Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a Western-inspired Japanese action RPG that on the surface appears to be little more than a rather middle of the road game at best. The setting is instantly familiar and tired, with well-trodden dirt paths, castles, and the usual selection of character classes, monsters, and grubby peasants. That, however, is only part of the story. Below that well-worn surface is a game offering enough new ideas, mechanics, and surprising turns to keep even the most jaded RPG fan keen to see what lies beyond the next rise. The destination may not always be what you would hope, but the journey is often fascinating, and seldom quite what you expect.

Dragon’s Dogma doesn’t come with one of those fancy ‘remastered’ tags that we’ve been seeing so much of lately but is instead a straight port. Having come out for the PS3 and XBox 360 back in 2012. While it is, in essence, the same game as you knew back then, Capcom have decided to take full advantage of today’s graphical advancements to upgrade the visuals… if you can run it. You’re able to run the game in 60 FPS, which is incredibly impressive, but you are also able to completely unlock the framerate. It is also 4K supported, so if you have the kind of equipment to do these kinds of things (I do not), the game is going to look stunning.

The story places the player in the boots of a created hero. The creation tools have enough power to create something that resembles a human, maybe even close to what you look like. It’s very similar in style to tool creations in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or Dragon Age: Inquisition, but don’t expect going into this game with a character creator from some of the latest massively multiplayer online role-playing games that have those amazing detail character creators.

For any single player RPG, the story is the skeleton that everything rests on, and sadly what’s here is the weakest skeleton I’ve encountered in an RPG in a very long time. In the opening cutscene, your village is attacked by a dragon, which promptly kills you and devours your heart. You awaken to discover not only are you not dead, but are now the Arisen, and fate has destined you to do great things. World changing things! Things no other can do… you know the rest. Hardly inspiring stuff despite the obvious desire to make it so, and sadly that holds true for the entire game. Thankfully, once you veer off the beaten path, Dragon’s Dogma will reveal not only many hidden secrets, but a fascinating and wonderfully crafted world that you will want to explore.

The real colour and detail of the world is found by talking to the various characters populating the landscape, many of whom will provide interesting titbits or useful quest information. This is important, because Dragon’s Dogma is not about to hold your hand and lead you to your destination. So exploration and conversation are vital to completing quests, and unlike many modern RPGs, starting a quest does not mean you’re up to the task of completing it. Rather than being frustrating though, harder quests always feel grounded in the world’s reality, and emphasise your place within it.

Your player character is able to choose between nine different 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. With “discipline” earned through levelling up, you purchase new abilities and attacks, and access to new vocations. You can change between unlocked vocations from an inn at any time, and most passive abilities will carry over between classes. Your vocation level is counted independently of your character level, further encouraging you to experiment with new builds and abilities.

Each of these classes allows a unique playstyle in the action-based combat, which is the game’s greatest strength. Different enemies obviously have different weaknesses, requiring you to change up your tactics based on who or what you’re facing. 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.

And that’s just when you’re fighting normal enemies. The true highlight of Dragon’s Dogma are its encounters with big, mythical monsters: trolls, ogres, hydras, chimeras, griffins, and yes, dragons. 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. 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.

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. My only complaint is wishing there was more - more encounters, more variety, and more scale. 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.

Also, you do not walk this world alone. Your party of four will consist of three Pawns: one custom made Pawn of your own design and two recruits. Pawns reside in a realm known as the Rift, and devoid of emotions or a will of their own, they are bound to the Arisen and will follow his or her command without hesitation. Even so, finding that perfect combination of warriors, rogues, and spell weavers to aid you in your quest is vital. The only real irritation with the Pawns is their lack of distinct personalities, and their all too soon repeated inane commentary as you wander the world. Thankfully this can be turned off, but the lack of interesting party members is something that follows you just as obviously as the Pawns themselves.

While the two recruit Pawns are essentially disposable, your own Pawn remains at your side for the entirety of the adventure, and will level with you and adapt its behaviour based on how you play. This is important, because just as you can recruit Pawns, other players can recruit yours as well, and all custom Pawns can be recruited from within the Rift to join another player’s game.

Recruited Pawns earn experience, knowledge of the world, and loot while in another player’s party, all of which they will bring to realm of that Pawn’s creator. This asynchronous online functionality gives you additional reason to make the strongest and most appealing Pawn you can: you want your Pawn to be hired because not only will it become stronger, but sometimes it will provide your party with something unexpected and uniquely valuable.

The overall presentation of the game is fantastic, and looks awesome on PC. I found the game ran perfectly at 1080p with consistent 60 fps. The game has plenty of options to play with, which include HDR, textures, anti-aliasing and other features that improve the experience. It still looks like an old game compared to some of the recent releases, but it still holds up fine. The world is full of interesting characters to talk to, and many quests to take on. I also really enjoyed the whimsical soundtrack, that added a feeling of magic and fantasy.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen mixes the well-worn and overplayed clichés of the genre with just enough new stuff to keep things mostly fresh. Its story may be completely disposable, but the world itself is fascinating. It also has the honour of being one of the best-executed ports I have ever played.

Like Skyrim, but the wolves hunt in packs.

This is the one and only game that I even bother to post a review on.

And I am going to do this only to tell you to not even bother reading reviews.

I can guarentee you on your first born baby tears, the first tooth loss of your childhood, and on the hearts of all the horny teenagers in the world that this game is beyond any expectation you could have of a game.

If you like to ♥♥♥♥ things up.. play it.

If you like to customize your character and be unique.. play it.

if you want your character to constantly look like a Bad ♥♥♥ (or weird af)... play it.

