Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

party based action adventure dark souls lite

I bought this on a whim, and I'm glad I did. My favorite action RPGs are the Gothic games and Risen, and this is not as deep or difficult, but I am finding it to be really, really, just plain fun. I do recommend using a game controller, especially if you use a laptop for gaming, because I found some of the key combinations difficult on the laptop keyboard. And even if you are not proficient with a controller (I'm not), you can learn some favorite moves and still progress. The graphics are really nice, the monsters are diverse and interesting, and you really can play every character class (independently) in one game if you want to try them all out - without losing progress. I do wish the save feature was better - if you lose a battle (die) twice in a row, you pretty much have to go back to the last time you slept in an inn and replay from there (there may be a way around this to load a manual save, but they don't make it easy). Anyway, I highly recommend this game - it's a blast.

THE MULTIPLAYER ELEMENTS ON GOG ARE BROKEN. GET THIS ON STEAM IF YOU WANT ANY PAWN SHARING/HIRING. Climbing giant enemies good! Bullet sponge OR 1-shot-killed enemies bad. Basic world idea good! Character writing bad. Unique and fun classes good! Pawn (NPC) AI bad. Really, really bad. Calling down a screen-covering meteor apocalypse good! 35 second casting time bad. The ability to duplicate ANY item good! Inventory management and crafting bad. Grinding bad. Really bad. This game is like 50% 5 stars and 50% 1 star with almost nothing in between, but I give it a 4/5 because it is so ambitious and original and despite the things it gets terribly, terribly wrong it gets a lot of things right (or close to) that most games don't even try. Don't expect a good story, you won't get one. The gameplay is fantastic when it works and unbelievably tedious when it doesn't. This game is about exploring cool environments, killing cool monsters, and then moving on to the next one half an hour, or an hour, or several hours after you've gotten really really tired of the current one lol. I feel like a little polish and balance and they could've had a real knockout; as it is, it's only "quite good."

One of the best RPG of all the times even in 2025

I would first point out that RPG's are not my favorite genre as far as games go. I'm more a strategy nut, real time or turn based, love them both. That said, I buy a few RPG's a year and put a bit of time into them. It's important to me to make the right choice when picking a role playing game because I don't want to waste my time. So I've put about 15 hours into this title so far and I've enjoyed the experience to this point. The games opening sequences are dam near worth the price alone. The travel distances between towns are not too far, yet it still seems like you have traveled. Long boring walks are a turn off for me. Also I find a little action along the way by wandering into the countryside along the way. The "Pawns" are not very interesting to me, I just think of them as travel companions, but you must switch them out fairly often to have the best chance of realizing your objectives. I prefer companions that I can kind of get to know, or develop a connection with. Not a deal breaker though, and it is a unique feature of this game. The combat is fun, and easy to pick up on, I was slaying monsters from the get go. The world is very detailed and realistic to me, I guess I've mostly played some older RPG's though, but I am impressed with it. The art style is perfect, very medieval, I love it. The castles and towns are convincing to me. The worst thing about the game is trying to quit. Its one of those games that takes you to a title screen, and after a short pause you can choose to go to the menu screen, another short pause and the exit button becomes available. I really appreciate games that have a exit to Windoze option. Its something that I am used to, but never did like or understand about games in general.