29th May 2012, 5:52 PM
This review is dead on.
<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/hdEVgvjkZgI.html?p=1" width="480" height="277" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#hdEVgvjkZgI" style="display:none"></embed>
Unfortunately, yes, the lack of "quick travel" and those other issues really mar the game. Now, I see where Dragon's Dogma was going with the lack of quick travel. A map interface like that means that instead of doing something "in" the game world, you just did something entirely by interface. That's all well and good, but Japanese games have perfected the "in-game fast travel" mechanic already. It's just a small switch from "pick a place and be there" to "here's the magical storyline reason you can do this", but it really keeps you in the game, and it's quick to do.
In Majora's Mask, the owl statues all over the world do an excellent job that something like ancient Dragon Statues could do in this game. Find a statue and activate it and it becomes a "becon" you can now warp to. Dot these all over the world, add in a cool spell animation for transporting between these places, and you've got your storyline reason for quick travel.
Yeah, I do kinda wish there was some sort of vehicle you could get in the game too, and a number of other things. I'm really hoping for a sequel to solve that, and that brings me back to his point. This game SHOULD succeed. Capcom, aside from a LOT of mistakes they've made recently, not least of which is their handling of DLC, is really taking the "massive sand box RPG" to the next level here. I love it when an outsider to a genre does something like this. For a long time, I've lamented just how DULL combat in an RPG like Fallout can be (and that goes for ALL of the Fallout games, I've got the trilogy). Granted, some of them can get really tactical to make up for the lack of action, and I LOVE me some tactics so I can look over that, but that's just not happening in a lot of the recent offerings from the big houses of Bethesda and Bioware.
It's a simple matter of opinion here, but when you go fully real time in an RPG's combat system and focus on a single player, you trade off a focus on tactics. To make up for that, the action needs to start developing, and what they've done with Dragon's Dogma is exactly how I imagined my characters were taking down massive creature in games like Final Fantasy 6 all those years ago, when I still HAD an imagination to picture how my fights were going.
Get Dragon's Dogma because it's very fun if you can escape the flaws and because it's the only way we're going to see Dragon's Dogma 2.
Bethesda and Bioware? I really hope you two are taking notes. Your next huge games better have combat like this! If I play your next game and I'm still hoping awkwardly in circles while just whittling some imp down with the same boring attacks over and over, I'm going to be upset.
<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/hdEVgvjkZgI.html?p=1" width="480" height="277" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#hdEVgvjkZgI" style="display:none"></embed>
Unfortunately, yes, the lack of "quick travel" and those other issues really mar the game. Now, I see where Dragon's Dogma was going with the lack of quick travel. A map interface like that means that instead of doing something "in" the game world, you just did something entirely by interface. That's all well and good, but Japanese games have perfected the "in-game fast travel" mechanic already. It's just a small switch from "pick a place and be there" to "here's the magical storyline reason you can do this", but it really keeps you in the game, and it's quick to do.
In Majora's Mask, the owl statues all over the world do an excellent job that something like ancient Dragon Statues could do in this game. Find a statue and activate it and it becomes a "becon" you can now warp to. Dot these all over the world, add in a cool spell animation for transporting between these places, and you've got your storyline reason for quick travel.
Yeah, I do kinda wish there was some sort of vehicle you could get in the game too, and a number of other things. I'm really hoping for a sequel to solve that, and that brings me back to his point. This game SHOULD succeed. Capcom, aside from a LOT of mistakes they've made recently, not least of which is their handling of DLC, is really taking the "massive sand box RPG" to the next level here. I love it when an outsider to a genre does something like this. For a long time, I've lamented just how DULL combat in an RPG like Fallout can be (and that goes for ALL of the Fallout games, I've got the trilogy). Granted, some of them can get really tactical to make up for the lack of action, and I LOVE me some tactics so I can look over that, but that's just not happening in a lot of the recent offerings from the big houses of Bethesda and Bioware.
It's a simple matter of opinion here, but when you go fully real time in an RPG's combat system and focus on a single player, you trade off a focus on tactics. To make up for that, the action needs to start developing, and what they've done with Dragon's Dogma is exactly how I imagined my characters were taking down massive creature in games like Final Fantasy 6 all those years ago, when I still HAD an imagination to picture how my fights were going.
Get Dragon's Dogma because it's very fun if you can escape the flaws and because it's the only way we're going to see Dragon's Dogma 2.
Bethesda and Bioware? I really hope you two are taking notes. Your next huge games better have combat like this! If I play your next game and I'm still hoping awkwardly in circles while just whittling some imp down with the same boring attacks over and over, I'm going to be upset.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)