Dragon Quest - Like a Dargon

[Kazin]

I can see why someone would like it, sure - I went back and read Conchobhar's and your posts, Peklo, from earlier this year near the start of the thread - but I know from experience with similar situations in other RPGs I've played that I would have hated the game had I played it as intended. To be clear, that's my problem, not DQ2s, but exploring a game of its size with the encounter rate as high as it was (again, haven't played the NES version, but I can't imagine the encounter rate would be lower than the GBC version on that system) with quest mandatory items being on invisible tiles all over the world map would have just made me quit in frustration, especially with the aforementioned enemies who frequently put your characters to sleep/poison them all over the overworld, especially on the water, where you spend a bunch of time sailing around. At least eventually you can Repel those and sail around relatively unbothered. I also really dislike the decision to make equipment genuinely difficult to find for your mages, especially the princess.

Putting the hidden crests in treasure chests probably would make me have wanted to play it without a FAQ. As is, I just don't like that choice, whatever the intent.

 

[YangusKhan]

FWIW, this was my post after playing DQ2 early this year:

Speaking to the earlier conversation on Dragon Quest II: I'm replaying it on Switch. I just completed the cave to Rendarak. Even though there's a lot to like about the game, this ending stretch still kinda sucks. The encounter rate in dungeons in general is extremely high, which I think made me overleveled at this point because the cave wasn't actually that hard, it just took me a long time to get through because there were so many battles and the cave was complex to navigate. For reference my levels are 38/36/32 and I see people earlier in this thread talking about getting to Rendarak proper almost 10 levels below mine. Also I looked up how to get Midenhall's final weapon from the cave and I don't see how I could've stumbled onto it naturally, because no way in hell was I going to walk around all the corners of a gigantic empty room with how high the encounter rate was (there was discussion about this earlier in the thread).

Everything leading up to this part is great and what I expect from a Dragon Quest game, but man the encounter rate suuuuucks and drags out what could be a nice brisk experience like its predecessor. I never finished this game when I first played through the series long ago, but that time was on NES and I vaguely remember stopping at this same point and never trying the game again until now, and it became the only main entry I haven't finished. I'm definitely ready for it to be over, but since I do seem to be overleveled I'll at least give the final dungeon a shot.

 

[Torzelbaum]

It has been ages since I played DQ*2 so am I mis-remembering it having something like Gwaelin's Love for the Crests?

FAQS weren't a thing back then so I had to call the Nintendo Hotline to find out where the Thunder sword had been squirreled away.

*W

 

[Peklo]

I'll also say that the DQII playable trio are one of my favourite RPG parties in anything, and not for any sham pedigree like "being the first" but the specific wrinkles that exist in that formative expression. They're one of the more pointedly skewed and "unbalanced" party units in ways that frustrate people because they would like each to have a comparable level of common usefulness, but DQII will never give you that: the hero is the hero because he carries the others in most situations, bearing the brunt of the responsibility and efficacy during the adventure supported by his own privileged and esteemed status. It's a "meme" that the Prince of Cannock is wont to push up daisies at the lightest opposition, which again I think is tinged in player frustration with maybe some affection sprinkled in, but I think it only benefits the characterization of the party dynamics that they are not equally capable, even within their own niches. The exceptionalism of the hero is underlined in their equipment pool, full of storied artifacts to further embolden them, while his cousins will have to make do with more mundane gear--the remakes added some "better" options which leveled the playing field a little in numerical terms but diluted the contrast that I thought worked for the game's narrative. The circumstances around assembling the party in DQII are exceptionally novel in how dynamic and autonomously-reading they are for the two whose perspective you're not chained to, and I always loved that the two allies had set out on their own journeys despite not being as prepared for its hardships as the hero was. It's a powerfully cathartic moment when they all unite and are able to support each other at last.

 

[Kazin]

Mechanically, the two mages dying easily usually means making (imo) excessive trips back to town to revive them, then trudging back to whatever dungeon you were going through. Without the Zoom spell from later games being available, this often means a lengthy sail across the world map to get back to the dungeon you were at, and since there are a few towns you can't even save in, it means you're sailing a lot.

It has been ages since I played DQ*2 so am I mis-remembering it having something like Gwaelin's Love for the Crests?

FAQS weren't a thing back then so I had to call the Nintendo Hotline to find out where the Thunder sword had been squirreled away.

*W

There's a flute that tells you when a crest is around, but unless I'm mistaken, it does not tell you the exact square to look on.

 

[Octopus Prime]

The mobile (and Switch) ports really took the ambiguity out of the tile hunting since they would sparkle if there was anything on them.

Did not hurt the experience, that.

 

[Kazin]

Well, darn it, I should have been playing the Switch version, since I do own it lol. Stupid backlit Gameboy, enticing me with its backlightedness and slim form factor lol

 

[Sarge]

I would assume the crest hunt was inspired by Ultima IV's rune hunt. It's quite similar in both games. I still want to eventually play through Ultima IV, and particularly the NES port, which apparently made the transition in fine form.

