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Dragon's Dogma Demo Impressions

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I believe you can manually wake up pawns and they can do the same for you. Not sure about an actually "awakening" spell that was in play...

The mages are using weapon enhancements though and I can't tell what they are or when they are activated (I can see some obvious fire effects, but there is a "green aura" spell I want to know about). Would be nice to know. I think there will probably be many buffs in the final, would just be nice to see.
 

ReaperXL7

Member
I was fighting the Griffon in the demo, I had latched onto it as it took off into the air, it had gotten pretty far up as I was stabbing it to death but finally bucked me off, but as I was falling one of my pawns actually jumped out underneath me, and caught my character as he was falling.

Have to admit, that was pretty badass, it's the little touches like that, that make me think this game is going to have some awesome moments. I still have some doubts, and concerns about the game, but I do think that the game is going to be pretty awesome in terms of some pretty awesome "oh shit" moments.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
The mages are using weapon enhancements though and I can't tell what they are or when they are activated (I can see some obvious fire effects, but there is a "green aura" spell I want to know about). Would be nice to know. I think there will probably be many buffs in the final, would just be nice to see.

By green aura you mean the healing spell? You need to stop and stay in the green burst to recover HP. There is a catch though as the healing spell won't heal you to full health. It's a bit like the blood damage thing from FFXIII-2. Only items can heal you to full health. I guess it was a way to balance the game since stamina recovers quickly.
 

Anteater

Member
Is there any way to see what the pawns are buffing us with in the demo? When I throw my pawns off a cliff in the first encounter and I fight the boss alone, he constantly puts me to sleep. But with pawns I never get put to sleep (by the boss or the harpies). I assume the mage is blocking whatever spell is causing the sleep.

There are icons beside your hp bar that shows what buffs/status effect you have I think
 

Synless

Member
I played both versions.

I feel like the PS3 one is actually a little sharper, but has more pop-in. Is there a difference in AA implementations? Is it FXAA on both? The 360 had a little more blur to it...it could be that the PS3 one is using lower quality (or none?) motion blur. I liked the sharpness. The framerate is definitely worse. And it didn't really seem consistent. 360 one tears fairly frequently if you have an eye for it.

Uhhhhh so I like the letterboxing. I MUCH prefer that to upscaling the 300p image or whatever to full res. Love my old 720p for these crappy consoles!
PS3 version also has less foliage ala Red Dead Redemption.
 
Made a new character.

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Kind of reminds me of Alexis Krauss.
 
Just played through the demo having absolutely no knowledge of this game at all. Capcom thinks this crap will sell 10 million copies?!?! It feels like a poor mans Demons' / Dark Souls.
 

web01

Member
Just played through the demo having absolutely no knowledge of this game at all. Capcom thinks this crap will sell 10 million copies?!?! It feels like a poor mans Demons' / Dark Souls.

As far as the combat goes I agree. Sadly people are willing to overlook that in these type of open world games.
 

Anteater

Member
As far as the combat goes I agree. Sadly people are willing to overlook that in these type of open world games.

What's wrong with the combat? Get rid of the pawns without all the overleveled pawns murdering everything and you got yourself some really flexible combat playing as Fighter, with stamina management, strict timing with guarding and timing based combo, and this is just the prologue so we don't know what skills there are with Fighters, but as far as combat and controls it's a lot better than most of the open world rpgs out there.
 

Ratrat

Member
Just played through the demo having absolutely no knowledge of this game at all. Capcom thinks this crap will sell 10 million copies?!?! It feels like a poor mans Demons' / Dark Souls.
I hope you examined the breadth of attacks and combos instead of just spamming the 2 attack buttons.
 

mollipen

Member
Just played through the demo having absolutely no knowledge of this game at all. Capcom thinks this crap will sell 10 million copies?!?! It feels like a poor mans Demons' / Dark Souls.

It's nothing like Demon's / Dark Souls, nor is it trying to be. You'd make far more sense saying that Capcom was trying to make their own Skyrim, but it's not that either.
 
There are definitely some similarities to DS, but it's a very different game.

