REVIEW : Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS4/ PS4 Pro)
Dragon’s Dogma launched in the shadow of Dark Souls on PS3 and XBOX 360 back in 2012 but immediately gathered a cult following among hardcore RPG fans. Dark Arisen is set across an open world filled with monsters and quests, it takes you on an amazing journey which will suck hours out of your life. With its release on current console we can relive the glory with better graphical presentation.
The opening moments help set the tone, that the game does not take itself too seriously which is a good thing. After playing the epic opening sequence, you are tasked with creating your character with plenty of customization options.
There are plenty of classes to choose from and each of which can be leveled up. The game has a frustrating stamina system which makes travelling long distances a chore and that is not helped with equally frustrating fast travel system which only works on few items.
The adventure begins with your village being attacked by a dragon which after destroying the village steals your heart. Without a heart you are able to drift into the rift and summon pawns into battle.
Pawns having the right equipment and abilities is the secret to success of any battle in Dark Arisen. One of the pawns is created when you travel online and help others in their adventure. This is amazing system which provides Dark Arisen a MMORPG but instead on real players you have AI.
Pawns are really helpful during battle as they heal you or provide useful battle tactics based on enemy. Combat in Dark Arisen varies greatly based on the class you choose. Mages and Rangers are long range while Knights and Striders are up close and personal. Monsters also vary in variety of shapes and sizes. Similar to Shadow of Colossus you can scale large enemies. Having the right setup of pawns makes even the most difficult battles a breeze to go through. Dragon Dogma feels natural in creating epic confrontations with a feeling of satisfaction as you overcome them with your pawns.
The Story of Dragon’s Dogma is procedurally generated which helps as the core narrative is dull and boring. The user interface does little to no support in helping the player reach next objective significant to main plot. This clunky-ness carries over to other parts of user interface as well and makes it frustrating to navigate through. A task as simple as equipping items requires lot of time, which should not be the case. All this could have been fixed in the re-release but instead it was copy pasted from the original.
Well, after ignoring all this you really start appreciating Dragon’s Dogma as it has made brilliant transition to modern consoles. It runs brilliantly and looks so much better than original.
Dark Arisen exclusive content Bitterblack Isle is also available and it contains high level enemies capable of destroying your party with ease. But rewards of killing such enemies is outstanding.