 

[Purple]

Also worth noting: The NES DQ games are old enough that treasure chests have kind of a spotty memory for whether they've been looted, so in those cases where the best gear for Princess Dogface happens to also be rather nice for Prince Nipples-Out, you can totally swing back later for a spare.

 

[Kazin]

Wait, really? The chests respawn their contents on NES?

 

[Purple]

Yeah, I don't know the exact mechanics and I'm getting a headache looking them up because it's more convoluted than I thought (just not wanting to waste the memory to track them long term, but offhand I know:
- You can find vital plot items again if you somehow lost them.
- At least under some circumstances, you can (and really should) get a second Water Flying Cloth to hook up both your cousins.
- Some chests with just like random cash or whatever respawn on a cycle (or was that just a DQ1 thing?)

 

[Kazin]

- At least under some circumstances, you can (and really should) get a second Water Flying Cloth to hook up both your cousins.

Aw, dang, that'd have been nice. Even the extremely expensive fur coat I bought for Dude Mage wasn't as good as that.

 

[ArugulaZ]

Well, that was a surprise. I'm playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon right now, and the lead character Ichiban just straight up namedrops Dragon Quest as his favorite game, despite it not being one of Sega's. I get that it's a big franchise in Japan, but it's kind of odd that they'd mention a competitor's software by name like that. I thought for sure they'd use a parody name or something.

 

[JBear]

I play a lot of old RPGs, and I can't recall one that I wasn't able to finish without outside assistance. I'm not saying that games that obtuse don't exist, but if they do, I haven't played them. They just expect you to talk to everyone, write everything down, and be thorough. Which are all things that I do when I play games anyway! (Seriously, I'm doing it for Dark Souls 2 right now, and it feels just as essential there as in any NES RPG.) It's not for everyone, but I adore it. Relevantly, I played DQ 2-3 NES this way in recent years (I will rarely choose to play a remake of a game when the original is accessible to me, preferring to engage with games as close to their original context as I can manage without reading Japanese), and had a grand time with both of them. (I also never grinded in either of them, FWIW.)

 

[Peklo]

I don't do external note-taking in games, so it's possible to enjoy and attune with the design language of old RPGs in that context too. There are always multiple vectors of engagement with this stuff, and it's especially doable with material like DQ, where the streamlining of genre concepts that begat the series is far more integral to its play structures and inferred player guidance than in many of its contemporaries or even successors.

 

[Sarge]

There's only one game I can think of that I've played that committed an egregious, show-stopping sin, and that was Konami's Dragon Scroll. I'm pretty sure I found every clue and the sequence to proceed is so baffling that either something got lost in the fan translation or it really was that insanely obtuse.

 

[Kazin]

Dragon Quest III beat, and I had a great time with it (I played the Switch version). I only got stuck at one point - unless I missed something (totally possible), I didn't hear anyone hint at what to do with the mountaincleaver sword. I found the volcano, but searching it didn't seem to do anything, and I thought, you know, mountaincleaver, I probably have to cleave a mountain with it. Turns out you attack a volcano with it? I guess the volcano sorta looks like a mountain, but it's got a hole on top so I didn't put two and two together, so I had to look up what to do at that point. Otherwise, I figured everything out just fine.

I particularly enjoyed how the people talked in the last area of the game. Felt like an absolute love letter to the original localization of Dragon Warrior, what with the thees and thous and whatnot.

I think I want to check out the NES version. It's a cool game.

 

[Bongo]

DQ1 on mobile and Switch has a new localization that also uses a similar kind of early modern English to the NES script. It also uses the much less grindy balance of the SFC release.

 

[Nodal]

Dragon Quest III beat, and I had a great time with it (I played the Switch version). I only got stuck at one point - unless I missed something (totally possible), I didn't hear anyone hint at what to do with the mountaincleaver sword. I found the volcano, but searching it didn't seem to do anything, and I thought, you know, mountaincleaver, I probably have to cleave a mountain with it. Turns out you attack a volcano with it? I guess the volcano sorta looks like a mountain, but it's got a hole on top so I didn't put two and two together, so I had to look up what to do at that point. Otherwise, I figured everything out just fine.

I particularly enjoyed how the people talked in the last area of the game. Felt like an absolute love letter to the original localization of Dragon Warrior, what with the thees and thous and whatnot.

I think I want to check out the NES version. It's a cool game.

I realize this is supremely unhelpful, but I do know someone DOES tell you what to do with it, because I've been doing my best to go through the DQ games without a guide. I actually finished DQ3 last week, I'm on 4 atm.

 

[Kazin]

I figured someone did, yeah. I just hadn't spoken to them, and I felt like I'd done enough running around looking for whoever it was.

 

[Nodal]

I figured someone did, yeah. I just hadn't spoken to them, and I felt like I'd done enough running around looking for whoever it was.

