f13.net

It's Capcpom's upcoming open world RPG. I wasn't expecting much, but today I ran into this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NrCiV4LOYk4

It looks like the lovechild of Oblivion and Demon's Souls. And as a first in modern gaming, nighttime is nighttime and you can't see anything! No fast travel either if the video is to be believed.

That looks amazing!  :drill:

Reads Wikipedia: No PC release.  :sad_panda:

Well, Dark Souls is getting ported. So we can always hope.

Spectacular.

I was sold after ten seconds when he picked up and tossed that guard of the roof.

I'm sure Capcom will do an incredibly shitty PC port of the game 3 or 4 years after this is released.

This has been day 0 for a while for me. Totally stoked. Will be one of the very few games I pick up in '12. Being a week after Diablo 3 though means it won't get played til 2015.

Same here.  This has been on my short list of 2012 for awhile now.  I really hope it looks good on PS3.

I'll pick it up even though like most large semi-sandboxy titles I'll get like 5 hours into the main plot and spend 10 fucking off before I drop it.

Other than EQ1 you mean? What is the attraction to stumbling around in the dark for 12 hours anyway?

FIRE BEETLE EYES AHHHHHHH That's why I immediately dropped human.

There is a neat online component to Dragon's Dogma.  After creating your character you create a "pawn" which is a partner for you in the game.  You can then lend out this pawn to other players who rent these mercenary pawns from a pawn guild (total of 4 including yourself in a party).  When a pawn encounters an enemy and learns the enemy's weakness, future encounters with the same enemy will have the pawn shouting out tips, like suggesting to climb an enemy, target a weak spot, etc.  So you might rent a pawn for your party who has already beaten the monster you are facing and the pawn will help you with tips.

Here's a pawn video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kehVmOZZoeE&t=1m25s) with the pawn shopping center at 1m25s. Looking forward to this.

I still respect EQ immensely for having more realistic lighting than pretty much every MMOG since.  It added a LOT to the races to have very different ways of seeing; when night fell and you had infravision or ultravision the game felt very different from being human and needing that wispstone to light the area around you.  I was also enamored with the fire beetle eyes, thinking it very clever that they'd made monster guts actually useful to get.  EQ2 on the other hand just added shitty color filters that made it virtually impossible to see in night or day if you activated them, so no points there.

Just yesterday I was standing in a barrow in LOTRO thinking, "Where the hell is the light coming from in this underground room?"  And just before that, I was in the Shire skirmish and was busy being pissed off that I couldn't see shit despite being an elf.  Keen elven eyes my ass.

Oh, and side note: Amazon, Best Buy, and Gamestop all have pre-order bonuses.  Of them, Gamestop's looks the best to me.  Amazon and Best Buy both give vaguely crappy-looking free equipment that you'll probably be throwing away after an hour or two, but Gamestop's bonus is in currency to buy pawns.  And if you start off with a higher-level follower, that edge doesn't go away as they keep on gaining experience.  It'll become inconsequential at some point down the road, but never as totally useless as a rusty sword on a 20th level character.

One of my most memorable EQ moments was as a result of the really dark nights.  While playing an Erudite I was walking through the newbie zone at night and decided to walk across a bridge.  On the bridge I looked out at the water for a moment and then turned back to face the rest of the bridge, only now there was a huge snarling Troll who had approached from the south.  I actually jumped out of my seat and was promptly clobbered.  It was harsh, but made for one of the most compelling memories I have from any mmo, and it wouldn't have happened without dark nights because I would've seen him from further away and avoided the bridge entirely.

I like the sense of mystery and dread in that video, and I think it's mostly a result of the darkness.  The nighttime zombie fight looked exhilarating.

 :oh_i_see:

Elven poop.

I remember saving up my barbarian warrior pennies for days to buy a lantern, and then I figured out that I could just turn up the gamma on my video settings and make the night go away for free.

This looks really good but I'm deathly scared of AI partners.

Ditto. At one point in the video the guy sees a troll ahead and it seems like his "team" goes rushing in before he even decides to engage. On one hand I feel like it gives the player freedom to play a glass cannon class, but I have yet to play a game with NPC assistants without moments that I wanted to murder them.

We put up with it in Skyrim. *shrug*

Of all the monsters I've killed, I think Lydia tops the charts.  We didn't put up with it, we spammed quicksave constantly.

There looked like there was a Charge! button on the controller, the player may have pressed it.  Hard to tell what party commands he was or wasn't giving.

More videos, this is starting to look really good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_328000&src_vid=NrCiV4LOYk4&v=qEsVmmXQqWA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_379356&src_vid=NrCiV4LOYk4&v=_c8krHCKHDI

Is this the new wave of multiplayer? Multiplayer with out the other player?

How is it new? This type of trading assets between players has been around since Pokemon at least.

I'd probably refer to it more as asynchronous multiplayer.  You have an impact on another person's game through your actions with your follower, jut not an impact at the moment that you're playing.

I wonder if a gold sub is required for the pawn portion of the game. The answer is no (http://andriasang.com/con06r/dragons_dogma_dlc/).

