The yellow classes, Strider and Ranger, feel light and agile, and bow combat is insanely fun. You can fire arrows like a machine gun, or expend all of your strength with one powerful shot, among many other moves. I'm usually a sword and board kinda guy, but I've spent a lot of time playing the other classes in Dragon's Dogma just because they are all so fun to experience, and I always end up returning to using a bow. It even feels good to play with a controller, and I usually hate aiming with a controller. The blue classes, Mage and Sorcerer feel like absolute gods of destruction. Some of the endgame spells feel like complete chaos, summoning a tornado or carpet bombing an entire forest just to kill some poor goblins. My personal favorites, though, are the hybrid classes: Mystic Knight, Assassin, and Magick Archer. Mystic Knight is all about big shields and big tanking, and is able to exploit every elemental weakness, Assassin is the ultimate monster climbing class, with a move devoted to just obliterating a monster's weak spot by stabbing your sword in and wiggling it around violently. Magick Archer has things like homing shots, sticky bombs, and bouncing arrows, which makes for a very fun toolkit and a playstyle unlike really any other game I can think of.

On top of the classes feeling so great to play, the actual approach to combat is amazing. Every major monster has a unique mechanic that you have to learn to take it down, and knowing what element enemies are resistant and weak to is often vital. Don't worry, your pawns will let you know. Repeatedly. The most important thing, though, is CLIMBING. Shadow of the Colossus style climbing up a huge monster to stab it in its weak spot, holding on to flying enemies for dear life, trying not to be thrown off. It just wouldn't feel the same if I was poking at everything's feet, and it makes a huge difference in a game like this. You can fling your pawn into the air to grab onto a flying dragon and knock it down, or grab onto a flying harpy until it can't bear your weight anymore. Very few games have so much verticality in combat. There are also nice ways of being able to buff up and prepare for fights, with usable items intentionally designed to LET you abuse the system to get an advantage, there is literally an in game system for item duping, and many effects stack. You actually use your items in this game instead of hoarding them for the entire duration.

The character creation was one of the best for its time, and still holds up great. You can see that they worked around the limitations of the engine mostly by giving a lot of preset options, but there was a lot of care put into the sheer variety of options given, that many games still to this day completely overlook.

The pawn system is a unique approach to a singleplayer game. You are able to create your own pawn basically as if you have a second character, and hire two pawns created by other players. Its like having a party in an mmo in a singleplayer game, except every one of them is lobotomized. They talk way too much unless you tell them to shut up (which you can) but I personally love it. The game is an unintentional meme generator, hearing your pawns yell WOLVES HUNT IN PACKS every single time they see a wolf. The actual intention behind it is interesting and adds a lot of flavor to the game, and it is genuinely helpful on a first playthrough, as they will make comments about locations, items, quests, enemies, and generally try to help you take the best approach to things. They also learn how to fight different types of enemies over time, and learn more about quests as you do them, and even carry over things they learned by helping other players, or in other playthroughs. After many hours spent with your pawn as your companion, you get attached to them, and your friends may too, since they are able to hire your pawn for free and regardless of level. In a way your pawn is indirectly including you in someone else's playthrough and their memories of the game, and I think there is something special to that.

The armor and weapons in the game look amazing, blending realism and fantasy is my favorite aesthetic. There are also layers to clothing, with a bottom and top layer for your torso and legs, so you can get a pretty diverse combination of looks. You are also able to upgrade every piece of equipment, so if you like something a lot you can pretty much take it to endgame. This is a top tier mechanic that I wish was in every game. There is even a way to upgrade things further beyond, but I don't want to give it away because I think its cool as hell when you find out how on your own. I also really like the way you get the endgame gear in the base game, and the way you get the even more endgame gear in the DLC, which gives you a lot of content in the postgame.

I think most of the story is great, but unfortunately it is the main part of this game that is lacking. It's very clear that development didn't get the resources it needed, and the devs have said as much. You can see the threads of genius, and places the writers wanted to explore, but simply couldn't go as far as they wanted. Some of the main story moves rather abruptly forward, and I know the early game takes a bit of time to get people hooked. The pacing is a bit messy. I love the worldbuilding, though, and the lore of the game does feel mostly complete. Grigori makes for a fantastic antagonist throughout, and I definitely think the best parts of the story are toward the ending of the game, and on Bitterblack. The ending is still phenomenal, and I also think the approach to New Game+ is very, very interesting.

The endgame and DLC deserves its own recognition, because I think the actual best part of the game begins at the end, and a lot of the endgame systems feel really innovative especially given how old the game is now. Without spoiling too much, there is an endgame area before the true ending of the game with a lot of interesting mechanics involved, that you could grind indefinitely if you really wanted to. They then took this idea forward into the major DLC, Dark Arisen, with what is almost a pseudo-roguelite mode with fantastic and challenging fights and really good reward progression on Bitterblack Isle. I've spent more time in Bitterblack than in the actual main game, and I still have more I would like to do there. It's practically its own game. Discovering I could kill a certain something on Bitterblack is one of my peak gaming memories.

After a decade of waiting, Dragon's Dogma 2 was finally announced. I am so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ready.