Playing Dragon's Dogma, too early to have a definitive impression but it is kinda... meh so far. I'm still on the starting area of the game so things could become better later but so far, oh boy, Dragons Dogma is a weird game. It is like Oblivion, Dark Souls and Dragon Age had an baby and it is kinda of a weird mutant kid.
From Oblivion, you have the very familiar european aesthetics open world where you go killing the familiar spiders, wolves, bandits and goblins. From Dark Souls, you have the physicality of combat and the enemies with deliberate patterns of attack that can be quite punishing. From Dragon Age, you have real time combat with companions that travel with you.
...
Noticed the game is at its best when you go dungeon crawling killing monsters and getting the lewt, sometimes reminded me of Gothic, the creatures are really well done too. Just two quick questions. Is it worthy playing on hard mode? Being one shot by goblin trash seems excessive. Can you multiclass or when you change your class or you lose all the shit you invested on the old class? Really thinking on changing difficulty to normal and playing the game solo. The pawns are kinda like when you summon an spirit on Dark Souls, it works, but somehow feels like cheating.
Although
Dragon's Dogma, due to being released in 2012, was frequently compared by game reviewers to
Dark Souls and
Skyrim, it really draws from Capcom's '90s fantasy beat-'em-ups but turned into an RPG, with combat influenced by Capcom's
Devil May Cry series, Capcom's
Monster Hunter series, Sony's
Shadow of the Colossus, and From Software's
Demon's Souls. The initial intention for the game was for it be truly Open World, inspired by
Oblivion and
Morrowind, but this was dropped fairly early in production, and the world was reduced to one-third of its originally-planned size. As a remnant of the Open World concept, you can spend a lot of time even at the beginning of the game wandering around the countryside, but it's largely pointless, as the main quest and a handful of important side quests will take you to every notable location in the game, and if you waste time strolling the countryside aimlessly you might get bored fighting trash mobs when there are better things to be doing.
I don't recommend playing on hard mode, certainly not your first time through. If you were playing on normal mode, the first fight that's at all challenging will likely be the group of Saurians in the caverns beneath the well. The side quest that sends you searching for Quina in the Witchwood will take you past groups of bandits, the last of which are overlevelled relative to a new character and should make for the first truly tough fight. As you keep playing, you'll encounter more variety of enemies, and it's the larger, powerful foes where the combat of
Dragon's Dogma really shines.
As for changing vocations, when you enter Gran Soren as part of the main quest (which happens quickly, at the beginning of Stage 2), you (and your pawn) will be able to change vocations by speaking to the innkeeper, Asalam. You can also initiate the Bitterblack Isle expansion and change vocations by speaking with the NPC outside the dungeon. These are the only two ways of changing vocations in the entire game. Some skills are used by multiple vocations, and if you've already unlocked a skill then you won't need to spend discipline points for it again. You will effectively 'lose' the discipline points you invested in skills that can't be used by your new vocation, though of course you might switch back later (or to a third vocation that uses some of those skills). Also, all augments that you've acquired in a vocation can be used even after changing to a different vocation, so discipline points spent on augments are never completely wasted except to the extent that you can only use six augments at a time and that some augments are only useful for certain vocations (e.g. a few augments improve bow use, which is only useful for striders, rangers, magick archers, and bow-wielding assassins).
