So I am playing Dragon's Dogma third time around now. First finished, second save corrupt and now third with a wiki, which I recommend to anyone [you can miss everything but the main quest].
For an action game, it's absolutely fantastic. Not perfect, but fantastic.
The combat system is very much like the one in Shadow of the Colossus, in that you can climb monsters to take advantage of their weakspots. You can climb a cyclops, reach its head and have it remove its massive helmet off it when it tries to grab you. You can cut off hydra's heads and set it on fire so it doesn't regrow them. You can grab onto a griffin when it tries to fly away, hack at its wings and have you both slam into the ground. Or you can just summon a tornado to tear anything and everything apart, launching lesser foes high into the air.
Controllable difficulty, most annoying features can be turned off, 9 classes that play differently, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun. All unfun can be entirely ignored, except one escort mission.
And everything I've seen or heard about it before I played it seemed boring.