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The opening hours of 2012 cult classic Dragon's Dogma are seared into my memory, and not because I played the RPG to death. I mean, I did play it to death, but there's a much stupider reason for this. See, I also replayed this game to death – seven times in a row, in fact, with the catch that these replays only covered the opening act. Gripped by min-max obsessiveness – which I've since kicked out of my brain like one would evict a tenant that cooks meth with their doors open – I continually made new character after new character trying to optimize the game's class system and its attached stat growth. I was terrified that I'd be cursed with a sub-optimal character – truly a fate worse than death.
When you level up in Dragon's Dogma, you get stat boosts based on your assigned class, or rather, vocation. Fighters get more health and attack, dextrous Striders get more stamina, and mages – this will sound far-fetched – get magic attack and defense. Advanced vocations yield more skewed stat boosts, meaning you could live as a Ranger for a while to power-level your Stamina and then become a Warrior who can run a marathon in full plate armor. With this in mind, I cycled through Fighters and Striders and Mages, Warriors and Rangers and Sorcerers, painstakingly laying the groundwork for the God King of Space build to come.
Without fail, I'd hit a point where I'd decide, in my infinite wisdom as an 18-year-old, that I'd missed the mark. I'd fumbled the bag, screwed the pooch, and indeed dropped the ball. I'd think of a new God King of Space build, and my current stat distribution simply would not do. My thumbs would leap clean off my hands in shame if I didn't start over. This happened seven times in about a week, and each time I'd speedrun the same quests, kill the same goblins, pick the same herbs, hunt the same rabbits, and slay the same ogre. I have the Cassardis wilderness memorized, and that useless knowledge is a source of immense shame.
The punchline here, as all Dragon's Dogma fans can tell you – and in this world there are only Dragon's Dogma fans, and people who haven't played Dragon's Dogma – is that this game is easy as hell even on the highest difficulty. I didn't know that, so I completely wasted at least 15 hours preparing for a challenge that doesn't exist. Not that the game actually being hard would have justified this. Min-maxing Dragon's Dogma is like studying for a preschool math exam. Restarting Dragon's Dogma seven times trying to make the ideal build is like spending two weeks preparing to summit the arithmetic challenge of 4 x 5. All my min-maxing was worth less than a bucket of griffin shit in the end.
Of course, I did eventually give up and stick to one character – out of impatience or enlightenment I couldn't say – and have a great time playing primarily as an archer and mage. Dragon's Dogma has some of the coolest bows and spells ever made, though melee is fun too. That's the takeaway here, and it's the lesson I'm carrying into Dragon's Dogma 2. There are no bad builds. Any perceived imperfections are meaningless compared to sensible play and honest fun. Every class is the best class. They're masterworks all, you can't go wrong.
Bury me with my weird, dumb magic
As Dragon's Dogma 2 approaches, finally, after 12 long years, I'm reflecting on this memory with fondness instead of regret. It was a ridiculous use of time, sure, and not terribly fun even in the moment, but it set me up for a memorable run of what's still one of my favorite RPGs and, more importantly, has given me even more motivation to make the weirdest Dragon's Dogma 2 character possible. I'm assuming the sequel's new vocations will use a similar stat growth system, but I don't care either way. My friendship with perfection has ended; off-beat is my new best friend.
I'm all-in on weird hybrid magic nonsense. It's one of Dragon's Dogma's biggest charms, and the sequel has clearly only taken it further. I'm hitching my wagon to vocations like the Wayfarer, who combines spells and weapons from multiple classes, and the Trickster, a support class that can taunt enemies straight off cliffs. Then there's the Mystic Spearhand, which combines one of my favorite weapon types – spears, you may have guessed – with spells that can weaponize the environment or debuff enemies. I'll inevitably sample everything and get sucked into archery for a while, and melee looks even better this time thanks to an injection of Devil May Cry juice, but Dragon's Dogma's vision of magic is irresistibly bizarre.
The last thing I want to do is spend all of Dragon's Dogma 2 straightforwardly swinging swords, loosing arrows, and chucking fireballs. If that's your happy place, more power to you. But I want combat styles so weird that their descriptions read like modern Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I won't be restarting Dragon's Dogma 2 seven times, either. I'm done sweating the small stuff. Life's too short, sequels like this are too rare, and based on our hands-on preview, Dragon's Dogma 2 is too good.
