Dragon's Dogma is one of the RPGs that surprised me the most. The game's affinity system needs improvement because it becomes confusing without researching how it works. The game doesn't explain this at any point, but I believe it was the creators' intention. The combat is very, VERY GOOD. A mix of Monster Hunter with Shadow of the Colossus and the story, ESPECIALLY THE PLOT TWIST NEAR THE END, is very, very surprising. I really liked it. I wish there were more choices that would change the ending, but I still liked it a lot. Highly recommend. Play it!

"Though I called you here to me, it was ever your own feet, your own will that brought you."

Dragon's Dogma is a game that encapsulates the very essence of a game being about the destination rather than the journey. I feel this isn't immediately able to be grasped until the game plays its whole hand. Both the setting and the plot are mundane at best, pitting the player against goblin and cyclops across rolling green hills with incredibly standard sword and board gameplay. The centerpiece of your quest to slay the dragon and restore peace is a single castle-town that plays host to a lineup of characters who are consistently as they appear and no more; stripped back to as-needed personality quirks designed to keep things moving forward, not tropes per se but instead actors playing as set pieces for the progression of plot and world-building sub-stories. I'd argue there is very little frivolous dialogue, everything is seemingly purposed to the ends of your journey as the hero; if not about Grigori directly then about the political state of the kingdom and the duke or about the cult who act in idealization of Grigori.

In this sense there is very little to ultimately consider outstanding, but just the same there is very little that impedes the player from simply experiencing the game and the world laid before them. Dragon's Dogma encourages sandbox exploration and engaging in all that you come across. The rewards are often carefully measured and exciting, very rarely did I feel like I wasted my time on a side venture through a dungeon or a side quest. I'd say this is in part due to an extremely satisfying progression system and the freedom of experimenting with different classes and skills, though I did find myself wanting for more cross-class options.

Dragon's Dogma fully understands what it is, a facet of its being that ultimately decides whether any individual will love or hate the experience; it offers itself humbly as an experience to be immersed in, not as a story that intends to tell itself. It becomes so natural to get lost in the world handed to you on a silver platter; which is further serviced by the game's ending in a more meta sense.

There's a lot at play I could speak on. The pawn system's ingenuity, how each class feels like an entirely different game to play, how the DLC functionally drags the entire game up a full letter grade. Honestly these things cannot be explained, but are instead tactile in nature; words cannot mirror experiencing. I figure it's best to leave it at that.

[Disclaimer: I played the game with a mod that removes stamina usage when sprinting. The game is borderline unbearable early game without it, and my score takes that into consideration. Mileage may vary without such a mod among other possible QOL mods that exist, though this was the only one I used.]

Really kinda hoped I'd connect with what other people see in this on a replay (I was on the fence before) but unfortunately this snuffed out any gleam of potential I saw in it before. There's absolutely nothing to appreciate on the narrative side - the main story is bad, there's no real narrative to the side quests, the characters are underwritten and boring. The art direction is fantastically boring and lends itself perfectly to the bog-standard, uninspired generic European-style fantasy of the setting and enemy designs.

The world is laid out in basically the worst way possible - you go on long treks down linear corridors with no real points of interest. There's no meat to the world - no environmental storytelling, no history of the people, nothing to be learned about the structures and why they exist.

The combat is excrutiating - janky slogs where you spam one or two moves that actually do something while you run and jump awkwardly to avoid damage from huge enemies. Your pawns rarely use the right abilities when you'd like them to and you have no way of communicating anything to them. The climbing is neat - albeit very janky - but there's basically 2 enemies where there's a real reason to do so. Issues with the way damage is calculated in this game mean you will have combats with enemies where you do basically no damage if you are underleveled or not using the right damage type. This could be fine if there was any sort of signposting about it but very early on the game flings you all over the map.

I had remembered Bitterblack Isle as a high point of my previous playthrough - much more enemy variety than the pitiable assortment in the base game, less attempt at a story and more focus on the dungeon-crawling feel that marked the best moments of the main story. I was wrong. The encounters have no thought to them, the setting is boring and repetetive. The 3 boss fights before you meet Daimon (who?) are slogs with insta-kill mechanics that absolutely dragggg. The overall leveling in this game is completely busted. This playthrough I completed maybe 80% of base game sidequests, fought nearly all enemies I came across, and I finished around level 50 after beating the main quest. I farmed for another 10 levels before continuing on to Bitterblack Isle, and yet - despite spending hours after beating the entire base game grinding I felt completely and utterly underleveled for nearly all the content in the DLC. I've seen some people suggest that jumping in after NG+ is the way to solve this, but there's absolutely no way I'm playing through this ever again.