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chuckroOver the last couple of months, I’ve been working on Dragon Quest 9, and this is the closest to the release date that I've played a game in years. If you’ve enjoyed the other entries in the Dragon Quest series, you’ll also enjoy this one.
The system is pleasant to work with—smooth and straightforward standard jrpg, battles move quickly, each character has an inventory and you also have an infinite-capacity “bag”, there’s a class system and every character can switch to every class, no huge surprises. The fact that encounters are visible on the world map is a welcome change, because there are a lot of instances where you’re looking for a specific type of monster, and that allows you to avoid the others. (Or avoid pretty much all encounters if you don’t want to fight them.)
The graphics are amusing, as you choose your characters’ appearance and every piece of equipment changes your character sprite. The music is pleasant but generally forgettable, through it pulls in a few themes from other DQ games in a bit of nostalgia.
The grinding is there, but not out of control if all you want to do is play the main story. The fact that many of the optional quests are basically inefficient grinding with another name (kill X of these creatures with a special attack / kill X creatures until they drop a plot item) means that you can disguise some of it from yourself, as well. "Fight these monsters until they drop a unique item" keeps you focused on getting the item to show up, rather than the fact you just fought 30 of the things. I actually found this insidious, because while it wasn’t as bad as FFTA2, it meant that I’d keep getting distracted by unlocking new quests when I kept meaning to follow the plot and what do you mean it’s been three hours?
The main quest moves pretty quickly, and you can pursue it in bursts, rather than needing to break up every bit of plot advancement with grinding, so long as you catch up every once and a while. Even if you’re away from the plot for a while, pressing Y brings up a synopsis so you know what you’re supposed to be doing. The plot itself is fun, but there's a "silent protagonist with no personality" problem, and it's not really offering anything new. Each segment is pretty much "Go to town, learn of problem, go to dungeon and defeat boss to solve problem. Repeat." Going back to both a generic protagonist and a generic party (after having a party made up of unique characters in DQ4-DQ8) hurts the game's ability to have a compelling story progression, because the party members can't actually contribute to it. Not to mention your hero is effectively mute, so any intra-party conversation is your ninja butterfly sidekick talking at you. I'm not sure why they didn't make the party members genuine characters--maybe so you could do a solo game if you wanted?--because any character can take any job, so it's not like giving them defined names and personalities would have hurt the system.
The biggest thing this game has going for it is its size. I were only able to play one video game for a year, this is the one I'd choose. Not because it's the greatest game ever, mind you, but because there's so much stuff to do in it. They used the Nippon Ichi model of game design: The main quest is ~30 hours, and not particularly difficult if you've played jrpgs before. There are 150+ quests to do (more when you include DLC), which range from taking five minutes to taking hours while you kill critters looking for random drops. There are "grottos", randomly-generated high-level dungeons full of bonus bosses. Each of your characters can master every class—including bonus classes—and every weapon and combine skills. There's an alchemy system that you can use to create the best weapons. There’s a multiplayer mode and online invites and item-trading. There are "accolades" that you earn for gaining abilities, wearing certain clothing combinations, completing tasks, etc. And there's a "battle records" screen that keeps track of your percentage-completion of all of these things. If you wanted to be a completionist, this game could easily take hundreds of hours.
Oh, and I discovered something that warms the cockles of my old-school gamer heart: You find a rusty sword in the final dungeon, and if you alchemize it (in a manner only the internet can tell you, Guide Dang It), it'll turn into the legendary sword from DQ1: Erdrick's Sword. Not "Loto's Sword". This means a lot to me.
The system is pleasant to work with—smooth and straightforward standard jrpg, battles move quickly, each character has an inventory and you also have an infinite-capacity “bag”, there’s a class system and every character can switch to every class, no huge surprises. The fact that encounters are visible on the world map is a welcome change, because there are a lot of instances where you’re looking for a specific type of monster, and that allows you to avoid the others. (Or avoid pretty much all encounters if you don’t want to fight them.)
The graphics are amusing, as you choose your characters’ appearance and every piece of equipment changes your character sprite. The music is pleasant but generally forgettable, through it pulls in a few themes from other DQ games in a bit of nostalgia.
The grinding is there, but not out of control if all you want to do is play the main story. The fact that many of the optional quests are basically inefficient grinding with another name (kill X of these creatures with a special attack / kill X creatures until they drop a plot item) means that you can disguise some of it from yourself, as well. "Fight these monsters until they drop a unique item" keeps you focused on getting the item to show up, rather than the fact you just fought 30 of the things. I actually found this insidious, because while it wasn’t as bad as FFTA2, it meant that I’d keep getting distracted by unlocking new quests when I kept meaning to follow the plot and what do you mean it’s been three hours?
The main quest moves pretty quickly, and you can pursue it in bursts, rather than needing to break up every bit of plot advancement with grinding, so long as you catch up every once and a while. Even if you’re away from the plot for a while, pressing Y brings up a synopsis so you know what you’re supposed to be doing. The plot itself is fun, but there's a "silent protagonist with no personality" problem, and it's not really offering anything new. Each segment is pretty much "Go to town, learn of problem, go to dungeon and defeat boss to solve problem. Repeat." Going back to both a generic protagonist and a generic party (after having a party made up of unique characters in DQ4-DQ8) hurts the game's ability to have a compelling story progression, because the party members can't actually contribute to it. Not to mention your hero is effectively mute, so any intra-party conversation is your ninja butterfly sidekick talking at you. I'm not sure why they didn't make the party members genuine characters--maybe so you could do a solo game if you wanted?--because any character can take any job, so it's not like giving them defined names and personalities would have hurt the system.
The biggest thing this game has going for it is its size. I were only able to play one video game for a year, this is the one I'd choose. Not because it's the greatest game ever, mind you, but because there's so much stuff to do in it. They used the Nippon Ichi model of game design: The main quest is ~30 hours, and not particularly difficult if you've played jrpgs before. There are 150+ quests to do (more when you include DLC), which range from taking five minutes to taking hours while you kill critters looking for random drops. There are "grottos", randomly-generated high-level dungeons full of bonus bosses. Each of your characters can master every class—including bonus classes—and every weapon and combine skills. There's an alchemy system that you can use to create the best weapons. There’s a multiplayer mode and online invites and item-trading. There are "accolades" that you earn for gaining abilities, wearing certain clothing combinations, completing tasks, etc. And there's a "battle records" screen that keeps track of your percentage-completion of all of these things. If you wanted to be a completionist, this game could easily take hundreds of hours.
Oh, and I discovered something that warms the cockles of my old-school gamer heart: You find a rusty sword in the final dungeon, and if you alchemize it (in a manner only the internet can tell you, Guide Dang It), it'll turn into the legendary sword from DQ1: Erdrick's Sword. Not "Loto's Sword". This means a lot to me.
