This is one of the few games I find hard to talk about without getting a bit rambly and abstract, as I think this game elevates the medium to an artistic marvel that remains unparalleled in its atmosphere, storytelling, setting and ideas. I could write an entire essay about this game. There are going to be minor spoilers ahead, so be notified.

When we think of JRPGs, we often think about saving the world, good versus evil, power of friendship and fantasy settings. This game ignores all of these tropes that we've come accustomed to. Instead of saving the world, the world ends within the first ten minutes of the game, there's no good or bad, instead of a party the protagonist is alone and instead of a fantasy setting it's set in modern Tokyo. Shin Megami Tensei games have a system known as the allignment system. There's no scale that measures choices between good and evil, but rather between law and chaos, which are extreme opposites of ideals.

At the beginning of the game you meet with your friends at Shinjuku Hospital. Upon arrival, your teacher seems to be missing. Your friends tell you that there's something off about this hospital and suggest to look for her. At some point while exploring the hospital, you meet this creepy dude in a chair, a cult leader. His name is Hikawa. He tells you about the inevitable rebirth of the world and attempts to kill you but is interrupted by your teacher who suddenly showed up. She takes you up to the rooftop to witness the spectacle called The Conception, which means the end of the world. She tells you that everything outside the hospital will be destroyed. Here you're about to witness the end of the world (which is a sight to behold). After The Conception occured you wake up in the same hospital, but not as the same kid you once were, but as the Demi-Fiend (half demon half human). Once you leave the hospital you learn that you're now in a chaotic post-apocalyptic limbo state called The Vortex World inhabited by demons. Within the Shin Megami Tensei universe exists a multiverse with billions of worlds that all go through a cycle of rebirth after a certain point. My guess is that this happens when a world runs out of steam, so to say. When on a collective and spiritual level the world somehow runs against a wall and needs to be reborn in and endless cycle of reincarnation (the title Shin Megami Tensei translates to Reincarnation of the Goddess after all). After The Conception occurs, everything about the world as you knew it is gone, with the exception of the few survivors in Shinjuku Hospital. You, your friends Chiaki and Isamu, as well as your teacher and the cult leader Hikawa are the only survivors left. There's one more guy who survived (there are theories going around that he is the reincarnation of Aleph from Shin Megami Tensei II, but I'm not going into that here as it's not relevent for this review).

Let's get the obvious out of the way first, the atmosphere. Without a doubt the most unique, eerie, dreamy, mysterious, lonely and yet beautiful atmosphere I've seen in a game. What's so odd about this isolated atmosphere is that instead of it being scary or claustrophobic like in a lot of survival horror games, here I find myself strangely attracted to this chaotic and isolated world. It makes me feel calm and happy. Why is that? I think there are multiple factors that make this possible. One very important factor is the story and characters.

In this game, there's a thing called Reason. A Reason is essentially an inner philosophy or ideology for how the world should be reshaped. With a strong Reason and enough power, one can summon a demonic sponsor to create a world with the laws they wish for. Since demons and even semi-demons are forbidden to have a Reason, you, the protagonist can't have a Reason. However, the idea here is that you can side with a Reason. The characters you can side with are Chiaki, Isamu or Hikawa, each with a different ideology. These characters are not there to be sympathised with, but they represent ideas. Yosuga is the Reason of Chiaki. It is a Reason based on elitism and survival of the fittest. Those who are useless and weak do not deserve to live and would be purged from society. Only those who are strong may rule, and power is acknowledged as the only thing of value. The weak will forever serve the strong. Musubi is the reason of Isamu. It is based on solitude and isolation. The self is absolute, and every living being would live in an independent world, completely separate from all other living beings. The individual could use their mind to shape their world at will into their own personal paradise, without consequences or unwelcome interference of others. Shijima is the Reason of Hikawa. It is based on stillness and oneness. It is a world of perfect harmony, without self, without passion, without conflict, without destruction. Individuality is eradicated and there is simply a collective inner peace in which everyone is equal to God. This collective functions as cogs in the giant, stable machine that is the universe.