I killed Lydia, maybe I can kill these "helpers" too.

Just commenting on a number of games seem to be, instead of adding multi-player, adding in some sort of proxy system.

Just like how recently, 4 is the magic number, and the unknown hero is disappearing in favor of fully fleshed out characters. ( L4D, Dead island, borderlands, ETC... )

Ah, I see. I guess then the answer is: Because real live multiplayer is still a giant PITA to build and rarely worth the effort unless it's a core feature of what your game should be. That is, unless you are just building rail cover shooter #4747, which makes things a lot easier.

This type of social interaction system (I wouldn't call it multiplayer really) would be much cheaper in programming effort and can just be tacked on to many existing designs, rather than having to build the whole game around it from the beginning.

So I think the decision is more between pure singleplayer and something like this, rather than between a full multiplayer implementation and this.

Spore used this approach, but with a better payoff because the loaned out characters were more interesting than these seem to be.

Also because Japanese companies don't seem to like keeping servers for online console games up for more than like 9-12 months unless it's something like PSO or Demon's Souls (and that was only because of DS's popularity).

</3 Capcom for closing the Resident Evil Outbreak servers. They should've released the source code or something since the whole point of the game was online play.

I'll probably be picking this up at launch.  Can't wait for the backlash here though when people realize that Capcom is just as notorious as EA when it comes to their DLC practices.

Edit:  As examples, RE5, MvC3, and Street Fighter X Tekken all had DLC that was on the disc.  Also they just announced the "True Ending" (http://www.shacknews.com/article/73055/asuras-wrath-true-ending-dlc-dated-priced) DLC for Asura's Wrath.

Demo out on PSN and Xbx (gold).  Very short, basically two monster fights.  I played through it twice for each fight because I had no idea what happened the first time.  Fun stuff!  One change I would like is to lower the amount of voiced and written party chatter, or at least shrink the size of the written chat.

Anyone know which (if any) is the platform of choice for this? I think I pre-ordered it on Xbox, just want to make sure I'm not making a mistake.

No screen tearing or frame drops on the PS3 at least. There are black bars on the top and bottom of the screen for some reason.

Went into options and there is a way to turn off the written party chat which takes up 33% of the screen.  I also turned off the giant button display and all other HUD elements which clutter the screen to an amazing degree, makes the game look much nicer.  

Tried the demo. It was ok.

Didn't much like the chaotic nature of having a squad of npcs just running around doing whatever. Climbed up on the chimera to stab the goat head. At least I think I was. It's kinda dark and it hops around a lot. I dunno, I was doing something I guess. It got knocked down every once in a while. Was that me? Probably not. Well someone did something. Walk over and stab it a bit. Stuff like that will probably be less confusing with some experience.

You don't have to bring them along.. just like you didn't have to bring Lydia. Psycho.

Tried it today. I am impressed with so many little things, and I know this is going to be a day 1 purchase for me. But I must say, the pawns are annoying as hell. They are too vocal, they are too independent and even without the chat spam it feels a lot like I am in one of those multiplayer sessions in Vindictus (or Diablo, you know) where the other three players are just grinding instances and running to the end as quickly as possible. At some point, just to try and get mor familiar with everything, I just stayed in the back while they hacked through a group of enemies and basically wiped them away while yelling tips and suggestions like there's no tomorrow. It was weird. They are optional you say, sure, but are they? I'm under the impression that in a game where you can have up to 3 companions, choosing to go around without them is probably unforgiving. Maybe a good compromise is to have one, and bring in the whole party only when things get too hard.

The whole thing -in the demo- seems a but too chaotic: pawns running left and right hitting everything and spamming chatter, enemies that cannot be locked on nor have a health bar over their head make for a difficult (for me) first approach. I can see people complaining that Mass Effect companions are too silent, but these randomly generated minions chatter doesn't give them that much personality anyway.
I wasn't expecting a new Demon's Souls, but I must admit that I was hoping for a slightly darker-toned adventure. In this regard, pitch black nights or not, the game is set on "epic" and the music is excessively in line with that. Turning down its volume isn't a bad idea.

The boss battles were fun, I loved being able to climb on them at any given point and having to chop at the tail, or being carried away by the flying one while hacking at its neck.
The one thing I really miss so far, given how confusing everything seems to be for me, is the lock-on feature.

TL:DR: Not exactly what I was wishing for, but still day 1 purchase to me. It seems really good, even though I haven't mentioned the awesome here.

I'm hoping the demo gets opened to us poor folk without gold soon. I want to play!

Demo was a lot of fun.  There' a ton of stuff going on screen, but I'm glad I have this on order.  The character aesthetics are my favorite in a game so far, I think.  The female models are beautiful without being slutty.

Yeah, put me in the "i had no idea wtf was going on" camp. Too dark, too many people onscreen, too many UI elements. I have no idea if my actions affected the game in any real way.

NPC buddies are hard to get right.

