Dragon’s Dogma is a hack and slash, button bashing, open world of boring! Developed and released by Capcom, the makers of the hugely popular Resident Evil franchise, which is one of my personal favourites as well, so needless to say my expectations of this game were set pretty high. The game is sort of a cross between the Baldur’s Gate and The Elder Scrolls series.

The game starts well; you are set out to kill the legend mythological beast that is the Chimera. The gigantic lion with a goat on its back and a snake for a tail. You and your team take on this mammoth challenge together. Bashing as many of the attack moves as you can to take down the beast. Once slain the game pretty much starts, as this level was just totally pointless and irrelevant. So now you’re at the creation stage where you make your character you will use for the rest of the game. You have to choose what type of warrior you want to be, depending on which one you choose will determine what abilities you have and what weapons you use etc. You can choose to be one of the following; fighter, warrior, mystic knight, strider, ranger, assassin, mage, sorcerer or magic archer.

The story then starts, you are some random every day guy (or gal) minding your own business in your small hometown then all of a sudden. Boom! A giant dragon is in front of you attacking people and destroying your town. Your characters things he is some sort of major warrior and tries to take on the dragon that’s the size of big Ben. Obviously he gets battered and the talking dragon rips your heart out and eats it. The dragon now or something now owns you like that until you can defeat it and get your heart back. Oh yeah you are still alive after your heart is gone, go figure! Anyway you then wake up with this massive scar and just walk off into a massive open world full of trolls, wolves, Cyclopes etc and also a load of pointless side quests like collecting flowers to save people’s lives. Why can’t they just die? I don’t want to help them!

All the Skyrim fans out there will love this game. Me personally I hate Skyrim and I hate this. I tried to force myself to play this game but I found it so boring that I was falling asleep while attempting to enjoy it. I feel there is too much to do on the game and that there are much better role-playing games available then this. You don’t get remotely attached to any of the characters, which is very important in an RPG. If you look at the most successful RPG series of all time Final Fantasy and how they make you love the characters. There is more of a fear of losing fellow teammates in that as they put a strong story behind every character so you understand everything about them and why they are where they are. This game just puts you as some wannabe action man in a mystical world. The game doesn’t look fantastic either considering it was released this year it looks about 5 years old when it comes to a lot of the graphics, especially on your own created player. The battling on the game gets so boring and repetitive. They are all hacks and slash so all you do is button bash to kill your enemies and the battles are either just too easy or too hard and you get battered while your teammates just wander around aimlessly.

Maybe I didn’t give the game enough of a chance? Maybe it actually is good? But I played it for about 3 hours and it just wasn’t for me. If you enjoy these kinds of open world games, which are similar to Skyrim, where you take on mythical creatures then this could very well be one of the best games you gave ever played. But when reviewing you can only give your own opinion.

Dragon’s Dogma is available now for Play Station 3 and Xbox 360 and a sequel planned and in the works.

Review in association with Duracell Gaming Accessories, which are available from Amazon, Play.com and Zavvi.com Review by Thomas Thompsett, White Room Games.