I can't stand Elder Scrolls games yet I'm enjoying Dragon's Dogma, a lot. I've tried out most of the Elder Scrolls games and I don't understand why so many people like (prefer) those games.
What blows me away is all those hardcore Morrowind fans who originally eviscerated Oblivion for the flaws it had, gave Skyrim a free pass.
Hey we got dozens & dozens of cut & paste procedurally generated dungeon with little to no individuality to them.
No unique or rewarding loot or any kind of unique/difficult enemies.
Enemies scale with you, so level 1 or level 99, the fights are always the
EXACT same.
Loot scales with you, so there is ZERO reason to look for anything. Everything you find is garbage at the start & the best loot is everywhere & anywhere when you are at higher levels, so it has no value whatsoever.
The games are epitome of
anti-adventure &
anti-exploration!
Not to mention the story, combat & animation are still so bad even after years of criticism they refuse to modernize.
DD has killer combat, true sense of exploration & adventure. There is legit difficulty, but never unfair. When you find unique loot, it feels like you accomplished something.
People say the game is smaller, but on the square mileage of the map has to be similar to Bethesda game. You can run much faster in this game & the map isn't all just an omni circular design where you go over the exact same terrain for every location that can give the illusion of bigger than it actually is.