Dragon Quest 9 Official Thread

[Compass]

The JP cover has dicier art, but I like how everyone looks so happy:



Nobody in the US will play your game unless the main character is a brooding bad-ass apparently:

[rama]

SENTINELS!

[Hero]

And it was completely half-assed. Imagine an actual new game in a major franchise.

So 500 times the budget and still only selling to its niche. Yep, stellar business move there.

Compass ~ Yeah, mean-face-serious-business is not what I like in Dragon Quest, but I also think the US cover design is better designed overall.

[Yoshi]

Life isn't all about responsibility 24/7.

Yes, it is. You can dick around in responsible ways once your normal responsibilities, like getting out of your parents' house, are taken care of.

[Chux]

Also: It's not like cost of living is retarded in MN like it is in MD. At least from my friend who is a teacher.

I just don't get it.

On Topic: Dragon Quest bores the shit out of me lately.

[Hero]

Off Topic - I was looking at rental rates in OR and AZ. CA is so much more expensive. If it really came to it, I'd bite the bullet and move out of state (granted I had a job lined up out there, and money save to make the move seamlessly)

On Topic - DQ is traditional as all hell (which can be boring), but seeing how many years have passed between 8 and 9, I'm ok with another. And it looks like the DS one tries to be a little different...

[Joust Williams]

People still play DQ games?

[Bojack]

SENTINELS!

Main character better have fast fly and unblockable.

[Compass]

I'm playing the DQV DS remake right now and it's really irritating me. VI is the only other one now I haven't finished, but the series' staunch refusal to adopt some of the very basic modern JRPG amenities is finally catching up and overtaking my patience.

I guess somewhere along the line they decided any color font other than white "just wasn't Dragon Quest," and into the giant Stuff Never to Update in Dragon Quest tome it went. So when you're shopping for upgrades, while every other JRPG in the last god-knows-how-long will show you potential stat increases/decreases in green/red for quick assessment, DQ says "such conveniences would destroy the soul of this hallowed franchise and as such, you shan't have them."

It's not the end of the world obviously, but it's lame I have to stare at the numbers that half-second longer to determine if the new equipment is better or worse. It might be easier to bear if it was incompetence, but you know they know, and are sticking with what's come before for the sole purpose of sticking with what's come before, player satisfaction be damned (the fact there probably are fans who would be upset if they added colored text is another matter entirely and one I don't care to ponder).

Then we have the Bestiary. Christ, what lazy shit. The top screen is black, unused. The bottom lists the monsters and when selected switches to a detailed page with an image and their stats.

No percentage tracker. No #Seen, Defeated, Recruited/#Total trackers. No indication whatsoever whether a specific monster has indeed been recruited. I've heard DQV cited as the inspiration for Pokemon; the Bestiary is more or less your Pokedex. A few very simple adjustments that would have made monster recruiting so much more (or at all) satisfying:

• Add aforementioned trackers to top screen with progress bars.
• Have top screen be the detailed screen, automatically displaying monster details as they're highlighted on the bottom screen.
• Have frames around the monster details: bronze = seen, silver = defeated, gold = recruited, gold w/ sparkles = all the above plus all drops obtained.
• Finally, allow me to view the Bestiary directly from the menu anywhere in the world. I shouldn't have to open my inventory and navigate to an item and use it -- and only in the field -- before the list will display.

I realize things like this are relatively minor in the grand scheme, but at the same time their user satisfaction/difficulty to implement quotient is high. The font thing is willful obstinacy (and one example of many), but the bare bones Bestiary in a game all about recruiting monsters is "eh, it's DQ, it'll sell millions anyway, so fuck 'em" laziness.

And I'm not amused.

[Space Pirate Roberts]

a game all about recruiting monsters

It isn't, though; the monster thing is more like a cool bonus feature. Approach this game like Pokemon, and you ruin it, because any monster worth going out of your way for has such a low recruitment rate that after hunting down four or five, you've also level-grinded (level-ground? What's the proper past-tense of level-grind?) to the point that the whole rest of the game will be a cake-walk. What the designers intended you to do, and what you should do if you want to actually enjoy the game, is check your OCD at the door, play through it as though the monster-recruitment feature wasn't even there, and take what you get.