Slight update: You can read my (unfortunately negative) thoughts on Dragon Quest combat here https://www.backloggd.com/u/gyoza/review/150377/
This game's difficulty curve seemed very unforgiving to me, and I realized it was because of how much I liked to experiment. I loved recruiting all the different creatures into my party and swapped them in and out wanting to try them all, inadvertently ending up underleveled in the process. This is perhaps the grindiest game in the series due to there being such a huge cast if you recruit plenty of monsters, and then having to grind exp and equipment for all of them.
Having said that, what kept me playing was the story - perhaps one of the most effective in any RPG for its simplicity. Other RPGs have complex themes, some of which they handle extremely well (see exhibit A: FFIX and dealing with mortality, and exhibit B: Xenogears and... whatever the heck its themes are). DQV succeeds because its theme is so simple that it can hardly be called a theme; it's just the story of a kid who grows up, trying to do the most good he can in his tragic life. The amount of emotion and wham-moments this game was able to communicate in its 16-bit medium really is quite something.
This game's difficulty curve seemed very unforgiving to me, and I realized it was because of how much I liked to experiment. I loved recruiting all the different creatures into my party and swapped them in and out wanting to try them all, inadvertently ending up underleveled in the process. This is perhaps the grindiest game in the series due to there being such a huge cast if you recruit plenty of monsters, and then having to grind exp and equipment for all of them.
Having said that, what kept me playing was the story - perhaps one of the most effective in any RPG for its simplicity. Other RPGs have complex themes, some of which they handle extremely well (see exhibit A: FFIX and dealing with mortality, and exhibit B: Xenogears and... whatever the heck its themes are). DQV succeeds because its theme is so simple that it can hardly be called a theme; it's just the story of a kid who grows up, trying to do the most good he can in his tragic life. The amount of emotion and wham-moments this game was able to communicate in its 16-bit medium really is quite something.
4 Comments
That sounds good! I also heard that there are four character slots in the active party instead of 3 which makes the difficulty more manageable as well. Definitely one for my backlog - I have a giant DS backlog since my DS broke down and my PC is too old to emulate most DS games smoothly.
There is no reason to play the SNES version over the DS version
Trying to click the review link in this review 404s now by the way.
Rensie
2 years ago