Dragon Quest - Like a Dargon

[estragon]

One thing I really do like in DQXI is the game balance with Stronger Monsters on. Without any grinding, I feel like I win almost every boss fight exactly one turn from a full party wipe. It's kind of amazing how consistent this is, like it was balanced to be exactly perfectly suited to how I personally play these games.

I had the closest possible variation of this last night against Chekov's Sealed In Ice Dragon: An AoE attack kills everyone in the active party. Two paralyzed party members with some damage are subbed in, not able to do anything but provide some an extra turn, maybe two if they are lucky. They are definitely about to die. I assume it's over. Then, the boss is pinged by ~50 HP poison damage at the start of its turn and dies.

 

[Super Megaman X]

Squenix is taking feedback on Dragon Quest. It's a very detailed survey, with 30 questions, and question 20 is a big one. It wants to know exactly what DQ games you've played, and each individual release of a title counts. So, with DQ2, as an example, I couldn't pick the nes version, as I've never played it. But I have played the gbc version, the android version, and the switch version, so I was able to pick each of those options.

 

[Peklo]

I asked them to feature a female protagonist and to ditch puff-puff and other sex jokes. Knowing how Square Enix has handled feedback like this in the past, they would probably think that an oxymoron.

 

[YangusKhan]

I asked them to feature a female protagonist and to ditch puff-puff and other sex jokes.

This was my first bit of feedback at the end. I also said a bunch of other stuff, but it was pretty minor.

 

[ozacrot]

Thanks for linking it! I took the survey - in the process realizing that although DQ is maybe ranked 4 or 5 among my top RPG series, the DQ series and its iconography have been a steady pulse in my life ever since I learned to read by playing Dragon Warrior. I asked for a female hero, and otherwise suggested that the retrograde elements of the series are threatening to overshadow what's so good about it.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Squenix is taking feedback on Dragon Quest.

Here's a direct link to the survey:

このアンケートは回答を受け付けていません

questant.jp

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Dragon Quest 8 3DS: Purchased at release to support future DraQue localizations but unplayed until now because I kind of didn't enjoy DraQue8PS2, and... it's good! 2x battle speed, visible encounters, and instant alchemy are a (somewhat) transformative experience.

There are still some issues - lots of pop in, sometimes encounters spawn right on top of you, the visible encounters are highly inconsistent wrt whether or not they despawn when you move the camera (i've noticed that camera quest targets tend to despawn a lot when off camera), and frankly I think it still sucks that like a third of the Alchemy recipes are "Use Rare Ingredients To Make Thing Worse"

I was a bit worried about the camera quests at first, but a quick look at the guide reveals that they're basically "Photograph the town's Slime Statue/photograph NPCS with voice acting/photograph landmarks and unique assets created specifically for this room" and that's... generally pretty easy? The only real tough ones are the "Defeat 30 of a specific type of enemy and a rare type will spawn somewhere in the area" but that's mostly solved by just checking a guide for where they spawn. One was listed as "it spawns somewhere between Ascantha, Home of the Sad Widow King, and Pickham, the Bandit Town, which is like... the entire eastern length of the continent.

(This also introduces a way to grind money - the Gold NugCat that spawns near the Trodain Church drops 777 Gold per encounter, and that's, uh, pretty good money for most of the game)

The Monster Arena also feels less annoying, but that could be because the 2x battle speed means less wasted time. (Potbelly bro I need you to stop throwing sand, that's way less useful than a straight physical attack bro)

It's... pretty funny how much stuff gets buried in the Misc menu in this version.I get Classic Dragon Quest Menu Aesthetics, but I feel like they could have removed the "Talk", a thing that literally no one uses in this game, and bumped some of these up to the main menu, like Photo Album/Cameron's Codex and Alchemy Pot.

I got the Boat and I'm kind of vibing around, getting sweet new gear that can be Instant Potted into something even better. I forgot that Neos was basically a trap: It's a giant island in the middle of the world map, just west of where you start sailing from, and it's full of monsters that are... not difficult exactly, but more trouble than they're worth, requiring a lot of Kabuffs and healing to put down and giving not particularly great Exp or Gold.

