It's a good idea,Jesse. Most people who take the effort to make an account really want to participate in the community in a positive way.
Sadly anonymous replies is kind of like giving people the option to thumbs up and thumbs down. Aka, it's an avenue for trolls to come out of the woodwork and shit on everything akin to cockroaches.
Hope it works out,Blake. She sounds like a beau,inside and out. 
3-day weekend? Hellz yeah! In that case, maybe check it out after your naughty dog fix? If your GF/Spouse sticked around during your Dark Souls binge your marriage should be able to endure Dragon's Dogma. lol. Er, unless your wife is a hair's width from snapping and killing you. Just kidding,bro. lol. 
I feel you. On average I like memorable characters and good narrative in my rpgs. Sadly many of the more modern open world rpgs do not have those attributes. (Aka, storyline is sacrificed for a HUGE roaming area.) Clicking with Dragon's Dogma was simply a wonderful fluke in my case. lol. Still, it does do some things much better than other open world rpgs.
There's a lot of "Dark Souls" in Dragon's Dogma, Chris! The Bitterback isle expansion is especially that way. However,even in the main game there are moments when night falls & suddenly your overwhelmed by zombies or more powerful monsters. I'd say for 29.99 you'd get your money's worth. As a cautionary word of advice, I would not pick up this game if your being productive right now. This is the type of rpg that will easily turn you into a couch potato. 
I'm not entering this gen until 2-3 years in,Ryan. lol. That is if it hasn't collapsed in on itself by that point.
You're right about sony. Publishers can still decide to put in DRM. The thing is sony couldn't put a stop to that if they wanted to. Even this generation we've had to deal with some of this. In my case if an AAA game has evasive DRM,day 1 dlc, and an "online pass" I will not buy it until it drops in price considerably. That's why I held off on Arkham City despite the fact it was a good game.
However, I've slipped. I remember picking up the most recent Mortal Kombat and I didn't even know it had an online pass. Warner Bros. was more crafty with that one.
My biggest beef with sony right now is because they make you buy a subscription to playstation plus just so you can play multi-player online. They tried to slyly slip that under the radar but I caught it.
It's difficult to beat my nostalgia for the original Ultima games and final fantasy 4 & 6,Chris. Hell, even Chrono-trigger can box toe to toe with the most grandiose rpgs today. That and I was more in love with Fallout 1 & 2 than I was with Fallout 3. (Seriously,not trying to be a hipster. There's just something about Bethesda games I don't personally click with.)
But yeah I was hesitant going into DD. I haven't played an open world rpg I liked since Divinity II Dragonknight saga and that was awhile ago. I'm glad I like it so much and I enjoy it for many of the same reasons you mentioned. (Such as a night cycle and needing to use lanterns to see in the dark)
Capcom also seemed good at making mechanics that are just complex and realistic enough but not overly so to the point they're no longer fun. For example I hated how even magical powerful gear broke so easily in Amalur. Delaying your current quest just to get stuff fixed isn't exactly what I would call "fun". The game also was kind of haphazard concerning where you could find repair kits.
A female version of Red from "That 70's show"? lol.
Yeah, "real female gamers" get it worse in online server fps land. You want to talk about a vile place of scum and villainy look no further than certain COD or Halo matches. (To a lesser extent the fighting game community suffers from the same problem. Which is strange, because I've never had a problem with the fighting game community then again,I haven't went up through the ranks to Evo tier either. )
I'm not saying EVERYONE who plays these games is an asshole but each of them do have a lawless "wild west" territory in them depending on the server you jump onto.
There's also an actress in Iran who supposedely got 90 lashes for being in a certain movie yet I don't hear & read nearly as much about that as I do how games are potentially sexist. (Probably because even if there are feminists fighting the good fight in places like the middle east they don't have the time to friggin blog about it or put up tweets! "Texting" is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.)
I can't wait until there are awesome game development studios of all women.(Or at least ones with women bosses) Then I will not have to put up with nearly as many people like Anita Sarkesian.
Another thing to consider is feminism has intergrated itself into education. For good & for ill, it has a strong pressence at colleges and even high schools.
However,it creates a sort of "beaten over the head with it" annoyance factor sometimes.
Yes, I see females as equals.
Yes, sometimes I like to look at sexy depictions of women
Yes, I like porn but it doesn't mean I see women as lifeless souless objects. Besides, what single male doesn't fall back on pornography of some sort when he's not getting the real thing?
As for Sarkesian? I dunno,man. She just doesn't give off the vibe of "I've been a gamer all my life". Sure, ther's a picture of her with huge stacks of games but I have a feeling she got a lot of them with the kick-starter donation money. Before her "Tropes in games" series she did other youtube videos yet she didn't seem to talk about games much. If anything it seemed like she chose games as her pet project just to further her own soap-box bias agenda. (And for the record, there are females on youtube who disagree with Anita strongly. It's not just basement dwelling dude-bros with chips on their shoulders.)
Most of the "negative tropes" can have positive connotations too. For example, Princess Peach isn't just a helpless damsel. She's so valuable and such a good person Mario & Luigi are willing to risk their lives to save her. See? You can take any of this stuff and apply different angles and points of view to it. It's not that difficult. You don't need a college degree in sociology to have common sense and an objective thought process.
Beyond that, "stay at home mothers" and "women who love to cook" do exist and I bet they feel offended whenever a radical feminist comes along and says they embody a negative stereotype just because they're fulfilling more traditional womanly roles.
Also, what about women who enjoy exotic dancing and enjoy being in pornos? While pro-sex feminists probably wouldn't have a problem with them I get the feeling feminists like Anita would say they're "slaves of the patriarchy" even if they're in fact doing their professions of their own free will.
My problem with the most vocal feminists is they claim to have a solution for everyone when the truth is that's bullshit. Why? Because we're all diverse indviduals.
Frankly I don't even like the term "feminist" because the very word puts femininity above all other things. You can't claim to be for "total equality" when you rally under a word that's sole objective is to benefit only one group of people.
Why can't feminists just call themselves equalists or egalitarians? There would be a lot less confusion.
