I made it to the first big city and quit. I had all the DLC loaded at the time and i was running into lvl 40 quests when I was only lvl 8 and shhh, then there was a lvl 20 side quest at the same level for some special weapon from a blacksmith that I tried and got owned, and I was like, F this, I am not gonna go around looking for quests my level. Great game, but next time I try, I won't be pre-installing any DLC until I finish the main campaign.
TW3 has a very unusual leveling and XP system that's mostly built around completing quests around where your own level currently is at. If you wait too long and don't do a quest until you're well above it, you'll get little to no XP, so its best to just focus on the ones around where you are as you come to them, and just keep the others that are high level for later on.
I always felt under leveled, as early as level 5. Seemed like leveling up took forever. I'll keep that in mind next playthrough.
It took me a while to understand it all. Honestly, I didn't fully understand leveling, the skill tree, and how to use the mutagens until I'd read some really good articles explaining it before my second playthrough, after the DLC had been released. The good thing is that if you have both DLC packs (which I highly, highly recommend, because they're awesome), the maximum level is increased to the point where if needed, you can get as high as you need to in order to get though most things. When I did my third playthrough this past Spring after the PS5 upgrade was put out, I was good to go the entire way through. It was the first time that I was able to beat several bosses without dumbing it down to easy mode.
I've had a lot of people recommend Dragon's Dogma to me when I've asked for suggestions, and given that its included in PS+ this month, I decided to give it a try. I'm trying to be open minded, but man is it rough around the edges. The PS4 remaster plays like a C-level Skyrim and looks like a PS2 era Final Fantasy game. It also gives the player too little information and guidance, and I'm glad that I'm very experienced with the genre or I worry I'd be pretty lost.
You really have to evaluate it in a vacuum, and you also have to realize it was originally released two generations ago. It was a very unique release for its time. The climbing monsters, the vocation/pawn system, the grimmer narrative, the day/night cycle was pretty different compared to other action RPGs of its time. I played it pretty religiously on release and enjoyed the heck out of it, and I'm sure it's shown its age. My buddy has played through it half a dozen times, but I wasn't that zealous about replays 10 years down the line. It took elements of games like Shadow of the Colossus, Dark Souls, and other games for its unique mixture. The obtuseness of its quests was also against trend in the era of follow this path conveniently marked for you, do the questy thing, and fast travel back. The damage scaling is a little wonky. No other game has touched it, scalewise, on the spell casting front. It's not for everyone, but it was for me when it first released. I will play the hell out of the sequel. It looks way more expansive than the first.
Yeah, all of those features are about the opposite of what I like, lol. I want bright, not grim, and give me all the information possible!
