First Dragon Quest ever played and I guess I started off with a strong one. It had a solid impact with great story, satisfying battle system, charming art and bomb soundtrack.
The biggest thing that probably stands out from the game is the party planning and monster recruiting. There are number of monsters you can recruit, kit out and take into an adventure with you and I feel like they offer a great way to build the perfect party for a specific game styles. I ended up clearing the game with the family and couple support monsters but from what I read, some of the recruitable monsters get you through the game with breeze.
Obviously, with kitting out, there is the grind. If you want your party to have the levels and the gear to beat the threat, the game offers multiple grinding options to spend your life away with. My playtime was a little bit over 60 hours and I bet a half of that was spent with the slots trying to get a good sword or some dusty dungeon trying to encounter metal slimes. In the end, you can beat the game with less grinding than I did, I had the worst of luck and was way too prepared for the final boss.
While the game's style can be a little limiting in expressing it, the story manages to hit extremely well. It's borderline comical how much the player character goes through, but in my opinion it made actually clearing the challenges all more satisfying. The story is often delivered via cutscenes and dialogue, the former being the stronger way of the two. Usually when you gain an important piece of information through dialogue, it's delivered in pretty nonchalant way, almost like in passing which is made even more infuriating by the awful accents of some npcs that were for some reason included in the DS release. However in the end I'm not playing this game for it's dialogue and can't expect them to do every single moment a carefully crafted cutscene.
This game looks really great. The art and designs by the late Akira Toriyama are just as wacky and imaginative as you get and some of the monsters are almost like ripped straight out of the pages of Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump. As someone who grew up reading those series', it felt a little nostalgic. I also love how the DS version uses the both screens to display the scene around the player character, which brings even more depth to already impressive sceneries.
Overall, it's a great game, though it gets a bit grindy especially towards the end. If you like JRPGs and haven't tried it out yet, I can confidently urge you to do so.
The biggest thing that probably stands out from the game is the party planning and monster recruiting. There are number of monsters you can recruit, kit out and take into an adventure with you and I feel like they offer a great way to build the perfect party for a specific game styles. I ended up clearing the game with the family and couple support monsters but from what I read, some of the recruitable monsters get you through the game with breeze.
Obviously, with kitting out, there is the grind. If you want your party to have the levels and the gear to beat the threat, the game offers multiple grinding options to spend your life away with. My playtime was a little bit over 60 hours and I bet a half of that was spent with the slots trying to get a good sword or some dusty dungeon trying to encounter metal slimes. In the end, you can beat the game with less grinding than I did, I had the worst of luck and was way too prepared for the final boss.
While the game's style can be a little limiting in expressing it, the story manages to hit extremely well. It's borderline comical how much the player character goes through, but in my opinion it made actually clearing the challenges all more satisfying. The story is often delivered via cutscenes and dialogue, the former being the stronger way of the two. Usually when you gain an important piece of information through dialogue, it's delivered in pretty nonchalant way, almost like in passing which is made even more infuriating by the awful accents of some npcs that were for some reason included in the DS release. However in the end I'm not playing this game for it's dialogue and can't expect them to do every single moment a carefully crafted cutscene.
This game looks really great. The art and designs by the late Akira Toriyama are just as wacky and imaginative as you get and some of the monsters are almost like ripped straight out of the pages of Dragon Ball or Dr. Slump. As someone who grew up reading those series', it felt a little nostalgic. I also love how the DS version uses the both screens to display the scene around the player character, which brings even more depth to already impressive sceneries.
Overall, it's a great game, though it gets a bit grindy especially towards the end. If you like JRPGs and haven't tried it out yet, I can confidently urge you to do so.