In most open-world games, the road is just a visual feature, but in Dragon’s Dogma, it’s a lifeline that shields you from truly dangerous encounters.

Outside of a few scripted moments, most of these fights just happen as you’re exploring the world, creating a terrific sense of mystery and danger when you’re caught wandering in the wilderness. The creatures are huge, but the only truly massive creature is the game’s final boss, which provides a multi-stage, truly epic encounter that I would have loved to see more of. My only complaint is wishing there was more - more encounters, more variety, and more scale. These encounters are exciting every time they happen, and slowly scaling the back of a cyclops to plunge a dagger in its eye was just as satisfying 20 hours in as it was the first time.

Grabbing onto a griffin’s feathers will give you an easy hold to strike its head, but the monster could easily take to the skies and shake you loose, causing you to plummet to your death. With obvious cues from Shadow of the Colossus, you can jump on and climb these creatures to get at their various weak points, while carefully avoiding their attempts to swat you away. The true highlight of Dragon’s Dogma are its encounters with big, mythical monsters: trolls, ogres, hydras, chimeras, griffins, and yes, dragons. That’s going to be a bumpy rideĪnd that’s just when you’re fighting normal enemies. Using various abilities and managing health and stamina consumption gives the game strategic depth approaching that of a more traditional turn-based RPG, while the action itself is fast and exciting, owing to good movement options and animations that make every attack feel immediate and impactful. Different enemies obviously have different weaknesses, requiring you to change up your tactics based on who or what you’re facing. Your vocation level is counted independently of your character level, further encouraging you to experiment with new builds and abilities.Įach of these classes allows a unique playstyle in the action-based combat, which is the game’s greatest strength. You can change between unlocked vocations from an inn at any time, and most passive abilities will carry over between classes. With “discipline” earned through levelling up, you purchase new abilities and attacks, and access to new vocations. Some are standard variations of traditional fighter, rogue, and mage classes, and others offer more advanced options, mixing and matching abilities from the more traditional class types.

Your player character is able to choose between nine different vocations.

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