Besides you fighting off enemies, you should have at least one partner and maybe some pawns who are basically the same as a partner. While their aid is certainly useful, how they assist you isn’t. For instance when they grab an enemy, the game will zoom in on them asking for your aid. This also happens for several other actions, which might distract you during combat and ultimately lead to you taking unneeded damage.
After a few combat sequences, you will encounter a boss. While the demo features two bosses, they were pretty similar fights that were pretty unimpressive. This was completely due to the poor AI. You see, both bosses had several area’s they couldn’t cover, so the fights were more about pushing attack than trying to stay alive. The chimera did have a roar, which would knock you back, but the griffin was easily killed by spamming attack. In fact, the boss was so underwhelming, that I was able to use this tactic on him twice and in both situations I never got hit. Ideally this will change with latter bosses, but it’s hard to say based off what the demo showcases.
While the combat might not wow you, the environments certainly look interesting. They won’t win any awards, but it certainly suits the concept. The castle looked dark and grim, whereas the countryside is quite colorful. Finally the character designs are interesting and varied.
To complement the designs, gamers are given a vast selection choices to customize your character. After selecting gender, almost every choice has 20 – 40 different designs to select. Additionally there are a number of sliders to further customize your character, with choices like height, weight, stance, or build. This is among the most expansive systems I’ve seen in an RPG and the full version might have even more.
In all and all, Dragon’s Dogma comes off a bit iffy. The stages featured in the demo offer limited challenge and showcase a rather bland combat system. Ideally this will be better in the full game, but it’s quite hard to say. Thankfully the customization system is quite good, plus the visuals really make the game pop.
MrTushy
April 27, 2012 at 12:56 AMExtremely well-written demo, this was a test for me to see if you really knew your games while this is not the greatest it also doesn’t suck and your preview shows just that, great job.
DemonDragon
April 27, 2012 at 12:08 PMWhat you fail to realize, is that the demo’s prologue(and, in theory, the main games prologue) is based around the graphic comic on youtube that Capcom has released. Its about Salde, Quince Morgana and of course that era’s Arisen.
Brent
April 27, 2012 at 12:12 PMUhh, there are lots of ways to attack, much more than Two. delayed presses of either square or triangle will perform different combos. Also there are skills tied to the shield and sword, by holding R1 or L1, then either square, circle or triangle. That’s a total of 8 different attacks if you don’t use timed presses on the combos. Also, try throwing your Pawn off the cliff at the beginning of the prologue, then tell me how hard the Chimera is. Should give you an idea of difficulty on the actual game without a healing mage as a Pawn.
Silk
April 27, 2012 at 1:35 PMHow long did you play the demo because if you make your character and pawn in the creation section they will appear in the second (griffon) quest. There are lots of different ways you could have fought them, you didn’t really seem to try anything else base on this article…next time try to actually play the game a little bit before you review it.
Will
April 27, 2012 at 4:47 PM“only 6 moves” – HA! And how many does Skyrim have? Worst review of anything, even a demo, I have ever read. The Pawns, as Brent says, are healing and attacking, without them it would be hellish – plus they are high level pawns.
Don
April 27, 2012 at 5:59 PMIf I just sat in one area and spammed arrows I probably wouldn’t have had fun either. Fortunately I know how to actually enjoy games.
ahmad
April 27, 2012 at 6:35 PMthis review is a very bad one, seems you either didnt know s**t of DD when you played the demo or just didnt bother…i dont know how a reviewer could actually say these things and be ignorant about the game…i actually know much, much more about the game than you do…so how can i know a certain aspect of your job better than you? i mean what are you doing? dont you know you should research and read a few previews first? i cant even believe you think it only has 2 moves…is it because its not skyrim? if you gave skyrim a high score and DD got this, then you are a failure of a reviewer in my opinion (no offence)… and your points such as (bland combat, limited challenge) its a goddam demo, its not really supposed to be challenging its suppose to just tease you abit for the full game…and if you seriously think skyrim’s combat is any better then no offence ill start laughing…slashing the wind and slashing a dragon in that game is the same…and it only has one kind of swing…but i guess thats awesome to some right? sheesh what happened to gaming these days…this generation sure is a disgusting one.
Hgeas
April 27, 2012 at 9:09 PMIf im not wrong the Chimera and the Griff aren’t actually true bosses, I’m not too sure what would qualify something as a boss but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Chimeras walk around in the wild in numerous videos (OXM and Capcom Unity streams). The game seems easy at first but what exactly are you fighting? Goblins and a random Griffin which im sure there are more of. I’m going to love seeing people who thought it was too easy fight the Drake where their own pawns turn against them and how they deal with those 7-8 health bars while almost getting 1 shot after every attack. If random enemies can give me such a blast as the Griffin did I’m sold and it beats fighting anything in Skyrim by far, hell this game seems so deep it’s shameful to compare it to Skyrim, the demo had very little content BUT at the same time it had a TON if you spent time trying to find them a few examples are hidden health items, just guarding, cancels, different combos that can be improvised by inputting skills in between and so much more hell you can even backdash cancel in this game (leap backwards while holding your guard up) so imo it’s too early to say if the game lacks challenge we could easily be way overleveled for these fights (Level 20 in the prologue makes me wonder).