Dragon Quest, a game series so entrenched in the Japanese public’s conciseness, but has never quite had that effect on the general American audience. The series earnest fantasy storytelling stood in stark contrast to the dark complexity of then rival Square’s Final Fantasy series. But Dragon Quest has made it’s notable dent in overseas gaming, and now Nintendo is back at the helm publishing the first new Dragon Quest title on a Nintendo system since 1996. Love it or hate it, it’s the quintessential JRPG, for both good and bad reasons.
Like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest doesn’t like to stay with one world for very long. In this ninth installment you’re one of the angelic Celestrians, guardians of the mortal world. After a slow start of helping the townsfolk with their day to day lives, (one of which involves picking up horse manure) you return to the observatory to fill the Great World Tree Yggdrasil with your collected benevolessence (everybody still with me?) to make the legendary fyggs bloom and call forth the great space train (yeah, a golden space train) to take the Celestrians up to the realm of the almighty. Well when things just about to go well for you, mysterious dark beams of energy rip apart the observatory, break the space train, and send you plummeting back to earth. From there your adventure begins as you search the globe for the missing fyggs to restore order. You gotta give it to Yuji Horii for this installment; he really wanted to create something fantastic for this game, and starting out as literally a fallen angel is better then an amnesic spikey haired J-Pop idol.
Where this game starts to change the 20 plus years of ancient gameplay that has ruled the series since the beginning is character creation. Your character is still a mute, having everyone else around him do the heavy lifting, but at least you can make him look the way you want. Since it’s Akira Toriyama doing the art design, you’ll either love or hate the fact that your character will look like he should be yelling about power levels being over nine thousand or something. But it’s still nice to have a more options then say, Phantasy Star 0.
The other noticeable change in the series, is the removal of random encounters. Yes it’s been a staple of JRPG gaming for near twenty five years, but the times they are a changing. It still doesn’t stop the occasional run in with a monster you didn’t want to fight, but if you keep your wits about you and play it safe, you can effectively cut a hassle free path to the boss in any given dungeon. The last big upgrade to the series is something I hope returns in a grander form for the sequel: multiplayer.
In Japan, this feature was highly touted and is one of the reasons it sold so well outside of it’s iconic name. The tag feature works just like the similar feature in Nintendogs; you walk around with it turned on, and it seeks out players in the vicinity who also have it turned on. But this is where the idea is ruined. It’s understandable that the designers wanted the multiplayer to be about camaraderie and teamwork, but without Wi-Fi the idea is only half as awesome as it could have been. The only reason there’s a Wi-Fi logo on the game box is that you use it to access a once a day list of exclusive items and treasure maps. Don’t get me wrong, grouping with a bunch of friends to play the game is great, but could be better if I could play with them from anywhere.
With the graphics and sound, for a DS game that’s truly pushing the limits of it’s storage capacity (The game only allows for one save since the game is just packed with stuff) they both come off as agreeable. The Akira Toriyama designs and settings may be a slight step down from the series high point with DQVIII, but they aren’t ugly. It’s cool that finally you get to see the armor and weaponry you put on your character -- it’s downright WoW-esque. The same praise goes for the musical score. Headphones are a given if you truly want to appreciate Koichi Sugiyama’s epic melodies. There are a few tracks that tend to get grating for their repetition, but the main themes are still as enjoyable as they were the last time around.
The game’s multiplayer mode and difficulty really start to shine in the post game section. Yuji Horii said he wanted to make this game the hardest yet, and even though the main story may be a breeze for some hardened gamers, the grottos of the game's collectable treasure maps is where those abilities will be tested. The game has always had a wealth of strategy, and with the series third attempt at a class changing system, the possibilities are nearly limitless. That is if you don’t mind doing a little farming and grinding. The only issue with this is that it takes a little over ten hours to get to that point in the story, so planning ahead helps if you wish to hoard your attribute points towards a class ability you want. Sadly there is no re-spec option for mistakes in character building.
Yuji Horii and company wanted to take the series in a new direction by putting it on the DS. People were wary, but as the sales figures prove overseas, Dragon Quest can still pack em in. It’s only fault is that maybe it was too ambitious. All the new features are very welcomed, but feel as if they could have been put to their full potential on the Wii. But for newcomers, it’s possibly the most accessible, and even with just local multiplayer, new gaming bonds of friendship can be created. And if you can’t dig on whomping on slimes, you've got no soul.
One last note about this game is that it is incredibly punny. More so then DQ8, this game almost goes out of it's way to have every location and character have a silly name. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but there are some groan worthy gems.
