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| Maou 1398th Post
 
Red Carpet Executive Member
   
    
    
    
|  "Dragon Quest love thread" , posted Fri 18 Apr 12:14:
Okay, so just because my friends and I skipped playing Dragon Quest IV-VI in favor of playing and replaying Final Fantasy IV-VI back in the 16-bit heyday doesn't mean that everyone else did, so the upcoming July re-release of Hori's favorite, V, should be a cause for a thread on convincing me to buy a DS and play these games. I think Rogers or someone on Insert Credit did a couple of articles on IV and V that made them sound appealing, and Famitsu fans along with everyone's father and uncle have played the originals, but still! Will they hold up in this modern age? V sounds like it did the intergenerational story better than Phantasy Star III or SaGa Frontier II (hah) did, so I'm intrigued by that in particular. And the terrifyingly difficult dungeons would be a plus...I love Lunar and Phantasy Star's massive mazes, and I love the terror of having a real sense of danger of death in Toruneko or Shiren or the Dungeon series. But then again, if it's just endless grinding...
Or would I be wasting my time to not just be playing Dragon Quest VIII instead?
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Fri 18 Apr 12:17] |
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| Toxico 4380th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
    
|  "Re(1):Dragon Quest love thread" , posted Fri 18 Apr 12:58:
quote:
I think Rogers or someone on Insert Credit did a couple of articles on IV and V that made them sound appealing, and Famitsu fans along with everyone's father and uncle have played the originals, but still! Will they hold up in this modern age?
I have incredible blurry memories of grinding the whole afternoon in order to amass enough cash in order to strike the local town store, just to advance two more hours on the game and being forced to repeat the same process all over again; and this seems to be a staple feature of the series.
On the games that I have truly played (1, 4 & 6), the game itselfs just screams old school; the storyline, the narrative, the character portrayal, and even the game mechanics (knights, pysichal skills = too good); In my youth, while I did enjoy classic character archtypes and storyline events, I could only take so much talk about heroism, justice and chivalry before killing my own party members, and running off to strike my school in frenzy, beating random students senseless.
And, of course, onion kid > loto 
The only evil of the word; is the one in the heart of mens
[this message was edited by Toxico on Fri 18 Apr 13:01] |
| Maou 1399th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(3):Dragon Quest love thread" , posted Sat 19 Apr 15:07:
Who are these "elitist nerds" you speak of (not an entirely humble phrase itself)? I haven't really noticed many people period knocking VIII, even here, myself. The Cafe's a tough crowd, but I think it's an intelligent crowd that can usually support its critical comments. Maybe there was some scrap somewhere else where there was shallow VIII-bashing that left a bad impression of those who dislike the game, but I don't really think it's occurred here so far.
Anyway, VIII only has orchestrated music in the overseas version, which I wouldn't be playing, sadly, so I don't know if the lack of good music and voice takes it down a peg...though the great expanses and vast world sound great. While VII sounded tedious and 100 hour games are not things I want to bother with, the sheer scale of its world sounded fascinating, and I remember one thing Rogers wrote about something similar in VIII about making your way to the very same mountains you see in the "background" that sounded wonderful, for instance. The sense of intense danger and exploration in DQ grabs me, but endless random battles scare me...I wonder if I could get the same "vast dangerous world" thing by sitting down and really playing Shiren or something. I hear what you're saying about the leveling up to advance the story, Toxico. Suffered through that for some time in Phantasy Star II the other month...I guess it's what you get when you have a design dynamic where it wasn't considered "grinding to get to the next fun story bit" so much as "exciting fighting with even some story to come afterwards as a fun addition."
I did hear that V really was a pretty seminal story, though like PSII I guess it may be told pretty simply by today's standards? I hear the best things about IV and V scenario-wise. Any other takers?
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Sat 19 Apr 15:14] |
| Toxico 4382th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(4):Dragon Quest love thread" , posted Sat 19 Apr 21:22:
quote:
I hear what you're saying about the leveling up to advance the story, Toxico.
Remember that for old school titles, the games just throw everything the got + the neihborg dog & sink at you, hence you'll biggest feeling of "catching up" is to level and get equipment; as being 'one shot' death by fire breath leaves you the "why did they pick up Guile" sensation. So, mainly, having a "over power them" or "get everything" mind set when playing the game really adds to the game clock, and that is most likely designed to be as such.
Using the search command can be annoying at the begging, but quickly becomes something that doesn't really matters, specially since at one point, it only becomes a button, most of the game mechanics come out as soft and familiar to the user, specially the good old "if it's damage not affected by strenght, don't bother with it".
As a personal take, when playing a game that "set the basis" for a genre, I feel that the games aren't really searching for revolutionary concepts nor mechanics, while these games do greet you with improvements and originality from time to time; the best way to enjoy them is to savor the different colored basis, setting and phylosophy of the game's style on each episode of the saga (similar to watching old age martial arts movie).
quote:
I did hear that V really was a pretty seminal story, though like PSII I guess it may be told pretty simply by today's standards? I hear the best things about IV and V scenario-wise. Any other takers?
About the scenario managament in IV issue, think "rudra no hibou" but more subtly and quickly handled. About VI, this obviously come as a spoiler, I don't remember VI having a episode setting, but rather a 'dual world' based map, where unlocking something in world A let you advance on world B, or destroying something on A, reflects on B.
