Brawl Custom Music Hub: Archiving all the music in one place!

Just Breed did go out with a bang, but it was also a very late game meaning it probably lost a lot attention to the SFC which had already been out for 2 years. I guess the American DW3 and DW4 suffered a similar fate since they where both also released in 1992 , when the North American SNES already was out a year before. You’re right, I totally forgot about that part, because I stopped being used to it and because it’s harder to have access to the old manuals. I think the manual is part of the overall experience in a game, and thanks to Toriyama the DQ manuals are feasts to the eyes. Check out the spells for DQ3 for example (these are actually for the remakes I think, that explains why Gira/Firebal is a fire spell). The translated version of the Japanese manuals for DQ1 and DQ2 can be found over at Dragon’s Den. It just felt like an inferior version of Secret of Mana. I also like when RPGs uses a grid so that position becomes a factor. This was pretty much the norm in WRPGs, before they all started favouring real-time action. Wizardry was one of those that didn’t though, which DQ copied and thus defined as standard in JRPGs. I agree about having more interesting battles would do them good though. At least not if you can do a little bit of grinding (not hours !) to afford that. I’m not sure we got Mystic Quest Legend in Sweden though.

I think more recent DnD editions removed this system, so healing spells heals the undead too . Healing spells hurting monsters is something that was introduced in FF3 and kept in the series since. You can generally buy everything in the game by the time you are strong enough to tackle the final dungeon, where you usually find even better items. Spells are sometimes unbalanced but seldom underpowered. They make magic users important classes (and non-magic users a bit duller since they can only attack). Every retail version of Star Fox Zero also comes with the Star Fox Guard game on a second disc. This fun and frantic game finds you defending a mining facility owned by Grippy Toad (Slippy’s uncle) from waves of enemy robots using the second screen on the Wii U GamePad controller. A full-fledged Star Fox experience in its own right, Star Fox Guard features 100 stages for players to take on, and also allows players to create and share their own challenges with other players online. I understand, I also do that in games when it’s possible. But I’m not sure I would design a game that allows doing that. I want gold to be precious so that the player becomes happy when he finds a treasure or anything that can be sold. I like to include things in the game that the player needs to save up for, not just the next weapon, but something very expensive as well as very useful like a ship or house. It shouldn’t require grinding, but the player must pinch every penny, and do quests that gives fast gold and such things. That might not be possible in DQ games without a lot of grinding. And if you grind enough so you never need to sell anything in DQ games you probably become too strong and the game becomes too easy. Also DQ games usually have a very expensive item like the Mink Coat which probably require a lot of grinding if you want to collect it . But what I think is worse than that are the incredibly rare items like the Mysterious Hat in DQ2, they do require grinding and/or luck. Of course other games like the FF series is no different. Neither are modern JRPGs, they are probably actually worse in this regard with tons of secrets and collecting stuff. Having unlimited inventory is convenient but does invalidate certain aspects in lengthy battles, like bosses. Such battles tend to be about healing with the right timing and avoiding all allies to fall at once. Your defence and HP doesn’t matter as much when the boss can fell you in one hit and you can revive with full HP almost instantly and indefinitely due to unlimited resources. DQ bosses are also usually strong enough to kill most characters in a few hits, but you don’t have unlimited resources and there is usually a much larger difference between a character with more HP and one with less HP.

Dragon Quest VII Eden Warriors PS Playstation japan game japanese

I wouldn’t be surprised if DQ9, a “modern RPG”, still has poison floors, although I’m not 100% sure. Otherwise I think something like Phantasy Star II is a good compromise, where you see the hero butts and animations. A grid system is also good because in that case positions and ranged weapons matters.

