dragon quarter boldly relies almost entirely on mystique. one of the most cryptic rpgs i've played, it cleverly strips the formula down to its bare essentials and managed to cart me along with few moving parts - the story itself is relatively simple once you have all the puzzle pieces aligned, and the main thrust is, essentially, to climb your way from the bottom of the map to the very top in hopes of finding a world still suitable for life.

the gameplay itself is reminiscent more of strategy rpgs than it is anything previously in the breath of fire catalogue. it took some while to adjust to, as the game gives very little direction on the ins and outs of gameplay; it felt a little like learning the ropes in divinity original sin ii, which is initially overwhelming and punishing but feels satisfying the closer you get to mastering how to exploit the resources you have.

essentially, you have a knight, gunner, and mage, who also correlate to your tank, utility, and support respectively. you learn new abilities not from leveling up but from random drops and purchases through the esoteric ant colony system, which i'll touch on in a second. characters like lin have hidden combos that allow for added effects when layered properly. a lot of moves you'll find it most beneficial to skip your turn and accrue AP, especially later in the game when bosses begin blocking damage that doesn't reach a minimum amount of damage done per combo.

in essence, the experience is a dungeon-crawler with occasional checkpoints to re-up on supplies. there's a level of risk and reward to every thing you do, though; you could spend all your money right off the bat or put it in the bank to hopefully make dividends. you could also stockpile your money (or your bonus xp) if you start feeling like your run is losing steam and you're anticipating having to restart.

the game's central gimmick is lies in its d-counter, which is constantly climbing but exponentially rises when you use ryu's dragon form, which can kill any enemy in the game in just a couple hits. each time you use this, though, you can expect to expend 5-10% of the d-counter. if the d-counter reaches 100%, your game is over, and you have the option of restarting completely and beginning with the bonus xp, items you've stored, weapons, and money, returning to your last save with this option (which sounds better than it really is - you lose everything in your stock, which could potentially softlock you right before the boss rush near the end, which happened to me!), or quitting and reloading your save without any changes. the save themselves are limited, requiring tokens to redeem when you reach a save point (which are few and far between). you can choose to play fast and loose and spend things as they come or reserve all these precious resources to the end.

despite the extremity, the game never feels truly cruel. it seems to rally around its central theme, finding freedom in a hopeless situation - this is an intensely lonely game, but shines with an occasional adolescent foolhardiness. dragon quarter really could have succeeded as a comic in the mid-00s or a late night toonami limited series. its darkness isn't purely aesthetic - it's quite baked into the plot, and some rather grim things buoy the sillier instances of action - but does get at a certain angst that permeated most forms of media around the time of its creation. its dedication, in my opinion, feels gainfully earned. dragon quarter goes to great lengths to make its psychotropic plot and undercurrent of zaniness work. it also, notably, features a storytelling device that requires failure to access its full story nearly two decades before hades, and an emphasis on playing the game multiple times with only minor changes two years before drakengard and, later, nier.

you don't have to traipse far on gamefaqs or youtube to see the sheer distaste gamers at the time had for this game, which speaks to the fact that dragon quarter has few-to-no contemporaries. as ardwyw points out in their review here, dragon quarter points out many of the phony aspects of not only the breath of fire series but of rpgs in general, and feels confrontational to the expectations of the people who play them. its existence as a "misunderstood" game pairs with its maudlin, emo aesthetic all the better; it's hard to say whether it's a love letter to rpgs or a scornful satire of them because of how carefully it toes the balance between these two modes. the game is fun and each battle feels unique, yet there are many instances when the rug can be pulled out from under you and, without some preventive save scumming through emulation, you'll end up on your ass.

it's notable that, were the music not as typical of rpg fare as can be, this game would be considered a horror rpg alongside parasite eve or koudelka. it seems pretty purposeful that hitoshi sakimoto was chosen for this, as his work for games like tactics ogre, final fantasy tactics, and vagrant story up until this point really defined what a medieval fantasy rpg feels like, the type of games capcom had been making in this series up until this point. instead, dragon quarter lacks any of those adventuresome, windswept elements - it's hard, mechanical, and sci-fi. all these aspects are remixed or stripped down as if to strip the veneer of illusion that goes into making a rpg, which is really a series of crunchy, quick numerical calculations being made in real-time.

this is a unique and maverick game that conspicuously has received very little mainstream reappraisal over the years. i bought it on ebay last year after having been interested in it for a while, and it was only around $27. it's odd to me that a game that so perfectly corresponds with the recent interest in post-modern expressions of rpg formulae could go so overlooked for so long. it's an uncut gem if there ever was one, unobserved and still interred waiting to be excavated from the bottom of a bargain bin.

Reviewed on Jan 17, 2022


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