Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen

This game is clearly not a PC game as controls like the ENTER key or INS and PGUP cannot be rebound to other keys, but are used quite frequently, Then the UI control using the mouse feels utterly complicated even compared to older PC RPG titles. The German translation is probably done with a bad auto-translate or an unskilled translator, as the grammar is incorrect sometimes up to a level where the meaning is lost. This game could have been a nice game, but it's a total desaster.

I bought this game on another store years ago and it looked dead then, I'm surprised it's on gog now. The idea they had was good. As in many RPGs, we create our custom char and here we also create on the same way our companion. I love playing singleplay with companion. Then we publish our companion on the server and other players may take her and play with her while we're not playing, and we can also take other players' companions to form a party to play with. And there's a special section to select friends companions. When somebody plays with our companion, she earns XP. To sum it up, it's marketed that companions learn enemies weakness and learn how to beat them, and when they do so by playing with another player - specially a player stronger than us who took our companion to places we haven't gone yet - then they teach it to us and other companions on the party. That seemed great, very original. But the game is horrendous. It's not open world neither we have multiple areas to explore, the game is a wide linear corridor. Quests are very scarse and control where we go. I remember there was a shady forest I wanted to explore, but there was no quest for it, all quests led to the next city. Then I kept getting quests that made me keep wasting time going back and forth both cities and no quest yet for the forest. Of course I could just go there and explore with no quest, but I kept expecting that some quest would popup and was waiting for it. Enemies are very few in variety. That's bad in any game, but here it's worse, because of the companion learning system. In practice it's just a matter of knowing that in example wolf is weak to fire and skeleton is weak to ice. Extremely simple, which we'd learn on a couple attempts. Then, companions keep repeating the same phrase "it's weak to fire!!!!" to exhaustion, always talking as if it was a great discovery, for the same enemy we're bored to know about and fight to.

After about 8 hours into this game I don’t understand what people see in it. You can climb monsters? Who cares? It feels like I’m just hacking and slashing in a mall arcade. This is closer to Gauntlet than it is Elder Scrolls. Story is dumb. Characters are dumb. Inventory management is dumb. All the controls are sloppy. Even exiting the game is dumb. It’s about as open world as KOTOR so idk how it even gets called open world. Nothing about this game warrants comparisons to ES or Witcher. I’m writing this review as I’m sitting in the jail in the main town, where I landed due to the incredible ease of punching an NPC immediately after ending “dialogue” with them. (There is no dialogue, only NPC monologue.) Save your money for quarters at the mall.

Unbalanced game with worst upgrades ever seen. You can barely use your skills during battle, they're so clunky, when you get a level up barely anything is different. there's almost no fast travel and the stones that enable you to reverse to the place you've been are so rare. Just a pure grind fest without anything really changing.

I kinda find the combat infuriating in regards to the stamina system. For me it's an absolute buzz kill. It bothers me that much, that I uninstalled the game 2 times within 24 hours.