Dragon's Dogma

I’m playing as an archer/thief and it is really just button mashing up until now, it doesn’t sound like it gets better. Are there any modern RPGs/ARPGs that make the button mashing more tactical? I’m basically looking for a 3D dark souls alike but maybe a bit more forgiving, but not much more.

Victor Vran has cooldown powers but no iframes on dodge. There’s also Nioh and Nier: Automata more on the action side. PS4 only, with a Nier PC port later this year.

Witcher 3, maybe also Darksiders and Kingdoms of Amalur. None of these games get even remotely close to Dark Souls though.

For what it’s worth, I disagree with other people’s opinion here. I think Dragon’s Dogma is well worth sticking with, it’s a unique game and does have meaningful combat tactics. I also don’t really agree with the argument that enemies just get more hit points, even the toughest enemy in the game can be taken down quickly.

The big negative of the game though is that it lets you ruined yourself without even knowing. On one hand you can exploit the shit out of the game and make it incredible easy, but also if you don’t really figure out how the game wants you to play it can be brutally hard. Also some of the awesome set piece fights can get a bit rote the fifth time you encounter them, but that point you’ve probably played the game for 40 hours so…

Nioh could be a contender for a Dark Souls-alike. It’s like the makers of Ninja Gaiden made a Dark Souls clone with gear churn. (This is actually what it is.)

Also there’s that slightly ropey Lords of the Fallen from a couple of years ago.

Darksiders did nothing for me. The Witcher 3 is an excellent game, however I don’t really feel it’s a combat focused game, more about exploring a huge world and getting to know people… Kingdoms of Amalur is also quite good, but it goes on way too long…

I’m interested in hearing a comparison between Witcher 2/3 vs Dragon’s Dogma. I played a lot of the first Witcher and it scratches some of the same itches as Dragon’s Dogma does as far allowing you to be this sort of spellsword mercenary hunting a menagerie of fantasy beasts. If the Witcher sequels capture that same essence but with better graphics and controls, I’ll have to bump up their priority in my backlog significantly. …Makes me wonder if there’s some sort of game dedicated to Monster…Hunting…

Richard, any thoughts on the post-game for a newb? I just entered the Everfall after completing the main campaign, and I’m finding myself completely outclassed by the enemies I’m encountering. Well, enemy. A Beholder that seems to be functionally immune to all damage from me or my pawns.

The first act of the Witcher 2 is pretty good at the monster hunter thing, but after that it becomes less of a focus.

The Witcher 3 though is this crazy open world, you could just play the story, in which case you would only do a little hunting. But you ignore that and just travel from town to town doing contracts. And there are so many contracts, all fleshed out and different. This might be the game for you.

Sorry, I never got that far. I was close I think, but then decided to wait for the expansion, and then decided to wait for the HD PC version. And somehow never got back to it.

Ugh, I’m sold. I did exactly this in the first game and had a blast.

Dragons Dogma is a pretty nice game, and the pimping aspect is great.

Just remember to get ReShade running before you play.

Well I thought I’d finished this but I have no idea what’s happening now. I’m falling down a… something.

A giant endless pit where part of the city was? Try and land on ledges. It doesn’t make much sense, but you do not die or anything by “landing” on a ledge.

Well I waded through to an ending. More or less incomprehensible :/ This game would really benefit from a sequel preserving all the good stuff and presenting it more coherently. I wonder if I should go back and look at the Bitterblack DLC, which I skipped.

a lot of new content to see in bitterblack isle. its quite difficult.

This is on sale on the Humble Store right now for about $11 so I picked it up. I’m not actually sure how well my XPS 13 will be able to handle it. The PS3 version plays well enough so I’m hoping it won’t be a problem.

Your laptop will absolutely detroy it:

On a budget i5 with an half-dead 1GB 820m and a really dead hard drive choking at 4MB/sec on its better days, it is smooth as silk. Great, great port.

Really ancient looking game though. Was hard to look at after playing the Witcher or Skyrim. Would imagine anything with a 5 year old video card could run it.

I think it looks pretty darned nice! I guess I’m fortunate to have such low standards.

(psst, you are not alone. I think it is very atmospheric, and I always appreciate a game going for dark nights)

yeah, I think it looks pretty damn awesome. The first night out is incredible.