In an era of fan translation patches, emulation, and rereleases, region locked games and/or games with language barriers have slowly become more of a rarity. It's super weird to look back on a time where JRPG releases in the west simply weren't lucrative in the eyes of publishers, and the amount of games that recieved half-assed localizations or simply never released outside of Japan were in the hundreds. Despite the new age of game accessibility through emulation, however, Dragon Quest X long stood as an outlier. This holy grail of untranslated, generally percieved to be untranslatable media due to its status as an MMO and a live service game.
Whether there were plans for a worldwide release or not, the fans took up the gargantuan task of translating it anyway, and there's quite a bit of history surrounding it. I want to talk about both how I fit in to it as a Dragon Quest fan, why DQX getting translated means so much to me, and what finally drove the community to take action.
See, Dragon Quest IX was probably the most defining game of my childhood, and it's what shaped my love for the JRPG genre as well as Dragon Quest as a whole. I loved the story, the world, the vocation system, grottoes; all that stuff that DQIX is known for nowadays, and it was a game I made an active effort to 100%. I finished every quest, maxed my levels (no MKS grottoes btw! only pure slime hill grinding), abused the DS' internal clock and hoimi tables to rig rng in my favour and get the ultimate equipment..and I did all of this TWICE in the 2010s. Imagine my excitement then, when Square decided to announce not just a sequel, but a sequel with online multiplayer. I was a real lonely kid - didn't even know anyone who I could play the local co-op with, so it was probably the first time I saw a game announcement that I was subsequently immediately excited for it. I remember watching that reveal trailer over and over again on the family computer, and it was something I'd return to every once in a while over the following days, weeks, months, and subsequently years. I'd frequently find myself typing "Dragon Quest 10 English" into google, hoping to uncover some news of a western release.
But I never found anything.
Fast-forward a couple years, and with the announcement of Dragon Quest 11, my hopes of ever playing DQX stagnated. I got 11 once it came to Switch a few more years later and adored it, by then having played every entry in the franchise available to me, but that only made 10 being unplayable more of an annoyance. It only fueled my desire to keep looking out for potential DQ10 news, rumours, and leaks. I did find stuff like the director saying they'd like to make it available via an offline mode, and a rumoured DQIX remake with online multiplayer, but neither of those actually came about.
A few more years passed, and Dragon Quest's 35th anniversary was just around the corner. Some of you probably know exactly what I'm going to be talking about next, but for the sake of those unaware, a synchronous worldwide livestream was announced to celebrate, with dozens of game announcements teased. Speculations of DQ10 getting a worldwide release were abound. I didn't care if this stream was at 3am in the morning, I had to watch for myself, and lo and behold, Dragon Quest X got a trailer.
But there were no plans for a worldwide release.
Of all the shown games, only DQ10 was to remain locked to Japan. Even the aforementioned potential offline version became a reality, but with no sign of an overseas release. 10 years. 10 goddamn years waiting for any news on this game, and nothing but a reminder in a worldwide stream that the game won't be releasing worldwide. Screw you Square Enix.
For many fans including myself, this was the straw that broke the camel's back, and almost immediately, in-development translation tools became public. Tools that I uh, didn't find out about until a month ago. In the three years since then, a bustling community has formed, with extensive English documentation, a wiki, and a large discord server, all in efforts to spread the word of DQX and its availability, assuming people are willing to jump through a few hoops to play it (which they really should be!). Playing it now, the tools the community have developed to get this game playable in English are of exceptional quality, are constantly updated, and allow for full comprehension of the main story via hand-translated text. For the sake of letting the devs work on translating the most important stuff first though, most NPC dialogue is AI translated on the fly at the moment. It's not perfect, but it's still in very active development, and even in its unfinished state might just make for one of the most comprehensive, extensive, passion driven fan translations a video game has ever recieved. Where hand-translated, the dialogue retains the charm of modern DQ localizations, without changing too much like how DQIV hits you on the head with thick Scottish accents as soon as you finish the prologue, or uneccesarily changing character names. I know people who vary between their preferred DQ localization styles, and all of them liked what they saw here.
In light of this newly available comprehension, and after a 10 year wait, it gives me great joy to say that Dragon Quest X is just as magical, charming, and emotional as Dragon Quest always has been. I feel that Dragon Quest's overall focus on family, whether it be found or blood related, is one of its greatest thematic strengths, and X might be the one to really hone in on this the most in its vignettes. The scrimblo bimblo tiny pukulipo race's story quests didn't need to hit as hard as they did, but the conclusion had me in tears. Hell, some of the vocation quests are really good too, namely Paladin's. They're definitely quest lines to look out for.