The best sort of NPC buddies are the ones that don't exist. AI pets are either too capable, in which case they steal from my play experience, or irritatingly incapable in which case they detract from the game experience. Doubly so if there's no pause feature for giving commands (and that video looked like a zerg). And putting in all this framework and not allowing co-op multiplayer?

Heck, I can't even watch the gameplay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gm-HYqq4r0&feature=related) without it making me nauseous and irritated at all the NPC chatter. And trying to do some sort of tactical control with a controller, lol. Feel free to mash your X or Y key (heavy hit and light hit, oooh, innovation).

This is some sort of "forever alone" version of an MMO I guess?

I think Mass Effect did companions right. I wasn't fond of them at first, but over time I started to appreciate their help without messing too much with what I'm trying to do. I'd extend my comment to all the three episodes.

I still prefer to go solo though, Demon's Souls style.

Xenoblade has good AI buddies. They feel effective but you can't just sit there and let them do the work either.

From what I hear the demo is not that representative of the actual game though, so maybe it gets better.

I don't know if you guys have played the demo the way MH fans have been playing it. They've been throwing the first pawn off the ledge by the dragon and soloing the rest of it. I personally don't like that. If you just play with that one pawn and don't summon the other two, I feel like you get a better feel for the game. Remember, in the game proper you have to pay for pawns that are better than you (much unlike the demo), so having less than a full party will make it more like regular difficulty.

Playing on PS3, enjoying it so far. Take my pawn, f13!

psn id: Excapase
pawn name: Xom
Pawn Class: Fighter

This just arrived in the mail.  I'm not sure what to do with it, as D3 is soul consuming.

The demo must have scared everyone away or D3 made everyone forget this and their families.

I'm holding out for a PC version, to be honest.

I've been raising a support/healing mage pawn under the theory that most players aren't gonna want to be doing that job themselves.  She's level 12 now and coming along nicely.

My PSN is Valatar
Her name is Cyllix

So far the game's really good, if just as brain-crushingly obtuse as Demon's Souls.  I'm still trying to figure out how half of the game's systems work.

MIne was shipped today (Europe), but I can't wait to put my fingers on it. Pawn info as soon as possible.

Played maybe 4 hours yesterday. I rolled a small strider because I personally value movement speed over just about everything across all games, regardless of whether or not that makes sense. Using archery and blades about evenly, and love it when there is a moneter large enough for me to climb up.  I spent a long time banging my head against a quest in the first town that I'm now convinced Im just not meant to do yet (The one down the well.) Can't wait to get home today  and play some more..


*edit* Does anyone have any insight about what will cause towns/NPC's to dislike you? I've noticed that my pawns seem to take all kinds of stuff whenever I walk into a house, so I've started doing that too. I've also climbed on top of a few cows and stabbed them in the first town. No one in town has said anything or treated me differently after these actions.

Anyone playing this on PS3 should send me a friend request on PSN, as evidently you don't have to pay for pawns you receive from friends.  My handle on there is Valatar, just mention F13 so I know you aren't just some random idiot.

I will probably buy this the first week of June.

DLC menus at launch kinda suck.  Also, the dragon's face is too fat or something. 

However, the tone and atmosphere of the game are 100% there for me.  I like it so far. 

Definitely having some Demon's Souls flashbacks with the way the game works.  I went into a cave, ran across an ogre, it beat my ass.  Went back to town, picked up some fresh skills and pawns better suited to the fight, went back to the cave, beat the ogre now that I knew what to expect from it.  Went deeper into the cave, ran across a second ogre, beat that too.  Then ran into a THIRD ogre.  :ye_gods:  After that particular trial by fire, I'm thinking that I pretty much have ogres down pat at this point.  The game is very not shy about throwing things at you that you can't deal with; without entering spoiler territory I'll simply mention that I've already encountered one literally unwinnable fight.  It took me several deaths before I realized that the game wasn't just being hard, it was putting me in a situation where I'd have to flee.

Were those the ogres in the quarry? Whats your strategy for them? I spent about an hour trying to kill the first one with no luck. I could get him low by climbing and stabbing, but it was a very slow grind and at some point he would usually catch me with a backslam. I finally just kited him over to the switch to open the gate and sprinted through to the end, then ran all the way back to talk to the guy that wanted me to open the way. He thanked me for opening the way, but said he still needed the monsters cleared.  :oh_i_see:

Oh, and I managed to clear the well in the first town. The trick for me was hiring pawns that could enchant weapons to do ice damage.

My original strategy of 'slash the crap out of their leg and hope they fall down' didn't pay off very well.  What I discovered is that headshots are the order of the day for ogres, so I stood back and shot arrows at their face a lot, then when they'd charge and fall, I'd run over and beat on their head.

So I fired the game up today, stopped by an inn to rest until morning, and discovered that eighteen people had hired my pawn overnight, netting me 56,000 rift crystals and giving her piles of monster, quest, and location experience.   :ye_gods:  So I did what any good American entrepreneur would do and used some of the crystals to buy her some blue anime hair and help out her popularity.   :grin:

I didn't forget but besides work and D3, I still have Xenoblade Chronicles to deal with.