It’s also probably the only WRPG I ever played, so I can’t say anything about the WRPGs you mention because I never played them and I don’t know squat about them. Well it’s possible but even though I finished the DS version I don’t recall any interesting story part, except that discovering a new part of the world with a new character was interesting. Maybe I’d have found it better on the NES, the only reason I played DS instead is because I expected it to be less grindy, but it was still grindy so maybe I was mistaking on that part. Yes DQ4 remake is one of the few games with the new localization that I’ve actually played. But I’ve also played a few English versions of Morimori Slime and Itadaki Street series and they all did the same thing. And it appears to me that localizations of other new DQ games does this as well. When DQ8 was released it was necessary to do something different since DW7 apparently didn’t do well in America . But I don’t see why they still have to turn everything up to 11, why not just keep DQ as DQ. As I said before, I believe DQ is popular partly for the same reasons Dragon Ball is popular , and DB is extremely popular all over the world, so it’s not a cultural thing. DQ has the potential to boom all over the world the same way. It’s not as bad as FF7’s materia system but I still don’t get the point. It just feels like an abstract rule to prevent the player from becoming stronger if he doesn’t play the game in a specific way. I think we already established that the only games you need to grind in are DQ1, FF1 and FF2, and a bit in certain parts of DQ2. All the others have normal EXP training, not something I would call grinding. Generally you can gradually afford better weapons as you gain gold from EXP training and dungeon crawling . Seiken Densetsu games also does this with Korobokkuru and Moogle status effects, and there is a Korobokkuru village you must be small to enter. FF5 also has some skills that helps you against damage terrains and pitfalls, and one for spotting hidden passages, so the FF series definitely has skills effective in field mode, although less often than DQ. What I meant is that modern JRPGs has a clear distinction between field mode and battle mode. This distinction did exists in earlier JRPGs as well but was far less pronounced. In WRPGs (especially those based on pen-and-paper RPGs) this distinction hardly exists at all. A spell can be cast in or out of battle and the effect lasts equally long in both cases.

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past (Nintendo 3DS, game only

As anything that is based on chance you have to consider the probability of things to happen and try for moves that has the best chance to succeed. Sometimes it really pays off to gamble though, and doing something successfully that really had a low chance and a big reward is very satisfying to the player. DQ3 is where mages and priests are properly separated and defined classes. Mages takes some time before they get useful and are then almost essential in the mid-game (especially against high-defence enemies) but gets less useful later in the game for various reasons. By that time you have time to do class changing though and probably have a sage that can learn all magic and still not suck in a fight. DQ2 has three heroes that goes from raw fighting power to pure magic . You mention that with good experience and a good strategy you need to level less. That might be so, but what strategy are you talking about ? The only strategy I could have is avoid non-healing magic at all costs as it’s useless and buy as good equipment as possible – but you still need to grind to be able to afford this.

• In DQ1 you only have the hero, and the hero class usually means a mix of a knight, a cleric and a mage, often with some unique spells.
• Not being able to open treasure chests just means you have to carry less medicine or other things.
• For example all classes should have some kind of unique skill in battle.
• Also the power of reviving the dead would have an effect on the story.
• No animations for magic, and you don’t see your party in battle.
• I haven’t played 6-7 though, but 5 is the first one to have real plost twists and cutscenes, and a great story line.

When you party is defeated in any Final Fantasy game, you have to start over from the last save. This is particularly disastrous in the earlier game, FF1-3, who lack saves points before bosses. DQ on the other hand, only takes half of your money for loosing, that’s pretty light IMO. The only compensation for having so much boring grinding to do, at least you keep all your precious-earned EXP, but still loose half of your precious-earned gold. FF quickly took the second place after DQ in Japan, and in America it even passed DQ. I don’t think money is a big problem in DQ games since you grind for money when you grind for EXP. More grindy games like DQ1 requires more grinding but you can afford all equipment in the game long before you are strong enough to get Roto’s armour and sword anyway. DQ3 has better balanced EXP grinding and gold grinding goes along the same lines. Inns in DQ games are so cheap that they make about zero impact on the economy. Usually one battle is more than enough to stay a night. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother taking your gold at all. I didn’t mean FF4-6, I literary meant Final Fantasy fourtysix (which of course doesn’t exist, yet). I just meant about any modern JRPG with low difficulty level, my most common complaint with many modern games. DQ11 is a good example, battles are so easy that they are almost pointless. I agre DQ5 is the more story realted, and DQ5 ought to be my favourite so far, but DQ4 no so much. FF is doing a bit too much experimenting for my liking what with FF2’s realistic character growth, though which I think is a good idea in theory, and FF3’s ridiculous on-the-fly-changeable classes. FF is taking the JRPG genre too far from its pen-and-paper-RPG roots IMHO. Kind of ironic considering FF1 was made to be a DnD-based video game, and introduced proper element rules, something DQ didn’t adopt until very recently. In the end what makes most JRPGs of that era poorly aged is that magic/spells/techs are underpowered and expensive to use, and new equipment way too expensive. What makes a JRPG battle interesting is if you can try different weapons, spells and techniques. Always doing the same boring physical attack is boring, and even moreso if it doesn’t matter what your weapon is. By 1990 most JRPGs developpers got this and evolved in a positive way… Added Satura’s Space Adventure DLC to the eShop with new multiplayer and single-player levels, costumes, music, gallery art and records. The evil Andross has taken over the Lylat System and only you and the Star Fox crew can stop them! The Star Fox Zero game is now available exclusively for Wii U consoles, so pin on your pilot wings and dry clean your flight suit – it’s time to report for duty in this action-packed interplanetary adventure. With the advent of the file replacement code (thank you Phantom Wings!) anyone can easily run custom music on Brawl. I’m sure you guys, like me, are chugging away to add the songs you love, songs you find appropriate for a stage (I’m on a Boat!), or songs you just want to annoy people with. Both FF4 and DQ5 can look “NES-like” to a player of later-day SNES games, but this is just yet another proof that back then, it made a huge difference whether a game was released on the start or end of life of a system. DQ5 has incredibly bright colours, I don’t think it looks very good. We have to wait for DQ6 to have a DQ game with truly good graphics.