It's basically taken until this point for Jessica's attack magic to really start coming into its own, I guess her Wisdom got high enough she unlocked her next damage tier and she's no longer all like "Spend MP to deal a third of the damage the Protag does with a regular attack" - now she's all "Spend MP to deal ~10 more damage than the Protag does with a regular attack if the enemy is weak to the element you're using", which.... is progress, I guess? The Magma Staff helps a lot, but mostly she's a Caduceus Staff Bot (she's getting points in Whips too even though I know Twin Dragon Lash was nerfed in this version)

Yangus is solid, he's on Fisticuffs for Thin Air and will be transitioning to Axes for single target damage. In the PS2 version I went with Scythes, because I thought the stealing would be useful (it wasn't) and being able to do multitarget damage is good (it is, but Jessica was on Whips and Hero was on Boomerangs, so it was a bit redundant)

Angelo is on Bows, and basically only ever attacks with Cherub's Arrow. He's also getting some points in Staff to get Caduceus, because we love free HealMores.

Protagonist is on Boomerangs primarily, but getting points in Swords so he'll be able to do some good single target damage later in the game when good Boomerang get fewer and farther apart.

No idea what I'll do with Red and Morrie, but I do know that there's a Shield that can cast Kabuff so Angelo's spot on this team is in danger.

Anyway I'm enjoying it a lot, my enjoyment will probably drop considerably once I hit the part of the game where bosses Icy Pulse every other turn even though the game is balanced around going into High Tension

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Sugiyama died

 

[Fyonn]

Very excited that I can play Dragon Quest again without every single musical track reminding me that Sugiyama was actively using Dragon Quest money to make the world objectively worse. Now it'll remind me of that time Sugiyama died, making the world objectively less bad.

 

[estragon]

i hope that whoever replaces him is able to write more music in dqxii, and also that they do not do hard right wing media projects

pretty decent shot at at least getting the latter, i think

but i wonder if tradition will lead them to stick with not nearly enough music for games of the length they're currently making

 

[Positronic Brain]

I wouldn't be surprised if they just keep recycling Sugiyama's tracks with new instrumentation.

 

[Peklo]

I'm glad he's finally dead.

 

[madhair60]

I'm glad he's finally dead.

 

[Octopus Prime]

This was a nice surprise to wake up to

 

[aturtledoesbite]

Sugiyama died

 

[WildcatJF]

Sugiyama dying has liberated a franchise I have long loved from a very problematic thorn that has poisoned it for a long while. Even the quality of the music had really dropped since VIII, so his living was actively hurting the series. A man truly full of hatred, spite and lies, the world is ultimately better off in the wake of his death.

(I'm not editing my comment in the first paragraph about him, btw.)

 

[Poster]

Even the quality of the music had really dropped since VIII, so his living was actively hurting the series.

Pretty much what I was going to say.

Even without the problematic stuff, the recent DQ OST's made it clear to me that Sugiyama was well past his sell-by date.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Cool, I can play Dragon Quest again.

 

[Fyonn]

In "honor" of the late full-time homophobe and part-time music composer, Koichi Sugiyama, I have embarked on a Gay Characters Only run of Dragon Quest 3. The cast of which I plucked from other JRPGs, even if one is an action RPG and one isn't from Japan. I have the Hero, Asellus from SaGa Frontier; the Cleric, Vira from Granblue Fantasy; the Fighter, Valentin from Get In The Car, Loser!; and the Wizard, Emil from Nier.

 

[SpoonyBard]

On that note, him being gone does make the question of buying that upcoming DQ3 remake easier.

On the other hand a memorial or something to him will possibly feature prominently in its credits....

 

[Kazin]

I've been playing the first two Dragon Quest games in the form of the Game Boy Color ports from over twenty years ago, and having a pretty good time.

The first game is a short, breezy playthrough that is mostly grinding, but it's not difficult at all and I think I'm going to play through the NES version of it whenever my flash cart gets here.

For the second game, I'm following a FAQ, and it must be said, it is an absolute slog even when you know where to go. I can't imagine trying to suss everything out on my own - the world map is quite large, battles are annoyingly frequent, and enemies on the world map love to poison you and put you to sleep, even equipped with Amulets. Meanwhile the latter half of the game is mostly sailing around the whole freaking world, finding hidden items with only vague in-game clues as to their location (which is the main reason I'm using a FAQ). The character you start as has all kinds of equipment options, the second character less so, and the third character basically can't equip anything short of secret items you have to seek out (again, in my case, via FAQ) to make her durable at all.

