Why the hell did nobody tell me Dragon's Dogma was so awesome?

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

Anyway, I'm curious to know what vocations those of you who have the game played as. I started off as a Strider, then switched to Magick Archer around level 25. I wasn't really a fan of the Magick Archer's skills so I went back to Strider for a while, then Warrior to boost my health and gain access to a few augments. After that I switched to Assassin and that has been my main vocation ever since. I love having both a sword and bow at my disposal, and I can always switch to daggers if I feel like mixing it up.

Assassin is fantastic. Clairvoyance is excellent against asshole two hander/sword and board skeletons/bandits/skeleton lords that are nigh-impossible to stagger with the rogue move set (other than implicate, but implicate just isn't quite as much fun for me, and unavailable to assassins), Dire Gouge is the best against large enemies, and that still leaves you one open sword slot. Then you can carry a pair of daggers around to switch off to if you need/want double jump for exploration, or dodge roll for some reason. And then there's lycean sight for the bow which is just fantastic in every way. I finish off entire groups of enemies before they even know I'm there, and have been since level 30.

Sorcerer is pretty great too, but only if you have at least one other sorcerer pawn and/or forged the wyrmking ring and then gave back the forgery instead of the original. It will reduce your casting times. And having the other pawn means that if you start casting the same spell next to them (or they next to you) that whomever started casting second starts their cast at the point where the earlier was. So if you see a pawn about to drop bolide you can run next to them, start casting, and cast almost immediately and drop two bolides, one from the pawn, one from you.

This was great against the dragon in NG+ as it was just dual gicel over and over again with me and my main pawn stun locking the dragon to death, once we managed to get one off.

However, it doesn't really fit my playstyle with all the casting times and stuff even with it shortened/dual'd up. So I stick with assassin for the most part.

Originally Posted by Arcanum

So I finally nailed down why I love this game so much. It puts the cinematic experience of quick time events into your own hands.

[. . .]

The dynamic potential of every fight is going to keep me playing this game for quite some time, and eagerly awaiting the sequel.

Oh man, yes. Let me tell you all a story, though I believe Grim and Greed already heard it.

See, I was exploring the lands just north of bloodwater beach/west of of the bandit stronghold over there. The sun had set and I was far enough away from any camp that I had decided to just forge ahead on what I was doing, as I found myself in this pitch black forest, unable to see anything beyond the small ring of my lantern light.

Then in the top right corner of my screen appears "AMBUSH! Slay your enemies!"

I start looking around, and can't see anything at all. Not even hear anything. Then as I turn to my left I see this giant lion head slowly come into the light of my lantern, and then it roared. My pawn, behind me, yells out "CHIMERA!" and then the monster jumped at me and I dodge rolled to the side (I was strider at the time), before jumping onto its back as it charged past. I managed to climb onto its tail, and started hacking away until I cut it off, unable to see where it was running as it dashed around, and then finished it off in similar fashion with the goat and lion heads.

When the fight was over I had no idea where I was. Had to check the map.

Originally Posted by Bells

is the "Fixed Monster Spawns" really a big issue against immersion in the game? That's been one of the major things i see people complaining about this game

There's a few goblin spawns you'll see a LOT that get annoying, but for the most part the fixed spawns are actually kind of a good thing, as it makes it easy/possible to hunt down large monsters or groups of smaller monsters that you want to fight for fun and profit.

It didn't really hurt immersion for me until really late into the game, and that's more than made up for by moments like the one above.

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Ok so while watching gameplay, especially against larger monsters I began thinking. "this reminds me of monster hunter"

How accurate is that, and I mean in the sense that fighting monsters is more about strategizing where and how you attack than just spamming it until its HP is gone

I've never played monster hunter but it's definitely more strategy than hack and slash. For instance, Ogres can only REALLY be hurt by attacks to their head. Even at ridiculously high levels body shots do next to nothing to them (I'm sitting at about 1.7k strength and using dire gouge on their torsos still doesn't do very much), so you have to either try to climb up to their heads, arrow their heads, or hack their legs out and then attack their heads. And they're one of the simpler enemies as far as strategy goes.

Cockatrice are a pain because you really can't just "PEW PEW PEW" them, or they will kill the shit out of you, and Griffins are likewise a pain, not because they'll kill you but because if you don't find a way to lock them down they'll run away as soon as you start doing decent damage (or they find their lunch).