I finished Dragon Quest IV not too long ago. The gameplay, as I said before, was much more entertaining once the game stopped starting over with level-one characters every few hours.
Still, I’d have to rand DQIV as one of the lesser RPGs I’ve played. It’s worth playing through once, but I’ll probably not pick it up again because everything it does has been done better in later RPGs – and there’s no great story or characters to want to experience a second time.
Now that I’m in Chapter 5 of Dragon Quest IV, the game’s started to pick up a bit. The story’s still not particularly impressive (or even immersive), but the combat’s a little more entertaining now that the game has tougher enemies and more options in combat for each character.
And am I missing something, or was the whole Colossus statue thing just silly?
Since I’ve recently beaten the main story in Dragon Quest IX, I’ve decided to pick up another DQ game for the Nintendo DS – Dragon Quest IV. Since it’s a remake of an NES game, I’m not that confident that DQ4’s going to be as entertaining an experience as DQ9 was, but let’s see…
Some initial impressions:
Presentation
On starting the game, you definitely see that the graphics are quite a few notches down from what you get in DQ9. DQ4 on the DS looks a lot like the PS1 game Grandia … 3D backgrounds with sprite-based characters and monsters. There’s also a very SNES/Genesis-ish 2D overworld. So, serviceable graphics – but nothing very exciting. Very retro, though.
The creators of this remake seem to have forgotten something, though. This is a DS game, and as such – you’d expect them to take more advantage of the DS’s features. Unlike DQ9, there is no touchscreen support whatsoever. It’d be nice to be able to navigate menus and move characters with either the stylus or buttons. The top screen does get used, but I’d have liked to have the option to have the map stay up there when I’m in a town (you have to push a button to show the map, and you can’t walk around while the town map is being displayed.)
Gameplay
The game itself is organized into chapters. I’ve been through the prologue – where you name “your” character and assign a gender – after which the game abruptly transitions onto some other guy in some other land. I’ve played Chapter 1, and after Chapter 1 is over the game abruptly transitions again to another character in a completely different land. and the process starts over again. I’ve been through most of the second chapter as I write this, and I wonder when the game will actually settle down and let me play with an actual party that won’t disappear in a couple of hours.
The problem with this approach is that is maximizes one of the weaknesses of DQ games – combat when you’re at a low level. So far, in each chapter my characters have started at Level 1. At level 1, you have very few effective options in combat other than to simply attack. In chapter 1, for example, the one-character party you start with has literally no other options than to attack, defend, or use an item. No special attacks, no magic, nothing. Walk a few steps on the overworld map or a dungeon, and hit “A” about a hundred times. Walk a few more steps, hit “A” a hundred more times. Go back to an inn to heal, then repeat. That’s battling in the early game in DQ4. It picks up a bit in the second chapter, since you get a party of three characters to start with instead of a single character – but the battling here is largely the same – except you need to hit the “A” button three hundred times for each battle instead of merely one hundred. True, one of the characters in your second party is a mage and one a cleric, but they will not be able to do much without level grinding … and lots of “A” button pressing.
Pity the poor “A” button.
And one other thing…
What’s with the dialogue in this game? The character you’re playing in the second chapter appears to be DQ4’s take on Russian – and the designers appear to go out of their way to make pretty well every NPC a parody of “Russians speaking broken English” – to the point of making the dialogue completely unintelligible. This makes no sense at all – since you’re playing a character that’s a native of the country she’s travelling around in! The townspeople shouldn’t be speaking to her in gibberish. Hopefully, the game designers let up on this later in the game.
So, I’ve beaten the main story in Dragon Quest IX, and I’ll probably be putting up the game for a while. Some final thoughts.
How were the story and characters? The story was … just there. Characters? What characters?
Dragon Quest games have never really struck me as having strong stories. DQ9 has yet another silent, not-very-well-developed protagonist – with the additional problem of having a party that’s also silent and not-at-all-developed. (Heck -your party just disappears and reappears by magic at some points in the game!)
Most of the plot involves doing odd jobs for NPCs in villages and towns – and collecting fruit, after which you beat up on the final bosses. It’s underwhelming to say the least – and by the time you get to the ending, you’ve all but forgotten the NPCs you see as the credits roll.
Then why play the game at all?
Despite the story and characters being all-but-nonexistent, the game’s still quite a bit of fun. There’s exploration of a decent-sized world, tons of sidequests (100+), the lure of literally designing your own party, item creation, and plenty of optional bosses. If the gameplay didn’t work, this one would be on the scrap heap along with failures like Lunar: Dragon Song.
Without spoiling too much of the plot of Dragon Quest IX, there’s a par of the game where you (without your party) are transported halfway across the world via a magic flying train, You then are unceremoniously dropped from the sky and are taken in to a village that’s rather hostile to outsiders. The moment you wake up and can stand … YOUR PARTY IS THERE.
How the heck did they do that?
Started a new game on my vacation week – Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS
Good points
Bad points
Overall (so far)
I’m going to keep playing it. May not put as many hours into this as I did into Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2, but despite its weaknesses of character and plot – it’s still fun to play.
Looks like Nintendo is looking out for the needs of adult gamers after all …
Nintendo is turning back to the handheld market for the time being with the recent announcement of the 3DS XL. The supersized version of the 3DS has a 4.88 inch and a 4.18 inch screen, while the original 3DS’s were 3.53 and 3.01 respectively.
(from Forbes)
Now, once they get the whole “lack of games that I must have” thing sorted out, I’ll be picking up a 3DS XL.