Dragon Quest VII 7 Playstation PS1 Japan import + spine reg card US Seller

I guess it could be counteracted by forcing the player to use a lot of items, but games seldom do. The original Dragon Warrior localizations has a similar history. Similar things can be said about the “olde English” language that the first two games used. Yeah easy is not the opposite of grinding, but a game where even a beginner don’t need to train his party members before proceeding is automatically easy. An RPG with a balanced difficulty level whould require you to get some training in before you can proceed. That way a beginner player would need more training while an advanced player could proceed with less training to get a bigger challenge. The more training you need the harder the game is without training. Mother 3 is another game that does this poorly by showering the player with items he can’t carry, so he is forced to constantly eat healing items even when not needed. Then when you meet a boss and run out of PP you soon run out of healing items anyway. Although you don’t see the characters in battle in DQ you see them on the map. In FF1-3 it’s the other way around since it doesn’t use the “caterpillar party formation”. And if you play the game again now you will probably notice that there are no “hours of grinding with Ryan”. It is just normal EXP training like in DQ3 and FF3, and it takes just a few minutes to be strong enough to proceed in the game. If the game didn’t require any training at all it would be pretty pointless to have an EXP system at all. This came gradually, FF2 has very tight and limited item space typically filled with story key-items, FF3-4 have limited inventory but you can use the big chocobo to store your extra items with unlimited space. FF5 introduced unlimited items and they didn’t go back since. Wearing 99 shelters makes no sense but so does using magic etc… And this doesn’t prevent the game to be fun, and some items are still expensive or sparse, the game engine allowing you to carry doesn’t mean you will. Not being able to open treasure chest because your inventory is full sucks and discourage world exploration. At least latter games allows you to first open the chest, see what’s inside, then decide what to do with your full inventory. This makes sense, unfortunately none of the NES DQ games allows you to do this, or I’m seriously mistaking. This started in FF2, only FF1 and FF3 have “death”, but FF3 have Phoenix Downs. In FF2, a lot of playabe characters dies during the adventure , and it didn’t make sense if 0 HP was also death. So having HP 0 being “heavily wounded” makes a lot more sense, story-wise. DQ was the definer of the JRPG genre so it’s not strange that FF and other RPGs derives from it. Maybe DQ could be said to be a culprit for setting low standards for the JRPG genre, but I’m not sure it could have been done in another way and still being as successful as it was. I agree that battles are dull in early RPGs, and the lack of choice limits strategy. Less choice means the choices you make have a larger impact than you might think.

That said there are many other mechanic-related things that DQ do gets right. For example there are spells for floor damage and door unlocking, and status effects generally work both inside and outside of battle. Modern RPGs seldom has floor damage anymore and even poison often heals after battle making it pretty much harmless. Final Fantasy games has almost no magic that works outside of battle at all except healing spells and the frog spell in classic FF games. In a DQ game you literary die when HP is 0 , it’s disastrous and something you want to avoid at all cost. The only way to revive is to offer donations to a church with a capable priest , have a capable priest of your own in the party, or use the rare leaf of the world tree item. In modern JRPGs on the other hand, HP 0 just means you are incapable of participating in battle (something starting in 16-bit era FF games) and Phoenix Downs are cheap items you can buy in about any item store. Besides a night at an inn cures anything, including poison and KO. This is kind of unavoidable since many games has cutscenes where the characters may have a line of dialogue, and it would be weird if they were a ghost. Also the power of reviving the dead would have an effect on the story. Sound like my first attempt to play DQ4 back long ago when I was entirely new to the RPG genre. A game with a middle-aged man in pink armour and a jellyfish-like friend was simply not very appealing to me, and the lack of animations didn’t help either.

