Level 35 or so in Dragon's Dogma...seriously considering putting the game down though. The combat system is so damn good but you spend way too much time doing some of the most boring and inane shit. It's one of the best RPG combat systems wrapped in an awful world and mostly boring sets of quests.
The way people talk about the game I thought I'd be spending most of my time fighting dope giant monsters and stuff like that.
My biggest problems with the game when I played it on PS3 were the shit-tier AI companions, the abhorrent menus, and the encumbrance. The quest design was the overall wrapper that killed it though.
I thought to myself, hey, I like playing games more than watching them, so I should just be able to wring fun out of this game by roaming the land and slaying foul beasts.
That was when I came across a Chimera for the first time. With two pawns in tow (a mage and a Warrior), my very low level strider fought it over the course of 3 in game days. Each evening was punctuated by respawning lizard men who I would have to dispatch between Chimera attacks that could kill me in 2 hits (and knockout my mage in one).
Three. Literal. Days. Straight.
I was literally hitting him for slivers of health damage that I couldn't see. I would have to hit him 10+ times to be able have his health move a pixel on screen. By the time I got him down to his last health bar, I was basically doing no damage on him. And then he clipped through a rock and killed me.
Rage.
But i resolved to not be defeated and this time I would go about it smarter. I would kill the snake first, then the lion head as to not allow him to buff his defense. I also knew that I basically could only do damage to the lion head with magic-buffed knives. So off I trekked and engaged him once again.
Three. Literal. Days. Straight.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't force my mage to buff my weapons. No matter what I said or what situation I put him in, he would only do it at random, approx 10% of the time. I realized on the 30th straight minute that if my warrior was at full health, my mage would be more likely to buff my weapons, but there was no way to actually instruct him to do so. Also, my warrior would go to town on the goat head as fast as possible, because he thought that was the correct way to beat the Chimera.
And of course, I was killed by the lion head at dusk on the third day by him jump attack a rock and clipping on top of it.
I haven't played the game since.
Like, I get that it's an "arr pee jee" so I have to power up my weapons and shit to face bigger monsters, but when I can skill my way into a fight with your monster for 45+ minutes straight without taking a hit, you need to put some baseline damage model in to prevent my character from doing basically zero damage.
Also, congrats to whomever designed the system where your lantern goes out when you touch water and then have to remove and then re-equip it again to get it light back up. In a menu. That has loading.
EDIT: the sad thing is, I'm probably going to buy the game again when it goes on sale on Steam because I can mod out the encumbrance, mod in some waystones, and I have a better overall idea of how the stupid pawn stuff works (thanks Morrigan). And I imagine all of the little hitching load times for every menu have been reduced to nil if running off an SSD. Oh, and the hotkeys for items.
A (and i'm glued to this great game!). Or maybe buy Witness (but i still not beat The Talos Principle DLC!)
