Yeah, Dragon's Dogma is pretty fun. The big draw is for sure the big monster fights, since those get pretty tense and they break up the standard RPG gameplay nicely. The combat itself is pretty fun, though I only played as a warrior because, since I get the shit kicked out of me in every game I play, I like to stick to melee classes that can take a beating. So on the gameplay front, Dragon's Dogma is kind of a badass.
My problems with it start leaking in once you get away from that, though. I thought that the pawn system, while novel, was vastly inferior to, say, a Bioware or Obsidian companion system that has actual, written characters. Having unique characters follow me around with things that only they say is a lot more interesting to me than the pawn system, and I'm a sucker for character arcs, so I would have preferred having something like seven or eight set characters that level up with you or something. I also like having a strong story that I pretty much always have a good idea of what I'm doing in. Dragon's Dogma is kind of loose with it's story, being more interested in providing a sandbox journey type thing, which is fine, but not something that is to my taste. The third big thing is that the post game is kind of annoying to me, since everything turns black and the formerly really fun boss fights just become a tedious slog. I'd also say that I would have liked a more clear indication of where to find ferrystones, as it got a bit boring running back and forth all over the map.
EDIT: Also, as far as Skyrim vs Dragon's Dogma goes, I'd say I liked Skyrim more, as the story was a bit more of a driving force in that one, as most of the sidequests are stuck into guilds, which all have their own plotlines, and the story quests just seemed more narrative driven. That's not to say that Skyrim has a particularly good story, it's just that it was more present in what I was doing minute to minute, and my tastes lean more towards that style of game.
