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Dragon's Dogma Demo Impressions

HoodWinked

Member
turning off alot of the HUD elements make the game instantly better. i hope capcom has the sense to have those settings off by default.

like pawn subtitles, button mappings and minimap

graphics are so uneven certain models look great up close but distant backgrounds look bad. and some of the smaller enemies. i played the ps3 version the framerate is not good but not horrible either. the aa they use works really well IQ is very impressive.

edit
also one more thing, this may be something stupid to be impressed about but the title screen looks really good like the fire effects look like something you'd see in a pixar movie
 

Anteater

Member
I haven't played the demo yet and excuse me if this has been answered or is available in the demo but I have more questions than answers at this point. I have watched several videos and know that it is an open world RPG. I like the looks of the combat...however:

Are there skill trees?

How does gear work? Blizzard or Bethesda or Neither?

Roughly how many epic battles are there in the game?

I am getting the Monster Hunter vibe as far as the fights go. Am I correct in getting this feeling?

Since they are called Pawns, I am assuming that there is no attachment to them. Is this a correct assumption?

I really want to like this game but with Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 coming, I am not sure I can justify a purchase of this. Answers to the above questions will push me one way or the other.
Thanks in advance.

There aren't really skill trees, but you unlock skills as you rank up and buy them, it's based on jobs, some skills could be upgraded to a higher level one, there are passive abilities that carries over to other jobs you could equip, and some jobs share abilities with the hybrid jobs, etc, and you could switch between jobs at an inn (or maybe some other place) at will.

Not sure the difference between Blizzard and Bethesda games, but you could equip individual pieces of equipments and accessories on each body parts (like shirt, pants, headgear, and a cape), I think you could also equip stuff like undershirt and such so you could mix them around, not sure how stats work though, and whether or not there are loots from dungeons.

You could also combine items like making arrows with poison, etc. There's also a crafting system too and you could upgrade your weapons if I remember correctly, they haven't really talked about it much.

Pawns seems to be part of the story, but I don't know how important they are, no idea what the story is really about other than kill teh dragon.

I think we won't know the depth for some of those stuff until reviews are out or someone has the full game :(
 

ironcreed

Banned
As I played the Griffin battle a few more times, all I could think about is how great it would have been if I could have fought dragons in Skyrim in much the same way. Even as low level as this particular Griffin was, it is a ton more satisfying to fight.

Not knocking Skyrim or the Elder Scrolls in general either, as I love the series dearly. I am just saying I think this game is going to be more fun to play for me. As great as the Elder Scrolls is, playing something like this makes the still bad combat stick out like a sore thumb.
 

Eusis

Member
I must be crazy since I rarely care about HUD stuff at all. I actually think favoring their removal can be problematic depending on the type of game, hiding the mini-map in the full game for example is probably not going to work out as well as in the demo.

Also, tried this on 360. Really didn't notice much tearing, so I guess if I got this sooner than later it'll probably be there. Somewhat disappointed though, Microsoft's been bugging me as of late plus I'd REALLY rather avoid getting those shitty cases with holes in them. Not unless they really did fill them up somewhat and that's become the standard instead.
 
Yeah, I'm going to have to give the demo another go this weekend. Jumping straight into the prologue mission when I'm dead tired after a long day at work was not a good idea. The combination of the tutorial hud taking up about half the screen and the poor image quality in that night mission had me quit back to the dashboard after just a few minutes.

Again, this is not a fair impression since I'm tired as shit and didn't give the demo my full attention. But even though I've been following the game for awhile, good god that hud is atrocious even by demo standards and probably won't leave a good first impression for people trying this that have never heard of the game before.
 

Anteater

Member
I must be crazy since I rarely care about HUD stuff at all. I actually think favoring their removal can be problematic depending on the type of game, hiding the mini-map in the full game for example is probably not going to work out as well as in the demo.

Also, tried this on 360. Really didn't notice much tearing, so I guess if I got this sooner than later it'll probably be there. Somewhat disappointed though, Microsoft's been bugging me as of late plus I'd REALLY rather avoid getting those shitty cases with holes in them. Not unless they really did fill them up somewhat and that's become the standard instead.