What's wrong with the combat? Get rid of the pawns without all the overleveled pawns murdering everything and you got yourself some really flexible combat playing as Fighter, with stamina management, strict timing with guarding and timing based combo, and this is just the prologue so we don't know what skills there are with Fighters, but as far as combat and controls it's a lot better than most of the open world rpgs out there.

The balancing of this game is my main fear. A recent example of balance gone wrong is Xenoblade, it basically plays itself. On the other hand when getting rid of the pawns it might be too hard and battles could take forever.

PS3 version also has less foliage ala Red Dead Redemption.

Really?
 
The balancing of this game is my main fear. A recent example of balance gone wrong is Xenoblade, it basically plays itself. On the other hand when getting rid of the pawns it might be too hard and battles could take forever.
The nice thing about the pawn system is that it should make the game easier to self-balance. You can work your way down from three pawns to none until you find your sweet spot.
 

BeeDog

Member
It is clearly less dense foliage. The RDR comparison might have been overkill.

Third pic down shows it perfectly, missing shadows on the wagon too.

Not seeing this either. I would still chalk it up to being due to lighting differences (different offsets between the consoles) and the difference in sprite positions (since the foliage is actually moving in this game), but the actual amount of foliage seems the same to me. Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't see any differences on this front.
 

Anteater

Member
The balancing of this game is my main fear. A recent example of balance gone wrong is Xenoblade, it basically plays itself. On the other hand when getting rid of the pawns it might be too hard and battles could take forever.

Yeah, one of the issues I'm worrying about too, I have a feeling the balance is easily exploitable through grinding, was shown many times in stream that they could murder through lowbie areas, but I don't think the core combat itself is actually as bad as some are trying to make it out to be. If anything it's one of the most flexible one with a lot of combat options.
 

Synless

Member
Not seeing this either. I would still chalk it up to being due to lighting differences (different offsets between the consoles) and the difference in sprite positions (since the foliage is actually moving in this game), but the actual amount of foliage seems the same to me. Maybe I'm just blind, but I don't see any differences on this front.
Possible I suppose, maybe it moving and the lighting is what's throwing it off. I am seeing a difference though, especially in the sixth shot.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Yeah, one of the issues I'm worrying about too, I have a feeling the balance is easily exploitable through grinding, was shown many times in stream that they could murder through lowbie areas, but I don't think the core combat itself is actually as bad as some are trying to make it out to be. If anything it's one of the most flexible one with a lot of combat options.

At least grinding is left to player's choice, pawns, on the other hand..
 

Anteater

Member
At least grinding is left to player's choice, pawns, on the other hand..

Well Pawns are kind of the player's choice too, I think they said the difficulty would be based around your pawns, and it also shows that you're rewarded with more exp with less pawns (and low level pawns), we just don't know how it's balanced in the real game. Journalists seems to say the enemies could be dangerous, and we're only shown a small piece of the game with the demo.

And I think the pawns won't be this smart and strong right off the bat, since you're limited by Rift currency on hiring them, higher level ones will cost a lot more, etc.
 
Classes are preset in the demo. Wish I could test out a mage. :<

Ok, thanks.


I loved the demo, it sold me on the game. The combat is really awesome, it's more like an action game than an RPG actually. I don't understand how you could compare it to Skyrim, it's light years ahead in controls, depth and physics.

Two things that bother me though:

- The art style, it's so generic. It looks like random western fantasy RPG XXXVII, and the game really needs some color, in the chimera part I had a hard time figuring out where the enemies were because everything including environment, characters and enemies is brown and grey.

- No coop, this game is so perfect for it. Multiplayer would give this game so much replayability and could keep it popular for a long time, much like the Souls games keep players coming back for online.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Pawns are no different. You don't have to use them in the full game.

Well Pawns are kind of the player's choice too, I think they said the difficulty would be based around your pawns, and it also shows that you're rewarded with more exp with less pawns (and low level pawns), we just don't know how it's balanced in the real game. Journalists seems to say the enemies could be dangerous, and we're only shown a small piece of the game with the demo.

And I think the pawns won't be this smart and strong right off the bat, since you're limited by Rift currency on hiring them, higher level ones will cost a lot more, etc.

