Sunday, February 26, 2012

What Does Everyone Think Of Dragon Quest games?

This series has been the bane of my existence. It's one of those things where I just don't get it. I showed my brother 2001 A Space Odyssey the other day and he hated it, sometimes it just works out that way. This is, however, a series that I keep coming back to and I keep giving it chances.

The reasons I don't like it are legion. First off, it's a grind fest. Plain and simple. Maybe spending 14 hours grinding in one spot is fun to you but to me it's wretched and is an artificial way to lengthen your game. Games like Earthbound do this same exact same game play but don't make you fight 400 lower level enemies each with their own loading screen. IT'S RUBBISH! Second off, if I am going to invest 100 hours into a game, I want said game to have at least a halfway decent storyline.

Dragon Quest games drop the ball here too. I'm sorry, but Dragon Quest 8 is boring as shit. "Look, an evil jester! LET'S KILL IT!" basically sums up the story. It's one of those games where you get 30 hours in and it doesn't feel like you accomplished anything. You have nothing to show for it besides being able to kill enemies because of grinding. There is no skill involved in grinding. It is TEDIUM!

The only things I really enjoy are the character designs and the music, especially music from the first game. I remember getting the first game for free with Nintendo Power and basically wanting to wipe my ass with it because I was young and didn't know how to play it. Here's a question, who agrees that Dragon Warrior is a better title than Dragon Quest? I have always thought this and I hope i'm not the only one.


13 comments:

  1. I have to say, if you want a really good JRPG, you really should play through Final Fantasy IX, I know you said the battle loading times turned you off, but trust me, it's an awesome game and it has everything.

    If you want a good western RPG that you may not have played, I urge you to play Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn/Throne of Bhaal for the PC, my personal favorite game of all time.

    Just thought I'd give my recommendations at least as I haven't played a Dragon Quest game before. But if they are as you described then I think I'll pass...

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  2. It's wierd because, i totally agree with you, yet i still play them. But, i'm a repetitive gamer anyways, i could quite happily sit around playing champions of norrath, hacking and slashing for hours with a crappy story-line.

    Same thing to me.

    I'd consider dragon quest games, time burners.... nothing like a final fantasy, where you'll think back and be like wow... good memories.
    With Dragon Quest i think, a slime in a grassy area... nothing more

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  3. I haven't played 8, but DQ9 seems to be much more forgiving in terms of grinding. "There is no skill involved in grinding." Well that's in every rpg Rob.

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  4. I completely agree with you. I bought Dragon Quest VIII around the time it came out and I thought it would be cool. I was initially attracted to the art because Akira Toriyama designed the characters and I'm a huge fan of his. Unfortunately I hated the game. I hated the story and like you said that game was a grind fest. I also didn't like the music either. It's not that wasn't well composed or anything, it's just not my thing.

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  5. i dont mind turning my brain off and grinding

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  6. im with you on grinding. im not motivated to sit there and level grind to crappy story line. If going to sit there and level grind for a few hours the damn story needs to be good. Which probabally why i never gotten into any of the Dragon quest. i prefer Final Fantasy (series) and games like Xenogears, Earthbound, Chronotrigger and Chronocross.

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  7. Dragon Quest/Warrior 3 is my personal favorite in the series. But yea, they are too much grinding. Back in the NES days though RPGs tended to be that way so cant really fault those games for being Grindfests when everyone else was also doing it, and Dragon Warrior 3 was just epic with the amount of stuff you can do in that game, its larger than a lot of RPGs today even, very impressive for that tiny NES chipset.

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  8. To be honest, I've never played Dragon quest/warrior game (besides 8). But for some reasons I've really enjoyed playing the game. The story wasn't great but i liked it. The world is huge,music is pretty good too,voice acting is perfect,I also liked alchemy (or w/e its called) , casino and others stuff. Yes, i agree the grinding is tedious, but to be honest I've never finished the game but,I have around 50-70 hours played (not sure) And in that time I've only spent like 3-4 hours grinding,and not because the game was demanding it,but because i felt like : meh, let's do some grinding for money n stuff, or the character is little bit behind in levels. I don't know... I think it's one of those series where you don't really understand why you like it. You probably not going to read it through all of this,but if you're going to,leave some responses I would appreciate it.

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  9. Dragon quest 8 is the only dragon quest game i've every tried but i did actually enjoy it. The story was pretty decent and lengthy, i really liked the cel shaded look with dbz like characters, the world was so huge and the battles were pretty tough at times. You could do a shit load of side quests and the alchemy system was pretty awesome as well.
    Dungeons had some pretty cool designs, also some shitty ones, towns were awesome so many unique characters, and the voice acting is actually decent maybe because they are all British/English?. Now some people love the system they used for the monsters, you basically get orders or something similar and you have to locate monsters on the world map, challenge them and win, then you can use them to fight on your monster team in the arena you discover way later on in the game. I personally hated doing this and i'm pretty sure it's just optional anyway. i'm really high and that's all i can think of right now

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    1. I totally agree that Dragon Warrior is a superior title and the music is awesome

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  10. glad i'm not the only one! lol yea, how this series has ever taken off in japan is beyond me. this and monster hunter confuse me...

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    1. I don't understand the whole Monster Hunter craze either. From what I've played it felt like Phantasy Star Online with horrible controls. I must be missing something.

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  11. I don't know, I completely understand why you dislike the series but for some reason I really like it. I never really find myself grinding too much in the games, to be honest, either. It's pretty much as basic and barebones as you can get and I think that's partly why I like it. It's more of a nostalgia for the olden days type of thing I guess. Although, the simplistic storylines are part of what I like, I prefer it to how convoluted and retarded Final Fantasy and many other JRPG storylines have gotten recently.

    The series definitely needs some revamping, which has actually kind of happened in IX, and X looks to be mixing things up a lot; just not sure about the whole online aspect since it's Wii/Wii-U exclusive.

    My favorite JRPG is probably Chrono Trigger or Earthbound but my favorite series is probably the Tales series just because of how enjoyable to combat feels compared to Turn-Based selecting attacks from a menu.

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