#control 1 barely explored their cast (fair enough with such a great original world)

[velvetjune]

I want control 2 to have even more documents and more reading

[chartreuse-gale]

Dragon Warrior/Quest ramblings/collective review

I rant about the Dragon Quest franchise a lot.

Two of my video game pet peeves are when people laude the original Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest as ground breaking (it’s not, see Wizardy/Ultima), or the great grandfather of JRPGs (it’s not, see Hydlide/Dragon Slayer/Fantasian/) I’m generally not a fan of silent protagonists. I rarely identify enough with a character to feel like I’m “in” the game, so I prefer to be playing the role of a character with some kind of dialogue and a personality. Every dragon quest (that I’ve played) has a silent protagonist. That said, I do have some love for the series. I’ve suddenly found myself interested in giving Dragon Quest XI a spin, but instead I went back to Dragon Warrior IV. I remembered liking it as a kid and I’m happy to say I’ve been having as much fun playing it now as I remember having back then. Here are my thoughts on the dragon quest games separated into the ones I’ve finished and the ones I haven’t (mainline only).

Games I’ve Finished

Dragon Quest: This is grinding the game.

Strategy is almost nonexistent in the battle system outside of “Grind XP to LVL UP/Gold to buy better equipment”. You have 1 character and you never fight more than 1 enemy, so all fights are one-on-one. There isn’t any equipment with special traits or functions (just better Attack/Defense). You get access to a total of 6 spells in the game: Heal Heal More Heal Most Hurt Hurt More Hurt Most (these last 3 are usually a waste of MP) The plot is linear (except for potentially at the very end of the game). At least there’s a decent amount of exploration. Worse than Final fantasy I and Phantasy Star I by far, but to be fair, Enix did better with Dragon Quest II, which beat both of these competitors to the punch. Dragon Quest II: So much better than the original.

The grind is mediated by choices that matter in regards to equipment and combat. Also, you have an actual party this time (of 3), Also, Also, you can fight multiple enemies at the same time. Dragon Quest II added a much wider variety of spells (buff, debuff, and elemental damage spells); Equipment that had special functions when used as an item in combat (e.g. the Lightning Staff can cast whoosh), and a smidge more plot. Many people say more grinding is required in II than in the original, but I would argue that Dragon Quest I is nothing but grinding whereas Dragon Quest II breaks up the monotony with a dose of strategy. Comparable to Final Fantasy I. Far worse than Phantasy Star I. Dragon Quest V: Decent.

Also the first game originating on the Super Famicom (although we didn’t get an official English translation till the DS remake)

Allows for a party of 3 (4 in the DS remake). Considered groundbreaking by many for it’s monster recruitment system but it wasn’t the first game to have one by any means (Megami Tensei beat it by 5 years and Wizardry IV by 4). The game is divided into sections based on time periods as you grow from a kid to a teen to an adult, which is a cool way of pacing the games content, and gives you a little more perspective on the setting than you typically get in a Dragon Quest game. Characters are mostly boring outside of one (or two) of the love interests. Did I mention this game has love interests? I think I would have liked it better if there was only one, because it punched me in the heart for not picking the one it leads up to as the primary love interest (who also happens to be the canon one). Has really frustrating setting/plot-gender dynamics with two characters late in the game who I won’t name because spoilers.

Games I’ve Played but haven’t finished

Dragon Quest III: My least favorite game in the series (out of the ones I’ve played).