I don't like the HUD but I kept it on for the longest time since I don't remember what skills I have :(

I can't play without the hp bars though even though I have the buttons layout disabled now.
 

SAB CA

Sketchbook Picasso
Answers in bold!

I haven't played the demo yet and excuse me if this has been answered or is available in the demo but I have more questions than answers at this point. I have watched several videos and know that it is an open world RPG. I like the looks of the combat...however:

Are there skill trees?
We've seen the ability to buy direct skills, and the fact they are tied to specific classes. It seems less like a tree (with branching directions), and more like a set or skills, which you can pick from. So it's not as free as something like skyrim (where you can pretty much just learn everthing, and use whenever), it has a bit more rigidity to it (You're going to clearly be a class, but you can decide what style of that class you are.)

How does gear work? Blizzard or Bethesda or Neither?
Errr... -shrug- It seems to be a mix of Bethesda and Monster Hunter? There are weapons you can make only with parts from enemies.But at the same time, there's multiple equipment parts, and there are crafting elements within the game, as well.

Roughly how many epic battles are there in the game?
No idea. They haven't said, from what I know. There's probably a lot of them, but I tend to think of it kinda like Skyrim: There's as many big battles as you get into. A big battle to end quest, big battles that are tied to story... so most likely a healthy amount.

I am getting the Monster Hunter vibe as far as the fights go. Am I correct in getting this feeling?
Kinda. The "Small men who bring down a giant beast, through teamwork!" aspect is there. It's kinda like MH in those aspects, but it's just got more "game" all around, IMHO.

Since they are called Pawns, I am assuming that there is no attachment to them. Is this a correct assumption?
Not entirely. You makea "main" one yourself. They're your main one for the entire game. You MIGHT be very attached to that one. But the rest... yeah, you can trade them in-and-out from "The Rift" as much as you want, as long as you are willing to pay for them. So they're not "named main characters" or anything, but they're not entirely disposable, either.

I really want to like this game but with Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 coming, I am not sure I can justify a purchase of this. Answers to the above questions will push me one way or the other.
Thanks in advance.
 

HoodWinked

Member
The 360 and PS3 versions look about identical to me and seem to run nearly the same as well. Slight tearing in the 360 version, but it did not seem too bad. I think it is going to be close to parity all around and everyone will be happy.

mt framework has consistently performed better on 360.

lost planet, lost planet 2, RE5, mvc3, original sf4

newer fighters are more even in performance because rendering budgets are tightly controlled DD has a free camera and alot of character models moving around which is considerably more taxing.
 

ironcreed

Banned
mt framework has consistently performed better on 360.

lost planet, lost planet 2, RE5, mvc3, original sf4

I actually played LP2 on PS3 and thought it was fine. Anyway, keep in mind that the engine has been updated and improved on since Lost Planet 2. They had to make a lot of changes for this game.

As far as the demo goes, I am just saying I could hardly spot a difference. There sure as hell was not enough of a difference to split hairs over, they both were great. Looked the same as well, other than some mild tearing on the 360 version.

Here is the devs commenting on the changes to the engine for this game.

"Additionally, the MT Framework has been upgraded to 2.x since Lost Planet 2, so now we can provide even richer graphics than what was possible with MT Framework 1.x, which was utilized in Resident Evil 5. This time we've focused even more effort on shaders and implemented even more functions. It's now possible or us to display various kinds of interactivity in our graphics--characters can be shown totally drenched in water or with their clothes scorched."

This is really noticeable:

"Also, Dragon's Dogma is utilizing the latest anti-aliasing technique (provided by nVidia), FXAA. The integration of this into the MT Framework had not made it in for the Captivate, E3, or TGS versions (they utilized a different anti-aliasing technique)--but FXAA is fully integrated into the product version of the game. With this we are able to use high-quality anti-aliasing to provide these massive environments which will look even smoother."

http://www.capcom-unity.com/gregaman/blog/2012/04/05/how_dragons_dogma_changed_the_mt_framework
 

Anteater

Member
I think if you parry the chimera charging move (one where it dashes at you), it will fall over, like a boss.

I don't know if it's whether I did enough damage over the course of the fight or if it's just for that 1 attack, parrying its other moves didn't seem to do much other than a small stun.

it's kind of hard without a target lock system, have to always turn to face the enemy for a fighter

Prologue > Griffin fight, fighter is so fun once you get used to it, shield bash seems useless... unless I'm suppose to use it some other ways, but it's slow...
 

