Nobody will read my review, so I'll just say I'm ♥♥♥

I do believe to have done virtually everything there is to do in the game. I played on hard mode from start to finish; completed BBI twice; played as a mage and subsequently as a sorcerer without using pawns; defeated the extra bosses; acquired powerful items for my class; and experienced all the endings present in the game. All of this was accomplished within almost 80 hours of gameplay, hours which I do not regret spending, or so i would like to think were it not for the disappointing ending. Now, let's discuss each aspect in detail:

Gameplay

To be frank, the gameplay of Dragon's Dogma is quite... basic. The player has the freedom to choose different types of classes, and within these classes, we can select buffs (augments) and respective attacks based on your class' weapon. This description might give the impression that each class offers a vast array of unique abilities, but this is not necessarily true. The playstyle of melee classes, regardless of their differences, remains strikingly similar. It doesn’t help that in non-melee classes (some melee classes also lack this feature), you have neither a roll nor a defensive option, meaning your only way to fight is to roam around the map aimlessly trying to evade attacks.

I played as a sorcerer (starting as a mage until nearly level 40 before switching to sorcerer) without using pawns on hard mode (and even earned an achievement for completing the game on hard), which means I was entirely alone during all combat segments. Despite this disadvantage, I still managed to complete the BBI dungeon twice; hunt dragons; and solo monsters. This in itself shows that even in its most challenging mode, without using the game's party system, and playing as a class where in hard mode any hit in BBI is equivalent to a one-hit kill, the game remains easy. While I do not deny that I am relatively skilled in this kind of game, my level of proficiency alone would not have allowed me to achieve such accomplishments in such a short period if the game were truly difficult in its hard mode.

It is worth noting that the lack of difficulty is not a significant problem, considering that the 'grandiose' fights and the way the game handles magic attacks (spells as mage/sorcerer) make it so that even after repeatedly facing the same enemy, you do not get boring. Having said all this, I would rate the overall gameplay as ranging from okay to good, somewhere around a 6-7.

Story

This part is extremely complicated. I particularly loved the story... of the BBI DLC. If you read the notes in front of the dungeon gate with the memories we recover as we progress, you will notice that each part of that dungeon was part of its host, that is, Daimon. His story is so beautiful and striking that the entire fight segment explaining his downfall leaves you touched (if you pay attention to the story, of course). It is so beautifully 'crafted' that I wonder how the same team that wrote the base game's story managed to create a DLC of this caliber. This question becomes even more pronounced after completing ALL the endings of the base game and NOT A SINGLE ONE of them being genuinely good.

The base game lacks good pacing for the story, or rather, not only is the pacing strange, but the direction is utterly horrible. Scenes are completely disconnected from the rest of the game; scene edits seem amateurish; explanations for almost everything that happens in the game are nonexistent, etc. All these reasons make it so that, although certain MOMENTS in the game are truly INTERESTING, much of it feels disconnected from your experience. In other words, parts that could have been incredible, like the segment of the fight with Julien; the scene with the Duke after the dragon's death; the scene where you kill the current seneschal; the scene with your beloved during the fight against the dragon; all are spoiled by poor direction.

Leaving aside the direction, let's focus more on the text itself, that is, the narrative. Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen has clear potential in this sense, at least judging by what was delivered in BBI. Unfortunately, this same potential is not seen in the base game. For much of the game, I felt like I was playing a version with a trimmed-down story. The course of events made little sense and was rarely explained; important NPCs for the main plot were not developed even during their respective missions; there is a vast lack of information about the world, even with you exploring the capital and observing the daily life of NPCs; important plot points are simply forgotten and replaced by insignificant ones (we had a large mission about the group of chaos worshipers, that is, the Salvation people, and after that, we had no more related quests until the main story remembered their leader... a leader who dies to the dragon in the same scene). Conflicts like Mercedes' simply arise out of nowhere and remain unresolved. This pattern repeats throughout the entire game. You do not get to know the NPCs well, you do not understand the world well, and you do not even know why you are being forced to do things; everything just keeps going and is pushed along until the game remembers the main conflict with the dragon in the last hours and rushes everything afterward. To make matters worse, we had a completely open ending without any necessity. The lack of a protagonist, that is, someone who truly exists and is not a player-created doll, makes the ending comical to me, not sad or hopeful. It is something that, like the rest of the game, came out of nowhere, and you are forced to accept that everything makes sense and that your 80 hours of gameplay were not wasted.

Soundtrack

Here the game truly shines. There was not a single piece of music in this game that I found bad. ALL the music for battles, exploration, cutscenes, menus, etc are excellent. Unfortunately, I do not have enough expertise to write a formal analysis of the music, so forgive me for the simplicity of this section compared to the others. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize that all the tracks present in this game are indeed of a very high standard, something you rarely find in the industry.

Conclusion

Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen is a game whose potential was much higher than the result we got. As evidenced earlier, considering how well the DLC was crafted, I believe the base game could have been much better. That said, despite its various problems, the world of Dragon's Dogma (referring purely to the fauna of the monsters here) still offers something valuable. The cities are lively in the sense that they have NPCs doing things, but almost everything in this game lacks information, ultimately feeling extremely artificial. All this leads me to the conclusion that the game is worth playing, but there are better options on the market. If you are interested in a medieval RPG with a european setting, I would recommend Dragon Age Origins to you, but in the absence of other options, Dragon's Dogma can be a good way to kill time.

seru banget