Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

Dragon Dogma is along the lines of Witcher 3. In some ways it is better. Witcher three has a much larger diversity of how you can make yourself stronger and more able to combat stronger foes. Dogma lets you develop a large set of skills and also provides upgrades to more capable classes of fighters, bowman, and mages. However, in many cases this means storing your current armor and buying all new armor. I found the gameplay to be good and after 50 hours of playing (it doesn't keep track) you can probably finish the main plot of the game. There are many side quests and I played many of them with no issues at all. You also get to create a partner called a pawn with capabilities different from your own and early on get a low level mage to assist you (if you are a fighter, dont know what you get if you choose something else). If you like Witcher 3 than I am very sure you will like Dragon's Dogma. I played the game on Windows 10 but have 12 Gigs of memory and a separate 2 gig ATI game card. So I get no delays at all when playing the game. The game only uses 1 of my four CPUs, this makes me believe that memory and the game card is more important than the type of processor. I really like the Witcher and Skyrim series and believe that Dragons Dogma is just as good but not as large or story driven. My recommendation, buy it from GOG whenever it becomes lower than $25.

As the title suggests. If you want the feeling of D&D experienced through 3rd person w/ great action combat get this game! Please note, there are balancing issues with some classes and bosses (especially bosses in the Dark Arisen expansion Island), but overall the game is a treat with most of what it presents to you and throws at you. The story is deeper than it seems. Also note the art style and colour palette is not for everyone, but I think it invokes the feeling of older edition D&D.

Look Arisen, a DDDA with DRM Free! Looks suspicious...

If someone asks me how a fantasy RPG should be made, I'd say to check this game. The combat is fun and tactical and the pawn system lets you customize your party. The AI is smart: the monster will not use the same pattern over and over and are difficult to predict. They also can react to some attacks in different ways (eg a chimera will go berserk if you kill both the snake tail and the goat). Pawns instead will learn new tactics to use against different enemies. If you play it at the max level of difficulty it is also very challenging. Where the game shines is in the combat mechanics. Monsters have weak spots and elemental weaknesses. Make use of the right tactic can make a giant flying beast fall to the ground or a tough lizard man take more damage. The palyer can also climb monstrous creatures to reach their weak spots. Combined with the AI assures that every encouter will be different and challenging. There are some flaws: the map is big, but there are some terrain features that force you to take a certain path. Moreover the fast travel is not as flexible as in skyrim, meaning you'll have to walk a lot. But the major issue is the bugs with the hitboxes, that can lead to unfair deaths expecially in hard mode (luckily these bugs don't happen too often). Also the AI has some pathfinding problems. This is a must have for any fantasy RPG fan.

If you are the person that loved Dragon Age: Origins but was disappointed by the sequels then this is the game for you. It has great gameplay and flow, wide customisition while still retaining acceptable graphics for the newer generation of gamers.