Dragon's Dogma

IF YOU WOULD FACE ME, TAKE UP ARMS, NEWLY ARISEN

Dragon's Dogma is an open world Action RPG that was developed by Capcom Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game has an open world fantasy setting and has been released in North America on May 22, 2012, Europe on May 25, 2012 , and on May 24, 2012 in Japan. It was finally ported to PC on Jan 16th 2016.

The game kicks off with your village under attack by a dragon. You take up arms and attempt to face off against him, but are defeated. The Dragon however, tells you that you are The Chosen One and promptly rips your heart out. However, you somehow manage to survive. Now revived as an "Arisen", you must seek out your fate by defeating the dragon.

Tropes used in Dragon's Dogma include:

• Action Girl: Mercedes, possibly the player character and just about every female pawn.
• Affably Evil: The Dragon fits this trope. He doesn't care much for Salvation's antics throughout the game, thinks fanatics are annoying, doesn't outright kill the Arisen, and even offers to just leave if you give just one measly sacrifice. He will apparently follow through on his offer too, if Edmun and the Dragonforged are an indication.
• Artificial Brilliance: The Pawns are generally pretty smart and can even kill enemies solo. They are capable of learning many things bout enemies, questions, and various locations in the world of Gransys. They can even help with the uses of different strategies.
  • If there are smaller monsters around while a large one is attacking, they will go for it rather than the Arisen.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Many of the strongest monsters will require you to attack a vulnerable spot on them. Your pawns can learn tactics for use against the monsters and use them to help other Player Characters.
• Ascended Meme: Caxton's oft repeated line that his goods were "Masterworks all!" gained plenty of notoriety. The PC release used "Masterworks Collection" to describe the soundtrack+artbook bundle sold as DLC.
• Barrier Warrior: This is one of the Mystic Knight's tricks, via Elemental Wall enchantments.
• Beat Still My Heart: The game begins with a dragon stealing the Player Character's heart.
• BFS: Weapon of choice for the Warrior advanced class.
• Bishounen: One of her underlings mentions that she's seen some men with "womanly frames and beautiful faces" in her time, and perhaps their leader could stomach one of them.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the end, the Arisen becomes the godlike Seneschal which binds him/her to the cycle, then kills himself to free himself/herself and falls out of the sky with his/her pawn. The pawn then wakes up on the beach, now having the exact same appearance as the Arisen, as all pawns eventually start to look like the Arisen who they follow. The pawn is then greeted by your Arisen's love interest or Selene, if you've adopted her, running up to it as the screen fades to black. But the cycle is broken forever, your pawn is now human and has the will to live, Gransys is recovering, and the people master of its own destiny.
• Bonus Boss: The Ur-Dragon, a much more powerful version of the dragon apparently made up of the hearts of several Arisen. It can be fought at any point in a New Game+.
• Book Ends: If you lose the battle with the Seneschal in the rift, your Arisen falls into the open sky, transforming into the Dragon, and exits the rift among a flock of harpies. The very same cutscene, minus the transformation scene, plays at the very beginning of the game.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Both the Strider, Ranger and Assassin classes do this. Ranger focuses most on the bow while the Assassin favors sword and Strider is the middle ground. Technically, the Assassin is the only one of the three which actually wields a sword. The Strider and Ranger both use daggers. Magic Archers also have this option, only with a magic bow and either a staff or dual daggers.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Basically how you become the Arisen. You manage to stab the dragon, it decides to take your heart.
• Captain Obvious: Pawns often dispense such invaluable advice as "Don't let that enemy grab you!" and "Watch out for their attacks!".
• Catapult to Glory: Fighters and Warriors get two different flavors of this. The former uses their shield to provide a stepping stone, while the latter uses their BFS to launch you towards a flying enemy. Warriors also have an offensive version which hooks an enemy with their weapon in order to launch them several dozen feet into the air.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Possible with the NPC Quina, one of the other survivors of the Arisen's hometown.
