[neo2046]

IMPRESSIONS:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthre...=427137&page=2

Dragon's Dogma
Director: Hideaki Itsuno

Dragon's Dogma has the largest development team in Capcom history. The game is fully open-world, but has a main line story you can choose to follow or you can opt to explore at your own pace. Not much was divulged about the story itself, but it does have to do with an ancient sleeping dragon choosing a warrior to be his servent, and thus you must embark on a quest to see the dragon's will done.

You can choose between three classes: Strider (think ranger) a mage, or a fighter. You hit the field and will receive objectives and sidequests and can try and complete them alone, but you are best to recruit "pawns" to your cause. You can meet any NPC in towns or out in the wilderness and have them be AI controlled team mates who will greatly assist you in taking down mythological monsters (Griffons, Hydras) or raiding a temple or saving villagers, etc.

The gameplay is fast and action-orientated, but there is lots of strategy and RPG elements under the hood. In the playable demo, you can only choose the strider, where you have a light attack, strong attack and one special move for each, in this case, daggers. You also have a ranged attack (bow and arrow) and most interesting of all, a "grab button".

In the demo, you must kill a massive eagle headed griffon, and this is where the grab button comes in handy. You can choose to fight the griffon while it's flying in the air, you hack at it when it's on the ground, but you can also grab onto the griffon from any angle you want, beak, tail, legs, then proceed to hack at it until it throws you off, or comes crashing to the ground.

Meanwhile, your fighter and mage companions can help you in various ways, the mage can imbue your daggers or arrows with fire, which will be able to set the griffon ablaze, if this happens while the griffon is airborn, his feathers will burn up, and he'll come crashing down in spectacular fashion.

The fighter meanwhile, can call to you, and let you know they will give you a boost by holding out their arms. The will then catapult you into the sky, where you can grab onto the griffon in mid-flight. Awesome stuff.

Smaller enemies, such as goblins will also join in on the battle, and pester you while the griffon flies overhead and tries to dive bomb the entire party. Once you get the griffon down to the ground, you have to work hard to slay it while it's there, less it take to the skies again. Once dead however, the griffon will be covered in blood, and it's feathers will be ripped and torn, you really feel like you just barely won an epic battle.

The sound track is fully orchestrated, and amazing, think Shadow of the Colossus, but even more bombastic.

Graphically, the game is amazing, draw distances to die for, tons of dust/rocks debris shooting all over the place when the griffon comes crashing down...

One of the most awe-inspiring sights, was when the griffon was hovering in front of the sun, waiting to attack your party, every individual sunbeam was poking through the folds of it's feathers, making it look like the most majestic fucking creature ever.