What comes to mind when you read these philosophies? Well, they all have a theme in common: the world as it was... kinda sucked. The game never explicitly tells you the backstories of these characters, but it's exactly this subtlety and attention to detail that makes this game so brilliant in its way of storytelling. You rarely meet these characters after The Conception, but when you do, every single dialogue matters. No unnecessary chit-chat here. Let's take Chiaki as an example to illustrate how this game handles its story. The first time you meet her after The Conception, she will tell you that she's scared and sick to the stomach because she lost everything. The second time you meet her she will tell you that's she's tired of having to look over her shoulder all the time. When she finally realises her Reason and shares it with you for the first time, you're presented with one of the most beautiful cutscenes I've ever seen in a game. We are suddenly in a white space in where Chiaki is standing in front of what looks like a teacher's table where she's looking over a classroom with red silhouettes of chairs, tables and people. She tells you that the previous world 'was filled with unnecessary things' while the silhouettes disappear and the chairs and tables slowly fall down and fade away, as if the ground disappeared. Until all that's left is Chiaki sitting on a table in the middle of an empty white space. Her dialogue itself makes little sense in this cutscene, however there's something deeper going on. Something that's not visible in her lines. She says she wants to shape a world in which only the strong rule, but actually her Reason is based on fear and paranoia. If you pay attention to the little information that the game gives you about her you can see right through her reasoning. The classroom setting makes me think she felt weak and lonely in the world and The Vortex World made her feel even weaker, which probably affected her reasoning. These character's ideologies are mostly based on their greatest fears. Which really made me think that psychology and philosophy aren't that far apart from each other.

Back to why this game makes me feel happy and calm rather than anxious or depressed and why I think the story and characters are important to understand what The Vortex World is. This isolated world of limbo feels like an escape from reality. You get to see how The Vortex World shapes these characters and how they basically become mad. I think the concept of isolation is also being explored here, what complete isolation does to the mind. What all of these characters have in common is that they were unsatisfied with the world in one way or another, but mostly with themselves. As depressing as that may sound, I think it's beautiful how it is not afraid to convey this existential ennui that has always been an essential part of the human condition ever since we could express ourselves, but in today's modern western societies it seems like these kind of subjects are not being explored that often anymore. I'm always happy whenever I stumble across a work of fiction like this that breaks these taboos to reveal something that's so universally human. Isolation may or may not be a modernity problem, but people do lack some sort of collective and spiritual meaning. Without getting too sidetracked here, this game makes you think about your own spirituality and what kind of world you want to live in. Are you satisfied with the way it is?

The Vortex World feels like home to me. It's a world I know all too well. I think it's a world we all know. It's a dreamy, absurdist world without meaning or purpose. It makes me relativate the world we live in. Almost as if you were watching it from above. This game is also sprinkled with dark humour that enhances the feeling of relativation even more. For example, when you talk or negotiate with demons, they can be opportunistic, sexist, unreasonable and downright assholes, which I find fitting in a chaotic world where demons are motivated by desire and don’t care about conscience or justice.

I'm aware that this review is messy. I didn’t even get to talk about the gameplay, battle system, demon fusion, demon negotiation and more. There are a lot of things I missed. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I can't talk about this game without getting rambly (and somewhat pretentious). Again, I could write an entire essay about it.

On a final note, I'm glad to see that this game has risen in popularity over the years and gets the recognition it deserves. It's rich with lore, it has a great battle system, interesting mythological and religious references, great minimalistic story, thought-provoking ideas and themes, heady subjects, awesome soundtrack, unique atmosphere, humour, compelling dialogues — I can go on and on why I think this game stands to me as the very best, not only within its respective genre, but in the entire medium.

Features Dante from the Devil May Cry series.

Tekken is a game about decades long family feud so here’s my story of Tekken-related patricide.

When I turned 6 my dad decided to gift me a Playstation 1. We weren’t rich so we bought it second hand. He found some guy willing to sell his console and we visited him together to make sure it works. I remember his room being cluttered and messy. I also remember the game he showed us first. It was Tekken 3. It blew our minds. Never have we seen 3D graphics that looked so detailed, so animated, so lively. Coming straight from shitty famicom clones it looked unbelievable. My excitement about graphics peaked right there and I’m still trying to catch that high. That dude sold us his stack of discs as well (I also remember a shitty Mission Impossible game), but really we only cared about the “game with brawls”. When we got back we played Tekken 3 all night long. That was maybe the most memorable day of my childhood.