The only evil of the word; is the one in the heart of mens
[this message was edited by Toxico on Sat 19 Apr 21:24] |
| Pollyanna 2493th Post
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
| "Re(5):Dragon Quest love thread" , posted Wed 23 Apr 15:11
I was letting this topic sit for a while to see what other people would say. Now that I see that the answer is "not much", I'll chime in.
First off, I don't remember an unreasonable amount of grinding in DQ5, just for the record.
Aaaand...
quote:
It was intensely long, required tons of grinding, didn't have any expensive looking cutscenes and had a meandering, slow moving story which you could only enjoy if you could sympathize with tiny sprites. Also, you have to really love sprite art to enjoy the battle graphics.
I'm quoting this, but most of these statements aren't aimed at anyone in particular.
You really couldn't grind in DQ7, though. The way they scaled the experience didn't let you. You had to level up/learn new skills whenever you got a new character, but that was it. Actually, that was the biggest problem in the game for me. They managed your party SO poorly. For half the game you don't even have a full team, they take Kiefer away when you're finally getting your stuff together, then when they give you new characters later, they're woefully underpowered. What the hell!?
I really liked all the short stories, though. There wasn't a lot going on in the overall plot, but each individual story was really interesting to me. Lots of tragedy and the pseudo time-travel thing was very well done. I liked the job system and the soundtrack as well. For a game that's blatantly old-school and looks so dated on the surface, it was surprisingly unique.
On the other hand, I can't figure out what DQ8 brings to the table other than better graphics. It just seemed bland an uninteresting for me. I guess the appeal is that it's a solid old-school RPG with a fancy new presentation? To be fair, that's what Lost Odyssey was, and I loved that, but when I played DQ8, I couldn't help but think "this is a step back from 7 in so many ways."
IGGY
I had no idea DQ7 was the "black sheep" of the DQ series. I'm not really a DQ fan, so I have no idea how people feel. I assume you're talking about Japan, too. My simplistic line of thinking was...
Japan loves DQ-> Japan bought lots of DQ7->Japan loves DQ7
Americans love hamburgers-> Americans didn't buy DQ7-> I want a hamburger
Suikoden on the other hand...when 3 came out, in America at least, most fans seemed to support it, either because they were determined to uphold their previous claims that the Suikoden series was the best thing ever, or they were stupid fangirls that don't notice shortcomings in gameplay anyway. Although there are a fair number of more sensible fans that complained about the game's obvious flaws, from my experience just about everyone liked the plot and characters.
I still see the most fanart for 3, for all that's worth. I get the impression that the fanbase in Japan is mostly female?
青春謳歌 弱肉強食
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| Spoon 1569th Post
Red Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Member
| "Re(6):DraQue's revenge" , posted Mon 28 Apr 05:20
quote:
Or maybe I should just get Shiren... Any thoughts?
Comparing Shiren to DQ is like comparing.... hmm... well.... I'd say.... hop scotch to dodgeball, because they're both played on the schoolyard.
They're really, really different games.
Shiren is a game that will often feel like it's out to get you. It will kill you, and if nobody rescues you all you can do is cry, because all your EXP and items/equipment not in the warehouse are gone. If you accidentally eject your game cartridge or lose power while playing, it "corrupts" your data and you will basically get game over'd only without the chance of rescue. It has quite a lot of plot.... for a roguelike. It has party members that likely don't get any better or can't be recruited without you dying more than a few times. And most importantly, there is never any guarantee of success. Even carrying over a +99 ultimate weapon and a +99 shield, and you still might get horribly unlucky and get chain stunned while a dragon attacks the entire map with his breath while you are starving to death because nobody is dropping any food.
But!
If all that sounds good to you then Shiren is great. The interaction among the enemies and items really makes the game in Shiren. It is really quite an "adventure" game because there can actually be creativity in getting yourself out of trouble, and how you can truly feel endangered. At the same time, it can be very very aggravating.
In DQ, grinding is the answer to your problems. Grinding guarantees you success within a confidence interval no smaller than 95%, at least in the DQs I played.
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| Amakusa 744th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(4):Dragon Quest love thread" , posted Mon 28 Apr 05:41
quote:
Anyway, VIII only has orchestrated music in the overseas version, which I wouldn't be playing, sadly, so I don't know if the lack of good music and voice takes it down a peg...
I've only played the demo which had the original music in it to compare with. However, after having gone through the full game with the orchestral music I have to say I prefer the orchestral. For years and years I've spent time collecting some of the Dragon Quest Symphonic Suites and I've grown particularly attached to some of them (DQ3 is my favorite). I would fire up my player and listen to them and remember what it was like playing the old NES games back in the day and think, wouldn't it be great? The one thing I really liked about the symphonic suite CDs is they were mostly, note-for-note, faithful reproductions of the old bleep-bleeps.
My understanding is the orchestral music is actually from the arrangement for DQ8. I don't have that CD so I couldn't tell you.
One of my favorites is actually in the game, 'Heavenly Flight', which sounds almost exactly the same as the DQ3 Symphonic Suite version.
As far as voices go, Yangus and the King, I thought were very good. I'm sure they would be just as funny if they were all silent, but there's nothing wrong with being a little more expressive (although there is the inevitable conflict of the DQ selling-out vs being more accessable).
I found Kagami's sword in a junk yard.
I will rule the world and find that truly good cup of coffee.
"Dink-a-dink-a-dink-a-do."
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