ThankeeSai

Member
Reading through all this on my phone at the moment, so don't want to go through all pages. Just posting to see if it's common knowledge that you start at level 20 for the demo?

Playing for the 3rd time against the Chimera last night, just as I defeated it, it told me I had increased to level 21 (i defeated without taking the other 2 pawns with me).

Not sure how many levels you get in the full game, but it might give us some indication as to why the combat is a bit on the easy side.

As I said, not sure if this is just common knowledge anyway, but I personally only noticed the "level up" text on my 3rd playthrough.
 
Here's my sweet father son team:
Main
ijRfEfFCnMgzw.jpg

Pawn
ibzrRI3hCCfRT.jpg


The names are place holders for the time being.
 
Reading through all this on my phone at the moment, so don't want to go through all pages. Just posting to see if it's common knowledge that you start at level 20 for the demo?

Playing for the 3rd time against the Chimera last night, just as I defeated it, it told me I had increased to level 21 (i defeated without taking the other 2 pawns with me).

Not sure how many levels you get in the full game, but it might give us some indication as to why the combat is a bit on the easy side.

As I said, not sure if this is just common knowledge anyway, but I personally only noticed the "level up" text on my 3rd playthrough.

I noticed when I killed the chimera with pawns my main didn't gain a level, but when I soloed it, the main gained a level. I'm wondering if experience is divided among the entire party.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
I think if you parry the chimera charging move (one where it dashes at you), it will fall over, like a boss.

I don't know if it's whether I did enough damage over the course of the fight or if it's just for that 1 attack, parrying its other moves didn't seem to do much other than a small stun.

it's kind of hard without a target lock system, have to always turn to face the enemy for a fighter

Prologue > Griffin fight, fighter is so fun once you get used to it, shield bash seems useless... unless I'm suppose to use it some other ways, but it's slow...

I downed it solo when I got a good hit in on its eye, maybe that's what happened.
 

demigod

Member
Those tearing in the 360 youtube videos look bad. Even worse than NG Sigma's tearing on the PS3. 7 year console and they can't bother to turn on v-sync?

BTW I played the PS3 version and absolutely saw no framerate dips. Then again, I've never seen Dark Souls dip to 5fps like people are claiming in Blight Town. There was the occasional *freeze* in Undead Burg but once I've got to Blight Town never saw it again. I have a phat PS3 with 750gb 7200rpm.


Anyone good with character creations able to make me this female wood elf? http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/1992/1243776-race_woodelf2_super.jpg
 

Eppy Thatcher

God's had his chance.
Bout 20 playthroughs of the demo now ... went after the chimera solo and won just a bit ago. Berserk style the whole way through... pose off... fights starts - hard sprint off to it's right as it moves for position on a first swipe jump past the length of it's body.. reach out and grab the base of the snake and just start hacking like a madman >:D

The rest was much more difficult... but that opening rush I think just fucked up his mojo... for all the times he just trounced me this time i was one jump, one block ... one feint ahead of him the whole time.

feelssofuckinggoodman.gif
 

Ranger X

Member
Looks like I am wishing for a game that doesn't exist yet...


I want to fighting feel of Dragon's Dogma but I really wish I was alone like in Skyrim.
The NPCs are freaking annoying, making the fight quite chaotic and they just can't shut the fuck up or stop moving. This is like dealbreaker stuff for me there. :/
 

Anteater

Member
Looks like I am wishing for a game that doesn't exist yet...


I want to fighting feel of Dragon's Dogma but I really wish I was alone like in Skyrim.
The NPCs are freaking annoying, making the fight quite chaotic and they just can't shut the fuck up or stop moving. This is like dealbreaker stuff for me there. :/

You could play alone in the demo for the prologue, just grab your pawn and kick him off the cliff, it's actually quite good/better too.

Don't know how possible it is in the full game though, since it's probably harder than this.
 
You could play alone in the demo for the prologue, just grab your pawn and kick him off the cliff, it's actually quite good/better too.