• The Chosen One:
  • The Arisen, and apparently there has been many before.
  • The prologue and comic focus on a previous Arisen by the name of Savan.
• City of Adventure: Gran Soren, which may also be the only city in the country.
• Colossus Climb:
  • This is one way to fight gigantic monsters: the Strider and its derivatives actually specialize in this, having much faster movement when executing it than other classes.
  • The Golem minibosses are basically a recreation of the trope namer, what with climbing all over a giant flailing stone creature to stab his magical symbol weak points.
• Combat Pragmatist: The game encourages you to stab enemies while they're down, throw enemies off of cliffs, and pawns will often grab opponents or otherwise pin them so you can hammer them. Goes Beyond the Impossible later in the game when pawns can not only grab targets, but light themselves on fire before doing it.
• Contractual Immortality: All Arisen are rendered ageless once the Dragon has taken their heart. They can still die from combat, but can essentially not die of old age unless the Dragon is slain.
• Crapsack World: A Dragon capable of destroying the entire world is loose, and to make things worse it brought all kinds of monsters into the world with it. However, when you finally defeat said Dragon, it gets worse.
• The Cult: A continent-wide secret society called "Salvation". They follow a tenant written by the prince of a kingdom destroyed by the Dragon. Although the tenant, titled "The Testament of Hopeless Regret", was written while said prince was wracked with pain and fever from an untreated infected wound that destroyed one of his eyes. Salvation was formed in hopes of ensuring that mankind and the world was destroyed by the Dragon.
• Cursed with Awesome: Congratulations, you had your heart stolen. Now, you have to fight the dragon to get your heart back. But, a race of homunculi sees you alone as their savior, you get an unbelievable boost in power, and you get to fight a dragon! A side effect of this means that you have become ageless, stuck in a stasis and unable to die of old age.
• Cute Witch: Selene. You can adopt her.
• Darkness Equals Death:
  • Enemies usually hide out in dark areas like caves or woods. To help counter the darkness the game issues you a lantern, and you're well advised to use it.
  • Nighttime, full stop. Dragon's Dogma takes on a whole different atmosphere when the sun sets. The environment goes pitch-black, and the most effective way to get a glimpse of what enemies you're facing is by casting fire magic and hoping you see their silhouette.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: The general idea when facing large monsters, much like another Capcom series, but especially the Strider and its Scarlet Kisses attack.
• Dem Bones: Skeleton warriors and Skeleton Magi are fairly common in the dungeons, with lich-like Mook Maker minibosses popping up to harass you at night in a region called the Cursewoods.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Arguably the driving force of the game: it's really hard not to feel a sense of accomplishment when you drop a massive enemy.
• Disappeared Dad: Reynard's father left his family while his mother was pregnant with him. Buying enough little curatives from him will eventually open up a quest chain in which he asks you to figure out what would drive a man to leave his unborn child and sends you across the land to find the pages of the man's journal.
• Does Not Like Men: A certain female bandit to the northwest of Gransys absolutely hates men and will attack your party if you have a male in it (you can avoid this by sticking him in women's clothing).
• Doomed Hometown: How many Arisen begin their quest after the Dragon arrives. Subverted in the player's case, whose actions prevent his hometown from becoming doomed.
• Double Jump: The Strider can get this as an ability.
• Easy Mode Mockery: If you come across a monster you can't fight or just don't want to, you can run away. But it'll be entered in your quest log as a failed quest.
• Elemental Powers: Mages have control over fire, ice and lightning initially. Upgrading to Sorcerer adds earth and wind to the mix, in the form of earthquakes, meteors and tornadoes.
• Enemy Chatter:
  • Sometimes if the player can sneak up on enemies, they will talk amongst themselves.
  • The creepiness factor is taken Up to Eleven when the player can overhear what the undead have to say.
• Escort Mission: A good chunk of the side quests.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": You get to name your character, but everyone will just address you as Arisen (or occasionally Master, in the case of Pawns).
