The 2nd attempt at playing a Dragon Warrior/Quest game for me, after my initial experience with Dragon Warrior 1 on the NES.
It went a little better than my first experience... but not by much. The game felt so archaic, even for its time; it was as if I was progressing backwards in time, and it made me recall why I didn't enjoy the RPG genre on the original NES. I thought it was very generic/formulaic after experiencing the Final Fantasy games on PS1.
Also, the game's start did itself no favors. Coming from the bombastic opening of say a Final Fantasy VII, to this game, where the opening hours were not spent in a single battle... I didn't enjoy it at all, is putting it mildly.
It went a little better than my first experience... but not by much. The game felt so archaic, even for its time; it was as if I was progressing backwards in time, and it made me recall why I didn't enjoy the RPG genre on the original NES. I thought it was very generic/formulaic after experiencing the Final Fantasy games on PS1.
Also, the game's start did itself no favors. Coming from the bombastic opening of say a Final Fantasy VII, to this game, where the opening hours were not spent in a single battle... I didn't enjoy it at all, is putting it mildly.
4 Comments
Oh, and if you want a more conventional adventure in the DQ series, I think you're limited to 11, 9, 8, and maybe 6. I've tried 4-5 and couldn't really get into them, but a lot of people swear by them. 11 is good to start but kinda drops the ball at the end IMO, and 8 is pretty impressive throughout. 9 is excellent, though it feels kind of small in some ways. It might just be because it's handheld, or because the main character is a custom creation (no real character to explore), but the actual gameplay is super good.
@jackindisguise - yeah, I just feel the DQ series as a whole, isn't for me. I did play DQ11 and greatly enjoyed my time with that game, but I consider that to be an outlier... at this point, I don't really have an interest in working through a game series I gave multiple chances to throughout the years, when there are so many other games on the backlog to play. Maybe I'll give DQ12 a look when it finally gets announced, but we'll see... the jury is still out there.
I don't expect them to change up the series radically, nor would I want them to - the series has a diehard fanbase for a reason after all... plus, I've been on the receiving end of that one too many times, where the original fans are "left out to dry" in favor of trying to attract a wider audience... it sucks.
If there is one positive thing I can say about the series it is that - I respect that it has kept a consistent, "old-school", basic, turn-based JRPG identity throughout. But unfortunately, with the lack of engaging stories, poor characters, terrible music, basic gameplay, etc. I don't think it'll ever be for me. I'm just more of a Final Fantasy guy and always will be.
I don't expect them to change up the series radically, nor would I want them to - the series has a diehard fanbase for a reason after all... plus, I've been on the receiving end of that one too many times, where the original fans are "left out to dry" in favor of trying to attract a wider audience... it sucks.
If there is one positive thing I can say about the series it is that - I respect that it has kept a consistent, "old-school", basic, turn-based JRPG identity throughout. But unfortunately, with the lack of engaging stories, poor characters, terrible music, basic gameplay, etc. I don't think it'll ever be for me. I'm just more of a Final Fantasy guy and always will be.
Yeah, Dragon Quest is a series I have never been a fan of and never really will be. Even DQ11 falters in how generic its story is. Every single game in the series is about Dark Death Evil Man who has to be defeated by the nameless, voiceless Hero. I didn't even finish it because of how rushed the end felt. You literally learn the ultimate evil destroying ability in a 60 second sequence. It's such a joke. lol
jackindisguise
2 months ago
DQVII is almost experimental as far as RPGs go. It presents itself as a series of a dozen~ completely disconnected sequences, like episodes a TV show. The first thing I thought of was Inuyasha, where you tuned into it every night, and Inuyasha and friends were in some random city solving random problems relating to demons. Every once in awhile, an episode with some overarching significance would pop up, but the majority of your time is spent in essentially meaningless conflicts with random nobodies.
None of the individual stories you experience really matters to the OVERALL plot of the game. In fact, you could say the plot of the game is not the point of the game at all. The point of the game is the episodes. If you aren't someone who can just enjoy the little meaningless adventures you go through, then you simply can't enjoy this game.
I want a story with characters, conflicts that matter, and a plot that I can follow. The game barely presents any of these things. You get little breadcrumbs every once in awhile, but never enough for a meal. It's just... weird.