In that primordial placeless origin, through the mist-veil of time, since man first airbrushed Merlin smoking a pipe on the side of a van, there, you can feel it in the noosphere, a moon-lit dream, The Dream, a call in the heart of the human soul. Some have seen some small part of this dream- The Legend of Zelda, The Elder Scrolls, Ultima, Dark Souls, Adventure, Dragon Quest, King's Field, Wizardry, among innumerable others, nameless here forevermore, all have failed to reach The Dream. Perhaps cruel circumstance chained them to Earthly bond, perhaps cowardice stayed their hand, perhaps they lacked the naivety and earnestness necessary to behold a waking dream. Whatever their individual situation, the results have always been, like Lion of Gripsholm Castle, a mutant, an aberration, at best a passing resemblance. Dragon's Dogma is The Dream, forged in the furnace of the heart, it is not visually plain- it is clean, it is not halfbaked- it is too goodly to exist totally in a world half-evil, it achieves the promise of videogames, and proves that creative endeavour above all else is the greatest goal humanity can strive for. it is the twinkle in the eye of Merlin smoking a pipe airbrushed on the side of a van.

Minstrel Song is an old skool rpg where you get into lots of fights with monsters to level up and learn techniques for your characters weapons as well as entirely new game mechanics, killing monsters is also the only way to advance the in game timer, the monsters will be replaced with stronger monsters at a rate faster than you will improve, on top that it will cause quests to time out, and new quests to become available, so actually you want to avoid combat as much as possible to keep the timer from moving forward and instead to focus on quests for character progression, only carefully incrementing it when you run out of things to do but monsters in the overworld spawn in huge numbers and are highly aggressive, so you can't totally avoid combat, but if you get into a fight you can just retreat to avoid advancing the timer, but retreating costs crucial resources so actually you need to run around like scooby doo with a trail of monsters chasing you while trying to progress quests, but the locations where you can find new quests are unmarked, and where you need to go to progress quests is unstated, so you need to run around the overworld getting chased by monsters like scooby doo so you can find quests to level up because there's no main quest, and you don't even know if you've done everything you can do before making the call to kill some monsters to advance the game clock, eventually you'll do this enough to get multiple quests that specifically tell you to go out and kill shitloads of monsters and they're really important so to do the most important quests you need to ignore everything you've learned about playing the game and potentially time out dozens of quests that you don't know how to do because they don't tell you where to go or what to do never mind the quests that you don't know about because they could be handed out by any of the dozens of NPCs who had nothing to say to you an hour ago, who are potentially in locations you haven't discovered because the only way to discover locations is either to talk to people or to recruit new party members, but you can only have a limited party size so to see if a new party member will give you a location (which they may not) you need to kick out an existing party member first if you are full, the removed party member will later reappear in potentially any one of the many pubs, one per city, scattered around the dozens of cities in the game, including ones you haven't discovered, after doing all that for a while the final boss shows up and you are probably not strong enough to kill him even with all that effort. This anti-lesson on game design could only be enjoyed by criminally deranged perverts.

An excerpt from the tragically unpublished Shadow Tower Abyss tie-in novel, translated to English for the first time:
"...I plunged further into the labyrinth, through the shimmering limestone walls, where troglodytic cyclopean beasts kept counsel, but even they were cowed by the nightmarish bellows that reverberated up from the deeper reaches of the tower. A deft sword hand and heavy plate armour kept me alive, barely, as I cut my way through inscrutable rooms and hallways, which seemed to have no other purpose than to confound me, as if an ancient prophet-architect foresaw my progress and took it as an insult. Sometimes, I felt that the creatures of this place were as lost and afraid as I was, their masks of madness seemed to slip, and I saw my own quiet desperation reflected in them, but to see oneself in horrors wrought flesh inspires only deeper hatred, my blade never once hesitated.

I wandered at length, doubled and tripled back on myself, and the passage of time was measured only in the dwindling of my supplies. I did not sleep. Eventually I came to a pillared hall, great enough that it's ceiling disappeared into the gloom, the doors were cast open, and I stepped inside. The now familiar roar echoed throughout, the great doors suddenly shut, and the ferocious denizens set upon me in droves, I exhausted myself against wave after wave, nameless limb severed from nameless beast. I thought that was to be my end, that I would be consumed and all that marked my passing would be whatever the creatures could not digest. But at long last, after wearying battle, a way opened before me. This was only a bitter relief however; the deeper terror called again and with it, a message came unbidden to my mind, an invitation to match power against the lord of this forgotten hall.

With notched sword and rent armor I resolved to face this challenge, despite my great weariness I pressed on through the darkness, and came to a throne room. Face to face at last with the beast that so frightened even the creatures of such a place, it looked like a lion, only far too large, with a burnt and tattered mane, and a face possessed of wicked and alien intelligence. The monster was lounging on a smooth limestone pedestal, girdled by stalagmites, and as it cast it's malevolent gaze upon me it reared itself up to its full height, towering over me, the look on its face told me that I had been sized up as a play thing, inferior in both might and sorcery.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! My Ruger Blackhawk revolver roared to life, 6 rounds of 158 Grain, Jacketed Hollow Point .357 Magnum tore 6 holes through the beast and left it crumpled on the floor. I blew the curling smoke from the barrel of my pistol. "Your face, your ass, what's the difference?" I announced, as I spun the pistol round my finger and returned it to it's holster."