Oh, but Final Fantasy games continues to be made but aren’t even RPGs anymore, let alone JRPG… Aside of the name, there’s absolutely no continuity to what they used to be. My other favourite DQ game is the eitght installment for the PS2. This game, despite I didn’t like the heavy grinding it required, is absolutely breath-taking and amazing in every way. It’s probably because you feel like you’re actually exploring areas, which is what DQ games are good at. Battles were retro, but still enjoyable because your characters had skills, and you could see the animations. Something that should have been made available since the late-NES days. You might remember an old game as more grindy, especially if you played it when you were young and lacking in experience of RPGs. A lack of strategy requires more grinding and steamrolling a game. Modified the Japanese fonts to include more characters, which allows some better translations and to show those characters in the Online Character Select screen if the main Mii’s name contains them. Fixed a crash occuring when a player is super-punched at the exact time of re-spawning in Online King of the Hill. Barrel roll into this unforgettable adventure by purchasing the game in stores at a suggested retail price of $74.99. Star Fox Guard is included in every physical version of Star Fox Zero. Both Star Fox Zero and Star Fox Guard can also by purchased digitally in Nintendo eShop on Wii U or at Nintendo.com for $64.99 and $19.99, respectively. If you purchase the digital version of either game separately, you will receive an automatic discount of $9.99 through Nintendo.com or Nintendo eShop upon purchase of the other game. Outside of The Outsider, April 28 also sees a substantial free update to SteamWorld Heist itself. On yoshis island the song wildlands isn’t even labeled as anything that makes sense on that stage. I’m having so much issues with stages like battlefield and yoshis island. The title of the songs on here have like no correlation with the names of the songs that are listed in the name list. IMO I think that it would be much better if it was organized by stage or ALSO by stage instead of that stupid order. I’ll repost my BRSTM conversions here, since the other topic is discontinued (and since they’re not on the list). But regardless it’s true this game’s graphics were good for 1986 standards. Dragon Quest’s graphics were okay for it’s time but what I don’t like is that they didn’t advance enough like other games of the time, where the difference between early and later NES game is gigantic. DQ1 only saves the name and experience points you have, and figures out the level and stats from that information. Most quest progress things are figured out by checking if the player has a certain item or not. Chests are not saved so they respawn when exiting a dungeon. Yeah I can imagine that you get disappointed if you play DQ2 and expect it to play more like a modern JRPG with tons of cutscenes and story.

And if you wanted a realistic setting, you wouldn’t care as much about the # of items, but their weight and size. Heck if you wanted to be realistic, you’d limit the character to 1 armor in the inventory and it shouldn’t even be possible to move with it unequipped. BTW I’ve also been a huge fan of the FE series since long before it was finally translated to English. I didn’t understand Japanese back then though so the story was lost on me. I actually love FE because of this exactness, it’s a common thing in Intelligent System games. I generally do prefer when you can see your heroes’ butts like in Phantasy Star 2 or Pokemon over a pure first-person perspective where you can’t see enemies’ animations. Pokemon is actually a great example of using both text and animation while also showing characters on both sides using the same animations. Good use of NES hardware is always nice, but I don’t think the technology makes a game. The DQ games are very well designed and don’t have a lot of bugs or bad AI or so . And the very concept of “making a game to learn audiance X of genre Y” is slly IMO… But that’s not entierely new, Portopia was ported to the FC with similar goals, before making DQ1. Magic is supposed to be super-powerful, especially if mages are a burden as fighters. Might be, but my criteria is that battle are dull when there’s not much else to do than fight and heal. Having limited inventory doesn’t make battles any funnier. Agreed, but once again, this doesn’t prevent from introducing cutscenes, plot twists, more interesting battles. Yeah that works too, same for DQ9 if I’m not mistaken, but even if the hero is silent anyway he can still have character from what other people say to him or about him. If the hero is a generic thing, then it gives further away the possibility of an interesting storyline. If the game allows you to keep all the weapons from start it definitely has broken economy and is too easy. If money isn’t worth anything it’s a useless concept in the game. You can buy all weapons at the end of the game when you have more money than you will ever need, just as long as you keep all the unique items around. Each spell only has a use at a certain part of the game though because of the fixed damage. Also there are many monsters that are strong against magic. Strong against magic in DQ means the magic has a larger chance to fail and have no effect, there is no Magic Defence wich absorbs the damage. I’m actually thinking of making a character creation in an RPG where you can choose everything, including name, gender, class, race and appearance. The concept of elemental magic seems to have been introduced in FF1 but was only fully effective in FF3. DQ doesn’t have to have elemental magic to be good, but it have to have interesting battles. Elemental magic contributes to interesting battles, but isn’t the only way to achieve that. I like the characters, but the story is basically they’re gonna save the world. Also you don’t even see them in battle, when you know you have to hot interesting looking gypsies in your pary, that’s quite a shame. Yeah FF2 was an interesting experiment but a failed attempt. If you know the mechanics though it is OK since you can battle near a town against easy monsters and then train against each other. Yeah DQ3, DQ4 and FF3 are all good examples of balanced RPGs for the system. In DQ1 it could be about learning what monster is weak to what spell or simply being good at micromanaging one’s resources and estimate when it is a good time to heal etc. In DQ3 everything gets much more complicated since you are able to create the whole party and there are more items and spells.

