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chuckroYour father was the great hero Ortega, but he vanished years ago when he left to fight the Archfiend Baramos. On your 16th birthday, you’re named the new hero of the realm, and need to recruit a bunch of friends and go off to fight the Archfiend yourself.
I last played this in 2009. I think I’m playing a slightly tweaked version of the fan translation this time, but it’s still (irritatingly) using the more literal translation scheme that the Game Boy Color versions of the games used. I would generally prefer the NES translation, but would also accept the later conventions (especially for spell names—I like “Zing” and “Insulatle”). The fact that the Dark World doesn’t use the names I grew up with (and that Dragon Quest Builders uses!) irks me greatly.
The last time I played, I did so “honestly”. This time, I was in the mood for the exploration but less for the grind, so I cheated up a couple of Gingham Whips and Sage’s Stones right at the beginning, and once I reached the Shrine of Dharma, I created a Jester, jumped her to level 99, changed her to a Sage, and jumped her to level 99 again. (All while she had the Sexy personality, so she ended up with effectively maxed stats and almost every spell.) This meant that the rest of my team was drastically underleveled for most of the game, but I charged through just fine. Also, my playthrough took literally half as long as my previous one, which says something about the necessity of grinding in this game. The experience curve is weird—you need to be level 20 to change classes, so you’ll probably reach that a few times (by grinding), but you’ll probably beat Zoma around level 40, even though the system goes up to 99.
Something that I discovered with this cheating method, though: the spells Open, Invisibility and Change are learned at high level, allowing you to theoretically grind past some of the game's puzzles if you're bull-headed enough. Not that the quest to get the Final Key is actually more obtuse than finding several of the orbs or the ridiculous chain leading to the Sword of Gaia. I do wonder if Invisibility has any use besides sneaking into one city; or if Change does anything other than let you shop from the elves.
I'd forgotten how much open-world and reliant on clues from townsfolk this era was—the first two games also relied on it heavily. I feel like later DQ games took cues from other series and got more linear and a bit more focused—the “traveling hero solving problems in each town” absolutely started here and absolutely stayed with the series, though. Reading someone playing through DQ4 on Talking Time concurrent to playing this made it very obvious how many things they re-used but also improved on for that game.
Overall: This is another game worthwhile mostly for the nostalgia value, and I don’t know about the newest mobile version, but this version of it is noticeably better than the NES or GBC versions. Personally, though, I think the series got markedly better from here and would recommend later games first.
I last played this in 2009. I think I’m playing a slightly tweaked version of the fan translation this time, but it’s still (irritatingly) using the more literal translation scheme that the Game Boy Color versions of the games used. I would generally prefer the NES translation, but would also accept the later conventions (especially for spell names—I like “Zing” and “Insulatle”). The fact that the Dark World doesn’t use the names I grew up with (and that Dragon Quest Builders uses!) irks me greatly.
The last time I played, I did so “honestly”. This time, I was in the mood for the exploration but less for the grind, so I cheated up a couple of Gingham Whips and Sage’s Stones right at the beginning, and once I reached the Shrine of Dharma, I created a Jester, jumped her to level 99, changed her to a Sage, and jumped her to level 99 again. (All while she had the Sexy personality, so she ended up with effectively maxed stats and almost every spell.) This meant that the rest of my team was drastically underleveled for most of the game, but I charged through just fine. Also, my playthrough took literally half as long as my previous one, which says something about the necessity of grinding in this game. The experience curve is weird—you need to be level 20 to change classes, so you’ll probably reach that a few times (by grinding), but you’ll probably beat Zoma around level 40, even though the system goes up to 99.
Something that I discovered with this cheating method, though: the spells Open, Invisibility and Change are learned at high level, allowing you to theoretically grind past some of the game's puzzles if you're bull-headed enough. Not that the quest to get the Final Key is actually more obtuse than finding several of the orbs or the ridiculous chain leading to the Sword of Gaia. I do wonder if Invisibility has any use besides sneaking into one city; or if Change does anything other than let you shop from the elves.
I'd forgotten how much open-world and reliant on clues from townsfolk this era was—the first two games also relied on it heavily. I feel like later DQ games took cues from other series and got more linear and a bit more focused—the “traveling hero solving problems in each town” absolutely started here and absolutely stayed with the series, though. Reading someone playing through DQ4 on Talking Time concurrent to playing this made it very obvious how many things they re-used but also improved on for that game.
Overall: This is another game worthwhile mostly for the nostalgia value, and I don’t know about the newest mobile version, but this version of it is noticeably better than the NES or GBC versions. Personally, though, I think the series got markedly better from here and would recommend later games first.
