Dragon's Dogma review - Telegraph Dragon's Dogma is somewhat of an odd specimen, fluctuating between carefully crafted, meticulously planned gameplay and what can only be described as haphazard madness. Take, for instance, the first 10-15 hours of the game. 'It's dangerous at night,' you'll be told, by pawns and NPCs alike. And they're right, it is. Stray out of town when the sun goes down and you'll be set upon by wolves, goblins, skeletons, and armed rogues. You'll be set upon by these things in the daytime too, but it's a lot safer when you can see what you're fighting. And it's excellent. It's a real, gruelling battle for survival; you're underpowered, you don't know where anything is, and every jaunt out into the world feels like a genuine adventure, one you have to plan and prepare for in advance. It's gruelling, tough, and especially in certain fights, genuinely epic. Often, you won't be tasked with just fighting goblins and their ilk. Certain huge beasts roam the countryside; cyclopses, chimeras, griffins and more. Taking on these beasts requires a careful approach, a balanced party, and the guts to throw yourself at an enemy's face and cling hold, stabbing away with your weapon of choice. There are nine character vocations to choose from (six for your pawn) and each deals damage in its own unique way. There are skills to learn for each class, and some of these carry over, so maxing out multiple vocations is key to having a balanced, powerful player. Becoming balanced and powerful doesn't take too long if you're doing all the quests, sidequests and activities the game throws at you (of which there are many). And it's when you start to get a bit more powerful that Dragon's Dogma changes quite dramatically. You no longer need to worry about the day and night cycle, or preparing for a journey. In fact, for a huge portion of the game, you'll be powerful enough to take on every single enemy you'll ever encounter with no more than a couple healing items and a decent mage in your party. It's here that the game's initial design comes undone somewhat. Because the game is very keen for you to trek around, carefully exploring, fast travel is severely limited (in fact, proper fast travel isn't provided until you're on a second playthrough) and so, most of the time, you're forced to walk everywhere. Enemies that were once terrifying become little more than nuisances to be swatted away as you slowly make your way across the map. There are shortcuts to unlock, and thankfully the map is actually deceptively tiny, but it would have been nice for the game to remove some of the needless, unhelpful legwork later on when there's really no incentive to keep killing wolves for 50 experience points. The reason for all this animal cruelty is because it's your destiny as the Arisen to slay a huge dragon, and the only way to do this is to get good at killing smaller things first. The plot, filled with political intrigue, deranged cults and guffawing jesters, is pretty interesting. It's also dramatically disjointed, with entire plotlines and bits of important exposition able to be completely missed, often because the game gives you no indication of the miniscule window in which you can find or complete these quests. One of the most intriguing plots was cut drastically short for me when I took a quest later than I should've, only to be told it was 'impossible to complete' with no indication as to why. Sometimes it adds to the mystery, other times it's just plain annoying. One scene towards the end in particular has the potential to be hugely meaningful or a dramatic comedy misstep depending on choices you've made that you probably didn't even know you were making. Then there are things like the inventory/item storage, in which items can only be sorted by size or 'optimised' (who knows what this actually means), often causing you to scroll through hundreds of herbs, bones and rocks to find the particular thing you're after. Or the fact that committing a crime gets you sent to prison, only for you to be able to stroll out with nobody caring that you're a fugitive on the run. But then there's also the excellent addition of the Black Cat, a forger's shop that lets you create copies of almost any item in the game. This can have minor effects, like allowing you to duplicate an item you need to enhance your weapons, or it can be more meaningful - try forging quest items and handing the forgeries over instead of the real thing, for example. The effects of these easily-missed choices often reverberate throughout the rest of the game. One particular item I decided to forge came back to haunt me in a rather unexpected way. It's neat, creative and offers a great counter to the frequent RPG feeling of 'well, no, I'd rather not hand over that extremely useful quest item you've just sent me off to find in exchange for a pittance of gold.' Then there are the battles against the huge beasts. These creatures are immaculately animated; believable in a way rarely seen in fantasy video games. Scaling an ogre, clinging to a griffin as it takes flight, climbing onto a cyclops's face and stabbing it in the eye, these are the moments Dragon's Dogma is all about. These are where the game really shines, and even when you start to become overpowered, they never get old. Neither does hurling people off cliffs, but that's another matter entirely. And, to the game's credit, it does make an attempt towards the end to balance out the difficulty again, with a rather significant change. It's a highly unusual game. Had some of the design flaws been fixed, this could comfortably be the best action RPG we've ever seen. Instead, its quirks and issues hold it back, but only to a degree. You can see what's wrong with it, you can grind your teeth and wish they'd fixed it up a little, but somehow, despite its issues, Dragon's Dogma begs you to love it, and you do. For every liberty it takes with the player, it throws something fantastic your way, for every annoyance it pleasantly surprises you, and with every misstep your pawn's there, waiting to catch you, brush you off, and snidely remark 'We've only just begun, master'. Over, and over, and over. Dragon's Dogma is one of those rare games which is brilliant, broken, amazing, infuriating, and one you absolutely, unquestionably have to play.