Tag Archives: Nintendo

Currently playing: Dragon Quest IX (Nintendo DS)

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Started a new game on my vacation week – Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS

Good points

  • Paper-doll avatar: Essentially, every piece of gear changes the appearance of your characters.  You can also customize your character’s appearance and gender at the beginning of the game.  These are nice, modern touches in an otherwise very traditional RPG.
  • Lots to do:  DQ IX certainly gives you a ton of things to do, what with alchemy, character classes,  and tons of sidequests.  There might be more, but I haven’t finished the game yet.
  • Serviceable touch controls:  Most stuff is easy to do with the stylus, if that’s what you have handy.  Normal buttons work fine, too…
  • Nice graphics:  This game looks great on the DS XL.  Not PSP-quality graphics, but they are vibrant, good-looking, and get the job done.

Bad points

  • Characters:  You don’t just create your main character  -you create your other party members out of this air as well.  So, while your party members dutifully follow you around towns/dungeons/etc., they are not characters at all – they’re accessories for the main character.  And speaking of the main character, there isn’t much development there, eithe:  silent protagonist, flimsy backstory,  Suffice it to say that DQ IX is not a character-driven RPG.  Even given the “create your own” nature of the characters, the designers could have created – say – small backstories / dialogue for each class.
  • Story:  You could say that DQ IX isn’t really a story-driven RPG, either. I haven’t finished the game, so I can’t pass judgement on the whole story.  However, what has been on offer so far is fairly slow-paced and generic.  There’s just enough story to give you a reason to give the game a reason to exist, but  it’s really the gameplay itself that makes the game entertaining.

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.

Oh, my!

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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.

 

And now, the 3DS

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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.