D3 is what prevented my purchase as well. If this had come out a month ago I'd be all over it, but I just don't have the cash to drop on a game that won't get played any time soon.

Starting to get into this finally while waiting for D3 to hammer out its issues.  There's something about this game that is really reminiscent of my early gaming on NES or SNES.  I can't even remotely put my finger on it, but maybe it's just that the system and world is overwhelming.  It's not a perfect title; there's all kinds of weirdness with it.  But it really rings my bell in a good way, and likely will be one of my favorite games of this gen.  I'll post my pawn info soonish.

EDIT:  Just dropped friend requests on the two listed above for pawn usage.  Here's my info, though my pawn won't always be quite as high level as I can't play as much as I want.

psn id: T_Abernathy
pawn name: Nika
Pawn Class: Strider

I've added you, Hawkbit.  Which, if I understand correctly, means you should be able to use my pawn without spending rift crystals for her, which ought to help you progress faster.  I've been optimizing the crap out of her healing and support powers, and I think she's like level 28 now.

I tried to add her about four hours ago and it did appear free of RC charge, but I think you were online using her and it wouldn't let me take her.  If I borrow her from you while offline, you still have access to her, right? 

Yeah, your using her never actually takes her away from me, which would rather suck.

I borrowed her a bit last night and she's really helpful.  Not only is she lvl 30 compared to my lvl 12 toons, but she has your kitted out upper level spells.  And, in a totally cooled out moment this morning, she stopped me while exploring to tell me that there's a cave nearby that she knows there's treasure in. 

The fact that the pawns take knowledge away from their experiences and use it in another player's game, well that's just awesome.  It's a whole new level of DS bloodstains.

Bought the game, figures that I'm too exhausted to play it tonight. Did make a character though, very cool creation. Loved the armor set teasing. Hopefully this will make me forget Diablo 3.

So I picked this up after hearing people rave about it.

This is one of the most fun things I've played in a while, even if pretty much everything about the game outside the atmosphere and combat is pants on head and/or unexplained.

I've been having a blast though, just for the sheer amount of random shit that happens. And the crazy night survival runs that I always wind up doing after being out too long exploring. Every night winds up with a Chimera and a dozen random adds while being unable to see shit due to all the fire. I had my fun fight with a cyclops on the side of a mountain. He charged after being shot up a bit, and a mess of arrows to the back of his knee sent him over the side of the cliff for 5k xp.

My main complaint is probably the camera, which sucks horribly when they force you to fight large things in small spaces. But the pawn system is a neat idea (caster pawns suck if you give them options, though. One boon, a heal if needed, and a bunch of nukes. Giving one multiple boons just winds up with them randomly recasting them all mid fight), and I totally don't get weak spots sometimes. A bunch of arrows to the knee on an ogre knocks him down, then later in the fight unlimited arrows to the knee doesn't even stagger the bugger.

Game could use some form of distinction on bandits, too. Two identical bandits will have really different stats based on where they are with no indication that "this bandit will hand you your ass" until you hit him for 1% of his health instead of one shotting him.

If the pawn knows the monster's weakness, they'll cast the appropriate boon to screw it.  Only inexperienced pawns just cast random elements willy-nilly.  I gave Cyllix fire, ice, and holy, and she's very good about picking the correct one for any given fight.  If I'm fighting something without any particular elemental weakness like bandits, she'll just cast whatever; any buff's better than no buff, but against undead I'll see weapons start glowing white, against goblins and wolves she uses fire, etc.  Same deal for offensive spells; a pawn who knows a monster's weakness will hit them with that element, if available.

Oh, and a tip, turn off pawn subtitles in the options menu if you enjoy your sanity.  The pawns often say useful things, but not so useful that it's worth cluttering up your screen with their chatter.

For pawns, is there any difference between primary and secondary skill slots? Eg. does my healbot heal more if there are no damage spells in primary slots?

edit: my PSN tag is Jakonovski, in case someone wants to hire a certain Sir Teddy.

Primary skill slots get the bonuses of the equipped staff, secondary slots don't.  I've never seen pawns seem more inclined to use one than the other, so you're best off putting damage in the primary slots and buffs/heals in the secondary, as to the best of my knowledge a higher magic stat doesn't do anything to alter healing (since you can't heal past the same point in any event) or buffs.

Cyllix is crazy good as a pawn. 

I'm adding Jakaonovski on PSN soon-ish.  I wish my pawn were stronger so I could reciprocate the goodwill of pawn use.

Someone borrowed my pawn, and when she came back she doubled my RC and brought back a ton of knowledge. 

Have I mentioned that this game is massively huge?

Started playing this in earnest. The world feels so big when there's no fast travel to trivialize everything. Currently escorting a dude to the middle of nowhere, walked right past a dragon stomping around in a forest. Kinda scary.