Years passed and I “grew out” of PS1. I didn’t have a PS2 or PS3, I got into PC gaming instead, so the rest of the Tekken series passed near me. I played some T5 on friends’ PSPs (I even showed them how to do cool Law kickflips that still worked exactly how I remembered) but otherwise it wasn’t something I was particularly interested in anymore. I’m into “smart” games now, not those meathead fightings.

But my dad, it turns out, never stopped caring. Now living a pretty prosperous life he bought his new son a PS3 (we stopped living together by then) with, you guessed it, Tekken 6. And this time it was a deliberate ploy for him to REALLY get invested in fighting. He started maining Hwoarang, actually learning his moves, trying out online. I remember my lil bro’s excitement when T7 got announced for PS4 because he knew dad would WANT to play that one, so yet another birthday Playstation was imminent. In T7 he got addicted to ranked play so he got really good. The meme about 40yo old dudes playing Kazuyas perfectly wavedashing and putting you in nasty mixup is real, except it’s my dad, he’s 50 now and he’s Hwoarang.

And of course whenever I’d visit Dad's side of the family he’d invite me to play Tekken for old time’s sake. And since he got so good it’s gotten pretty miserable. I played a bit of T7 as well since it was on PC, but never on the level that invited understanding, just mashing here and there with friends. Of course it wasn’t enough against Dad’s Hwo. And whenever he’d perfect K.O my ass he’d laugh straight in my face. Look at the gamer son who can’t play fighting games! I very much gave up on reaching his level, I just accepted my beatings at occasional family gatherings.

That is until Tekken 8.

Something clicked with me in this game. Maybe it’s fantastic learning tools, maybe it’s yet again great graphics, maybe it’s Jun Kazama being an amazingly fun character, but it got its hooks deep in me. Now I know how to apply pressure, how to put an enemy in a mixup state. I understand the concept of taking turns, the difference between crush and evade, when to use my 13i and 10i punishes. I know my character’s moves and available tools. I’m actually learning.

My Dad of course also hopped on T8. He bought an entire new laptop for the game, justifying it as a working expense! And yesterday we finally got to play some sets.

These were my most nailbiting T8 matches so far. Turns out Dad doesn’t like it when I’m ducking his highs. He also can’t do much when it’s me who’s putting the pressure and forces the mixups. I put everything into this… and finally got him. We went 4-3. I defeated my Dad. I truly am the son of the Mishima family.

The fifth best Final Fantasy XIV expansion, a modern Final Fantasy IV: Final Fantasy XVI is a game that I understand why people like it, but I cannot really conceive of how somebody would love this game. And don't let me stop you from loving it if you truly do, there's certainly moments of beauty within FFXVI that feel meant for somebody with much different sensibilities than I, it just remains a pretty thoroughly underwhelming affair to me personally -- both in what the game promises and in what it fails to deliver.

Mechanically adequate, systemically superfluous, and structurally mundane, but where Final Fantasy XVI really fucks up is with its thoughtlessly derivative narrative and dull characters. The way CBU3 have plucked concepts, backstories, and characterizations from popular shows like Game of Thrones isn't necessarily the worst thing they could do on the face of it, it's just how little those aspects end up mattering outside of being familiar tropes that the player can quickly identify. The same could be said for the game's attempt at a more serious tone with a focus on geopolitical affairs. The game starts off with two sequences that are almost identical to ASOIAF/GoT's Winterfell introduction, which is then followed by a Red Wedding-esque event to make sure you understand how fucked up this world really is. Except, that's kinda where everything stops being like that, they copied GRRM's homework, now it's time to be Final Fantasy!