(PRS never names his remixes.) However, the name of the remixer is in the wrong place. Try to find a Youtube video or MP3 link containing the song so someone can preview it (this is especially important if your music is obscure, but it’s just convenient for those who want to see what you’re sharing). For another extensive list of BRTSTMs, check out BrawlCustomMusic.com . Previews of songs are automatically created and everything! I better stop raving about it before I make this thread look outdated…credit goes to Moosehunter for the great website. The season of love is upon us … and with restaurants open again, you can finally have a date-night out at a restaurant for Valentine’s Day. I never noticed it, but indeed this is a lacking aspect of a traditional fantasy element in the series. It also contributes to less interesting battles I suppose. Nope, menus for all the NES DQ games are terrible and were only made intuitive in DQ5. I was totally blown away by the beautiful world, sound, story and its likeness to DQ4 which it is a sequel to. I don’t understand the critics it got for being “NES-like” (NES don’t even have that many colours). It wasn’t very different from other SNES RPGs from the same time like FF4 and FF5 either, rather I’d think it was more beautiful than the slightly washed out and simplistic FF4 . Around the time DQ6 came out a man in his late 60’s wrote to Nintendo Power lamenting he’d never get to play DQ5 and 6 . I often wonder if he ever discovered the translation patch or the DS versions. I’m pretty sure fan translations are available since a long time (there’s even 2 concurrent translations of DQ5). Seen from today, the time period between when those games were released and when fan translations were made available in the early 2000s seems rather short. I’ll retry DW4 for NES but first I’ll have to go through DQ6 and DW7, which are the ones I didn’t play. Oh and DQ2 also but since it seems so grindy and annoying I don’t even want to play it. WRPGs tends to take both weight and size into account, since they aim for more realism (and because that’s how pen-and-paper RPGs often work). It’s about having item micromanagement and limitation as a strategy and gameplay aspect. In FF3 I didn’t have to re-visit dungeons thrice to get enough EXP to proceed, at worst I had to wander a bit arround the world map, which is more interesting. In each DQ game I have to visit each single dungeon twice if not thrice to have any chance to proceed, this tends to be annoying. Of course I could replace that with endless world-map wandering, but it gets boring after a while. Yeah, at least localizers often wanted to hide the Japanese art style so badly that they didn’t mind using much inferior art . While FE doesn’t have dispersion in the damage values , the game requires you to do exact calculations and use very carefully planned strategy at all times if you don’t want to loose any units. This kind of planning wouldn’t be possible in an RPG because there are too many random factors, but they are also not as needed as you generally don’t die so easily. Also when it comes to games for american audiance, American Squaresoft did a better job at developing Secret of Evermore, than Japanese Squaresoft did with FFMQ… Even DQ5 and DQ8 were very grindy despite the fact I liked the game. I don’t care if battles are text or graphics or both, but what I care is that they’re interesting and are not just a long repeat of “fight, fight, fight, fight” orders. I think European publishers wasn’t interested in the RPG genre at all. Mystic Quest was also made to teach Americans of the RPG genre, which is quite ironic considering that it was the Americans that invented the genre and introduced the genre to Japan. The lack of elementals works OK in DQ1 and DQ2 which doesn’t have as many spells, but from DQ3 there are lots of different spells that seemingly only varies in power, MP cost and range. I think you’re targeting the DQ4 remake, well there’s so few story anyway that they tried to make it funny. At least no localisation changes how fun the battle are, and that is “not very”. FF5 who is retro has this, but FF9 who is more modern doesn’t. I didn’t only play the remake, but I only finished the remake. I only did the 1st chapter with the NES version, and I was tired of having to do hours of grinding with Ryan. Yes, saving the world with your family and your pet is a nice break of doing it with your friends. They even released an anime based on the game apparently I’ll have to… Yeah DQ5 is probably my favourite in the series, due to its setting and story, not due to its mechanics.

