Dragon's Dogma is a game without a heart. On one level, that's a pun.
After a brief prologue, you create your character and are soon forced to watch as the eponymous dragon casually digs its claw into your chest and plucks out your heart like a pit from an olive. Your job is to reclaim it.
Capcom's ambitious new roleplayer is made valuable by its combat. Climbing on a chimera's back to hack away at one of its many heads doesn't need to make sense, it only needs to thrill you, and it does.
If, like a lot of RPG gamers, you have a taste for risk and reward, try not to give in to temptation too early. Bravery is often met with death after brutal death, as if the game is trying to steer you away from taking premature chances and fighting above your station. That's fine sometimes, but you are obliged to drop your adventurous instincts and play a reasonably linear game for longer than you might want to. For a game with so many tantalising locations and opportunities to explore by day and night, it is a cruel hand that slaps you down.
Dragon's Dogma offers a masterclass in how to do hit-and-miss sound, with the soundtrack alternating the usual orchestral tunes with some fist-pumping metal, as an imaginary game based on Manowar might do.