Which like, if they wanted to copy Game of Thrones, you'd think they'd be a little more confident about it. Like, the way Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI cop shit from Star Wars (and I guess a bit of Dune and LotR) feels like expert craftsmanship in comparison, because they also fairly accurately replicate the tone of space operas (just, you know, in the form of pseudo-sci-fi medieval fantasy). They sort of try to keep up with the underlying geopolitics aspect throughout the game, but it mostly falls apart by the end and Valisthea never really ends up feeling like a real place to me. So post-GoT-esque intro, the first third of the game's tone plays out like a more linear, bootleg Witcher 3, in a kind of unflattering way.

The remaining two-thirds of the game do feel pretty distinctly Final Fantasy (with a pretty weak undercurrent of half-baked Matsuno-isms) with structure identical to a Final Fantasy XIV expansion. The latter aspect was comforting at first since I kinda enjoy the simplicity of a fresh FF14 expansion, but it's easily the worst part about the moment-to-moment experience of Final Fantasy XVI, making the game much more prolonged -- and much of it being coated with the tasteless grey sludge of live service content creation habits -- than it really needed to be during its most important narrative escalations. The former aspect is what keeps the experience feeling adequate, but it really just doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from most of the series in terms of character dynamics, overarching themes, and fantasy elements. Really feel like most people who aren't allergic to turn-based combat are better off playing Final Fantasy IX or VI for most of the stuff XVI is trying to pull off. There's even this point where the characters decide to embark on this Final Fantasy V/Final Fantasy VII-esque quest to save the environment, and that also just kind of goes nowhere as the game buckles under concept bloat and is wordlessly replaced with a different thing later on.

The funniest part is the last third of the game is so clearly bogged down in its own bullshit that they had to add this NPC that feels like she was ripped out of Dragon Age Inquisition or something to explain the plot to the player because there isn't actually enough deliverable gameplay moments or constructive skits to bookend all the threads the game has set up by this point. I guess it's more disappointing than funny in the end, there were moments in FFXVI that made me wanna feel that it's all somehow worth it, but so much of it is just unearned or passively malicious in what it's conveying to the player.

The thing that almost makes the whole experience worth it -- a pretty common opinion -- is def the eikon fights, though I can understand if they're too spread apart and too mechanically fluffy for somebody who wants more substantial action gameplay to sink their teeth into. They're carried by their presentation and spectacle, as the gameplay interaction ends up feeling pretty junk food-y, but fuck they rule. Even the one towards the end that everybody I hates, I love that one too! Though maybe it's because I'm permanently a sucker for CBU3's boss encounter design, even if it's gotten a little stale in Final Fantasy XIV itself lately.

The combat design might be another story unfortunately, like, it's not bad, I actually kind like it because I have the issue with my brain where I enjoy performing class rotations in MMOs, but slapping that kinda shit onto DMC5-lite was not the move I think. There's just not enough going on here to be having a cooldown-based system integrated with kinda barebones action gameplay, and I don't think the individual eikon abilities themselves are interesting or cohesive enough to make up for the lack of both strategy and truly engaging action. Glad to see the stagger system here, but I kind of almost would've preferred if CBU3 had copied even more from the FF13/FF7R dev team's combat ideas.

The game is clearly designed around the fact that you can only play as Clive, and it only adds to that dynamism that's sorely lacking from most of the characters; if you're not going to show me enough of who these characters are in the cutscenes themselves, you could at least communicate it through gameplay, like other games in the series do. Clive's solipsistic streak feels pretty fucking forced compared to protags like Zidane or Cloud, Clive is just way too fucking reasonable of a dude most of the time I don't really buy it! And that's fine, I like having nice protagonists sometimes, but they spend the entire game trying to convince he's this brooding lone wolf! It doesn't help that in the game's pursuit of copying and pasting elements from other FFs, it also steals their mistakes: like Clive's main motivating factor being resolved like 5 hours into the game just like Cecil in FF4 and forgetting to make any of the women actually characters, also like Final Fantasy IV.

Like, I wanna say on average Jill is better written than FF4 Rosa, but at least you get to play as Rosa! Sure, both Jill and Rosa are treated as fragile baby birds who are forced to stay at home while the men go fight, but at least Rosa gets to defy that notion when it counts. It's just kinda pathetic what's happened here, like, CBU3 doesn't have an amazing track record with women characters, but at least they do get to do things and have individual motivations for participating in the story in Final Fantasy XIV. Even compared to the FF14 expansion that preceded the start of FF16's development, Heavensward, it feels notably regressive.