Regarding the game itself, it seems very few concessions were made to make the MMO leap, and, unlike a certain other long-running Squeenix IP's MMO adaptions, DQ10 feels like a Dragon Quest game first, and an MMO second. There aren't 50 million different action buttons and their rotation you need to memorise - just traditional JRPG menuing. This, among many other aspects, makes DQX a game that, while being a time sink like many other MMOs, actually respects your time, and doesn't come with a "it gets good after [x amount of hours]" caveat. Dragon Quest X isn't an MMO with a Dragon Quest coat of paint, it's a straight up, no nonsense, Dragon Quest game. Much of what IX established is built upon and accomodated to an always-online setting, like having multiple vocations you can swap between at any time; each coming with their own skill trees that offer permanent, flat stat increases that apply to your character, and not just the current class you're in - something other MMOs frankly seem allergic to. It's a much better system and far more respectful of my time than, for example, if I wanted to start playing a Tank in FF14 after having only played a DPS for most of my playtime. I'd probably have to spend a day or two doing dailies in the form of those insufferable roulettes (because forcing players to go through hour long raids with unskippable cutscenes they've seen before is fuuuun) or mindless fetch quests. In DQX, I just need to spend half an hour or so hunting for metal slimes, doing a metal maze, or doing metal slime time to level a character from 1 to 30, or potentially as high as 40, and unlock their vocation quests. There were times where I'd get up to four classes appropriately levelled in a day, and even if they were classes I had no plans on using, still gave me stat boosts. A game shouldn't make the reward for grinding the luxury of getting to actually play the class, and I'm so glad DQX isn't like that. If I had to come up with any criticisms though, walk speed in towns should be waaaay faster, and limiting the zoom spell to zoomstones is dumb. It's thankfully rectified by the bazoom girl in Megistris, so if you want my advice, head there and make it a zoom spot ASAP.
Overall, Dragon Quest X has just...totally enthralled me, and it mirrors exactly how I felt playing DQ9 as a kid. To say something makes me feel like a kid again is one of the highest praises I think I can ever give something, and finally getting my hands on this after so long has been incredibly significant and important to me. I've loved almost every second of it so far, having invested a hundred hours in a mere week, finishing the base game with a friend, making plans to commission art of our characters with said friend..God though, huge shoutout to her, since she's the one who told me about the DQX Worldwide community and the translation tools. I've said it to you already before but I'm so glad to have been able to play together, even if you're actually way ahead of me in the story at this point, lol, I'll catch up though, I promise.
Equally importantly, I want to thank everyone at DQX Worldwide for being part of such a wonderful, welcoming community, and the DQXClarity and Akhmon's teams, for all of your hard work in finally making this playable and accessible.
Thank you, to everyone involved, for letting me feel like a kid again.
Whether there were plans for a worldwide release or not, the fans took up the gargantuan task of translating it anyway, and there's quite a bit of history surrounding it. I want to talk about both how I fit in to it as a Dragon Quest fan, why DQX getting translated means so much to me, and what finally drove the community to take action.
See, Dragon Quest IX was probably the most defining game of my childhood, and it's what shaped my love for the JRPG genre as well as Dragon Quest as a whole. I loved the story, the world, the vocation system, grottoes; all that stuff that DQIX is known for nowadays, and it was a game I made an active effort to 100%. I finished every quest, maxed my levels (no MKS grottoes btw! only pure slime hill grinding), abused the DS' internal clock and hoimi tables to rig rng in my favour and get the ultimate equipment..and I did all of this TWICE in the 2010s. Imagine my excitement then, when Square decided to announce not just a sequel, but a sequel with online multiplayer. I was a real lonely kid - didn't even know anyone who I could play the local co-op with, so it was probably the first time I saw a game announcement that I was subsequently immediately excited for it. I remember watching that reveal trailer over and over again on the family computer, and it was something I'd return to every once in a while over the following days, weeks, months, and subsequently years. I'd frequently find myself typing "Dragon Quest 10 English" into google, hoping to uncover some news of a western release.
But I never found anything.
Fast-forward a couple years, and with the announcement of Dragon Quest 11, my hopes of ever playing DQX stagnated. I got 11 once it came to Switch a few more years later and adored it, by then having played every entry in the franchise available to me, but that only made 10 being unplayable more of an annoyance. It only fueled my desire to keep looking out for potential DQ10 news, rumours, and leaks. I did find stuff like the director saying they'd like to make it available via an offline mode, and a rumoured DQIX remake with online multiplayer, but neither of those actually came about.
A few more years passed, and Dragon Quest's 35th anniversary was just around the corner. Some of you probably know exactly what I'm going to be talking about next, but for the sake of those unaware, a synchronous worldwide livestream was announced to celebrate, with dozens of game announcements teased. Speculations of DQ10 getting a worldwide release were abound. I didn't care if this stream was at 3am in the morning, I had to watch for myself, and lo and behold, Dragon Quest X got a trailer.
