Dragon's Dogma Game Guide

We're not just referring to the title when we say that Dragon's Dogma is an interesting beast. Despite the fact that this is an open-world fantasy game in the vein of the Elder Scrolls series, it's not a role-playing game; rather, it's a frenetic sword-and-sorcery action game. We're talking about a game where you can set a goblin on fire, pick him up, and throw him into a group of his goblin buddies like a living Molotov cocktail. It's almost if the minds behind Devil May Cry made a game heavily inspired by Lord of the Rings. Other Capcom influences are on display as well. The game has three player classes: mage, fighter, and strider. Lacking any glowing orange weak spots, the griffin boss fight was an open-ended affair where we could use any number of strategies. You've got the usual options, like reviving a fallen ally or using the mage class to buff a teammate's abilities. Dragon's Dogma is running on the same engine as Lost Planet 2, which was certainly one of the more visually impressive games of the past year. While the camera was a bit problematic during the frenetic boss fight we played, the game itself is already rather pleasing to the eyes. What we've seen of the game has us cautiously optimistic, but there are a great many questions left to be answered to see if the game is going to live up to the potential it's showing in these early stages. We'll see if Capcom's new open-world fantasy action game can deliver when it's released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 next year.