The combat is so great, sounds and feels like utter chaos, just as it should. Fought a  pack of goblins. First one of the big guys throws a smoke bomb at me and I flail around barely seeing anything. I recover and start kicking ass, until some of them suddenly frenzy and start killingl my pawns. Not to be taken lightly, the mobs in this game.

edit: does anyone else get attached to the non-leveling pawns? It hurts me to swap them.

Picked up this game on Friday.  It's rough around the edges in any number of ways, but the gameplay is phenomenal.  I'm liking it more than I liked Diablo 3, and the pawn system is unbelievable fun.  I'm enjoying my pawn so much that I sometimes upgrade her possessions before my own.

I think travel times will eventually become an issue.  I like the idea of having to move everywhere without any fast travel options, but with a busy work schedule I'm not sure how long my enthusiasm will last.  As Hawkbit said, the game is positively enormous.

PSN name is Ruvaldt, by the way, if anyone wants my pawn.  Level 18 or so Holy/Fire Mage that I'm hoping to keep as a healer.

Current list of f13 PSN IDs for pawn usage.  Use them, they're free.  If you want your name removed from this list, just post here or PM me.  I'm going to leave pawn information off this list because a few people have changed pawn classes.  Best to simply search from the Rift menu for the info.

Excapase   (Bann)
Jakaonovski   (jakonovski)
Ruvaldt   (Ruvaldt)
T_Abernathy   (Hawkbit)
Valatar   (Kitsune)

Jesus, this game's combat delivers so much. I just had a fight against an Ogre, was about to get my lowbie ass kicked when I managed to dodge so that it charged right off a cliff and died from fall damage. Now to trek down there to see what it dropped...

The last bit of this game (the post-game) is .. really fucking strange and makes me happy that the other 99% is plot-light and fun to play. What the shit, game.

The post game is crazy hard, by the by. Fun, but holy shit.

Teleport options are available, if not exactly cheap and somewhat limited in destinations.  If I'm way the hell away from the capitol and really don't feel like walking back or am caught in the middle of the night without any good spot to rest, I'll burn a ferrystone.  Otherwise I'll just walk.

The map is also littered with quick travel routes (well, "quick") to the odd places you'll have to go. Blue Moon Tower is the only place that's a bitch to get to, and you get something there to help.

Just picked this up last night and am really annoyed that I have to attend a training session after work. From everything I've read about the game, it sounds like a damn fun game despite all of the quirks.

8 hours to go.

I've gone through and added anyone who was missing from my friend list. 

One thing I learned recently is that you can equip other peoples' pawns.  It's a one-way thing; once equipped you can't get it back from them, so it's effectively an extra gift on top of any item you hand them to take back to their player.  But before anyone gets the idea to twink out everyone else's pawns with top-tier stuff, I also discovered that the game penalizes you if you're using an item below the level the game expects you to have it.  So be sure to put stuff on your buddy's pawn that is more-or-less of the appropriate level for it before sending it home.

Before it expects it being progress in the main quest, or being character level? I ask since I found it odd on starting a NG+ that my main character with an end game sword still takes about 5-6 hits to kill a bandit leader.

Raw level, to the best of my knowledge.

So does the game play better than the demo? I played the demo and I didn't really like it (although it was cool that characters could jump on monsters).

Significantly better.

Also, I didn't really get into the full game until two or three hours in; it is rough around the edges, and that's most glaring in the beginning.  Now that I'm actually going through dungeons I'm even more hooked.  Just when you think an area or dungeon is trivial the game throws something really exciting at you that makes you rethink how you're playing.

The demo is... frankly sort of bad, in comparison to the game.  It just throws you in without a clue about how to play, what you're doing, how your class works, anything.  All knowledges that are really important for being able to enjoy the game.

We're still pretty early into this year, but I suspect this will be at least my GOTY or a very close runner up. 

There's weird bugs all over, but the game is so much better than all that.

Post up if you want to share your pawn - I'll keep this thread updated with new PSN ids for pawn usage.

Did anyone get this for 360?

Yes. The game is a little rough. Lip synch (and the v/o over accompanying text) is often off by over a second, there's screen tearing and my character's hair keeps going through his clothes. But fun so far (I've only played 4 hours though).

I am planning on picking it up today or tomorrow.

Lip sync is similarly stupid on the PS3, they really dropped the ball on that part.  And there's occasional slowdown when lots of spells are going off at once and filling the screen with fireballs.  Aside from those two obnoxious bugs, I've not encountered anything terrible.

The transitions between gameplay and cutscenes are also often quite rough.  Sharp elbows stuff though when contrasted with the fun of the gameplay.

I agree with the mute protagonist giving the "the shit is wrong with you people, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON" face the entire game.

I love the gameplay, though.

Nixel is my Live ID. Add me and we can swap pawns.

I discovered in my inventory a golden weapon worth 150k gold. I hope it's not useful for anything else because I cashed it in immediately. Also, the big  thingie in the southwest. Is it quest related or are you supposed to just kill it for funsies and lewts?

I sent a request.  My id is SteakFury.   I have a mage pawn.

For #1: they're basically cash, they say it in the description usually. I actually had one for a while that was leagues better than my normal gear though.