All of which is to say, I see what DQ2 has the reputation it does. There's stuff to enjoy in it (a huge chunk of DQ1's world is in it, weirdly), but it's pretty rough, and I don't see myself returning to it once I beat it.

Next up is DQ3, which I've not beat yet, but do enjoy.

 

[Purple]

Honestly the last time I played 1 and 2 (original NES versions) I was pleasantly surprised by how smooth and grind-light 2 was. The first game is all about "how far can I get before I have to stop and farm?" but 2 you can just move forward with decent momentum, and the final stretch really rewards just running your party into the ground until it works in a way I appreciated.

 

[Kazin]

I cannot imagine NES DQ2 lol. I'm currently leveling my party outside the final dungeon/save point, and the random encounters there are brutal. I imagine it'd take longer and be even more difficult on NES rather than GBC like I'm playing.

 

[Sarge]

Yeah, you definitely had to beef up to get through the final section in Dragon Warrior II. I still like the game a lot, though. It's those blasted instant-death guys that get you once you hit the last zone. Thankfully you can both save and heal there, so you basically just have to "fake it till you make it" with the encounters.

Also, the minibosses, as long as you don't reset, don't come back in the NES game, so even if you died you can make another run and it's a little easier on your resources. I typically just got to high enough levels to beat it then run from everything until I hit the end. The SNES version makes things a bit easier since two of your characters learn revive, and I think the GBC version is the same.

 

[conchobhar]

Huh, that is not my experience with DQ2 at all. I found the villagers' chatter to be quite helpful, and the world geography laid out in such a way that it always leads you to where you need to go next. Like, right when you get the boat: you immediately land in Alefgard, where the only place you can enter is the Dragonlord's Castle, who gives you your new quest (finding the Seals); then, leaving Alefgard requires you to exit to the south, where you find a tower that contains the first Seal. And then when it comes time to leave the 'inner sea' area, most directions will lead you to Beran, where you learn that the King of Osterfair holds a seal; the one direction that doesn't lead to Beran instead takes you directly to Osterfair. That sort of thing happens all the time; the game is always nudging you in the right direction. I never had to consult a walkthrough for clues, and never felt lost.

 

[Kazin]

You found all the invisible items? That's the part that annoys me, not any lack of clues or anything. The Loto Armor is pointed to exactly where it is in DQ1 (and was optional, I think), whereas several of the seals are randomly on a floor tile somewhere, with only a vague hint as to what room it'd even be in.

Just beat the final boss, gonna go around and talk to a bunch of townspeople before moving onto 3 tomorrow, the only mainline DQ I've not beat yet (X aside).

 

[conchobhar]

Okay I admit to using a walkthrough to find the Thunder Sword. But that's it!

 

[Kazin]

The GBC version actually shows that on the map, so you might stumble across it on accident (I probably would have, that cave is nightmarishly twisted), but those seals still annoy me lol

 

[Peklo]

I think following a guide closely for a game like Dragon Quest II can potentially be detrimental or at odds with its design, because it's built around densely layered investigative curiosity on part of the player, closing out one branch of exploratory options even as several more open up in the process. If done under the auspices of player-governed self-direction, it's deeply satisfying and engrossing, a game of true wanderlust with little to stop one from making their own mistakes or building up to personal successes, telling a very good travelogue narrative along the way; if all its mysteries and connective tissue is laid out before the player external to their own discoveries, those connections can seem arbitrary and baffling. Structurally and experientially, I don't think anything in the series is like it, even the superficially same-but-more DQIII, and for those reasons it's just about my favourite out of all of them.

 

[Lokii]

I've only played the GBC version of II, which I understand corrects a lot of issues with the original game, but when I went through it (oh god more than a decade ago now whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy) I adored the crest hunt. II established a lot of the Dragon Quest format, the mid-to-late game treasure hunt included, and there's a certain purity in II's original conception. Following the clues, mastering ownership of the world geography, investing myself in the journey and adventure was surprisingly impactful. Like a lot of things that 2 innovated, the macguffin hunt would be refined to a crispness in the later games, but in doing so it loses something of the cleanness of expression as practiced in II. When I recall II fondly the satisfaction of the crest hunt is among the foremost recollections. At least on the GBC.