• It was quite weird to me considering IBM PC games was generally of lower quality than console games at this time, and not really that suitable for games.
• I didn’t understand Japanese back then though so the story was lost on me.
• This changed in DQ4 and FF2 which both has many cutscenes and premade characters with personalities.
• Like I said it works well because you get a good focus on the text.
• Both games was very popular in Japan among nerds , so they created DQ by mixing features of both Ultima and Wizardry, and prettied it up to make it appealing to a larger audience.

Different classes affects what type of equipment and spells you can use as well as stats. This gets better in newer RPGs and newer DQ games are no different in this regard. The lack of backgrounds and animations was just standard for RPGs on the system . Not seeing the party is also standard for RPGs, and something DQ introduced in battles only. Before DQ, dungeon crawling was usually in first persion perspective, and DQ took that and used it only in battles. Like I said it works well because you get a good focus on the text. For DQ I wouldn’t have it any other way (I’m very disappointed with DQ11 that battles looks like 3D Final Fantasy games instead of preserving the first person perspective). This year they are doubling the number of firework shows, so there will be 10 magical nights alternating between two themes, legends of fire and superhero. Fixed Records related to the number of multiplayer games played so that Bowhemoth games don’t count anymore. Fixed a bug where too many players connecting to an online game at the exact same time causing a freeze; as well as some other minor bugs related to players joining or disconnecting from Online games. In addition to flying the now-iconic Arwing vehicle, you can also pilot the ground-based Landmaster Tank and new GyroWing, a hovering drone ideal for stealth-based missions. The Arwing can also transform into the bipedal Walker, allowing for further exploration in the game’s varied levels. Using the StreetPass, SpotPass or “Call Someone Online” features , players can invite fellow players’ Mii characters into their castle town to assist them by providing helpful items. Players can even customize their Mii characters with outfits and a custom message. Playing the Pokémon Rumble World game is perfect for the Pokémon 20th celebration, as the game features more than 700 Pokémon. In the game, players control a Toy Pokémon and battle and befriend as many Pokémon as possible in dozens of stages in many different areas. The more Toy Pokémon players befriend, the better chance they have to defeat other Pokémon. Well the most obvious NES-like feature is the sound effects. This doesn’t prevent DQ5 from being a great game, but I can see where those critics comes from, and they’re similar to what I have to critic against DQ3-4 for sticking too strictly to looking like DQ2. I have a knack for playing old games in their proper context. Well not exactly, but I seldom have trouble getting into old games that most people think have aged badly, as long as I’m prepared for it. Especially not NES games, since I grew up with the system and have never really stopped playing it . I was unable to play DQ5 and 6 for a long time since they where not available in English. I meant to say the first English game, not the first game in the series. Its translation was very well made (though not that I’ve played the Japanese version yet), and this continued with the Gamecube game which also is excellently written . Yeah I was amazed when the first FE game finally came in English (thanks to Marth’s inclusion in Super Smash Bros Melee), and found that the story and characters extremely well made. Before I only knew that the art, sound and game mechanics were fantastic. I’ve always felt that the series would do very well outside Japan, so I always thought it was very strange that they didn’t try to translate them earlier. The DS remake added a bunch of stuff, including post-game quests. I don’t know, I remember the NES version as having a lot of twists and cutscenes. There are the touching cutscene when your childhood friend uses herself as a diversion for Pisaro/Saro’s forces and a sad flashback with Rozary/Rose being abused by bad men. It felt like a lot of cutscenes since that’s not what you’d expect from a NES game . Ironically Portopia has a more interesting story with more twists than any DQ game, and especially DQ1 released just after by the same developers. Also considering it’s NROM it’s just incredible how they could fit that in a NROM cart. But those were fashionable in the 1980s for some reason. The first RPG I ever played in my life was a PC game whose name I forgot but had a lot of those. Since there was nothing else available I enjoyed it but today I’d find this game is shit I believe.