Don't know how possible it is in the full game though, since it's probably harder than this.

so I could kick my teammates off the cliff if I wanted to. That sounds pretty awesome.
 
Downloaded the demo. Had fun but also some problems. I don't really care about the black bars. I'm used to it from watching movies. Am I missing something? Or is my character going to walk that slow all the time? Even with my weapons put up she still walked super slow. Plus, I hope in the final version you can turn off all that clutter with the characters speaking on the left side. I didn't see any options when I paused the game to turn that off.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.
Downloaded the demo. Had fun but also some problems. I don't really care about the black bars. I'm used to it from watching movies. Am I missing something? Or is my character going to walk that slow all the time? Even with my weapons put up she still walked super slow. Plus, I hope in the final version you can turn off all that clutter with the characters speaking on the left side. I didn't see any options when I paused the game to turn that off.

You sprint with the left stick clicked in, and it's really fast on top of that.

You can disable the pawn stuff showing up on the options menu which you can only get to from the main menu in the demo.
 

Sentenza

Member
Meaning: "Japan doesn't understand the Internet."

You know, jokes aside I was wondering about this a few weeks ago... How it is that despise having some of the fastest internet connections in the world and very widely spread broadband, Japan websites are so clumsy and messy and Japanese developers always release media (like videos or screenshots) of such an awful quality?

Every time on a forum someone link some content from a Japanese website it's usually painfully slow and/or just terrible quality-wise.
 

monome

Member
Had a go at all three offerings of the demo :

1/Character creation is great, with a healthy amount of options and having the girl character pose with her breast nicely offered to me is a plus.
2/Prologue did give me a chance to understand the mechanics and how the story and fights would flow.
3/Griffon fight showed me the game was superior to Lost Planet 2 in which the big beasts fights were not my cup of tea.

Combat feels dynamic. I love button mashing, I don't mind having limited control over pawns. LOVE to grab ennemies. I'm very happy with an action oriented RPG, and since I've been reading a lot of Dark Souls/Zelda stuff, I'll put my two cents and say I'm much more fond a Dragon's Dogma/Zelda.

Graphics are nice, even on 102", and I'll deal with bizarro cameras and other glitches for the sake of felling like a raging warrior.

Very pleased, still pre-ordered, can't wait.
 
it's kind of hard without a target lock system, have to always turn to face the enemy for a fighter

don't know if you noticed but you don't have to be too precise about that, the fighter seems to angle his shield towards the chimera regardless of what direction you face. not sure how well that works with multiple enemies though.


Those tearing in the 360 youtube videos look bad. Even worse than NG Sigma's tearing on the PS3. 7 year console and they can't bother to turn on v-sync?

seems to be something about the architecture of the two systems that ps3 versions favour frame-drops and 360 sync tearing. regardless, if vsync was enabled for 360 the frame-rate would drop and then what would people have to compare?
 
You sprint with the left stick clicked in, and it's really fast on top of that.

You can disable the pawn stuff showing up on the options menu which you can only get to from the main menu in the demo.

Good to know. Can you turn off the button layout on the right side? I hope that is an option too in the full release.
 

Seraphis Cain

bad gameplay lol
Had a go at all three offerings of the demo :

1/Character creation is great, with a healthy amount of options and having the girl character pose with her breast nicely offered to me is a plus.
2/Prologue did give me a chance to understand the mechanics and how the story and fights would flow.
3/Griffon fight showed me the game was superior to Lost Planet 2 in which the big beasts fights were not my cup of tea.

Combat feels dynamic. I love button mashing, I don't mind having limited control over pawns. LOVE to grab ennemies. I'm very happy with an action oriented RPG, and since I've been reading a lot of Dark Souls/Zelda stuff, I'll put my two cents and say I'm much more fond a Dragon's Dogma/Zelda.

Graphics are nice, even on 102", and I'll deal with bizarro cameras and other glitches for the sake of felling like a raging warrior.

Very pleased, still pre-ordered, can't wait.

Hold on just a minute.

102"? WHAT?!
 
Just got done with the Chimera fight and really liked it.
That being said though I couldn't help but play that whole part with all these gauntlet like characters and lament over what a missed opportunity online co-op would be for this game.

