Bit late for the party, but better late than later!
Was listening to instrumental music on the way to work and decided to take a small holiday from football games. I was hungry for some rpg/action fantasy game, with good combat (like Dark Souls) and some nice story/structure to it (like Skyrim).
Did a little research and downloaded Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen.
The game has aged. When I got Witcher 3 recently - it still looks solid, better than some current games. Dragons Dogma looks older. Especially cutscenes and close ups on characters look a bit goofy.
Fortunately - it gets better when you get pass initial clips and introduction to this, somewhat, ridiculous story.
Long story short - dragon comes, eats your heart, you dont die and you go on a quest to get your heart back.
But few drinks and you should be able to accept it..
Anyway!
Game starts and it gets much better. World looks much nicer than cutscenes, you have crates all over the place that you can smash and some monster to batter. And, oh boy, is monster battering not fun in there!
Fighting is sort of like from Witcher, but on steroids. You can climb on big monsters and poke them in the eye. Or climb on top of three headed hydra and cut one head off! Or you can grab a wolf and toss him off the cliff. How fun is that?!
But fighting mechanism is not the only fun thing in Dragons Dogma.
So called Pawn System is very original and cool idea as well. Basically - you create two characters - you and your AI companion. And AI companion can be "borrowed" by other people. Same way - you can borrow theirs.
So your total party is you, your AI companion and two borrowed ones.
Its not mandatory, you could go on your own if you wanted, but it would be a little bit tougher than the average bear could take.
I just have one "borrowed" companion and my AI companion. Four would be a bit crowded.
You and your main companion level up, borrowed ones dont. Likewise - when your main companion is used by some other player - they dont level up. But they all get wiser. They learn. And when they come back - they know more about monsters, their weaknesses, area and possible dangers. Overall - its a very good, fresh and cool system, which I never seen anywhere else.
Those two - fighting and pawns - were enough to get me interested and I spent half of the night bashing monsters and having lots of fun.
Now ill see how long they will keep me hooked, as the story, so far, is ... well... see above...