I've gotten riiight before that point a few times. The only thing I've looked up so far is how to trigger the yellow orb continuing.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Even if you already know how to make the Yellow Orb appear, that’s one of the more obtuse parts of the game, mechanically.

Also, getting through the haunted lake pass

 

[Felicia]

I recently discovered that it's possible to play Dragon Quest X in english, sort of. Some enterprising fans have made two different programs that you can run at the same time as running DQX on your computer, one of them translating the menus, the other translation dialogue boxes in an overlay. The dialogue translation is done partially through a separate online machine translation tool, and partially with text translated by the fans. This of course means that the translation is far from perfect. There are plenty of gramatical confusion, obvious errors and general strangeness, and I imagine that a lot of the original script's subtleties may be lost. Still, I've managed to play through a fair bit of the beginning of the game, and I think I've generally understood the overarching story, and at least some of the character personalities (it helps that the characters a fairly expressive in cutscenes) through context. And I've rarely been confused about where I need to go next to progress the story (and if I do, there are some english-language faqs and walkthroughs available). It also helps that even though it's an MMORPG, there are several functions that seems to make it possible to play through most of it by yourself (including the ability to hire other player characters as NPC party members).

Setting it all up does require jumping through some hoops. First you of course need to register a Japanese Square Enix account and download the game, but fortunately the game has a fairly extensive free trial without time limits which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion the whole Version 1 storyline and apparently a long way into Version 2. Then you'll need to set up a VPN if you're playing from outside Japan (though apparently this isn't required if you're playing from the USA?). I used ProtonVPN which was fairly easy (and free!) to set up, but there's probably plenty of other options. Once you've gotten the actual game running, you need to download the translation programs and do some setup, including registering an account for the separate "translation API". I did hestitate a little at this part, since the translation service requires you to type in a credit card number, even though it's free, apparently to make sure that the service isn't abused. It does seems fairly trusthworthy though, so I decided to risk it. When you have everything set up, you start DQX, and then the translation programs, and it all works fairly painlessly, though you might want to fiddle with the settings to get the translated text where you want it.

Fortunately, there are several guides (though some are a little outdated) for setting things up, and if you follow those (and occasionally make use of Google Translate when dealing with the Japanese Square Enix pages) I don't think it should be too difficult.

The translation tools are called dqxclarity (menu translation) and ahkmon (dialogue translation).
Here is a page with various links to guides for getting started.
Dragon Quest X Adventurer's Abbey has several guides on how register accounts and set everything up.
A guide I used for getting the game running.
There is an english wiki with plenty of information about playing the game.
A walkthrough for the first part of the story.

 

[Felicia]

Playing the translated version of Dragon Quest X, I notice that the slightly-better-than-machine-translation unintentionally makes the game a little more queer from time to time. Today I ran into a minor male NPC who refers to another male NPC as "my husband", which might possibly be a translation error rather than what it said in the original Japanese. And earlier, there were several times when an old bearded sage was called "miss".

 

[Pajaro Pete]

sugiyama's corpse found shaking

 

[Daikaiju]

sugiyama's corpse found shaking

GOOD

 

[Felicia]

I can confirm that it's possible to play through the entire pre-expansions story of Dragon Quest X in english, using the method I mentioned previously, since I've now done it myself. This includes defeating the Big Bad, though of course the story ends with suggestions that there are in fact Bigger Bads to be defeated, and plenty of loose plot threads yet to be tied up. But I don't think I'm ready to go through the potential hassle of paying for the expansions to play them with an, at best, passable english translation. I'm plenty satisfied with the story I've been through so far, and will probably continue with XI sometime in the future.

The parts of the game I've played through is absolutely soloable, since you can recruit other player characters as NPC party members who acts with decent AI, which makes it feel like playing the original version of Dragon Quest IV, though with the main-character-and-personality-free-party-members of games like III and IX. The story does provide plenty of other characters with fun and interesting personalities and many mini-stories in typical Dragon Quest fashion.

Oh, and some of the links in my previous posts are somewhat out of date, since the translation tools have to be updated everytime Sqare Enix does an update of the game. If you're interested, the newest releases of the two translation tools can be found here and here, and you should keep an eye on the translator's Discord (found via the link here) to know when they update them.

 

[Torzelbaum]

I don't think I've seen it mentioned anywhere here but I wonder if Square Enix is going to make anything like the pixel remasters for the Dragon Quest games. It seems to me like that's not currently the direction they are going for DQ remakes but I don't know for sure if that's the case.

 

[Sarge]

Outside of the 2D-HD thingy for DQIII, it sure doesn't seem that way. I'm still pretty indifferent on those remasters - there's so much visual incongruency between the various elements that it bothers me. I'm not sure I'd trust them to not do the same thing with DQ. I'd absolutely spring for them done correctly, though.

 

[Bongo]

The remakes of 1-3 effectively are pixel remasters already. I'd welcome ports of the mobile versions of 4-6 to anywhere else they'd care to sell 'em to me, though.