★★☆☆☆
Dragon's Dogma has epic combat and RPG systems, but is dragged down by many other flawed systems, which seem to be there purely to make the game longer, tedious, and/or frustrating.

+ Barbers
+ Lanterns
+ The Everfall
+ Lite parkour
+ Book of Credits
+ Sheathe weapons
+ Multi-class system
+ Combat & Boss Battles
+ Theme/Enemies/Graphic Style
+ Equipment variety and layering
+ Create a partner, then a party with other players' partners

+- Fully voice acted, but text doesn't auto-advance
+- Pawn inclination (AI customization) is so convoluted
+- Weak graphics, but it is an HD port of a last gen game
+- NewGame+ Not as good as a persistent open world, but ok
+- Lots of equipment sets, but they rarely seem to be stat upgrades
+- Helmets toggle their visors in friendly areas, but not in cutscenes
+- Port crystals would be a nice addition to fast travel, but there is no default fast travel

- Aught
- Stamina
- Only 1 save slot
- No multiplayer/coop
- Class-locked equipment
- Missable, timed, and failable quests
- Only 1 major quest hub, leads to endless backtracking
- The game often drops quest lines, leaving you with no direction
- Pawn orders don't work well, because they aren't potent or persistent
- The entirety of the world feels like a single, poorly constructed MMO zone
- Meaningless chests. Most give a common item at random, and soon respawn
- Some bosses can get a bit bullet-spongey/button-mashy. Can only cut so many regrowing heads off a Hydra before it starts to get old, eh
- Doesn't hit its stride until you reach high class level, which can take 20+ hours, then has a very short finishing act which is better than the rest of the game.
- Bad quest tracker; half the quests don't have markers, main quests are mixed among countless "Kill 10 Bears" quests, defaults to equipping those "Kill 10 Bears" quests whenever you complete a real one
- Unbalance/Difficulty spikes throughout (ie; an early main quest has you easily fighting undead, only to be attacked by a troll, nearly impossible to defeat, unless you cheap him off a ledge. Things like this happen regularly)
- The inventory system is nonsense. Each character has a weight limit, but its more or less unlimited if you just unload things onto your pawns, but what a huge chore that is. Then on top of that, there's a storage space that can hold infinite items, and it makes expirable items never expire.

* Controller required
* Easy Mode recommended, then hard mode with NewGame+
* Strider with a Mage partner as starting classes recommended