GAMES YOU PLAY AS A DRAGON HOW TO
GAMES YOU PLAY AS A DRAGON SOFTWARE

Much like in Soulsborne games, your main character in Dragon’s Dogma – the Arisen – is kind-of a blank slate that can be customized and developed in many different ways.

GAMES YOU PLAY AS A DRAGON HOW TO

Dragon’s Dogma might not pack Soulslike combat, but it’s a perfect example of how to bring tight battles and rewarding exploration, normally found in games that funnel you forward, to more open environments. While the overall mobility and travel options have been upgraded, the Lands Between look and feel like many cool places glued together instead of a big bunch of nothingness filling the gaps between key locations.

GAMES YOU PLAY AS A DRAGON SOFTWARE

Looking at what we’ve seen so far of Elden Ring (especially its map), we can infer From Software has gone bigger and more open-ended, but without losing sight of what has made their worlds click together in the past. Remember: Dragon’s Dogma wears its hack-and-slash roots on its sleeve, and the Dark Arisen expansion only doubled down on this basic philosophy. In fact, Dragon’s Dogma shines brighter when you venture inside dungeons, caverns, and dark dwellings – cramped spaces make for great combat moments in which both physical and magic attacks make quick work of the weaker enemies. The world’s limited scale could be attributed to the project’s limited budget (we know for a fact original plans were much bolder), but it’s also clear the game’s core systems and mechanics came before the level design, and not the other way around. Yes, every trek between points of interest normally becomes a blood-soaked odyssey, but Gransys is really just a bunch of big areas connected by wide roads, canyons, and a bit of goblin-infested chunks of countryside. Thankfully, it appears that Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team have picked up on many of the game’s strengths – every new Elden Ring preview has presented an evolved and more flexible take on their classic Soulsborne formula.Īs we've noticed with Elden Ring's open world, Dragons Dogma's Gransys may look daunting at first, but as you spend a few hours roaming around the map and trying to figure out the game’s structure, you begin to notice that the overworld – really – isn’t that big. In an era where action RPGs have become immensely popular, Dragon’s Dogma has as much to teach us as The Elder Scrolls, From Software’s unique efforts, or Breath of the Wild.

And I feel like it’s not part of the current conversation around open-world games at all. But the number of gamers who have actually given it a chance remains astoundingly low. If Capcom’s title was in the middle of it all, why has video game history forgotten about it? I mean, most folks know about Dragon’s Dogma, the game has received several ports over the years, and its community is dying to hear about a sequel. Dragon’s Dogma already toyed with some action RPG and open-world elements that would explode in later years, following Skyrim and Dark Souls’ popularity.

Games you play as a dragon