The sequel to 3D Worldrunner? Sure, why not!
Monthly Archive for July, 2009
I’d like to know who to give proper credit to, but I was just shown this image by a friend. All I can say is that my pants got a little tighter.
SaGa2 DSi, you will be mine. Oh yes. You will be mine.
Dragon Quest 9.
That’s all there has been and that’s all there will be for a while. I’m loving this game so much.
My little in game ticker says that I have put fifty-six hours and twenty-six minutes into DQ9. I have had it for about a week so that’s a bit crazy, maybe? The multiplayer clock is showing 10:50 and that has been a huge blast as well.
I’m really digging the game.
Really starting to flesh out my party.
My party is making really good progress at this point. What took up a large portion of my playtime thus far was me working on various classes for my characters. I hit Dharma Temple, which in Dragon Quest tradition allows me to change my characters’ classes. So change I did! I got a lot of work done on all of my characters so they have a larger variety of skills now. The craziest I did was leveling up both Thief and Soldier for my main character in order to max out the sword skill. Now, as you can see in the picture to the left, my main character is a sword wielding Mage. This is pretty awesome, I have to admit. My other characters only gained some stat bonuses or function skills in addition to the weapon skill points I got in leveling up other classes. Aside from my main who is going to get some Mage skills before going back to being an Entertainer. A lot of this progress was made in multiplayer, which I plan on writing about at a later date. Right now, I’d like to focus on what I have played solo which has been marvelous in its own right.
So the story, eh? Really, really good. It’s just purely entertaining. This is a bit surprising coming from a game with no speaking playable characters. The closest you have is your ganguro-esque fairy companion Sandy. But in a styling that has been used in Dragon Quest for quite some time now, each town has its own story going on and solving it is part of the hero’s ultimate goal. Now, this sounds like it can get really sappy, but the way these stories have played so far have been not without their own little twists that make them really great. I’m not that far story-wise but unless it takes a big downturn I can’t see myself being disappointed with it. And even if it does, the first few stories are still awesome.
As far as actual gameplay, I’m really digging the class system. Meshing the classes with the point system from Dragon Quest 81 really made for a system that has pulled me in completely. To the ire of many Dragon Quest fans, magic is limited to the class you use but skills are not. I didn’t think this would bother me and it really hasn’t. Flexibility and customization still thrives and all of my characters feel really different and useful.
The online shopping is also really cool as it gives you a few items to buy every day. A lot are ingredients for the Alchemy Pot2 but I even stumbled across a birthday cake which when used has the amazing effect of doing absolutely nothing. Still, I spent 4000 of my gold to have two of them in my inventory. Damn pack-rat habits.
Going to take a break now to eat lunch and do some dishes but I’m fairly sure I’m going to jump right back to the game after that. It is so much fun.
- Characters gain skill points as they advance in levels and can spend these points on a skill which grants abilities and status bonuses as its rank increases. [↩]
- Which I’m indifferent towards. Not really a big fan of item creation in games but this is definitely not done poorly. Step up from DQ8′s, at least. [↩]
I finished a game before DQ9 came out! Now I will probably be Dragon Questing all the damn time.
One game I did not finish but did poke through a bit more was Gyakuten Saiban. Slow reading in that one but I’m really enjoying the story. At the opening of Case 2 right now.
Popped in Final Fantasy USA Mystic Quest, the hilarious titled Japanese version of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Game is so easy but oddly satisfying. That was only to tide me over before DQ9 because I did happen to finish. . .
Final Fantasy 4 Easy Type. Which has a really weird looking version of the final boss who I forgot to screen capture. Dammit. The game is still a completely enjoyable jaunt through a neat world with great characters. I really love the game. Bizarre, but whenever I see the kanji 針 which means needle, I get the urge to play the game. I can’t explain why!
But yeah, mostly Dragon Quest 9. It’s just so good. I finished the first big story arc and it was a really satisfying tale. Fairly simple but just good. Word is the scenarios are pretty great in this game so I’m really looking forward to digging in deeper. Some people don’t seem to care for the way the job system works out once you can change jobs but we’ll see how I feel about it when I get to that point. So far I’m loving it.