• Everyone Is Bi: The Affinity system makes it possible to romance any NPC, regardless of your gender or theirs.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: With the exception of bunnies, pigs, birds and oxen. Possibly Lampshaded when your pawns go into panic mode over taking fall damage.
• Eye Scream: Whenever you encounter a cyclops, your pawns (if they are knowledgeable enough) will encourage you to stab/shoot it in the eye and attempt to do so themselves. Current Salvation leader Elysion became the leader by tearing out his right eye in front of the congregation.
• Fan Service: The vast majority of the game's armor and clothing can be equipped by either gender, but there are several pieces that can be worn only by female players/pawns. They're abnormally skimpy, and sport Jiggle Physics.
  • Sent up with a trophy: buy a male character the female armor, and you unlock it.
• Fastball Special: If you have a pawn with a large build, they may offer to throw you at a large airborne foe. You can also do this with a tiny pawn to get them into hard-to-reach places, and even throw enemies at each other.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Or in this case, Fighter, Mage, Strider.
• Ghibli Hills: The majority of the lands of Gransys are plains, mountains and forests filled with all sorts of beasts.
• Guide Dang It: Hand in hand with the less than friendly difficulty curve, some quests will be really hard to complete, mostly because you'll have no idea where to go next or what to do. The game helpfully points out you can engage in another quest while you're blundering around clueless.
• Have a Gay Old Time: Because the game uses older English language dialogue, expect people to describe unusual things using the term 'Queer'.
• Healing Spring: There are a couple spread out across the map, and is one of the few ways to heal everyone in the party.
• Henchmen Race: Rare non-evil example in the form of Pawns, homunculi created to fight the dragons and aid the Arisen.
• I Have Your Wife: The dragon captures the one with the highest affinity (or the one you gave the Arisen's bond) and uses them for a Sadistic Choice.
• In-Universe Game Clock: The game has a non-static night and day cycle (entering towns, dungeons and menus does not pause it) that affects monster spawns and some quests.
• Inn Between the Worlds: Inns are one of two places (the other being Sigil Stones) where Pawns from every different plane of reality gather.
• It Got Worse: It seems that killing the dragon has worsened the situation in Gransys.
• Jerkass: Feste, a jester who's more than willing to betray, use, and backstab anyone to keep his life of ease
• Jiggle Physics: Mostly the female-only armor, though some of the unisex pieces have it. Some armors have more jiggle than others (i.e. a simple leather bra bounces A LOT, while full plate holds those puppies tight).
• Knight in Sour Armor: Julien after meeting with the local lords in Gransys.
• Kill It with Fire: Fire based spells are especially effective on feathered beasts and are handy in lighting the way at night. GOBLINS HATE FIRE! This is also a pretty good tactic against most any enemy. A good portion are actually weak to fire (wolves, harpies, zombies, Saurians and, yes, the aforementioned goblins), and those that are not specifically weak to it still have a tendency to catch on fire and be too busy to attack you anyway. But the most common enemies are weak to it, so expect to be hearing your Pawn shout "'Tis weak to fire!" and "Fire works well!" a lot.
• Lady of War: Mercedes is a noble lady who was expected to be wed by twenty. She asked for a platoon of knights to lead so she could work on her skills as a commander instead.
• Level Grinding: Done subtly: for a lot of quests you'll be required to backtrack, meaning you'll often be killing respawning thieves, goblins, wolves, etc.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Averted completely, surprisingly enough. The different classes all have different play styles, but the game puts emphasis on teamwork, not going it alone. Unless you choose to become an assassin, in which case you actually get a huge attack and defense bonus for not having any pawns with you, including your own.
• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • The Magick Archer's Threefold Bolt, Seeker Bolt and their upgraded versions fire off multiple magic arrows that home on their targets following erratic trails. Unfortunately, your opponents will also have this buff.
  • Laying down multiple of the Mystic Knight's Great Cannon following with hitting them with the Full Moon Slash results in a frame-rate breaking amount of magical seeking orbs flying for the nearest monster.