So the Sony folks don’t feel like I’m kicking them while their sales are down, I should note that I don’t have a 3DS either. I recently purchased a DSi XL, and am very happy with it so far. So why didn’t I just spend the extra cash and get a 3DS?
Look at the size of that thing! The DSi XL is a big handheld, and – frankly – that’s a good thing. Since the dual-screen nature of the DS and 3DS mean that there’s going to be no way to play games on a larger screen, the size of the screens becomes very important. While the resolution of both screens on the 3DS is much higher than the resolution of the screens on the various incarnations of the DS, the screens themselves – particularly the touchscreen – are small. The touchscreen on the 3DS, in fact, smaller than all the DS models except for the very first. I can’t help but feeling like I’m trying to game on a postage stamp when I’m playing a 3DS. I’d love an XL release of the 3DS, but until that happens, the screens are just too tiny for my eyes.
Where’s the charger? When I play an RPG on my DS XL, I don’t really worry about the battery life. Heck, I can leave the thing on most of the day day and still have plenty of battery left. The 3DS, on the other hand, boasts a battery life comparable to the PSP Go’s – and the Go gets slammed a lot for its poor battery life of between 3 and 6 hours.
what about the games? I will admit to never having been that much of a Nintendo fanboy. I was gaming on computers during much of the NES era (though I did own an NES). I owned the SNES, but much preferred the game library of the Genesis. I never owned an N64, because the N64 was pointless. I owned a Gamecube, but didn’t find all that much worth playing on it compared to the PS2. I never bothered with the Wii, because I already had a PS2 and a 360. (I may yet get a Wii or its successor, but that will probably be for the rest of the family…) I’m just not that into Nintendo’s first party games. In other words, I don’t get wowed by Pokemon and Mario. Aside from that, in my preferred genre (RPG), the 3DS has a rather Vita-like lineup of … SMT: Devil Survivor Overclocked and Tales of the Abyss. Both of these are ports of games I already own on other platforms. Sure, I could play DS RPGs on a 3DS, but then we’re back to the teeny tiny touchscreen on the 3DS compared with the much larger DSi XL. Just like the Vita, though, with time the lineup of must-have games for the 3DS will hopefully improve.
So, the Vita’s been out for a couple of months, and I still don’t have one. I just can’t seem to get enthusiastic about Sony’s new toy. Sure, it’s got a lot of power. Sure, it’s got a nice screen, and lots of other bells and whistles. And … it’s the successor to the PSP, and I love the PSP. So why don’t I have a Vita yet?
It’s current maximum storage of 32GB isn’t even an upgrade from the PSP. The PSPs I use routinely are all fitted out with 32GB of storage. In addition to games, that’s a lot of space for music/podcasts and movies. And I spend at least as much time with my PSP as a media machine as I do with it as a game machine. Sure, the Vita can support 32GB – but 32GB will not get you nearly as far on a Vita as it will on a PSP. The Vita’s screen is both larger and higher-resolution than the PSP’s. While normally that would be considered an advantage, that requires larger movie files for an acceptable quality on the Vita’s screen. Vita games are also larger than PSP games, so that’ll mean that if you choose to purchase anything digitally, your stick will fill up that much faster. Once we start seeing larger cards, this will be less of a problem.
No video out, I’m guessing this might come out in a later hardware revision, but if Sony wants this to be a real multimedia handheld, they’d better figure out how to let users display this media on a larger screen. To be fair, the initial release of the PSP didn’t have this either.
Sony’s terror of pirates aggravates those of us who want to use our portables for media. With the PSP, all I have to do to swap out my movies or music is to connect to any computer in the house. Or, I can just take out the PSP’s memory card and stick it into my laptop. The Vita uses some new proprietary memory card, and the only current way to read this card is in the Vita itself. While this is only a minor annoyance, Sony also requires you to install crapware called Content Manager Assistant to be able to copy media to and from the Vita. If this weren’t annoying enough, the crapware has to phone home to Sony for you to be allowed to move your files. If Sony were giving Vitas away for free, I might put up with this – but not otherwise.
And then there’s the price. Frankly, $200’s about my maximum price point for a handheld gaming system. True, there are some deals out now that come close to $200 for the base wifi model (some retailers are offering a gift card with purchase), but there’s also the memory card issue – for 32 GB, you’ll get soaked for about $80 – about five times the price of a comparable MicroSD. (A MicroSD can go into a PSP with an adapter that only costs a few dollars…) Were the Vita more compelling in other areas, I might overlook the price, but …
What about the games? I look at the Vita’s current and announced software lineup, and I see a wasteland of titles, littered with uninteresting games and games which might be interesting if I hadn’t already played them on some other system. About the only thing that seems fresh that’s here in the US is Gravity Rush, and frankly that’s not enough to make me overlook the rest of Vita’s flaws. I mainly play RPGs on portables – right now there’s Disgaea 3 (which I have on PS3) and – coming soon – Persona 4 (which I have on PS2). If I already had a Vita, I might go for Persona 4, but there doesn’t seem to be enough added to it to make it a system-seller. With time, hopefully the lineup of games will improve.
Welcome to the site. There’s not a whole lot here at the moment, but this site is where I’m going to dump my video game-related thoughts.
I’m a game collector, and you can check out some of my collection using the links above. Right now I do most of my gaming on the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS, though I own most consoles from the current generation all the way back to the Fairchild Chanel F.