It'd be bad enough if it stopped there, but the two other women in the main cast are probably treated even worse. The first one's whole characterization is how she manipulates men with sex to gain power, with the writers using threat of SA as a motivating factor for her transformation into an eikon. Actually fucking vile! They even just straight up copy a panel from Berserk! And the other one's main character trait is she's an evil mom (basically just Cersei Lannister without any of the actual interesting parts). There's one secondary woman character towards the back half of the narrative who's probs the only woman with a personality, which is a shame! Jill especially had a lot of potential as at least Clive's best friend and confidant, and it's just wasted on a character who sits there and placidly stares while bloodlessly agreeing with everything Clive says and does. They can't even make her interesting as an extension of Clive, let alone as a person with actual interiority.

I don't really hate Final Fantasy XVI as much as this review would make you believe: I love adventures and I love action RPGs, and it does a pretty decent job of both. It's "comfy", but it could've been so much more with the kind of talent that Square and CBU3 have on hand, but consistently have failed to utilize to their fullest, outside of maybe Shadowbringers. Like the soundtrack is the best microcosm of all of this; Soken has an insane pedigree, and while his work here is mostly high quality, it feels like his strengths are being misutilized to adhere to a specific vision that maybe should've gotten a few more complete redraftings. Final Fantasy XVI half-heartedly commits to aesthetic ideals and tropes that were already outdated years before it released, in a way that feels almost Final Fantasy, but is ultimately never really elevated into its own cohesive identity.

Anyways, play Asura's Wrath instead. It's got the same misogyny per capita, but it's basically like if you cut out all the rest of the bad parts of Final Fantasy XVI and then also made it way cooler at the same time. 'Star Wars x Fist of the North Star x Buddhism and Hinduism' clears 'Spark Notes of A Song of Ice and Fire books 1 thru 3 x Buzzfeed Article History of Final Fantasy Series' any day.

Just wanna let ppl kno that I ain't proof read this shit, i just got bored and wanted to write sumn about Final Fantasy 6.
The game is pretty ok I think.

In like 2020, I finished Final Fantasy 7 and I was like "Wow this game is really THAT good!". My knowledge of Final Fantasy before FF7 was that there are a shit ton of games + me dropping FF13 when I was like 12. I deadass didn't know anything about Final Fantasy 6 until I downloaded a random emulator and ran it up. Yes, not even the elitist discourse surrounding the game lmao. When I saw the intro scene, I was immediately locked in.

I am a big sucker for pixel art and FF6 displays the beauty of it to its very core. I was like "damn they really put they entire meat into this game". Little did I know that was basically the philosophy of how the game came to be. A giant effort for Square's last Nintendo FF game.

Not even just the art, the MUSIC? Oh my god, some of the best shit I've ever heard. I think its corny but I really do understand the comparisons of the music essentially being the equivalent of "Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel with crayons". No amount of covers, remasters. or rearrangements will beat out the OG SNES soundtrack for me cause of this alone.

The gameplay is turn based greatness at it's finest. I really love the esper system and how you can essentially build up anyone to use magic. Despite how cool the esper system is, I gotta admit it's flaws. Summons in this game are either useless at worst or kinda good/situational at best. Does not really help them fuckers have a 1 time use. Another thing, despite how fun the game is, it is admitely pretty easy, even without grinding because magic is THAT broken. Having characters have their own identity and battle gimmick is cool but "Me when I spam Ultima and win". Even physical built characters are better off learning magic, which kind of sucks but not to the point where it ruins the game for me. It's pretty straightforward even without it I would say. Speaking of characters, I GOTTA mention the gang of 14 bozos you play as.