This time you have a protagonist and you can hire adventures to join you on your quest. They are all nobody characters. Their personalities are assigned at random, and (from what I can tell) only effect their growth. There’s no fucking dialogue with them (which is something I expected after DQ II). Personalities and seeds are fucking annoying, because both of them are random, have huge differences in their effects, and their effects make a huge difference in character capabilities, so it makes me want to spend hours saving/reloading until I get the effects I want. Fuck this game for introducing seeds to the series which appeared in many Dragon Quest games after this (thankfully I haven’t run into personalities again yet). Often lauded for having the “groundbreaking” option of changing character classes/jobs. Yes this came out before Final Fantasy III (Japan), but I would like to make the following points: - Final Fantasy I let you pick your character classes (which came out beforehand) - Final Fantasy III had a class change system you could actually make use of throughout the game (unlike DQ III where you need to get about halfway through the game first) - The original Wizardry came out 7 years earlier and also had a much more accessible class change system than DQ III I played very little of Dragon Quest III (I dropped it before even getting to my 2nd town). Two great thing about this games: It’s the first in the series to give you the option of playing as a woman, and I heard it’s the game that introduced the casino/mini games to the franchise. Dragon Quest IV: This game is Great! Also, Unlike the first three games in the series, Dragon Quest IV might actually be groundbreaking. You ever play Wild Arms I, II, or III? Did you enjoy playing through the prologues that introduce your early party members? Well Dragon Quest IV does a similar thing: The game is divided into chapters. Each chapter has a different protagonist. In their chapter you play them as silent protagonist, but when you encounter them later in the game they have dialogue. This does a lot to develop much of the cast, because you can see how people react to/talk with them and later on you can see how they engage with the player character (who you’re actually introduced to last). The cast is great and falls into a mix of both very old school and very uncommon tropes for a JRPG: You have an aging knight who goes on a mission to rescue children and then goes on a journey to find more about the ominous forces behind their kidnappers (Ragnar). Then there’s a princess who wants to go on an adventure against her fathers wishes so she kicks a hole in the wall of her room and jumps out of the castle (Alena); she’s joined by a young priest (Cristo) and an elderly mage (Brey) employed by her father, who give up on bringing her home and instead ask to travel with her to help her out. Next you have a merchant who wants to raise enough money to buy his own storefront (Taloon). After that you play a Fortune Teller (Nara) who travels with her dancer sister (Mara) on a quest to avenge the death of their father (an alchemist who was murdered by his apprentice).  Each chapter ends on a climax related to motivations/goals of its lead character and each chapter shows more of the world/gives out more info on what is going on behind the scenes. While you actively control the primary characters of a chapter other characters are either controlled completely by AI (in chapters I-IV), or loosely follow a tactical strategy you select (chapter V). I’ve been getting on fine with it, but this might be a deal breaker for some. The music is better than any of the Dragon Quest games I’ve finished (and what I’ve heard from any of the ones I’ve played, but not finished). A remake of this game has an interesting flaw: they cut all the party chart dialogue from the foreign language versions of the DS version; so if you don’t know Japanese, you’ll probably miss out on a lot of character interaction with that version. (I heard this had something to do with concerns that the game wouldn’t make enough sales to cover translation costs of the party chart [which was reputedly two thirds of the game’s script]). Dragon Quest VI Honestly I’ve barely played this one. You have actual characters for party members (a big plus in my book). I’ve heard there’s a job system as well. Plot/setting seem decently interesting on first glance. I might come back to this one later. Dragon Quest VIII I got about halfway through this one.

They included a character-specific skill tree system which is cool, except that there are objectively best routes to take for some (possibly all?) characters and these best routes are not even close to obvious from the outset. It introduced a pretty fun crafting system.

There’s  a decent cast of characters, but they don’t have quite enough going on for my tastes (my fave is Yangus). Plot has an interesting premise, but feels very barebones, and the environments/towns/npcs aren’t very interesting (maybe about as good as DQV, but worse than IV).

This game gets lauded for the 3D models of characters/enemies, but honestly I’ve never been a fan of the character designs of Dragon Quest (especially the monsters), so I feel pretty “meh” about it outside of being able to see your party members in combat (for I think the first time in the series), which is very nice. The music is very ambient a lot of the time. It does a good job of fitting melancholy moments, but doesn’t do such a great job of building excitement during battles and high-tension events. Dragon Quest IX This game feels a lot like Dragon Quest III.

You don’t have any actual characters, you just recruit them and use them in battle (no meaningful intraparty dialogue, character development, etc.) I think I played around 10-20 hours before dropping it.

Final Thoughts

Dragon Quest games vary from game to game in terms of gameplay mechanics, but they vary a great deal more when it comes to characters.

If you like having a lot of control over your party composition and don’t care about having characters with personality, you might like Dragon Quest III, V, or IX.

If you want a party comprised of characters who interact, have personalities, and might even develop over time, you might like Dragon Quest IV, or (sort of) VIII (I haven’t played much of VI, or any of VII or XI, but I heard they also fall into this camp). If you want to play an old school, 8-Bit JRPG that launched a spectacular franchise, might have actually been ground-breaking for its time, and is still fun to play today, check out the original Phantasy Star. . . . . . . (at least, for me it’s still fun to this day) [notes: - edited some typos, and mistakes most notably regarding the Hurt series of spells in Dragon Quest I - Revised some word choices - Added a comment about being able to see your party in combat in Dragon Quest VIII]