For #2: he's in the way when hiking to a quest, but he's basically a random "ambush". There is loot in them there hills, though! Including one room of it that's a bit tricky to notice.

Awesome, I'll accept it when I play tonight. My pawn will probably be an Archer.

You can change your pawn class, too.  Just in case you didn't know. 

The depth of game here is pretty amazing, and for as much as the follower banter is annoying, the pawn concept is fantastic.

The shame of this system is the one character per account thing.  I really want to try the Mystic Knight out, but taking so many levels in Fighter to get the improved blocking augment would be unkind to my magic stat, which I desperately need as a Magic Archer.  It's my understanding that after level 100 the stat increases dip to a relatively inconsequential level, so I may just wait till then to toy around with the other classes.

I'm slogging through this slowly because of work/school/other games.  Last night was some of the best fun I've had in a single player game, maybe in my top five all time.  Spoilered because it was part of the main quest.


So, so much awesome going on in this game.  I've been doing the sky DLC, too.  I'm up to about 20 coins now.  It seems kinda dumb for DLC to basically do a guided easter egg hunt, but I'm digging it.  It has shown me other parts of the game I might have missed had I not gone to that area for the medal.

I had a similarly amazing fight last night involving a canyon, two cyclops, a ballista and a small army of goblins.  There were moments in which it felt like I was taking part in a big budget fantasy film, firing flaming ballista arrows at a cyclops, and then leaping from the edge of a cliff onto his head, where I grabbed hold of him and began clubbing him about the face.  Enthralling stuff.  Before I knew it it was 3:00am and now I just want to play more.

I also encountered my first dragon, and it did not disappoint.

I have too many things to play at the moment so even if I have the game and I am liking it a lot I can't put in it the time it deserves. My PS3 name is Falconeer (for all I know) and my pawn is named Suomenlinna, she's going to be a full time healer but right now a very low level one. It was nice to realize that due to our previous PSN friendship Cyllix, Kitsune's pawn, was already in my rift waiting to be picked up when I accessed it for the first time. Really smooth and cool.

My only gripe so far is the lack of a target lock. Sorry but after Dark/Demon's Souls it's hard to convince me that an action RPG can be better without it. Or there is one?

Falconeer: There's no 'target-lock' in the way you're thinking of. There does seem to be a certain level of "assist" though in that I can point in the general direction of a mob, hit my Cutting Wind button and I will dash towards that target even if its moving laterally to my initial aim point. Can't speak for any other melee classes but that's true for my Strider/Assassin/Magic Archer toon.

Edit: Oh yeah, game is phenomenal. Haven't really felt the same sheer sense of "adventure" since my newbie days of early Everquest

There's a sort-of lock on in that when you're firing up some ranged abilities like spells you will see a targeting icon, and it does 'stick' to an enemy so you don't have to have pinpoint precision to get the damage to go where you want it.  In the case of Magic Archers, there is an ability with a literal lock on where it will hit up to ten things at a time with one shot.  In the case of large monsters, you can actually lock onto multiple hit locations simultaneously with it, and I never get tired of drawing my bow and watching target icons spring up all over a cyclops before I shower magic bolts into it.

One thing to note for Magic Archers is that their abilities are naturally elemental.  Unlike most everyone else who needs a buff cast on them for their attacks to do fire damage, etc, their attacks have an element inherent to them.  Some of the descriptions flat out state that they do fire or holy damage, but even the ones that don't like sixfold shot (which does ice damage) have an element.  When in doubt, watch for the color of the arrows when you fire them for a clue about what element is involved in the attack.

Picked this up over the weekend for 360. Pretty addictive so far - though I'm learning to save frequently, as my explorer tendencies have brought me in to a few areas I clearly am not ready for.

Bunktavious on XBL

Added you.

I already have the urge to restart. Picked Warrior and not feeling the combat. Watching my Hunter pawn is making me jealous.

Don't need to restart, you can just swap classes when you reach the big city.

It takes up points doesn't it? Or do they not mean that much?

It's 1000 for the basic classes, 1500 for the advanced.  I usually net 2000-3500 on a single dungeon run at lvl 24, so it's really chump change when all is said and done.  Mobs respawn, so you won't run out of XP to put into points. 

I'm sitting on around 40,000 unused points right now, so no, it's not arduous to pay to unlock extra classes.  It's a one-time unlock; once you've paid you can switch to that class at any point in the future without cost.

Yeah, class switching is the spice of DD and it's practically free. I've gone Strider->Ranger->Assassin at level 30 and I'm still drowning in points.

Another thing I dislike, the lack of a roll/evade function. Or can you pick up something like that later? When a big bad monsters lunges at me I love to be able to, you know, step aside.

