The first few episodes are shit, a lot of weird decisions by Ethan.
That said, it's hard to explain, but it gripped me eventually.
The monsters are AWFUL-LOOKING but the people? They're actually alright, not great, but far FAR better then Berserk was.
That
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ending left a sad feeling in my stomach though
, jesus that sucked, in a good way.
They were really trying to drive home that this was "Dark" fantasy as well, there's themes of rape
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kind of paying tribute to Goblin Slayer in that regard, I don't think I need to explain more
, and
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a child gets eaten on-screen in the first episode.
This was honestly VERY faithful to the source material, aside from towns and areas from the games being much larger then normal, they do mention and show towns from the original source material, and the Arisen in this show looks exactly the same as the one from the games, the monsters are also pretty spot-on.
The fight scenes were ass, Ethan is a complete joke as a fighter. Speaking of him, you expect him to show some skill but
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he consistently is quite bland in the beginning and sucks as a fighter to the point he is unable to defeat one wolf, and he never speaks up or stops/kills someone when you expect him to later on, it's extremely annoying, like with Hannah when they first met, I expected Ethan to throw the band at the wall or grab her aggressively after the stuff she said. The only genuinely cool fight scene was against the Hydra, he was completely useless against the Griffin.
Ethan is also
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kind of a douche, he nearly let this hot chick cheat on her husband with him, I was genuinely looking at the screen like "so... are you gonna stop her anytime soon?" But he doesn't, the husband notices them and only then do they stop. He becomes a douche later on but that's because of his... random-ass rage-filled power-up. Bringing back up his "not speaking up", there's a scene where thugs come into this family's house while Ethan's there, you expect him to **** shit up or wait till they go back to their lair or whatever then do it, but nope, dude is too civil with villains for a dark fantasy protagonist. Going back to the Hydra episode, that's where he was at his best, personality-wise.
Characters
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end up dying in really stupid ways. You'll always be asking yourself "why?" because it honestly feels forced when a side character dies for plot purposes.
I really enjoyed some of the music, which was apparently done by the original game's music producer, which makes sense, Dogma has some kick-ass music.
I actually did like the later half of the show, it wasn't as ass as bad as everyone expected it would be. I'd go as far as to say it is worth a watch, but maybe not worth buying later on or watching a second time.
I really enjoyed Hannah's development from an emotionless pawn into a strong sidekick, and she's kind of a bad-ass from the get-go. It's really Ethan who drags down this show, and the monster CGI. Hannah is great, some of the side characters are alright. Grigori, assuming you're watching the Japanese Dub, is also done pretty well.
Some of the side characters are pretty decent too. In Dragon's Dogma fashion, there is a
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big twist
which is pretty shocking, it nearly brought me to tears, in a good way.
Anyway, hope ya'll enjoy it, it's not a horrible show by any means, it just makes a lot of mistakes (and it was too short, 7 episodes? I get it, but they could've done a "Gluttony part 2" or whatever to stretch it out instead of having so little time for character development.)