In Dragon's Dogma you play as the Arisen, a character who has had their heart stolen by The Dragon. You soon get to make a secondary character, called your Main Pawn, who you mold into any support role you see fit. You can also hire two support pawns to round out your party. This allows you to have a customized party to fit whatever style of playing you want to do.
The game offers a nice job class system that can be utilized to customize your specific style of game play even further. You and your pawn can take on three normal vocations, Fighter, Strider, and Mage, and three advanced vocations, Warrior, Ranger, and Sorcerer. There are also three hybrid vocations, Mystic Knight, Assassin, and Magick Archer, which only your main character can use. The normal and advanced vocations are nice, but the hybrid vocations really allow you to become a powerhouse by mixing up the weapons and armors you can use with your character. All of the classes are properly evened out for the most part to allow great gameplay no matter what you want to be.
I started out with a fighter, made my pawn a strider, and hired a mage and another pawn to round out whatever type of team I needed at the time. I have to say I didn't care for being a mage myself, because it seemed slow to level. However, upon starting NG+ with a mage I like it more. My complaint is that the mage takes a longer time to do any attack especially skill attacks. The mage does auto target enemies which really helps out though. Bow users must always aim, and sometimes make adjustments for distance or movement. Straight malee users will have an extremely hard time with some enemies, because a lot require you to have ranged attacks of some sort. So far my personal favorite vocation is the assassin, which mixes a fighter and strider, and allows you to use either a sword or daggers and bow or sheild. You get all of the good stuff at once.
There's loot, which we all know makes a game ever more addictive. The armor and weapons in the game can be upgraded up to 4 higher levels to make it even better. Upgrading from level 0 to level 1, 2, or 3 costs gold, and materials you've found or purchased. Upgrading to level 4, or Dragon Forged, requires you to fight one of the 5 types of dragons in the game. The story's big boss, "The Dragon," will Dragon Forge all of your armor and weapons. However, the other 4 types of dragons randomly Dragon Forge your level 1 or higher gear. As for materials, you can usually use or craft better items out of whatever you find. There are plenty of curatives found in the world if you scavenge for them so you don't have to run to a shop before to buy them before you set out every time. You can even upgrade low level curatives to be more powerful.
The story is great, but does have some crazy aspects. Some parts are just twisted. After You've beaten the game some major changes take place, and you are able to grind with harder monsters or move on and finish a post story part of the game. After the post story has been completed you start NG+, which is the whole adventure over again. However, NG+ adds some new quest board quests, which give some major gold.
A few other great features include a built in screen shot system that allows you to upload to the official pawn community, a decently extensive character / pawn editor, an in game currency purchase for a anytime character editor (White Knight Chronicles I'm looking at you and your $5 re-customizing pass), a post game dungeon full of extreme challenges, and infinite NG+ Playthroughs.
That's about all I can really say without going into major spoiler territory. If you enjoy Western RPGs, Action RPGs, or all RPGs, like me, then you will probably love this game. I'm well on my way to 200 hours, and have no plans of putting it down any time soon.
Rating: 9.7/10
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