Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is an action role playing game, developed by Capcom. The original game was released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2013, before the game was finally ported to PC in January 2016.

The game starts with your character being super overpowered, with really rare equipment and dealing tons of damage, giving you a sneak peak into the type of end game content you have to come. But yes, you do get nerfed back down to the regular level 1 RPG character, in your rags and sticks for swords. You are able to choose between a number of different classes, or vocations as they are called in DD. On top of being in control of your character, you will also gain a party of up to three more “pawns”, these too take on specific roles in the group, such as tanks, damage and healers. I found this to be a really nice addition to the game as I wasn’t expecting such mechanics from an RPG game like this. The party controls and management system is basic at best, but the AI is fairly in tune with what they should be doing, and the two basic controls, attack and follow, are both really responsive as well.

The combat system in DD against the smaller style of enemies is very generic hack and slash, there is no real special combos or special abilities to come across, The warrior class is probably the most basic class to play, but is probably the one I would recommend for your first play through. Where DD’s combat system really comes into its own, is when you get to scale larger enemies, such as giants, and cyclops. This allows you to climb onto enemies backs and swing at them to deal more damage. This is a feature that I haven’t really seen incorporated into combat systems in recent memory, the last time I remember coming across it is in Shadow of the Colossus.

You can definitely tell this game was ported from the consoles as the graphics are average at best. The game is pretty poorly optimized as even though the graphics didn’t look brilliant, I wasn’t able to get the full 4k effect. The character models look pretty good once you get some more interesting looking armour and weapons to equip. Animation across the game is of a high standard though, with the regular combat hack and slash animations looking very cool when you can couple a few attacks together. You can get some really nice visual effects through the draw distance of the PC version of the game being superior, with some really nice looking environments when you are out in the open world. This is a game which is completely voice acted, all to a really high standard as well.

DD is a pretty hard game, even on the lower difficulty throughs, you will have challenges. You can really run into high level enemies without realizing it’s too late and your attacks do no damage at all. You have to make use of the game’s block system and your excessively large jump range too in order to dodge attacks and swipes. The use of the pawn system really aids the inexperienced players though, as they scale with your level too.

Whilst DD has a really large open world for you to explore, it is really tedious to travel to and from places. The lack of any staple fast travel system without having to use consumables is a real pain. There was nothing more demoralizing than getting a quest, then seeing it was at the completely opposite side of the map, only to get there, and they tell you to go straight back. This problem at times almost made me not want to continue. There is a fast travel system, but it is not easily accessible and you require items which are not very common to find in the game too.

Completing the game took me twenty hours. I will admit, I didn’t complete as many side quests as I would normally, and this was purely down to the giant map, and no fast travel system. The side quest system is also pretty in-depth too; because if you go too far in the main story line, you are unable to complete some side quests, which means if you want to go for the complentionists approach to this game, you best get that Wiki bookmarked to make sure you don’t miss out on anything! I would say there is an element of replay ability, not only does the game have a New game+ mode, but also has a speed run mode which is nice to see. You could also get another play through out of playing as a different class to change up the variety a bit.

Technically, the game is sound. I didn’t have any crashes or bugs. The graphic side of the game is poorly optimized as my rig should be able to cope with his game on ultra-settings but sadly it got some chugging and frame drops on the higher graphical options. You can tell the game is a console port as the menus are clearly made for consoles, and do not incorporate the use of keyboard and mouse very easily. That being said, I did play the game completely with a keyboard and mouse but the game could quite easily be played using a controller.

In summary, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is a really good action RPG game. The only negatives I found are the poorer graphics, and the annoying fast travel system. If these aren’t problems which will grind on you, then DD is a stellar game. The combat system is really interesting, along with an intriguing story line. If you manage to complete all of the side quests on offer, you could easily get 30 or so hours out of this game, plus any further runs you do in the other game modes. The game is really nicely priced at £23,99. I am going with a highly recommendation of this game

Tom’s Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play