dragon quest

[shelter]

i love dragon quest... let's talk about dragon quest.

i've been practicing the speedrun of dq1 (game boy color remake) and casually playing dq3 (also gbc remake) and watching my gf play dq11.

1 is a perfect, elementally simple game with perfect numberfeel and a perfect world map, and the gbc version is the cutest so that's the one i'm running. a toddler hero in pajamas waddling around in with a toy sword and shield. it’s been meditative and comforting to get familiar with the route, and there’s a surprising amount of nuance and challenge involved in running even such a simple game, especially one with such a stressful final stretch. i’m considering returning to twitch streaming once i’m ready to do proper attempts.

3 is one of the best rpgs i've ever played, enough has probably been said about it but i really appreciate all of the small poetic details and surprises that are characterful and funny and quietly moving in a way that's perfectly in sync with their status as 2d abstractions, and the design and balance remains tuned to its mysteriously simple, cosmically perfect proportions while expanding in depth and sophistication. i also appreciate that it has relatively few boss fights and a story that is fairly loose and minimal so far, prioritizing exploration and following clues over big narrative beats. lately when i'm falling asleep i'll imagine myself grinding in dq3 and clear encounters optimally in my head and it puts me to sleep instantly.

11 is a great game as far as modern mainstream rpgs go, it's gorgeous and comfy and charming, veronica and sylvia in particular are great, and the boss fights are taut and rewarding at low levels despite the elimination of random encounters and with them the flavors of dungeon/overworld survival tension and resource management that the early games executed so well. on the other hand, i still really dislike the translation, which is what put me off it after a while when i played on my own. my gf is a professional japanese translator and we’ve been playing with jp voices and english text, and it’s reassuring to hear from her what i already intuited, that the localization's artificial jokey singsong bits and silly dialects constantly interfere with the elegant simplicity of the original writing.

i'm also really excited for the remake of 7, i'm a sucker for the diorama style and i'm intrigued by the colder colors and lighting compared to 11's brightness, though i'm likewise not so optimistic about the localization...

[amos]

I really enjoyed my time in 11, enough that I keep thinking about picking up that expanded version on PC... I really should play 2+3 first though. 1 was really fun and also the first game I played in japanese, which is extremely difficult on the famicom since there is no kanji and I had a really hard time figuring out wtf anyone was saying.

[shelter]

oh god yeah trying to decipher a famicom game with no kanji must be so difficult (admittedly most of my jp knowledge is kanji lol). if you want to play the original version of 3 and don't want to deal with that again i'd recommend trying the translation quest retranslation/restoration, though i'm really enjoying the gbc version.

washy is the resident dq2 expert who i'd love to hear from ITT. i really want to try it even though (and because) people often deride it, though i don't think i'm strong enough for the famicom version since that's notoriously hellish, even compared to its nes localization.

[lynnedrum]

i actually blasted through Dragon Quest 1 twice back to back recently as a brainflattening bedtime podcast game, between both the NES and the GBC versions. i enjoyed it, though largely as a fidget-spinner-adjacent activity where i muted the game and toggled on emulator fastforward for a large amount of it. a hypocrite as i may be as a Shiren the Wanderer fan, I don't think I ever need nor want to hear a Koichi Sugiyama Dragon Quest soundtrack ever again.

I ended up largely preferring the NES version, but the only tangible difference other than art design would be how the dungeon maps in the GBC version are scaled up to double the size than the single-tile hallways of the NES game. I actually really liked the single-tile scale in the original game; the way that movement and exploration felt in hand with the short-range torch mechanic made it feel like I was playing something so much closer to Wizardry than I was something like Final Fantasy. the doubled scale in the GBC one just made the dungeons a lot less fun to explore, so it bummed me out when it seemed both the NES and GBC versions of DQ2 have dungeons at that doubled scale.

but i'd like to do the same for 2 eventually, starting with the NES version. i've only gotten slightly into 2, and haven't seen anything all that worthy of notoriety, but i am also very much playing these muted and with emulator fast forward and grinding overworld fights for fun. other than that, I've played all three of the DS remakes of IV-VI, and I remember liking those a great deal, particularly the one where your kids are the real heroes. I played a good amount of VII on PSX when i was a kid, but don't remember a whole lot about it other than I think the little green main guy is cute.

I hate Koichi Sugiyama but sometimes I do hear the DQ level up jingle in my head when I am rewarded with something (largely because I just spent a season of my life playing too much Torneko Mystery Dungeon for the SNES). such is the burden of being alive

[shelter]

yeah koichi sugiyama is scum, rip bozo. i think his music works a little better in chiptune form, 11's soundtrack is dire.

from what i understand it dq2's notoriety mostly comes from the last dungeon, where there are tons of enemies per encounter and a lot of instakills, plus some obtuse progression requirements leading up to it.

[cherryscampers]

When I streamed dq2 almost the entire last stream was me running head first at the final dungeon over and over lol

[amos]

Sugiyama's a bozo and 11's soundtrack is awful (especially the Adam West Batman ass battle music) but I have a soft spot for the main DQ theme, especially Pekora's version.

[moon]

I have a long history with DQ... My mom would play the NES games back when they were released as Dragon Warrior. She would play them in my room and I would watch when I was supposed to be sleeping hehe :^)

My favorite has always been IV, which is kind of a curse because the best localization of it is imo still stuck on the NES. I just can't deal with the DS and onward retranslation and its really thick accents and turning Alena into a cavewoman. I hope if they do Dragon Quest IV HD-2D that they give it a loc that is more evenhanded, but it kind of feels at this point that they painted themselves into a corner with it, considering Heroes and Heroes II and other spinoff games feat. Alena commit to that characterization as well.

I still have to beat III HD-2D (which I really like) before I+II come out. I'm a huge fan of I because I love the Dragonlord, the villain of all time. Excited for more people to meet him and accept his funny offer :^)

[Tristi]

I've only played 9 and 11 lol so far, but I really liked both of them! I have fond memories of fishing so desperately for anyone to proto-streetpass with on DQ9. (I think I might have gotten one or two pings at QuakeCon.) The series taught me that my favorite kind of RPG is one where a plucky youth takes sword and board in hand to save the world. I eat that shit up. Works on me every time.

I really want to play another, but I haven't settled on which yet. I think it's a toss-up between 5 and 7 at the moment. I really want to play 10 someday, but I'd rather play FF11 first, if I'm going to start another MMO.

[cherryscampers]

I really wanna play X but I've been waiting both out of indecision and forgetfulness but also because it'd be fun if a bunch of people picked it up and I jumped on that