If you want to be impressed by all the features of your favorite games shoved into a glass tube and then grinded up and molded into perfection ... play it.

if you want to jump and cling yourself onto the face of a massive flying demon and hack the ♥♥♥♥ out of that mother ♥♥♥♥ in real time and not in some stupid ♥♥♥ combat cut scene but in actual ♥♥♥♥ing virtual reality time... play it.

and if you want that damn flying ♥♥♥ demons hit to be able to fling you across the ♥♥♥♥ing room ina ctual real virtual reality time world ♥♥♥♥.. play it.

And if you want to see what its like to play with the team you have always dreamed of but couldnt because they were all 14 year old punk ♥♥♥ horny teenagers.. play it because this game has the best NPC AI you could ever dream of. No one will have your back other than your homie-G they allow you to customize in the beginning. I named mine Peanut Alergy. Named off of my biggest insecurity.. Not only does he help me in combat to the ♥♥♥♥ing edge of the world... but he is my one and only doctor.. my only friend.. my only councilor.

If you want.. to freaking have an adventure.. that will blow the ♥♥♥♥ing brain juice thats resting boringly in your mind and have it rush out your ears in the same way your bathrub faucet fills up your tub when your super depressed and need to just take a relaxationt ime but couldnt afford a spa treatment and wished your wife would come back to you and that you didnt waste all your money on League of Legion skins instead of buying this damn game... play it.


Just... Play it.

Dozens of feet up, my gauntlets digging into the mane of a livid griffin, I knew I'd made a huge mistake. The beast was grounded when I'd hopped atop his back in the hopes of introducing his eyes to my sword, but he'd shot up so high afterwards that I could have seen the main character's hometown if I'd dared to look (and if it popped in in time). One slip, one splat, and it'd be game over. Below, though, a mage's spell set my group's weapons aflame. My ranger companion let loose a mighty arrow, alighting the monster's wings and bringing us slamming back to earth.

I already knew how all this would end: I spent many sleepless nights with Dragon's Dogma's appealing mix of Western RPG stylings and Monster Hunter-inspired combat years ago when it first dropped for the Xbox 360. Graphics have advanced, scores of better and lesser RPGs have come and gone, but there on the stones of the Bluemoon Tower, I still relished the return of the same rush of victory that overcame me in 2012.

Now, at last, we have the PC port, which takes its guise from 2013's Dark Arisen, a retooled version of the initial release with a ridiculously tough endgame zone and numerous tweaks to various annoyances. It's a port, all right, which is to say that it's here and it does little to distinguish itself from its console forebears aside from nifty features like better textures and uncapped framerates. (A single crash over 50 hours aside, it ran beautifully.) Still, that's cause for celebration. Scarred with imperfections but entertaining to the end, Dragon's Dogma is easily one of the most memorable RPGs of the last decade.

It achieves this distinction almost in spite of its story. It's not bad, and it's capped on one end by a dragon who eats your heart as though he's sucking Nutella off his claw and on the other by a deliciously bizarre conclusion preceding the New Game that still makes for good discussions when less than sober. In between, though, it relies excessively to backtracking and indulges too many humdrum sidequests. It clings to predictable Western RPG conventions: in one corner there's the dastardly secret society, in another, the artifact-stuffed ruin.

It works, though, because it's all told with enthusiastic gravitas. For all the chimeras and dragons, Gransys is a land that tries to stick to the real, favoring utilitarian armor designs over flamboyance, and the interactions impart a dutiful ‘let's do this’ sense I admire. This extends even to the open-world landscape, which boasts coastal cliffs, mountains, and towering Norman architecture but never quite inspires the kind of visual rapture you get from, say, The Witcher 3. (Worse, it's prone to pop-ins and muddy details at long distances.) Saving the world is a job, dang it, and Dragon's Dogma makes you feel it.

Jobs can be fun, of course, and Dragon's Dogma delivers a challenging brand of action that's rousing regardless of whether it's played on the keyboard or with a gamepad. Greatswords crash with hefty weight, arrows fly with satisfying thwapps, and spells impale ogres with icy tendrils. So many RPGs could learn from how fun this is. The appeal isn't just the fighting (which could benefit from a lock-on); it's also the way it lets you scramble up the arms of cyclopes and slice off the tails of lizard men. Sick of one of the main three classes of Fighter, Strider, and Mage? You can easily switch out to another and level its skills or those of six hybrids. Some fare better than others; Warriors, for instance, perform pitifully in Dragon's Dogma's many ranged encounters.

Dragon's Dogma still feels enjoyably unique four years on.
Enter the pawns. Nothing sets Dragon's Dogma apart quite like them. They're mysterious beings with classes and skills that fill the blanks of what you need, thus allowing my Warrior to bring along, say, a bow-toting Ranger, a healing Mage, and a powerful Sorcerer—for a price. You get a main pawn that other players can summon, and you can summon up to two of theirs as well. There's a satisfying Pokémon-like appeal to trying them out (which you'll need to since they don't level with you), and having to let go of a well-geared, well-skilled pawn sometimes stings like the death of a fleshed-out character in another RPG. Alas, they're prone to spouting obvious, ceaseless chatter such as "These stairs serve as a useful route in their own right," but happily Dark Arisen lets you switch that off.

If that's what it takes, do it. It's rough in parts, and numerous other RPGs tell a better story or inspire greater awe. But Dragon's Dogma still feels enjoyably unique four years on and that's something few of its genre cousins can claim. And the best thing I can say? Even now, I'm already itching to get back in.

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THE VERDICT
81/100
About PC Gamer reviews
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen
The PC port doesn't introduce much new and certain elements could be stronger, but Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen still shines as a uniquely enjoyable RPG.

is pretty good game mate. has them dragons