The movie is not that bad in the 1st half but holy fuck, the 2nd half suck so hard, they should be ashamed of releasing a movie that bad. The pixart art style is awful, but that’s another story… It looks like female characters are wearing a ton of makeup, completely ruins their attractiveness. And aaargh those eyes, did they all smoke weed before the shoot? You’re completely right it would have made sense to mimic Toriyama’s style. But dragons, princesses, magic and swords setting doesn’t mean there’s necessairly a very straightforward storyline, no cutscenes, no plot twists, etc… They started having those only in DQ5, and even then, much less than contemporary FF. I don’t think DQ needs more developed characters and story. DQ and FF each has their own style but I don’t think either is better than the other, and I wouldn’t like one of them turn into the other. Earlier DQ and FF games has a story that is solely told by the intro, ending and by dialogue with NPCs. This changed in DQ4 and FF2 which both has many cutscenes and premade characters with personalities. Now I know back then FF was annecdotal and nobody knew the fanchise existed before the end of the SNES-era, while DQ was very well known, especially in Japan. That’s probably why all other JRPG of the time, such as Fantasy Star, got more inspiration from DQ than from FF. (or in DQ you’re emotionally attached to the universe, it’s different). In DQ games fights tends to be a hassle but still takes most of your playing time. Since magic characters are bad at physical attacks, and also takes more damage, you’d expect them to be more useful in another way. This is only possible if their spells are cheap enough in mana so that you can explore large overworld areas or big dungeons while regularly casting spells and not run out of mana. Usually in early RPGs it’s impossible, if you do that you’ll run out of mana very quickly and need to sleep to refill it. And even so they’re no stronger than physical attacks on other classes ! So since magic is useless I tend to not bother with magic other than healing anyway – and that makes the fights boring because it’s basically attack attack attack heal attack etc… First time I played DQ and FF, I thought FF was generally cooler. FF1 had young cool heroes with red and blue hair while DQ4 had a middle-aged soldier in pink armor and mustache . Now I think the simplistic look is part of the DQ charm though. And the characters aren’t exactly badly drawn or anything. The levels in Star Fox Zero aren’t just about going from point A to point B. Many of the game’s gorgeous locales contain secret exits and hidden collectibles, inviting you to retry missions to discover everything. Just like previous Star Fox games, exploring and discovering new things is part of the fun. By using your stellar piloting skills, you can destroy as many enemies as possible to try to get the highest score. The Star Fox series makes its Wii U debut in Star Fox Zero, once again reuniting leader Fox McCloud with his memorable team composed of hotshot Falco Lombardi, reliable Peppy Hare and engineer Slippy Toad. For this new adventure, you take on the role of Fox McCloud as he pilots multiple transforming vehicles using a unique control scheme that lets you shoot in one direction while flying in another. Star Fox Zero is the first game in the series to employ independent controls for flying and aiming your lasers. Pokémon Rumble World for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, which finds players battling and befriending more than 700 Pokémon, is getting a physical retail version … and it’s available in stores today! I already got the Japanese version of all the main series games , except DQ10, all CIB . But I need to be in an “RPG mood” whenever I’m going to play a game in the series. I remember I got a bazooka and a dog and then ended up at some village when I lost the interest. The characters and the dark graphics was what made me loose interest I think. It’s not, it’s just one bad thing with an unlimited inventory system that I complain about. The fact that Phoenix Downs are cheaply found anywhere in many JRPGs in combination with an unlimited inventory is causing the problems I was talking about.

In classic RPGs like DnD, Wizardry and DQ , revival of the dead is just part of the worlds they takes place in, and are not always possible. I love to being able to create the main character yourself, and let it be “mute” to let the player decide on its personality. You can not choose class in DQ games, but I wouldn’t want to choose any other class than hero for the main character anyway. But creating the whole party in FF1 and DQ3 is like you say, not good for a story oriented game like JRPGs tends to be. It’s fine if you have a general dungeon crawler or something where mechanics are more important and the main characters has no direct integration with the story. I think DQ4 is perfect because you create the hero while all the others are premade. But the way you use the word substance I would say mechanics, and that’s definitely something that the DQ series lacks in, and something Squaresoft tried to fix with Final Fantasy, and also succeeded with in many aspects. For example usually healing spells and items should damage undead monsters, but it never does in any DQ game . And elements are limited to fire/magic and breath attacks in the earlier games. A proper element system didn’t appear until the more modern instalments of the series (DQ7 or something I think? DQ9 definitely have elements, so does the Monster series). Magic all have fixed damage which is the main reason why a spell is limited to a certain part of the game. There is no intelligence and spirit stats, DQ3 do introduces intelligence but it’s only for increasing MP .