FOURTEEN NIGGA? I was expecting like 6, maybe 7. When I found out how FF6 handles its story by incorporating a large cast of characters, I was overjoyed. There was a game I played in recent memory that I overall enjoyed, but was dissapointted due to how weak the story overall was and that game was Octopath Traveler 1. Idk why they made a game with 8 characters and they decided to make 3 of them interesting and basically none of them connect to the central plot in any way. Final Fantasy 6 was my answer to a cool RPG that handles multiple playable characters. Sure some characters in the story definitely get way less than others (Strago, Relm, one or two more characters arguably) and one kind of does not really matter (I still love you Gau), I think the fact that the cast comes together in multiple ways throughout the story is empowering to me, especially with the 2nd half of the game.

The story is something I never really experienced before. I was 15-16 when I played it initially and that game exposed me to things I never thought a game in the damn 1990s would ever show. Niggas bought games back then and expected to beat them in like 8-12 hours, mot a 30+ hour epic. The conflict with the empire and the dystopian regime the world is under, the motivations that give our little pixelated heroes life in the 2nd half of the game, the opera scene, oh man the opera scene. I was NOT expecting to see anything like that in a SNES game, just like how I wasn't expecting to see anything like "the" celes scene in the 2nd half of the game. Looking back after playing every final fantasy game (except 12, soon...), this is still my favorite scene in the game because I've genuinely felt the same way in life without going too much into detail. I never thought I would see a lot of things in FF6, and this probably was the biggest thing. Emotions were high and the musical leitmotif of her theme in the background definitely didn't help me from NOT tearing up, but it did help me personally.

It was a surprise, a surprise out of nowhere from a game that I had very minor expectations of that there always is hope in the absolute worst of the world. It's corny, its generic, but I genuinely was touched by how scenes like this as well as other scenes in the darker half of the game display hope, display love, display life. It feels like the game always reminds me of these things....because I can't stop playing it. Hell, I couldn't stop playing it then, and I sure as hell can't now.

I am really shit at sitting down and playing games, especially when I am 21, broke, and stupid. I would say overall, I am NOT a critical person, but it takes a decent bit for a game to make me sit down with it for multiple hours and FF6 is one of a handful of games that won me over. When was the last time you sat your ass down and played a game for hours, slept and thought to yourself "Damn I can't wait to play <insert mid here> tomorrow"? Because that feeling is the best and FF6 was so good upon my first playthrough, I just felt this way after every session. Beat that game in like a WEEK. Matter of fact, FF6 is so good that I just....keep replaying it. Every year or so, I just pop it in and play it start to finish. It's like therapy for weird niggas cause that shit is usually too expensive. But I genuinely feel empowered playing it and I doubt that will ever change.

TL:DR
I could go on more about the story and the funny clown being an amazing. memorable, and nihilistic villain or the funny train Supplex or some shit, but Ill be honest I wrote this review purely out of BOREDOM. I AM BORED AS FUCK and I am kinda also bored of just passing off things I like/dislike/am mixed on as just "It was goated", "it was ASS", or "It's ok". Sometimes you're passionate about something and have to yap somewhere, so I chose to yap here. I don't give a fuck about objectivity or none of that shit, i just wanted to make a personal lil essay on why I think Final Fantasy 6 is an awesome game. Free thinker opinion I know, but who gives a fuck about what people think? I sure as hell don't

Whenever I found myself disappointed that Dragon Quest IV wasn’t taking its most interesting ideas very far, I had to stop and remind myself that I’m actually playing an NES game, and in that context it does feel remarkable. As much as the series would become known for playing it safe and sticking to its traditional conventions, at this point that’s not quite as true as it will be in twenty years. Surely the aesthetics are locked in, and the core interface is basically solved, but the format is still being played with in these NES era Dragon Quests. That first game is so revolutionary that iterations on its formula in all future RPGs make it feel fresh even today, 2 is a sprawling sequel in all the wrong ways, and 3 refines that approach to world exploration while adopting a diverse class system and the series staple episodic town story format. Dragon Quest IV’s innovations may be deceptive at first because they’re not gameplay-centric, more focused on stretching the limits of presentation on the NES. It definitely feels like a game where, having kind of done everything there is to do and conquered the world with the third one, now we’re just stretching our legs, getting playful, and a little bit more experimental in ways that are as fun as they are underwhelming at times. Regardless, keeping in mind through the shiny coat of paint and user-friendliness of the DS remake that this game came out in 1990 helps me swallow that disappointment even as that’s my primary vibe a lot of the time playing it.