Good to know.
As i said in a previous post, my ideal would be a team of 3 (me included) 4 seems too messy, alone you'd be missing out and 2 is also alright.
 

charsace

Member
Just played through the demo having absolutely no knowledge of this game at all. Capcom thinks this crap will sell 10 million copies?!?! It feels like a poor mans Demons' / Dark Souls.

The combat is different from the Souls games. Its more like a simpler version of NG/DMC than it is a Souls game. This really didn't click with me until I played the countryside quest a few times and figured out that there are combo variations. And You can't really see this because the Pawns are around. The combat in the souls games are more rigid.

People say the art style is generic. They are going for medieval fantasy. Going crazy with all the designs would make no sense. Basing the world on medieval times means they have to show some restraint in the clothing designs. Women back then weren't wearing cut off shirts and miniskirts.
 
Am I the only one who thinks the graphics look terrible? Everything from textures to lighting looks terrible, it looks like something that might pass at the start of the generation. It looks miles worse than games like Skyrim which is open world to boot and it even looks worse than Dark/Demon's souls and they have like a tenth of the budget of this game.
 

entremet

Member
Other than the thematical influences of both Souls games and this I'm not seeing the comparison at all. Game plays very different.
 
The only Dark Souls vibe I get is the look and feel of the main menu. The gameplay is nothing remotely Souls-esque. Count me among those that think the graphics are a huge downer too. Not sure how old the demo is, but I assume there's hope that the final will be much better.
 

Anteater

Member
Am I the only one who thinks the graphics look terrible? Everything from textures to lighting looks terrible, it looks like something that might pass at the start of the generation. It looks miles worse than games like Skyrim which is open world to boot and it even looks worse than Dark/Demon's souls and they have like a tenth of the budget of this game.

You're not the only one, pretty sure a lot of people thought the same thing about the graphics, I thought the open field looks kind of ugly too, it's a bit blend, and the pop ups and a lower framerate really makes it look a bit rough, I'm hoping it's like an early build since it's the same demo from a year ago at E3 and other conventions.

I think the art looks fine though, the lighting, animated environments and attention to details like wet clothes and hair makes it stand out, the hair animates from what I can tell, in terms of art it looks great, but I think it should've run and look better technically considering it's a new version of MT framework
 

Skilletor

Member
That just sounds silly..those other pawns will giv e you so much information..

So does a strategy guide, but sometimes figuring things out in your own is more fun.

I'm not going to use pawns. As I said before, this game looks like knowing your enemy will lead to victory. Knowing patterns, attacks, weaknesses, being able to dodge and parry, etc. It seems like you'd be able to beat any enemy if you know how to exploit its weaknesses, no matter your level.
 

Patryn

Member
So does a strategy guide, but sometimes figuring things out in your own is more fun.

I'm not going to use pawns. As I said before, this game looks like knowing your enemy will lead to victory. Knowing patterns, attacks, weaknesses, being able to dodge and parry, etc. It seems like you'd be able to beat any enemy if you know how to exploit its weaknesses, no matter your level.

Videos with the developer playing seem to indicate otherwise. Operative word being seem.
 

ironcreed

Banned
So does a strategy guide, but sometimes figuring things out in your own is more fun.

I'm not going to use pawns. As I said before, this game looks like knowing your enemy will lead to victory. Knowing patterns, attacks, weaknesses, being able to dodge and parry, etc. It seems like you'd be able to beat any enemy if you know how to exploit its weaknesses, no matter your level.

I think it will be fun to try sometimes and plan to, but I am ultimately going to stick with my pawns for the most part. As the game is built around it and there will no doubt be encounters where support that requires abilities you do not have will be called for. In which case, I wish you luck in trying to play the entire game alone. It's your game, play it how you want.
 

Anteater

Member
Can you adjust how often the pawns talk? I remember someone mention that being an option, but I don't remember it being confirmed or not, since it's not in the demo, if you could make your pawns shut up with their tips, it would probably make it a lot better, I too would like to explore myself and try things out for myself, but I don't mind the concept of pawns and how they learn about quest info.
 
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