It's high time this epic action RPG had its own thread.
The budget, enhanced re-release is out now, and even includes a high res texture pack and Japanese language option install-able from a second disc (on 360).

ratsoalbion wrote:It's high time this epic action RPG had its own thread.
The budget, enhanced re-release is out now, and even includes a high res texture pack and Japanese language option install-able from a second disc.

We must have some Dogma fans on the forum - it's the equal of Dark Souls in the eyes of many.

Equal of Dark Souls? Crazy Talk!

They are both great games though and they could both learn a lot from each other.

I didn't get too deep into Dragons Dogma before they announced Dark Arisen so I traded in my copy and pre ordered Dark Arisen(quite a lot of game for £15). Turned up yesterday but I've not played it yet. I did hear that the new content is quite Soulsy so I'm keen to try it out.

I only played maybe 8-10 hours of the original and I thought it was fantastic, but I had to put it aside.
Dark Arisen is now installed and ready to go for when I can get to it.

Dragon's Dogma is a great game. It was one of my favourite games of last year and one of the most fresh RPGs in a long time. I love the combat of it, and despite the game being quite rough graphically, it actually looks pretty good. It's got a good sense of vast scale to it, even though the world isn't actually as big as most other similar RPGs. But the way you can see for so far, and it has a lot of dramatic scenery like cliffs and such, and you can see there's always a lot of strong wind blowing in from the sea as well.

Also, on the topic of graphics, I have a question about Dark Arisen. I haven't got it myself yet, since I'm waiting for the price to go down so I can hopefully get it for free using my Game reward points. But how improved are the graphics? I hear there are hi-res textures, and that was one of the worse things about the graphics in the normal game. Also the draw distance on things like plants and stuff isn't that great. Is that improved?

I'm currently playing the PS3 version of Dark Arisen, and, the performance is drastically improved from the original version. Haven't seen any framerate drop or tearing.

Not sure if the PS3 version has the high res textures. There was no mandatory install, but, it does look a little better than what I remember of the original version.

I'd guess the HR textures are included on the Blu-Ray.

Been playing an hour a day of this and enjoying it. It's not a game I'm eager to blast through which is quite nice for a game like this. I do a couple quests and turn it off until the next day.

I chose to be the bow and arrow guy and have died quite a bit, they don't mess around in destroying you should you go down the wrong path!

I've also heard the difficulty balancing for the new content is badly done in Dark Arisen. That doesn't really put me off the game, but is that true as well?

So I have the original and stopped playing after hearing about Dark Arisen. Can you just buy it as DLC?

Apparently so, yeah.

DomsBeard wrote:So I have the original and stopped playing after hearing about Dark Arisen. Can you just buy it as DLC?

No. They said it wasn't possible in the original code.
You can find the Dark Arisen disk for less than £15 though.

Weird! Seems very odd to have it done like that.

I've never played Dragons Dogma - I must admit I'd always thought it was a poor mans GoW clone, akin to Dantes Inferno or something. So it's not, then?

Not in the least, it's an open world action RPG.

Where did you even get that impression? I've never seen anything presenting the game like that.

No idea! Must have got it from somewhere though!

Perhaps you actually heard "a poor man's Dark Souls" which...

But, hey, I'm still really enjoying it!

I really hate the term "poor man's (whatever)". It so often doesn't make any sense when it's used to describe something. When people say it they usually mean it's a watered down or just crappier version of something else. But why does that mean it's the "poor man's" version? Is that supposed to mean poor people have bad taste or something? Because most of the time, these "poor" versions of things are just as expensive as the thing they're being compared to.

And aside from the fact that Dark Souls is an RPG too, I don't see why Dragon's Dogma has to be seen as the crappy knock-off version of it, because it's not. It takes some influence, but it's still doing it's own thing. That thing just happens to be different from what Dark Souls is, so to compare it to what Dark Souls is trying to be is just stupid. Some people really need to get off their high horse when talking about certain games.

I'm just being a dick. The game is awesome.

Edit: it's just, like I said on the DS show: for me, those games have (unfortunately) ruined almost all 3rd-person medieval RPG's. While playing DD, any time I get into a battle, I can't help but think "god, I wish this played more like Dark Souls".

On the plus side, Dragon's Dogma is the only one that has held my interest past the first 2 hours. I'm psyched to get back into it later tonight. Not sure how far I am into it, (just got the ferrystone, which, I imagine is still quite early), but, I wasn't joking when I said I'm still really enjoying it.

No problem. I can see why finding a game you love so much kind of ruins others. I've had similar experiences.

I didn't mean to come across as being antagonistic either, if I did. It's just sometimes when I hear certain phrases that people like to throw around in gaming it triggers something with me. I'm sure you'll agree there's no shortage of people saying stupid things about games on the internet.