Riding high on the success of their critically acclaimed and very popular Castlevania series, which had just wrapped up its third season when this released, Netflix naturally tried its hand at seeing if they could make lightning strike twice by taking another video game property and turning it into an anime. On paper Dragon's Dogma sounded like the perfect choice as it would allow them to capture a similar dark fantasy style and monster slaying vibe as the aforementioned hit, and the promising Game of Thrones-esque intro you're greeted with gives you the (false) hope that they maybe pulled it off. Unfortunately, once the first episode starts and you're bombarded by the bad voice actors spouting embarrassing generic anime dialogue you'll realize something went terribly, terribly wrong, and it's only downhill from there. I'd say the biggest problem is that the show tries way too hard to be mature using the most juvenile of tactics. Gratuitous nudity and grim endings plague every step of the main character's quest to kill the dragon that stole his heart (literally, like his actual heart that it ripped straight out of his chest), because nothing says complex adult storytelling like titties and making everything oppressively bleak apparently. There's a single episode that almost concludes on a somewhat positive note, but of course they spoil it by having the two protagonists berate the girl who chose to finally escape a bad situation behind her back and call her an idiot for doing exactly what they spent the entire runtime telling her to do. What the heck?! The writing in general is uniformly awful. The whole thing is centered around a seven deadly sins motif for reasons that go as unexplained as the actual lore itself, the leading man turns into a total unlikable jerk in the last three episodes out of nowhere making it even harder to care about his journey, and with each episode introducing a new monster for him to get beaten up by you can't help but feel as if there's no way at all he'll be able to accomplish his goal of conquering his almighty fire-breathing foe considering he barely survives the far lesser beasts he encounters along the way. Bafflingly enough though, he ultimately does so with relative ease by inexplicably becoming good at fighting right there on the spot all of the sudden. Unbelievable... That last complaint isn't solely the fault of the script however, but the ugly 3D/CG animation as well (the titular antagonist vaguely resembles a chewed up piece of pink Hubba Bubba bubblegum most of the time). It's not hard to see why the weeb community is so divided on this style. I imagine it saves the animators plenty of time by allowing them to craft scenes faster with premade models rather than having to draw everything by hand, but if not done correctly or with the appropriate amount of care the actual movement of the assets onscreen can suffer as a result such as they do here. The stiff, awkward motions of combatants during the action sequences made it so all they really could do is have the hero thrown around into stuff a bunch as sword swipes look too unnatural, which not only strips those moments of any excitement, but inadvertently robs the various creatures of the personality needed to make their appearances noteworthy. Overall, Dragon's Dogma clearly aims to imitate the types of shows you can find on HBO or Starz, like Game of Thrones or Black Sails. It certainly manages to capture the naughtier aspects of their premium cable nature, but none of the deeper merits that made them worth watching. When it comes to video game adaptations there are honestly Uwe Boll works I would rank above this as their lack of quality is far less offensive to me. Partially because at least I'd expect it from them. This meanwhile takes all the flaws from the absolute worst of those movies and stretches them out into a roughly three hour long miniseries. Plus, it may have legitimately hurt my interest in its source material...