I will admit it, I’ve played a few CAPCOM games in my day and I never thought I would play one such as Dragons Dogma and enjoy it. True to the nature of CAPCOM, I can’t help feel as though I’ve been catered for in almost every area. It’s nice to know there is a company out there looking after its consumers. But enough talking about how much of a heart-throb they are and let’s get into the review!!

Dragons Dogma (Hereafter referred to as DD) is a Role Playing Game that will take you, the adventurer, to new heights you would have only thought possible in your dreams. You start off in the Prologue which to me is a bit of a tease. Classically you must plough your way through a number of meaningless foes and face off with a “Boss” at the end. It’s almost climatic and gives you a taste of what is to come later on through the campaign. Upon completion of this you will begin you journey, but not before dying first. That’s right you die and at this point of the game I couldn’t help feel a bit like a zombie and this feeling lasted up until some guards locked me in a prison cell over killing some insignificant villagers in the search for some braaaainsss. Apparently they didn’t see the humour in it.

Without giving too much away, you are basically on a mission to retrieve something that was taken from you by, you guessed it, a dragon. Luckily enough for us though we have a few different choices that we can manipulate to make the game more interesting and throw that edge into our play styles. Now like most RPG style games you have the choice between 3 different vocations if you will, Warrior, Strider, or Mage, and anyone familiar with RPGs will know the different styles. You choose between each and being that I love daggers and bows (and wanted to feel like Aragorn from LOTR) I went with Strider. Best choice ever! but thats my opinion on it. Here's the fun part, if like most people you get bored with the basic 3 choices you can mix and match between them later on through the game. This means that you can become say an Assassin or a magic archer and things like that. This aspect of the game I much enjoyed until i started buying weapons for wrong classes and raging at my dramatic loss of currency in the shops but luckily for me there is plenty more to make, and besides this it really helps to keep you on your toes if you get too comfortable with a certain class and want to mix it up a little.

Another great feature I loved was the "Pawn" system. This is basically followers you can have in a group to assist you with missions and fighting creatures etc. You get the chance to fully customize your very own personal pawn and name them whatever you like. Now this is the fun part, you can hire other players pawns by means of running into them on the trails or via the rift. Hiring another players pawn that has already completed certain quests was a major help for certain tasks and you as the player can earn RC if your pawn gets hired by another player, kind of like your own personal pimping session. This makes the game feel alot bigger for a single player game and gives it the feel of an offline MMO.

These are all great features and I must say I have not experienced them in other games but that just comes down to my own sheltered life. Now that you have a slight hint of what you are getting into lets talk about how its all going to look while you are doing it.

It goes without saying that CAPCOM aren't well known for their level of graphical detail. With the gaming engines available today you can’t help but feel that it must be a personal preference or even a trademark the company has incorporated without telling anyone. Never the less though It is still at an acceptable standard and while the game detail may be slightly poor, the cinematic video clips more than make up for it. I was slightly concerned when building my character as I tried to make a somewhat poor representation of myself and once I started playing he just looked weird. Cool but still slightly weird and I feel that it may be the same with others.

I couldn't help but notice that whilst exploring I felt rather confined within the areas I was in. Although you get the effect of an open world I still felt as though there were only set paths one could take to reach certain destinations with the exception of the odd shortcut here and there. In conjunction with this the variety of foes to face along the way can become quiet repetitive. I'm unsure if the AI incorporated into the pawns actually works in this area as after you finish a fight one of them may blurt out something along the lines of they have learnt new ways to take down that foe etc and in my play through I felt like they were getting dumber by the second. Maybe too many blows to the head I'm unsure. But alas it is all fun in the end because lets face it a game that lets you slaughter countless creatures, be it zombies to griffins or goblins to hydras, nothing beats a good amount of blood shed.

All in all, Dragons Dogma is a great game to play. It does fall short in some areas and soar in others but so do many other games. It would be a recommendation for any RPG fan to get a hold of a copy of it and just sit back, relax and play through. I shall grant it a 3/5 in my books.