We've been skeptical about Capcom's upcoming knights-and-magic game Dragon's Dogma for about a year. And then Capcom sent me a near-final copy of the game so I could play it. My skepticism increased.
Dragon's Dogma appears to be one very messy, clumsy game, full of bad dialogue, cumbersome menus and annoying supporting characters. Its theme song is grating and the graphical engine running this game is either broken or the world's worst homage to the buggy launch state of the game Dragon's Dogma seems designed to feel like: Skyrim.
This game's a wreck (or at least my preview build of it is).
So... it might surprise you to learn that expert Kotaku video editor Chris Person and I are now big fans of Dragon's Dogma.
We're not just excited about it because of its many hilarious problems but because, as the video above shows, there is some awesome, genuinely good stuff hiding in Dragon's Dogma. It just took us a few hours of playing the game and tolerating lots of bad stuff to find them.
We encourage you to give the game or at least our video of the game a look, to see some of the horrid and wonderful things in Capcom's new epic. The full game will be out on May 22 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
We're teetering into so-bad-it's-good territory with this one, but there are also real, good things in the game. Hopefully the finished version will teeter the right way.
UPDATE: I apologize for not initially noting that this video shows that Dragon's Dogma game includes an enemy goblin who asks, "Who let the dogs out?"