It was thanks to the hype of FF7 that the JRPG genre became mainstream in Europe. Yes I think DQ6 introduces the bag which basically is a portable storage and allows you to hold unlimited with items. Yes it’s the FF5 system I’m criticizing for the reasons I mentioned above. It’s not about making sense, it’s a game mechanic thing. Not being able to open treasure chests just means you have to carry less medicine or other things. As I said, DQ games doesn’t necessarily does this perfectly . It is because they improve things that needs to be improved and don’t change things that don’t needs to be changed. Exactly, you have to grind hours for either EXP or money , and your only consolation is that you get the other “for free”. In FF3 and later you can usually collect the weapons of the whole game, in DQ forget about it you’ll definitely have to sell your weaker equipment or you won’t be able to afford the new one. Floor damage might been gradually removed as it makes no sense in a 3d environment to step on a poisonous tile, since there’s no tiles.

Overworld graphics are also horrible a “hiding the grid”. There’s no battle backgrounds whatsoever, and the only animation is monster blinking when they’re hit by either physical or magical damage. No animations for magic, and you don’t see your party in battle. DQ4 is great because it builds upon DQ3, but instead of letting the player create all characters it only lets you create the hero while the rest are premade characters that are based on all the classes of DQ3 . It also polishes every little detail that made the previous games so great and expands on them. It’s not just DQ1 with bigger maps, more characters, enemies and spells. The story aspect from earlier is greatly improved, classes are greatly improved and incorporated into the story among many other things. It’s similar to DQ1 on the surface (and I wouldn’t want it any other way), and similar to DQ3 since that is the game that set most of the standards of the series, while its content are improved in about every way. If you think DQ is only about large maps and monsters I think you are missing the point of the series . The cute little towns with funny characters that change their routines day and night, the simple yet intriguing story which is told mostly by talking to NPCs and the general and warm feeling of RPG adventuring. The world and story is much more down-to-earth fantasy than FF’s airships and ancient robots . The tone and style reminds me a lot of Dragon Ball, which makes me think Toriyama had a hand in other things besides character design . Another reason could be the recent ridiculous localizations. And taking down means a real dead, de facto game over as you don’t want to loose your party. Luck plays a too big role in FE, but I still love the game, because of art style, music, and so on. I especially love that they finally introduced the “caravan system” of DQ4 and up. It allows you to have all party members with you at all times and you can even tag them in battle. I hated the FF6 system where you have to pick your party members so they are levelling uneveningly and affects cut-scenes. You have to play the game a trillion times i you want to see all possible combinations of characters and cutscenes. I also like that the story is a bit simpler after FF7 and FF8 having almost overly complicated stories, but it still has that FF feeling. You just have to avoid dying as much as possible, and you must prepare a plan B when you do. The thing is that letting a character die (or swoon, get KO’d etc) isn’t very punishing in newer games, and that combined with unlimited of cheap healing items makes battles dull. Especially boss battles are just long cycles of healing and dishing out damaging attacks. Since you have almost unlimited resources, the only thing you need to worry about is that you don’t all get downed at once. It makes sense in FF games for the reasons I stated in my last post.

An experienced player is doing a lot of less bad choices than a beginner does. This is why an experienced player can beat DQ1 at level 19 or so, while a beginner might need to go up to level 23 or something and steamroll the Dragonlord. In DQ1 you only have the hero, and the hero class usually means a mix of a knight, a cleric and a mage, often with some unique spells. But heroes are more knight than magic user so their magic is very limited. I understand that you would like mages to be able to use magic as their main weapon instead of being a trump card used in a pinch and on bosses. I don’t mind that myself, and it do works well in Fire Emblem for example. Only a very powerful wizard (Gandalf-style) with a large mana pool would be able to use magic regularly and don’t need protection from regular monsters. If you only played the remake I could imagine that it is a bit disappointing since it’s lacking many things that I would expect in a modern JRPG. For example all classes should have some kind of unique skill in battle. The dancer should be able to use music magic and the merchant should be able to throw money on the enemies or something. These are things you just have to look past considering it’s not a modern JRPG at all. Since there’s no elemental magic, the only offensive magic is a generic “HURT” spell (or whathever it’s name), and it’s basically a physical attack that costs you mana. Since you’re investing mana in doing that, you’d expect the attack to be devastating, but no, it does sometimes even less than a physical attack of a well-equiped fighter of the same level. That’s what all early DQ games suck at, and early FF games too. I agree that the lack of skills other than spells makes battles more repetitive. But this is also not any different from other RPGs on the system. You can generally only attack with the weapon or use spells and items in old RPGs.