Fighting alongside you are up to three Pawn characters. As the Arisen players have the ability to command a human-like race of things known as Pawns, which basically look like humans but have no emotion of their own. Near the start of the game the player will create their own main Pawn which will fight alongside them through thick and thin and never leave your side. However the player can also hire two other awns from various stones littered throughout the world called Rift Stones.
At these Rift Stones players will be able to select two more Pawns to join their cause through the use of an easy to understand and use search system. In this system players can find their Friends’ Pawns easy, but also can hire other players Pawns by choosing filters such as class, level, fighting style and even gender. There are a number of random pawns created by the developers, but it seems that a number of these basic pawns are inherently lesser equipped than human-created Pawns.
Hiring these Pawns takes Rift Crystals which can sometimes be obtained from monsters, but also obtained whenever the player’s main-pawn ventures into other players’ worlds and helps them out. This is done whenever the player happens to sleep at an Inn and this also happens to be the time when the player’s Pawn data is updated. Hiring Pawns within or under your level range will cost practically nothing, but hiring stronger Pawns can cost quite a lot of Rift Crystals.
However there is much reward for choosing Pawns to balance and improve your fighting style. For example, my own party consisted of myself as a Strider class who was capable of using bows, daggers and was capable of climbing monsters with ease, as well as a warrior with sword and shield, mage with healing ability, damaging spells and weapon enchantments and a powerful warlock capable of unleashing devastating tornados, pulling meteors from the sky and summoning pillars of ice from nowhere. This is only the tip of the iceberg as to how players can choose to customize their party, but considering the amount of enemies players will be facing off against it is necessary to be prepared.
While the player has plenty to do and fight while taking on the main-quests, there are a number of side-quests that can be acquired from townsfolk in need as well as a large amount of job board postings which contain everything from item collection, escorting, dueling and monster slaying. As such the player will be battling quite often and Dragon’s Dogma has done something with RPG combat that may well put most RPGs to shame, it has made nearly every fight exhilarating.
Taking on monsters is simply amazing, whether it is a simple flock of harpies, group of bandits or even large monsters, every battle will be fun to experience. Battles unfold like how one would expect them to in the real world, albeit one full of chimaeras and Cyclops. Every battle can be hectic and a bit of a messy affair as your Pawns yell out assistance or call out approaching enemies and monsters swarm around while magic flies through the air alongside blood and steel.
This effort of realism truly shines whenever the player battles against larger enemies. Seeing a chimaera roar in pain as you climb on its back and sever its serpent headed tail or a griffon crashing to the ground with its wings aflame is something that has never been seen before and Dragon’s Dogma has pulled it off almost flawlessly. These monsters are just as powerful as their size makes them out to be however so despite the wealth of tactics players can unleash; many of these encounters truly feel as if they are life and death and overcoming these foes brings forth a feeling of accomplishment usually found only for defeating major boss enemies.
Perhaps in an effort to keep in with the realistic feeling of the battle, there is a bit of an issue with the way the game’s traveling system works out. There is only one way to fast travel and unless the player finds a very rare item, the player can only fast travel to the main city. This means that there is plenty of walking and running to be had as the player makes their way, sometimes large distances, to finish quests and defeat monsters.
This ultimately turns out to be a bit of a double edged sword. The little point of this is that players can run into a number of monsters along the way and experience the great combat system, but the large edged side of this is the fact that, despite the large swathe of land players can explore, many of the quests involve lots of backtracking. This is even worse when you consider the fact that two main storyline missions involve traveling to the very same remote castle for two completely unrelated quests that happen hours apart from each other.
This problem is only compounded upon by the fact that enemy appearance patterns can become very predictable as, more often than not, enemies will always spawn in the exact same spot as always, with the only change to the monster spawns happening in the game’s beautifully handled day and night cycle system.  Even large enemies such as chimaera, trolls and cyclops can be fought again and again by returning to their spawn point. Another issue with this is the fact that running drains the player’s stamina meter which is also drained by using skills and climbing monsters. When the player runs out of stamina they slow down and eventually stop to catch their breath which makes it quite annoying when you have to trek the same exact path twenty times and fight monsters in the same spots twenty times.
Overall:
While there are certainly a few problems with the game itself, Dragon’s Dogma offers a visceral experience with some of the most exhilarating combat you can possibly find. Even if you have to listen to the constant prattling of the Pawns and long walks players will be eager to set out on their next quest to take on their next foe simply to see how amazing their next battle will be. With the ability to easily suck away thirty hours of your time Dragon’s Dogma offers a wealth of quests and monsters to beat and even a large amount of end-game content to keep you coming back for more monster slaying action.