Also, I fought the hydra at the very start of the game, when you wake up and it is ravaging the camp. My pawns kept telling me to chop the head off but I just couldn't do it since at that point I was still struggling with the lack of a target lock. Well, after 5 minutes like this, pathetically hitting the body or the tail and trying to figure out how to get at the head, and after my pawns had been swallowed by the hydra (!), the thing just... died. I know for a fact I didn't land a single hit on the head and while there was some TNT in its neck I certainly am not the one that threw it there or made it go boom (how am I supposed to hit the barrel without ranged weaponry?). So yeah, after 5 minutes of aimlessly flailing at the monster, it just chopped its own head off out of pity I suppose, and still all the NPCs proceeded to call me Arisen and cheer me for my amazing feat.

 :awesome_for_real:

I know I am still in the tutorial-ish part of the game, but this is the third boss fight already and while cool looking it played out as a complete farce. This thing has a tendency to play on auto-pilot and I am not sure how I feel about it.

There's no autopilot after the Hydra fight, believe me. As for combat rolls, I believe that's a Strider/Ranger talent I believe, along with double jump.   

Yea, the Hydra fight was kind of silly. I "heroically" chopped its head off and saved the day. What I really did though, was ride around on its back for five minutes while it crashed through town, then shot a couple arrows at it from 200' away after I fell off. That somehow beheaded it...

Anyone using Cyllix should release/renew her (haw, networking humor!)  I just finished getting her to rank 9 in sorcerer for the cast speed boosting augment and upgraded her gear, in addition to getting a pile of extra levels and knowledges on her.  She should now be a better pawn in most every respect.

So, if I use your level 50 pawn with my level 7 main character, am I actually playing the game in God Mode?

Not precisely.  She's pure support, heals and buffs, so she won't win a fight for you on her own while you go off for drinks.  But she should make life considerably more convenient with those buffs and heals.

Cyllix is fucking awesome.  I wouldn't call it God Mode, but she has helped turn the tide of a fight quite often. 

Got this yesterday for PS3 and really enjoying having a game that scares me. Getting stuck in the swamp in the dead of night was pretty epic. The pawns I had with me and their advice was the only thing the kept me sane.

Going to start friending to check out your pawns!

I've been also playing this for few days now. The game is freaking hard at points. I don't know in what order you are supposed to do stuff in the beginning, but after the prologue I head for Witchwood and while the woods are not that difficult the bandits on the way murder me.

Also running back to civilization half dead in the middle of the night while being chased by a pack wolves is pretty awesome.

My only gripe so far is the stupid AI and pathfinding. Pawns get stuck behind small cliffs they can't climb up and are too stupid to run around. Also put  a group of bandits with both melee and archers with them and at least rogue and mage pawns just run towards them, get hit by something and run back and repeat until they die while doing nothing useful. Especially mages with weapon buffs and heals decide to cast shit in the rain of arrows that causes them to dirt nap fast.

This game is very engaging.  I managed to stumble on the hydra head escort mission at about dusk, thinking the midcastle was perhaps someplace I could avoid being killed, so Mercedes started rolling the cart.  Did the mission at night, which was interesting.  About the time I could see the sky brightening, we arrived at Gran Soren.  This is now somewhere in my Top Ten Moments of Gaming.

I liked when I saw there was an augment skill that increased the radius of the lantern light and decided it was a must have based on assorted moments of terror. Also, I started planning long journeys based on the daylight schedule and departing at night so I will be in daylight when things start to get nasty. It makes me realize there's a fine line between inconvenient game mechanics that are annoying and those that add atmosphere and enjoyment. For example, repairing gear in Olbivion, while realistic, was annoying.

I was very skeptical of this game, so much so that I decided to rent and not purchase.  After playing it, I found a lot to like about it and alot also to dislike.  My main gripe was how unforgiving parts of the game was.  After this I also found myself wondering where to go on many of the missions which was frustrating.  Operationally I also had problems as I had alot of trouble outfitting the pawns. 

You wold have thought that it would have been as simple as buy an item then order it to be worn by a pawn. 

The combat though was really exciting and for every problem I had there was a lot to like such as the truly intense night combat.  Bottom line is its a good game but there are alot of hmm what do I do now moments as well.

Fuck, now I want to buy this. I STILL havent finished Dark Souls. Although I do have around 120 hours invested in it, over 4 characters.

This is a great game, I own it and love it, but nowhere near Dark Souls. That game, and Demon's Souls, are just the best ever.

I think the comparisons to Dark Souls is unfair to both games.

Started this a couple of weeks ago and love it, I don't have much time to play during the week but try to catch up on weekends. Level 27 at the moment and about to start the last Wyrm Hunt quest (saved the escort quest for last).

Not much to complain about so far, maybe the pawns should sometimes have more initiative picking up items and less initiative on wandering around picking fights, but those are small issues. Also I was positively surprised when I noticed a hired pawn start mining while we were strolling through a dungeon, never thought pawns were capable of doing that on their own.

Aeternus72 on PSN.

You can buy items to change their inclinations, from a guy in the encampment near the riftstone.

Wow.  I just got bit by the corrupt save data bug.  My bad for not backing things up, but in my 4+ years of owning a PS3 I've never needed to. 

2/3 of the game finished, level 32.  Now I have to start totally over.  This went from being in my top 3 games this year to being the worst game experience in the past few years.  Maybe 50 hours lost?

