Very disappointed with Dragon's Dogma after all the GAF-hype. Outside of the great battles against large monsters and dragons, it seems below-average in just about every other aspect.
Blah! Outside of some pop-in issues (which are very apparent), frame-rate issues, and rather bad NPCs, this game does a lot of things better than many of it's contemporaries, or at least more favorably in my eyes.
The combat system is ace, and the unique abilities you can get for ranking up your vocation are all really cool. Magic looks and feels powerful. Archers can do a whole host of moves with their arrows, both magical and mundane. And warriors pack that Übermensch punch. But heck, I've only played as the strider and magic archer vocations, outside of the ol' demos.
The traversal and the world are both great. The lighting and environments combine to make some of the most believable locations I've ever seen in an RPG. There's loot tucked away everywhere, but it's not anything too powerful that it breaks the game, just materials and gold. I love that you can climb on almost any edge that's sharp enough, and certain classes like striders can get a double-jump to make it even easier to get around. Night time is amazingly black.
The game is rough around the edges (rampant pop-in, some framerate apocalypse, and the dreaded filmic black bars), but it still manages to pack some really nice details that make the world come to life. There's a lot of foliage which blows in the wind or from some impact caused by the player. Armor is made of multiple layers with robes and cloaks that have physics (Skyrim, pls) and everything that gets wet takes on a dampened look. There are some really cool effects on the player's attacks too.
There's just so much
stuff in the game. So many equipment pieces, combinable materials, weapons for all the classes, techniques, loot, corners to explore, quests (of varying quality), enemies with distinct weaknesses and attack styles...
Again, I'm only to Gran Soren.
Also my main character is called
Rip Wilkis, and he looks a little like the main character in The Order: 1886, so I feel really happy about that. No screenshots at the moment though. I've got them, but I haven't uploaded any yet.