• Magick
• Magic Knight: The Mystic Knight class, which functions as a defender with some support spells.
• Mistaken Identity: Pawns sometimes do this when encountering unfamiliar monsters, often calling them something far stronger. For instance, one's first encounter with a drake will often prompt a reaction something along the lines of "The dragon, here?".
• Monsters Everywhere: It's pretty much a guarantee that if you are not in a town or settlement, you will be in a battle with--or running away from--monsters.
• Multishot: Classes that use a bow all have some form of this.
• No Kill Like Overkill: Even when equipped with weaker spells of the same element, pawns always seem to prefer to do things like rain down meteors on goblins and wolves when fireballs or even staff bolts will work.
• Nintendo Hard: The main missions aren't bad at first, but the second you get into the sidequests... And then there is the part after you defeated the dragon.
• Old Master: The Dragonforged, an old man who somehow knows more about the dragons than anyone else alive. Nobody knows how he learned it.
• Our Monsters Are Different: A lot are based entirely on old representations of Medieval and Greek mythology, with a few other things thrown in for good measure.
  • Chimeras: The classical Chimera with a lion's head and front legs, a goat's head in the middle of its back and hind legs, and a snake's head for a tail. The snake spews poison and can be chopped from the body (you are advised to do this first), the goat casts magic, and the lion is a physical attacker that your Pawn claims is afraid of magic.
  • Cyclops: A rather big one-eyed monster that likes to smash things with a club and may wear armor. You are advised to climb up and stab it in the eye. They also have some Orc-like tendencies, with large pig tusks that can be broken off and are valuable for crafting. Can also apparently be tamed, as a certain female bandit living in the mountains shares her camp with one, and it just rolls around and rocks back and forth on its legs like a large child.
  • Dragons: Only come around to mark the end of the age, bringing with them a huge surge of monsters around the world then await their respective Arisen on a mountain or other high, easily noticeable place.
  • Evil Eye: The Beholder from Dungeons & Dragons makes an appearance under its name from Final Fantasy I as a boss, with a lesser version called Vile Eyes appearing as mooks. In a physical variation from the typical appearance, they have their eye inside their mouth.
  • Gargoyles: Yet another monster you can fight. One late-game sidequest asks you to exterminate three of them.
  • Goblins: They're about as smart as children, capable of understanding how to use weapons and armor, and tame other creatures like cyclopes.
  • Golem: Yep. They're in here too.
  • Griffins: They resemble classical representations but with the coloration of eagles, and their wings generate electricity in flight.
  • Harpies: They sing a song which will lull you to sleep, and tend to try to carry you off. Mostly bird-like, but with human faces and breasts.
  • Ogres: Moderately large monsters that Pawns claim are more vicious than a Cyclops, but are basically Dumb Muscle. They also have a taste for human flesh, particularly women, and hoot like large apes when excited. Oh, and it Turns Red.
  • Pawns: Spawned specifically to fight dragons, pawns are immortal non-human beings that aid the Arisen.
  • Lizard Folk: Known as Saurians.
  • Skeletons: Walking skeletons are capable of playing as any class that a living human is, which results in skeleton swordsmen, skeleton mages, skeleton archers and so on. Smashing them with a hammer is extremely effective, while stabbing them with a sword or knife is not, as they have no soft tissue to cut.
  • Spirits: They will posses you or your Pawn and generally make a pest of themselves. An attack from an ally will dislodge the possessing spirit, but this is the only time they're vulnerable to physical damage; outside of a body, magic is required to hit them.
  • Undead: They're still undead with the standard weaknesses to fire and holy magic, but they apparently remember some of their lives and might even be aware of their surroundings. They can often be heard commenting on the state of their clothes, mumbling about having to be home, or wondering aloud where their loved ones are.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: You can play as male or female and it really has little effect on the storyline at all. Seriously, Everyone Is Bi anyway.
