Dragon's Dogma

Dragon's Dogma is a strange, stubborn game in which a dragon rips out the main character's heart, and he, now known as the Arisen, sets out across the land of Gransys to get it back. The foundation is an open world with action combat, whose most remarkable feature is the ability to climb onto giants, griffins, and other large monsters, hold on as they try to shake you off, and stab at weak points. A fight with a single cyclops ends up looking different every time, depending on the terrain it happens on and whether the player manages to knock it to the ground. Vocations can be freely changed throughout the game, and hybrid classes combine a bow with magic or a shield with spells.

The heart of the game is the Pawn system. The player creates their own companion who accompanies them through the whole campaign and learns from what they've experienced together, while borrowing two more from other players. Pawns then offer advice themselves on an enemy's weak point or which way to go, because they saw it happen with someone else, and upon returning to their owner they bring back the knowledge and gifts they picked up. The world is deliberately uncomfortable: fast travel is nearly unavailable at first, night is genuinely dark and dangerous without a lantern, and the journey across the map counts among the main experiences, not among the delays. On Xbox 360 the game occasionally hit the ceiling of its performance during large battles, but the impression of a vast landscape and striking lighting work wasn't spoiled by it.

Reception was warm, especially for the combat, with reservations about padded content and a story told rather choppily. The expanded version subtitled Dark Arisen later added a demanding underground island and became the recommended way to play the game. Its influence can be seen in later action RPGs that borrowed the idea of climbing giant enemies as well as shared companions. Today, Dragon's Dogma is a title with its own distinct signature that doesn't do anything the way you'd expect, and that's exactly why it keeps a loyal audience. Anyone who accepts its rules gets some of the best combat of its generation.