Played the demo and the combat impressed me so much I had to go and buy it. Been playing for about 2 hours so far and I have to say it is one of the best rpg's of the year. As a Capcom game you can expect some weirdness (especially when it comes to the story). But its quirks make it an even more enjoyable experience.

If you dislike the follower pvssyr in Skyrim you'll probably hate this game too as the "pawns" that you are given throughout the course of the game are incessantly dumb and repeat lines over and over. Yet in the prolog I came to accept their stupidity after I watched one pawn climb on top of a chimera (yes a f-ing chimera in the first 30 mins) and stab it in the head repeatedly. Meanwhile, the mage healed me and the archer-type, reminded me to avoid the chimera's pounce attack. When wandering across the open-world they will make the all too frequent "observation", but at least the ambient soundtrack is good and they do make the game feel a bit more alive.

Like the combat experience I mentioned before, this game is filled with them. Its has incredibly deep customization, a pretty engaging story and setting, and is filled to the brim with awesome creatures( I've seen some damn cool looking goblins, harpies, chimeras,gryphons and as the title says, a dragon). I haven't gotten far enough to check out the loot system, and I after reading some reviews I discovered that their is some repetition and backtracking (has to be expected, its an open world rpg and its a Capcom game).

Overall I just wanted to post to say that this game is awesome, if you are on the fence about it, or just looking for a solid RPG to play while your awaiting some of the blockbuster titles coming out this year, buy Dragons Dogma.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1396639-dragons-dogma-thread-6/

Dang... that's some serious play time to judge by right there.

A great game doesn't take long to show how great it is. Dragons Dogma shows off what it does best very early in the game. Ever heard the term "Put your best foot forward". One thing that I can say DD has on Skyrim is that Skyrim used its first hour trying to act like any other blockbuster first person game. By using that forced perspective "cutscene" and then following it up with a linear tutorial? Those aren't what Skyrim does best(especially when it came to things like canned animations in the cutscene)

You do have quite a few good points there.

In my opinion RPGs oftentimes don't show their warts until I'm far enough into the game to see if the setting continues to be compelling, the character development is satisfying, etc. It's not uncommon for me to love the first 5 hours of an RPG and then start gradually becoming more and more disappointed as things unfold.