So I got to Ruida’s1 tavern in Dragon Quest 9. This means I can make my party! After creating a warrior that looks like Eriko2 I had her pick out how to design the rest of my party. I’ve been playing around right now and have the main character Zerick at level 11, the Warrior Eriko at 9, the Thief Lin-lin at 9 and also the Priest Shotaro at, you guessed it, level 9. Going Swords/Spears/Claws/Staves on the weapon skills respectively for the characters but mostly putting skills into the unique class skill.
Monsters on the map isn’t as lame as I expected but it is still fairly lame. The surprise is just down a bit. But if you want to grind the population isn’t lacking. That’d be my only complaint thus far. Still, what with this basically being DQ3 meets DQ8 it is pretty goddamned awesome. What I mean by that is DQ3 let you create your own party of characters from a few classes and DQ8 let you select what weapon and other skills your characters had. Since each class has its own skill set to pick from, in turn despite there only being six classes at the opening of DQ9 there are a lot of options for creating your party.
For example I went with Claws on my Thief because the skills I’ll get in the future look like they could sap HP and cause status effects. But they could also go Barefisted which looks nice for doing damage.3 Priests have a few interesting options like Spears, Clubs or Staves. I really like how the staff you can buy can be used to cast the fire spell Mera (or at least it acts like that) so my Priest is doing decent enough damage. Staves also allow for MP regeneration when you do physical attacks with them. It is pretty sweet.
Now, I can’t do it yet but I’m sure later down the line you’ll be able to change the characters’ jobs. I wonder how changing classes and skill points will work since many jobs have the same skills. Will a Soldier with 34 points in spears keep those points when transitioning to Priest? It will be interesting to see.
And for those worried about the Japanese, the game has furigana. Which is so awesome because it makes reading it so much smoother, assuming you have hiragana down. Looking up words takes very little time for me and this is probably one of the first Japanese games I’m really understanding the dialogue too. (Although that may have been a long time coming thing considering how long I’ve been working towards it.)
Gonna get back to it while I have the time!
Dragon Quest 9 released today to much fanfare and crazy long lines, if you’re in a big city in Japan. For the rest of us in good ol’ Nippon not so much.
I can’t really blame people for thinking all of Japan is Tokyo. Most Japanese just think of New York or wherever they may have visited one time when we talk about the States. So I tend to not get to annoyed. Of course there is good fun to be had in the shocking of systems when it comes to what people tend to think about things. Stuff? What’s the vague word here to use. Anyway. So today when I saw people begging for line-up photos for Dragon Quest 9 I decided to oblige.
Yep. Big line out in front of the Lawson’s where I reserved my copy. Actually, the guy in front of me also was getting a DS game along with his coffee and breakfast but since it was wrapped up in plastic perhaps he was picking up his copy of Hayarigami 2 DS: Toshidensetsu Kaii Jiken a few days late. Yeah.
So no big lines, no girls dressed like Dragon Quest characters, no meeting Yuji Horii1 but I did get the game really fast. And breakfast at the same time! What convenience.
Game is pretty damn good, by the way.
- Creator of Dragon Quest [↩]
You may notice a new tab up there next to where it says Videos. You may have noticed it before but clicking on it got you nothing of note. Well, fear no longer! I have gotten my gaming stream going up and working pretty decently.
When I’m not playing games live I’ll be showing videos that I have recorded in the past. The way I’m doing it, though, it’ll always say that I’m “live” but I may not necessarily be there playing. Most videos are under ten minutes, though, so that should be a give away.
Hope you enjoy! You can find it here if you don’t feel like clicking up top.
Head over this-a-way and you will find some short clips of field and battle gameplay from this newly announced game from Square-Enix. Once you get through the awesome little opening clip (or press the skip/スキップ button in the lower right hand corner) click on System (システム) to check out the vids. To watch both the field and battle videos, toggle between the black boxes up in the left hand side that look a little like this.
Short they are but they show some really neat things. Of note in the battle is that there is a spell called つよいファイア which translates to Strong Fire. Not exciting initially but when you look carefully you can see two characters are casting in union. This implies there will be some exciting options being planned for the battle. I really can’t wait to hear more about this game.
