Dragon's Dogma

I used to complain about unreadable text/resolution issues in videogames.
and then I realized it wasn't 1998 anymore and that I needed a real TV...
I was a console gamer though so maybe that helped fuel my TV need.

Having just recently started myself:

Pawns aren't that bad really. Their dialogue is pretty frequent though...buut my Pawn is adorable so what the hell, I don't care. Their AI seems fine to me, they're pretty damn good in a fight. Mage/healer pawns anyway. Whatever the hell archers are called seem to be fine too. Never tried a warrior. Though I bet AI archers aren't too accurate when you need them to be.
I KINDA wish the game was soloable. Well, it IS to a degree, it's just brutal. But the pawn system is pretty interesting so i'm fine with using it, and I usually tackle every game, even MMOs, solo. Only thing I hate is only being able to make one pawn yourself. I'm way too picky to hire other peoples pawns.

I wont say combat is REALISTIC, but it's realistic enough that a roll command would be completely out of place. Archers can "evade" or dodge, forgot what it was called. Useful enough, dunno about mages. Warriors can block. Dun need barrel rolls.

Unfortunately I don't exactly have $1000 to spend on a big ass TV so I'm stuck with the one I have. I can't even fit a big TV in my room, I just find it ridiculous that some games pretty much only support large TVs. Like the latter Mass Effect games, their text and HUD can be horrendously small. It's not like taking a game with a reasonable text size/HUD and bringing it to a big ol' TV kills it.

Here's an example of pawn AI for me. I'm in a dungeon and there's a bit of a drop. I realize that dropping onto a rock and then dropping down again will eliminate all fall damage. So I do that, I'm fine. One of my pawns just jumps down and incaps himself. So I have a half-health pawn that I have to throw my precious healing items too. My current pawn set-up is mage (the default one you get at the beginning), fighter (my custom pawn), and strider (who I randomly got from the, erm, "pawn shop").

I like the pawn system, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I like to play big, open roleplaying games solo. It's what I did in Skyrim. Not that I dress up in knight armor and go all into RP'ing it, but it's fun to kinda create my own story without a group of pawns noticing every box or tower or brightly colored object in their view. But I do think their dialogue is actually not terrible, while a lot of it repeats, there's some variety and context-sensitive stuff that makes them feel a bit more lively.

I mean it's just a roll, you don't need to be a ninja here and do backflips. Just a simple dodge roll would suffice. I'm playing Assassin (formerly Strider) and I don't see any dodge option. Usually I have to sprint or jump to dodge but there's no dedicated rolling. It doesn't seem though out of the question. I'd see it being Strider/Archer/Assassin only.

TVs are pretty cheap these days. I know my buddy picked one up a bit after Christmas for around $500 and games played perfectly fine on it. If you're going to play on a console, you pretty much require at least a halfway decent TV (so much for consoles being so cheap to play~)

AI hardly ever do advanced maneuvers like that though. I can't think of any games with an AI that would actually do something like that to mitigate fall damage. (the closest being games that have your AI partners teleport to you when something would be dangerous to attempt, like a fall).

I remember in the demo that the Strider you played as had an evade skill? I'm not playing a strider so I have no actual idea. Was just going by the demo, which DID have it.

Maybe once I get a consistent job I'll invest in a better TV. For now I've learned how to read the text a bit better and stuff.

I would assume the AI would just take the longer stair path down. But there's also some other issues, particularly with large foes like Cyclops. My allies will keep getting roflstomped by them while I'm busy hammering at it from climbing. Like my mage won't just stay in the backlines and heal/lob magic at it. Especially when there's the chimera (the lion/goat/snake things, I think it's called a chimera) and it goes berserk, literally my entire party dies and I'm left sprinting around reviving them.

Also some more complaints. No quick travel. Some people pass it off as "cinematic" or some bullshit but this is just fucking stupid. Here's something that happened: I was doing a quest where I had to raid a bandit fortress. It's a long ass walk and we tons of bandits, two cyclops, and one chimera before arriving at the fortress, so we're rather weary. Next thing I know like twenty bandits are on top of us. Mages, striders, fucking everything, including a bandit boss. So we win but I lose two of my pawns (including my healer). It's a long ass walk back to the city. I have to literally sprint back and playing Madden NFL 2012 here, dodging everything, until I get to the capital, get my pawns back, and so on. Then I still have to go back there to finish the fucking quest. Apparently there's some items later on that work for "fast traveling" but for now it's absolutely retarded. At least make outposts or somewhere I can stop to rest, summon pawns, bullshit like that. Combined with enemies that constantly respawn, it's not challenging, it's repetitive and obtuse.

Like I love half the game and hate half the game. Combat is great, it feels really involved, deep, and challenging. There's a lot of customization, fair amount of quests, and the world is decently sized (it's no Skyrim but it's big enough). But then the AI is kinda dumb and the lack of fast traveling paired with respawning enemies and no outpost areas means that you're often fucked.

Looking at the Wiki, there's apparently a rank 5 dodge move for Assassins (which are basically just dagger-heavy Striders) which I can get eventually. Here. Who are you playing as by the way? I'm guessing Warrior?

Actually i'm a sorcerer. My pawn was a strider...realized that was a stupid combo, changed her to a fighter. Much better combo. Though not having a human controlled healer kiiiinda sucks.