Game review: Dragon's Dogma

Dragon's Dogma is an RPG (role playing game) that borrows heavily from games such as Skyrim and Dark Souls but manages to etch out a place of its own.

The game starts off with your character foolishly attempting to exact justice on a dragon who has razed a fishing village.

Unfortunately, his rather rusty sword isn't much use and the dragon (quite graphically, I must add) eats the heart of our hapless protagonist.

Fear not, however, as our heartless friend gets reborn as the "Arisen" and embarks on a journey to get his heart back.

That's pretty much it in terms of storyline for the 35 hours or so it takes to get to the climax - which also throws in a love interest just to make things interesting.

The class of character you choose also shapes how combat plays out, but as you level up then you can inherit traits from other classes to mix things up a little.

The game world is expansive and often beautiful with some horrific monsters and pitfalls of you venture off the beaten track. Combat does become repetitive though, so thoughtful levelling up keeps the game interesting.

You have one permanent companion that you can level up and two that you hire on a mission by mission basis. These "Pawns" can be generic grunts or other player's characters. You can utilise their strengths and skills like organising a raid in an offline MMO game (massively multiplayer online game).

Dragon's Dogma is a game that improves with time, has some moments of brilliance but some that you can only sit and shake your head in embarrassment.

Dragon's Dogma

From: Capcom

For: Xbox 360

Rating: 4 / 5 stars