  • Game Favored Gender: The lines of some NPCs make it quite obvious the game was expecting a male Arisen: some females will be quite flirtatious right from the get-go, while the males are usually simply polite. Talking to a "working girl" in Gran Soren at night even makes it obvious that the game is expecting a male Arisen with a (presumably attractive) female Pawn: she tells you to discard the "puppet" in favor of a real woman.
• Relationship Values: The Affinity system allows you to befriend every single npc available, giving you discounts or advice. The one with the highest affinity gets captured by the dragon and becomes your Love Interest.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • It's possible to get past the Broken Bridge and up to Gran Soren before said bridge is 'repaired'. However, it seems that The Dev Team Thinks of Everything, since the guards will turn you away at the gates, and the entrance via the aqueduct is closed tight.
  • Also near the beginning is a minor break in the Watergod's Temple where you can dash/hover/doublejump over a pit to get behind a plot-locked door and strip the place of loot well before you get the quest that sends you down there.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: In the sidequest Duchess In Distress, the camera pans out as your Arisen and the duchess made sweet love.
• Shield-Bash: The Fighter has a number of attacks based around using the shield.
• Smashing Survival: When the player is captured or pinned down by a monster, the player is prompted to frantically flick the left analog stick back and forth.
• Soft Water: Averted. A fall from a height is a fall from a height, no matter what you land in. Averted only with shallow water, but if you fall from a great height then land into deep water, The Brine takes you which lands you back into solid ground, instead of killing you.
• Squishy Wizard: Can be avoided by players and pawns depending on your build and class, but played straight for many bands of rogues you run into.
• Stop Helping Me!:
  • Averted in actual gameplay: the pawns are good fighters. Unfortunately, they're also chatty and repeat themselves. A lot.
  • Played Straight at night, however, when they chat on and on when the game's own hints tell you to shut up and use your ears. Pretty hard when you're babbling about the sea, Pawns.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: The game levels you up fairly quickly, and there's a triple figure level cap. The various enemies out to pick a fight with you don't seem to realize this.
• Took a Level in Badass: Everything, every single monster you fought before killing the Dragon, will now destroy you utterly after killing the Dragon.
• Total Party Kill: It'll happen a lot.
• Trauma Inn: Resting at an inn is one of the few ways to recover lost or unconscious pawns.
• Trick Arrow:
  • The Strider, Ranger and Magick Archer classes all have multiple shot types, least of which being the Multishot and Rain of Arrows. Magick Archer is notable for being able to make their arrows home in on targets.
  • The Magick Archer even has a shot that gets more powerful when bounced off multiple surfaces before striking a target.
  • The Ranger can launch a arrow that sticks into a surface and fires even more shots at everything around it.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Duke Edmun's wife, Aelinore.
• Underground Monkey: Just a small sampling of the creatures you'll be fighting are Harpies, Snow Harpies, Saurians, Sulfur Saurians, Snow Saurians, Wolves and Dire Wolves.
• Wide Open Sandbox: You're free to go absolutely anywhere in the world at any time. On the other hand, go to the wrong place when you're under leveled, and you're pretty much toast.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You can pick up and throw pretty much anything or anyone. This can range from pragmatic tactics like tossing an enemy off a cliff, to random dickery like a back-and-forth game of "catch the pig" between you and your pawn. Or tossing your pawn off a cliff...
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Be careful what animals you pick on, or you'll find yourself on the business end of an ox’s horns.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Possibly Savan, who molded his pawn after his father who was killed by the dragon.
  • Mercedes. She wants to slay the Dragon to please her father, the lord of Hearthstone.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: You get an achievement for sticking a male party member in female clothing.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: A bad repeat offender. Aside from quest-essential dialogue, which resembles modern English (bar a few shoehorned-in archaic-sounding ones), all of the game's dialogue is delivered in pseudo-Shakespearean dialect that uses so many "ye olde"-sounding words, it can get very confusing at times.