I honestly cannot understand how Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen receives such high scores when so many of the problems with the game are clearly visible and repeatedly mentioned by players and reviewers who actually know how to evaluate games. The clunky movement, awkward camera, clunky combat, confusing mechanics, steep learning curve, poor quest guidance, tedious travelling and dated presentation are not minor details that can simply be ignored. These problems affect almost every part of the experience, and yet they somehow seem to disappear when it comes to the final score.
The first thing that immediately stands out is how outdated the game's visual presentation feels, even when compared with other games that were already available around its original release. Dragon's Dogma released in 2012, and there were already games that had established higher standards in terms of graphics, environmental detail and overall presentation. Skyrim had already released in 2011, while Dark Messiah of Might and Magic had demonstrated much more interesting physical and environmental interaction back in 2006. Fable is another strong example. The original Fable was released in 2004, almost eight years before Dragon's Dogma, and already offered a much more interactive RPG world.
The biggest gameplay problem is how poorly the game teaches its own systems. It explains some basic mechanics, but leaves far too much for the player to figure out. Quest Board objectives can become mixed together with the main quests, making it difficult to understand what is actually important and what is simply there to earn money and XP. Quest markers are also inconsistent, and sometimes I found myself running around the map trying to figure out where I was supposed to go. Even basic points of interest are not properly introduced or marked until you discover them yourself. The game expects the player to explore and learn through trial and error instead of properly teaching how its systems work. This is not a good learning curve; it is simply poor guidance.
The combat is another major problem. The movement feels clunky, the camera is clunky, and the combat itself is not fun. Even on Easy, basic enemies can take far too long to kill, while the game does very little to explain how its deeper mechanics are supposed to be used. This is one of the areas where I particularly struggle to understand the praise. I keep seeing people describe the combat as one of the game's greatest strengths, while some players and reviewers repeatedly point out problems with the movement, camera and combat. I also do not understand the argument that the game “rewards patience”. There is no stealth system built around patience; most of the time you are simply walking around and fighting enemies directly. Climbing large enemies is an interesting idea, but it is hardly revolutionary when games such as Shadow of the Colossus and older God of War titles were already doing things with large enemies and specific weak points years earlier.
Travel makes the gameplay problems even more frustrating. The map is huge, there are no mounts, and a significant amount of the game involves walking back and forth between locations. Fast travel exists, but it is nowhere near as convenient as it should be. When the game is already making you repeatedly cross the same areas for quests, not having a proper mount becomes ridiculous. Skyrim was already giving players much more freedom of movement. Dragon's Dogma does not even give you a horse. A system that already makes travelling tedious becomes even worse when the game keeps sending you back through areas you have already visited.
Then the save and checkpoint system finally gave me enough reason to uninstall the game. After exploring a large part of the map and completing several quests, I died after jumping from a cliff. I selected Retry from the Last Point and ended up roughly an hour or more of gameplay behind. Quests I had already completed had to be repeated, and areas I had already explored were no longer explored on the map. Other players have reported similar problems with the game's checkpoint/save system, so this is not an isolated experience. Whether the exact cause is considered a bug or simply an awful checkpoint system, the result is the same: I lost a huge amount of progress and had to consider repeating all the travelling and quests I had already done. In a game where travelling is already one of my biggest problems, losing around an hour of progress was enough to make me uninstall it rather than do everything again.
The NPCs and dialogue do not help either. Outside of cutscenes, characters often feel robotic, repeating the same animations while speaking, while the voice acting can sound flat and lifeless. The Pawns constantly repeat the same comments while travelling, which becomes irritating very quickly. These problems might be easier to overlook if the rest of the game were highly polished, but combined with the clunky combat, confusing quest design, weak guidance, dated presentation and frustrating travelling, they become part of a much bigger problem.
What frustrates me most is the disconnect between the problems acknowledged by reviewers and the scores they give the game. I can read a review that describes clunky movement, an awkward camera, confusing systems, technical limitations and other problems, only to see the game still receive an extremely high score because the gameplay is supposedly incredible. I do not score games that way. If the problems are serious enough to be repeatedly mentioned by experienced reviewers and players, they should also be serious enough to have a meaningful impact on the final score. A good concept does not automatically turn poor execution into a great game.
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen has interesting ideas, but the execution does not justify the reputation it has. The game feels outdated even compared with games that existed years before its original release, the PC version was not modernised properly, the combat and movement are clunky, the game barely teaches its own systems, travelling is unnecessarily tedious, and losing around an hour of progress was the final straw. I have no reason to continue playing it or to recommend it simply because other reviewers decided that these problems were not important enough to affect their scores.
[b]Score: 4/10[/b]
(1) Trash(2) Horrible(3) Very Bad(4) Bad(5) Average
(6) Fine(7) Good(8) Very Good(9) Great(10) Masterpiece
