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. Â 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. [↩]