But there were no plans for a worldwide release.
Of all the shown games, only DQ10 was to remain locked to Japan. Even the aforementioned potential offline version became a reality, but with no sign of an overseas release. 10 years. 10 goddamn years waiting for any news on this game, and nothing but a reminder in a worldwide stream that the game won't be releasing worldwide. Screw you Square Enix.
For many fans including myself, this was the straw that broke the camel's back, and almost immediately, in-development translation tools became public. Tools that I uh, didn't find out about until a month ago. In the three years since then, a bustling community has formed, with extensive English documentation, a wiki, and a large discord server, all in efforts to spread the word of DQX and its availability, assuming people are willing to jump through a few hoops to play it (which they really should be!). Playing it now, the tools the community have developed to get this game playable in English are of exceptional quality, are constantly updated, and allow for full comprehension of the main story via hand-translated text. For the sake of letting the devs work on translating the most important stuff first though, most NPC dialogue is AI translated on the fly at the moment. It's not perfect, but it's still in very active development, and even in its unfinished state might just make for one of the most comprehensive, extensive, passion driven fan translations a video game has ever recieved. Where hand-translated, the dialogue retains the charm of modern DQ localizations, without changing too much like how DQIV hits you on the head with thick Scottish accents as soon as you finish the prologue, or uneccesarily changing character names. I know people who vary between their preferred DQ localization styles, and all of them liked what they saw here.
In light of this newly available comprehension, and after a 10 year wait, it gives me great joy to say that Dragon Quest X is just as magical, charming, and emotional as Dragon Quest always has been. I feel that Dragon Quest's overall focus on family, whether it be found or blood related, is one of its greatest thematic strengths, and X might be the one to really hone in on this the most in its vignettes. The scrimblo bimblo tiny pukulipo race's story quests didn't need to hit as hard as they did, but the conclusion had me in tears. Hell, some of the vocation quests are really good too, namely Paladin's. They're definitely quest lines to look out for.
Regarding the game itself, it seems very few concessions were made to make the MMO leap, and, unlike a certain other long-running Squeenix IP's MMO adaptions, DQ10 feels like a Dragon Quest game first, and an MMO second. There aren't 50 million different action buttons and their rotation you need to memorise - just traditional JRPG menuing. This, among many other aspects, makes DQX a game that, while being a time sink like many other MMOs, actually respects your time, and doesn't come with a "it gets good after [x amount of hours]" caveat. Dragon Quest X isn't an MMO with a Dragon Quest coat of paint, it's a straight up, no nonsense, Dragon Quest game. Much of what IX established is built upon and accomodated to an always-online setting, like having multiple vocations you can swap between at any time; each coming with their own skill trees that offer permanent, flat stat increases that apply to your character, and not just the current class you're in - something other MMOs frankly seem allergic to. It's a much better system and far more respectful of my time than, for example, if I wanted to start playing a Tank in FF14 after having only played a DPS for most of my playtime. I'd probably have to spend a day or two doing dailies in the form of those insufferable roulettes (because forcing players to go through hour long raids with unskippable cutscenes they've seen before is fuuuun) or mindless fetch quests. In DQX, I just need to spend half an hour or so hunting for metal slimes, doing a metal maze, or doing metal slime time to level a character from 1 to 30, or potentially as high as 40, and unlock their vocation quests. There were times where I'd get up to four classes appropriately levelled in a day, and even if they were classes I had no plans on using, still gave me stat boosts. A game shouldn't make the reward for grinding the luxury of getting to actually play the class, and I'm so glad DQX isn't like that. If I had to come up with any criticisms though, walk speed in towns should be waaaay faster, and limiting the zoom spell to zoomstones is dumb. It's thankfully rectified by the bazoom girl in Megistris, so if you want my advice, head there and make it a zoom spot ASAP.
Overall, Dragon Quest X has just...totally enthralled me, and it mirrors exactly how I felt playing DQ9 as a kid. To say something makes me feel like a kid again is one of the highest praises I think I can ever give something, and finally getting my hands on this after so long has been incredibly significant and important to me. I've loved almost every second of it so far, having invested a hundred hours in a mere week, finishing the base game with a friend, making plans to commission art of our characters with said friend..God though, huge shoutout to her, since she's the one who told me about the DQX Worldwide community and the translation tools. I've said it to you already before but I'm so glad to have been able to play together, even if you're actually way ahead of me in the story at this point, lol, I'll catch up though, I promise.
Equally importantly, I want to thank everyone at DQX Worldwide for being part of such a wonderful, welcoming community, and the DQXClarity and Akhmon's teams, for all of your hard work in finally making this playable and accessible.
Thank you, to everyone involved, for letting me feel like a kid again.
Kelzo
1 month ago