Only other thing that wasn't so great was the combat. Seemed really button mashy. Coming from DS where every decision you make with your sword is a weighty one it might take me a bit to get used to.
 

wiggleb0t

Banned
Being hearing impaired makes the subtitle dialogue for pawns on the left section of the screen essential.
I can understand people not liking it and taking up valuable space however would hate for them to hear feedback and completely remove a feature like that.

As for an action RPG it's pretty awesome... It's kinda hard to get a good vibe of how big of a quest and world awaits. I'm hoping 30-40 hours main quest alone.

The daylight to night time transition seems pretty terrible.. 2nd time taking down the flying thing it went from midday to dark night time in a matter of 5 off minutes???
 

glaurung

Member
Judging by the screenshots posted... It looks like it would be very possible to make a perfect The Boss face from MGS3.

Hmm.
 

brickface

Member
It's Strider actually. You can't select your class for yourself or your main pawn in the demo. In the game you actually pick your class after the character creation.

Also I'm pretty sure the combos are (using L for light attack and H for heavy attack):
L > L
L > L > L
L > L > H

At least those are the ones I found myself using the most. The L > L one is much slower than the L > L > L which I think comes out even if you mash.

Don’t Mash! The Fighter and the Strider have timed combos that are different if you change up the timing. For instance the Fighter can do a simple three hit combo, but if you put a pause inbetween the first and second hit this can be changed to a rather fancy four hit combo! Oh and you can cancel these normal attacks into specials – do the three hit combo then cancel the last hit into Blink Strike and it’ll make you feel like Dante doing his Stinger attack!
 

Schwabe

Member
Six handy hints for playing the dragon's dogma demo

http://www.oxm.co.uk/40905/features/dragons-dogma-six-things-to-do/



If I was going to add a seventh point on to this it would be – Don’t Mash! The Fighter and the Strider have timed combos that are different if you change up the timing. For instance the Fighter can do a simple three hit combo, but if you put a pause inbetween the first and second hit this can be changed to a rather fancy four hit combo! Oh and you can cancel these normal attacks into specials – do the three hit combo then cancel the last hit into Blink Strike and it’ll make you feel like Dante doing his Stinger attack!

http://www.capcom-europe.com/blog/2012/04/six-handy-hints-for-playing-the-dragons-dogma-demo/

@brickface: i see what you did there =)
 

Anteater

Member
The daylight to night time transition seems pretty terrible.. 2nd time taking down the flying thing it went from midday to dark night time in a matter of 5 off minutes???

hmm I'm not sure about the actual transition but I remember them saying each day is about an hour real time, don't know if that's the exact time though, but it seems that you should be able to do enough within the day before it turns dark.
 

Papercuts

fired zero bullets in the orphanage.

"Much of the process will be self-explanatory, but there are a few points worth bearing in mind. If you make a tiny character, there's a moment in the game where this might be an advantage. The same can be said for making a female character too: some equipment can't be worn by men, and (cryptic hint) being a lady proves useful at least once during the campaign. That said, there's no reason you can't just pretend to be a lady. Whatever you go for in the end, remember that facial scars are cool."

Pretend to be a lady! I can just imagine what that's for. Being small having some sort of purpose seems pretty cool, I wonder if tall people have anything like being able to reach higher areas at spots.
 

moonbeam

Member
This has probably been mentioned but anyway...

Those of you experiencing tearing on the Xbox version, try changing your Xbox video output to 720p instead of 1080p.

I initially had tearing and this fixed it, at least for the 2nd adventure. I still need to re-try the first and see if the tearing has disappeared there as well.
 

demigod

Member
Someone already posted that there's still tearing on 720p.

My biggest gripe, who's the idiot that mapped run to L3?
 

burgerdog

Member
This has probably been mentioned but anyway...

Those of you experiencing tearing on the Xbox version, try changing your Xbox video output to 720p instead of 1080p.

I initially had tearing and this fixed it, at least for the 2nd adventure. I still need to re-try the first and see if the tearing has disappeared there as well.

It really doesn't. I'm not going to post my video that i recorded at 720p again, it's in one of the previous pages of you want to check.
 
I really don't know why people have a problem with run being on L3/Left thumbstick. It's not like you have to hold it in to run, just click it once and then stop moving to stop sprinting.
 
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