Most of that feeling comes courtesy of this game’s big hook and, uh, name, is its chapter-based structure, where roughly the first half of the game is broken into four chapters that chronicle the adventures of your nameless Hero Character’s JRPG party as they pursue the personal missions that lead them to cross paths with you and join up when you finally take control of the main kid in chapter five. This is a novel concept, one that I wish had inspired other things more directly. This is the kind of idea that I feel should be brazenly stolen rather than referenced as a cool thing that one venerable beloved thing did. It’s pretty sick and IMPORTANTLY I don’t think it’s really taken advantage of as an idea.

There’s a degree to which this eases you into the game, starting you with a character who is really tanky with no access to magic and an optionally recruitable heal guy, chapter two giving you a balanced party, and chapter four skewing you heavily towards squishy mage characters against the toughest enemies yet (I’ll get back around to chapter 3). Each of these mini-adventures is fun, and cute, and they do a fun job of introducing you to various parts of the world and previews of their problems and cultures before you’ll eventually get the chance to really address them and visit them in the interconnected way that previous DQ games have, and watching that world map stitch itself together as you go through chapter 5 is genuinely special in a way I’m not sure any other game can replicate exactly. They do go on maybe a little bit too long, and starting every character flatly at level 1 in each scenario does tune things a little needlessly grindy in a series that hasn’t had any problem being breezy before now but has the dark cloud runtimes of games like DQ7 and 11 looming ever nearer.

The real issue I take with these chapters, however, is that they feel like wasted opportunities, largely because chapter 3 is such a unique standout compared to the rest. In chapter 3 you play as Torneko, a middle-aged merchant guy who has inexplicably become a mascot for the series and the star of the first ever Mystery Dungeon game, as he works at his small town’s weapons shop and dreams of one day opening his own. There IS a pretty normal DQ adventure here, sort of, but there’s not really an enemy you’re driving to defeat or a primary antagonist, and I spent a lot of time at the top of this chapter working at the shop for money. Guys come in and say hey will you sell me this item and I say yeah of course. Sometimes they come in and sell me a crossbow just like I’ve done a million times in these games, and I give them a good price. Sometimes a guy will come in and sell a REALLY nice sword and if I can afford it from my meager earning’s I’ll buy that and equip it myself to eliminate the need for the grind if I can, seeing as Torneko is not really a combat guy. He can inspect items though and appraise their value, maybe squeeze a few more coins out of them than they’re worth.

Because that’s his whole thing, while you are still diving through dungeons and stuff you’re doing it in service of raising funds to rent space for your storefront, to loot nice weapons and armor to fulfill an order, to stock your new store well enough to raise enough money to repair an important tunnel. The true final boss of the chapter is Getting Sixty Thousand Dollars. It’s rudimentary, as it necessarily had to be given the hardware the original version of the game was developed for, but it does succeed at playing out like an extremely prototypical version of the burgeoning item shop RPG genre, with a flavor unlike anything else in the game. It made it feel really weird that none of the other warmup chapters took the opportunity to try stuff like that; Ragnar is an important knight in active military service, but his mission puts him in a position to behave like a normal JRPG guy. Meena and Maya are professional performers, a fortuneteller and a famous dancer, who are seeking revenge for the murder of their father and their quest makes them cross some dangerous and important people, but they never try to use their professional credits to go undercover and get close to anyone of something; there’s no element of the context of their lives that plays into their story, we’re just told these things about them and then do a JRPG adventure with them for a few hours before we switch over to the main game.

It’s hard to hold these things against the game too much because as I’ve mentioned I do understand that I may be asking for a lot of complexity from a game that was probably already pushing at the seams of its hardware, and beyond that this is just a fun game. Everything that’s good about the writing and presentation in Dragon Quest 3 is still good here, better even a lot of the time. There are more creative puzzles and there’s better dungeon variety. So the fact that I spent this whole thing moaning shouldn’t indicate that I didn’t have a good time, only that I’m mourning the much more interesting game I got a brief taste of here that, to my knowledge, this series would never approach again.