Back up your saves, folks.

How do you notice the bug? Reload?

My saves are shot up to PSN nightly so I suppose I need to do a test reload before I go to bed.

Yeah, I played this morning for a bit, then when I went to play today it was corrupt. 

In reading about it, when PSN+ members upload their saves, those saves are corrupted too.  PSN is actually saving the corrupted file.  So all the recommendations are to do a daily USB backup. 

I filed a support ticket with Capcom, but I suspect I'll hear squat.

http://www.capcom-unity.com/dragonsdogma/go/thread/view/122057/29154085/Hey,_thanks_for_the_single_save-file_system,_Capcom...

Yeah, ever since I had my power cut off in the middle of a game, I've been making occasional backups onto USB.  Just in case.

ARISE!

So I just finally got this via Gamefly.

Are any of you XBox folks still playing it? In any event, if you see my username add you please to accept so's I can use your pawns and vice-versa.

Totally late to the party, but finally picked this up for Xbox. If the handful of you that have this for Xbox see an XBL request from TheToxicWaltz and don't mind me fondling your pawns, please accept. If I understand correctly the pawns should still be available even if you no longer are active, though they may not level or something to that effect.

This game is being re-released April 23 at $40 with the base game and a new xpac.  They're supposedly cleaning up some of the UI, better travel and other systems, hopefully with some bug fixes.  It is supposed to be available day 1 from Live and PSN.

I'll likely rebuy, even though the game seriously fucked me over last year.  Enough time has passed that I think I can try it again.  Such a damn good game.

http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2013/1100.html

Man I forgot about this game.  When I saw the title I was about to go to Amazon and buy it since I'm needing a new game to play, but I guess I might as well wait until april.

Head's up: This launches on Tuesday.  I'm grabbing it for a second playthrough, though I'll remember to backup my saves frequently.  Fingers crossed they didn't hose the base game up.

I'll be on PS3 if you want to see my pawn:  T_Abernathy

Supposedly this has been turned into a franchise and we should see a DD2 in the future.

Idle pawns are available (and if you run into a cock block quest like the early witch quest, pick up a mid/high level pawn to help for free), and still gain their rift crystals. I came back to this after like a year, and had some million fucking crystals waiting for me.

Too lazy to read elsewhere: can I buy the xpac and get the bugfixes?  I'd rather not buy it twice.

It's essentially a re-release with additional content and bugfixes.  You can still start from the beginning of the original game and access the new stuff at some point with this new release.

Which is fine by me.  I loved the original.  I really hope this is made into a franchise.

I just picked this up for PS3, having never played the original but hearing good things about it.

Is anyone I'm friends with on PS3 into this? I want like, pawns or something, right?

I haven't played in a while, and I don't know if we are PSN Friends.  But you know, I have a pawn.

You can add me as T_Abernathy for PS3.  My pawn is a 18 mage that is healing focused.  Nothing special. 

I'm running with two F13 pawns, one is Cyllix, a badass 55 healing mage and a lvl 33 magic archer.  It's almost too easy with those pawns, and there's not much that I'm having trouble with yet.  However, I have played through the first three chapters of the game before.

Super PROTIP:  get a USB thumbstick and backup your saves to it every day.  I'm not sure if this new version fixed the save synch error from the base game, but I don't want to find out again.

Also:  This wasn't announced, but ALL previous DLC for the base game is included in the new game.  It works a bit differently, in that they don't just give you the stuff after buying it from PSN.  Instead, all the previous gear is for sale from:


I think there's other new DLC, but I'm not sure how to buy it yet, as it's not on PSN.

I'm Ruvaldt on PSN.  Feel free to add me; I have a pawn available.

I got the expansion some time ago but still haven't installed it, I guess I'll wait for them to fix the save issues first. I still have a lot of the base game to finish though.

My pawn (Eclipse) is a level 30 sorcerer, I'm Aeternus72 on PSN if you want to use it.

Im SJSLongshot on psn, i plan on addin you guys so i can mooch the pawns.

I just checked and apparently I changed my pawn's job to mage for some sort of skill-learning that I can't remember.  So he's a lv30 mage but is obviously not really a mage just at a glance.  Good luck!

The saved game bug still exists. Also I had been using some pawns that belonged to friends, and after I made a new game because the old one was corrupted, I can no longer search for pawns by player ID or even see my friends pawns. I am sad.

Some people need to accept friend invites, so i can mooch...i mean appreciate the quality of your pawns.  :-)

But I'd have to turn on my PS3!

As always, I've picked the version that no-one else is playing and am on the 360.

All the reviews said it was the better version due to the frame rate!

Plus side - this game really is freaking superb. Skyrim plus Demon Souls = fantastic.

The game keeps surprising me with well done bits.

I finally tackled this--it was sitting all lonely in my Steam backlog.

Like Pennilenko says, it has some really strangely well-done bits hiding amid the not-well-done bits. A strange game. Some fantastic writing and quest design and some really bad quest design.