Man...53 hours...I honestly think it took me as long to beat this game as it did to play the other games up until this one combined. I usually don't start out talking about things like that, but it's kind of the best way to express that this Dragon Quest game is different from the past games.
As I've played the series I've said that I can oddly see the parallels between how Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest grew between their matching numbered games, but I honestly think FF6 and DQ6 don't quite have the same parallels except for MAYBE that both have an issue where the plot comes to halt and there's a lot between that time and near the end where there's just side quests and dead air of vague story, before the story revs up and gets going again.
It's honestly becoming kind of hard to talk about this series graphically because it seems each game uses the same sort of graphics and animations as the last. DQ 1 - 3 as far as the Switch remakes look the same, DQ4 - 6 on the DS kinda looks the same with very small improvements in spots. this isn't a bad thing, because as I've said with 4 and 5, the game's look great and remind me of that era between SNES and GBA. I will say the one thing that has been getting much better per game is the character art, definitely has improved a lot.
Everytime I write one of these reviews I kinda worry if when I think of music to the game, have I been hearing the same tunes between the trilogies and aren't noticing or are the compositions so alike that I'm confusing them? Either way, I really like the music even if I'm too the point I swear I've been hearing a lot of these songs for like 6 games with little change, but if it's not bothering me, it's apparently pretty good then.
Now for the story...as I said earlier, the game has this weird issue that the story kinda disappeared for a good chunk of the game and was just sending me for place to place late into the game, but before then...the story was going very nicely. The mystery of why you constantly find yourself going between two worlds that seem closely related to each other and why things are affecting one in ways that sometimes do or don't change the other. I really liked the story overall, and honestly found most of the characters to be pretty interesting. It's weird, but I kinda like the "Hero" design of this game out of the 6 so far. Oh, and unlike some of the past games, this actually fixed something I've complained about and actually made the villains important and were a constant through the whole thing.
As for the gameplay, not much really changed from the past games. Exploration was mostly the same, dungeons and puzzles were the same, combat didn't have too much of a difference....except the Vocation system was brought back. I absolutely love job/class system games in RPGs and I love to customize my team and especially since there's a Martial Artist vocation I went straight for it! But...this system felt like a double edged sword. Unlike the past games, you learn skills from the Vocations as they go up by rank. this is done per battle and isn't tied to your experience level. every skill you learn in your Vocation you get to keep when you move to another vocation, so there's plenty of hybrid customization. even better, some vocations when mastered make a new Vocation, again an awesome system, but where the double edged part comes in is...the Vocations kinda feel like accessories or something to that nature, because when you equip a Vocation it doesn't change anything about the character aside their stats and skills they can learn. This mean that you can have a Mage which in most games uses Staves or Clubs, but in this game equipment types are tied to the character themselves not the Vocation...so if you make the Hero a Mage...he's gonna be a sword and shield heavy armored Mage casting spells or in my case a Martial Artist with the same equipment, but using fist-like skills and kicks despite having a giant blade and wearing heavy gear...get what I'm saying? It's weird, but not entirely bad...just strips the identity of the Vocations a little.
I did have some things that caused me not to be able to give this game the 5-star treatment.
- I'll start with the biggest issue and the reason it took me 53 hours. Grinding is required and I don't mean just leveling, Vocation grinding too. the final boss ALMOST requires 3 particular Vocations to be mastered or you're highly unlikely to win.
- Sometimes there's so much space between story bits, it's easy to forget what you were doing originally.
- The map really could be smaller, so many areas had little to no point to it and it makes it worse with two worlds.
- Half the total characters are optional characters and half of the main characters are under developed story wise.
Honestly I really liked this game for what it was, but I kinda felt it needed to be reeled in a bit and shortened to be a tighter experience, it has all the makings of a great RPG, but is a little too bloated in spots, but other than that, a pretty solid entry in the series.
As I've played the series I've said that I can oddly see the parallels between how Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest grew between their matching numbered games, but I honestly think FF6 and DQ6 don't quite have the same parallels except for MAYBE that both have an issue where the plot comes to halt and there's a lot between that time and near the end where there's just side quests and dead air of vague story, before the story revs up and gets going again.
It's honestly becoming kind of hard to talk about this series graphically because it seems each game uses the same sort of graphics and animations as the last. DQ 1 - 3 as far as the Switch remakes look the same, DQ4 - 6 on the DS kinda looks the same with very small improvements in spots. this isn't a bad thing, because as I've said with 4 and 5, the game's look great and remind me of that era between SNES and GBA. I will say the one thing that has been getting much better per game is the character art, definitely has improved a lot.
Everytime I write one of these reviews I kinda worry if when I think of music to the game, have I been hearing the same tunes between the trilogies and aren't noticing or are the compositions so alike that I'm confusing them? Either way, I really like the music even if I'm too the point I swear I've been hearing a lot of these songs for like 6 games with little change, but if it's not bothering me, it's apparently pretty good then.
Now for the story...as I said earlier, the game has this weird issue that the story kinda disappeared for a good chunk of the game and was just sending me for place to place late into the game, but before then...the story was going very nicely. The mystery of why you constantly find yourself going between two worlds that seem closely related to each other and why things are affecting one in ways that sometimes do or don't change the other. I really liked the story overall, and honestly found most of the characters to be pretty interesting. It's weird, but I kinda like the "Hero" design of this game out of the 6 so far. Oh, and unlike some of the past games, this actually fixed something I've complained about and actually made the villains important and were a constant through the whole thing.
As for the gameplay, not much really changed from the past games. Exploration was mostly the same, dungeons and puzzles were the same, combat didn't have too much of a difference....except the Vocation system was brought back. I absolutely love job/class system games in RPGs and I love to customize my team and especially since there's a Martial Artist vocation I went straight for it! But...this system felt like a double edged sword. Unlike the past games, you learn skills from the Vocations as they go up by rank. this is done per battle and isn't tied to your experience level. every skill you learn in your Vocation you get to keep when you move to another vocation, so there's plenty of hybrid customization. even better, some vocations when mastered make a new Vocation, again an awesome system, but where the double edged part comes in is...the Vocations kinda feel like accessories or something to that nature, because when you equip a Vocation it doesn't change anything about the character aside their stats and skills they can learn. This mean that you can have a Mage which in most games uses Staves or Clubs, but in this game equipment types are tied to the character themselves not the Vocation...so if you make the Hero a Mage...he's gonna be a sword and shield heavy armored Mage casting spells or in my case a Martial Artist with the same equipment, but using fist-like skills and kicks despite having a giant blade and wearing heavy gear...get what I'm saying? It's weird, but not entirely bad...just strips the identity of the Vocations a little.
I did have some things that caused me not to be able to give this game the 5-star treatment.
- I'll start with the biggest issue and the reason it took me 53 hours. Grinding is required and I don't mean just leveling, Vocation grinding too. the final boss ALMOST requires 3 particular Vocations to be mastered or you're highly unlikely to win.
- Sometimes there's so much space between story bits, it's easy to forget what you were doing originally.
- The map really could be smaller, so many areas had little to no point to it and it makes it worse with two worlds.
- Half the total characters are optional characters and half of the main characters are under developed story wise.
Honestly I really liked this game for what it was, but I kinda felt it needed to be reeled in a bit and shortened to be a tighter experience, it has all the makings of a great RPG, but is a little too bloated in spots, but other than that, a pretty solid entry in the series.