Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

 Yeah. Let's do this. Even though I haven't finished the game yet. 

I have no idea if this is just one game in a series or something, like if there's another Dragon's Dogma game aside from this one. And I don't care. I wanted this one. And it was on sale. So yeah, mine now. 

To put it simply, it's a fantasy RPG game with a shared pool of minion characters that is available to everyone if they play connected to the internet. I'm still not too sure about the main quest chain as it's not labeled as such anywhere. But well. It starts with a dragon that tears your heart out and eats it. I'm not sure if it's hilarious or weird. I'm leaning toward the former. 

And then you run around the world and complete quests. And as you level up, you ditch your minions and hire new ones. As only the one you create during the first segment of the game (after the tutorial) is leveling up with you. So don't waste your time trying to find the perfect-looking minion while you're only level 7. You'll be ditching them soon enough. Unless you somehow cheat and got your hands on a ton of the currency (in-game) needed to hire minions with level infinite. Whatever that means. 

Don't trust the maps too much. They are confusing as fuck! And I literally cheated using WeMod in one quest just to be able to jump down from a ledge in order to find my way to the fucking package I was supposed to find for that one moron with a secret document in it. Add in the fact that I had to try to find my way in almost complete darkness because night came before I finished... Well, jumping down was the only way. 

And I've stopped accepting escort quests from the notice boards. I hate those. As well as the spectral phantasms or whatever their name is. Those mobs that can possess you. They are such a pain to kill! 

I'm level 40-something and I'm still the basic dagger class. And I'm still thinking about changing that, but at the same time, I would have to remember where that option was. I don't understand why they don't offer all of the classes in character creation. What is better? Dagger guy or Ranger? And by dagger guy I mean the class that is (in the 3x3 square) the first one on the second row. 

Also, who came up with the idea that all the cool looking armor is only wearable by the stupid heavy-hitters! I'm a fucking steamrolling assassin bow-guy and I want to have a cool armor too! Seriously. And yes, I play as a guy. I always play as a guy whenever I can. Unless we're talking Skyrim where I play my main character as female (AnnElfwind - the one I use for profile pictures). And I mean, I have a second character for Dogma that is a female, but that brings another thing. 

The process of creating multiple characters is such a pain! You have to go and manually back-up the save game file and store it somewhere else and then start a new game. The game won't let you run more character profiles at the same time. If you create a new one, it overwrites the old game. Lame. 

I'm still in the process of finding out if it would work to just change the name of the save file and leave it in the save folder. I think it could work. But regardless of that, I'm not gonna do it unless I am sure that I have my game saved somewhere else first. Just in case it doesn't work. Don't wanna lose either of those two characters. 

One more thing. Does anyone know if it's possible to change the controls for the menus? Like, confirm with the spacebar instead of the enter? It drives me crazy that the inventory doesn't conform to playing the keyboard one-handed. Whoever came up with these controls needs a reality check! Pronto!

Well, this is more of a rant rather than a review. But well, I prefer rants. Still, the game is really good and I have a hard time closing it. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's good. And it was on sale so I got it cheap. I try to always get my games when they are on sale. 

Enjoy. I guess. :D See ya next time. 

~AnnElfwind

Written on the 2nd of October, 2020