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JustJeff88 posted:DQ2 stuff Yeah I understand the hate DQ2 gets because gently caress if it isn't the most brutal DQ game in the series, but I also believe the game gets substantially easier if you have the "explore then retreat, explore then retreat" mentality. Yeah it can get tedious but part of the fun is balancing how much you venture out vs returning to restock, and I feel like the game mechanics are deliberately set in a way that encourages this. Correct me if I'm wrong but you aren't penalized EXP, just gold when you die right? So every failed excursion is still successful in the sense that you accrued EXP. And as you illustrated, Hargon's castle is so brutal with mobs and minibosses that you're essentially forced to play this way, increasingly getting stronger and stronger as you come back in and out. This ties into the ideas of danger and risk that I had mentioned a few pages back. It scratches that real-life scavenger itch of exploring your surroundings while ensuring you can always get back to home base safely. Though I can understand why others might see this as tedious gameplay.
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Jul 26, 2014 21:23
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I consider that style of gameplay to be central to the entire series and I enjoy it quite a bit, right up to the lighthouse which pushes that style to the absolute limit of what's fun and rewarding. Unfortunately, the sea cave, cave to Rhone, and Hargon's castle go far beyond that limit into absolutely unfair and unfun bullshit. Still, overall the game holds up pretty well until about 80% of the way through which isn't bad for something from 1987.
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Jul 26, 2014 22:32
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KingSlime posted:Correct me if I'm wrong but you aren't penalized EXP, just gold when you die right? So every failed excursion is still successful in the sense that you accrued EXP. And as you illustrated, Hargon's castle is so brutal with mobs and minibosses that you're essentially forced to play this way, increasingly getting stronger and stronger as you come back in and out. This is one of the best things about the series, since it's far better than spending hours on the final dungeon in Final Fantasy III, getting wiped on a boss before you can act, and gaining nothing from all that time you lost.
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Jul 26, 2014 23:24
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KingSlime posted:Yeah I understand the hate DQ2 gets because gently caress if it isn't the most brutal DQ game in the series, but I also believe the game gets substantially easier if you have the "explore then retreat, explore then retreat" mentality. Yeah it can get tedious but part of the fun is balancing how much you venture out vs returning to restock, and I feel like the game mechanics are deliberately set in a way that encourages this. Correct me if I'm wrong but you aren't penalized EXP, just gold when you die right? So every failed excursion is still successful in the sense that you accrued EXP. And as you illustrated, Hargon's castle is so brutal with mobs and minibosses that you're essentially forced to play this way, increasingly getting stronger and stronger as you come back in and out. I agree with this, to a point. Yes, there is an element of that, but III did it much better. DW2 in the aforementioned areas doesn't wear you down so much as it outright decides to arbitrarily kill you whenever it bloody well feels like it. Starting specifically from the beginning of Rhone, into the snowy valley and through Hargon's castle all the way up to the Big Bad himself, you fight so many monsters that can instantly kill characters - in a game where bringing back the dead in the field is not trivial - as well as enemies like those loving robots who are apparently immune to everything and do huge amounts of damage. I like the idea of wearing you down, but automatically dying if you roll a 1 on a die you never saw isn't good game design. Only losing half of your money does take the sting out of it, but money is gear and gear is life (DW2 became much less punishing when I had Shields of Healmore for everyone). Plus, there's no way to store money as in III and other games. Granted, you should be in end-game gear by the time you hit Rhone, but the point is that losing cash isn't nothing. Nevertheless, it's better than the FF method of sending you back to your last save... I had a lot of Marsh Cave and Ice Cave runs in FF1 end just like that.
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Jul 27, 2014 03:55
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I don't know how I figured it out at the time, but repeatedly selling the staff of thunder from the first castle utterly obliterated any money issues I had later in the game. In the NES version, the game determines if the guy in the prison should drop it based on whether or not you already have it in your inventory. Get it, sell it for a shitload of cash, save and reset, get it again. All money issues are gone forever.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:52
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Cyberventurer posted:I don't know how I figured it out at the time, but repeatedly selling the staff of thunder from the first castle utterly obliterated any money issues I had later in the game. Exactly what I did. DW2 was so utterly hateful that I didn't regret it for a moment, and getting those healing shields was a miracle, though it made the horrible inventory limitations even worse. You can't do that in III, but it's still worth going to Soo immediately after getting the ship and getting the Staff of Thunder as it makes a wizard so much more useful. Sages can also use it, but they are decent fighters already. Early-game wizards are rubbish until they get some infinite-use attack items.
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Jul 27, 2014 19:36
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I stopped feeling bad about breaking and abusing DQ games the first time I played DQ6's ROM and fought Mudo. It's like the person planning out the fight figured you'd just be cool with grinding for a few hours and throwing yourself at him until the RNG gods favored you enough to not just beat down on your party heavily. It's the only fight I've ever abused save stats on just to win. It's like someone missed DQ2's end game insanity and decided to throw it right in to DQ6. It's also by far the hardest fight in the game since you unlock Dharma right after that and getting access to class changing is huge and as soon as you get the hero class on someone and unlock meditate they become nearly unkillable. You'll only get it for the main character unless you grind for hours though.
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Jul 27, 2014 21:14
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Is it like that in the DS version? Surely not...
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Jul 27, 2014 22:21
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Evil Fluffy posted:I stopped feeling bad about breaking and abusing DQ games the first time I played DQ6's ROM and fought Mudo. It's like the person planning out the fight figured you'd just be cool with grinding for a few hours and throwing yourself at him until the RNG gods favored you enough to not just beat down on your party heavily. It's the only fight I've ever abused save stats on just to win. It's like someone missed DQ2's end game insanity and decided to throw it right in to DQ6. I didn't mind that. It was a MAJOR turning point in the game, and otherwise well encapsulated that sort of 'prologue' of the game as if it were a standalone game comparable to the original Dragon Quest. An extremely difficult fight for such a radical change in pace and focus seemed appropriate, and was otherwise excusable, to me. Finally, death in DQ games are a thing. Take some lessons, better equip, and devise a strategy. Give it a try. I don't think that is an excuse to make bosses/enemies arbitrarily difficult, but Mudo, in my opinion, was arbitrary. The script up to that point made him out to be the big bad, and it is important for the narrative that some random punk adventurers can't just waltz in utterly unprepared and take him down. At least not without some luck. Its definitely a massive step up in difficulty that never spikes again until maybe the last boss, so being the one exception to the rule of "tough but fair" is pretty reasonable to me, given the narrative. If they were pulling this sort of crap with every boss and obtuse checkpoints/dungeons, yeah, gently caress that.
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Jul 27, 2014 23:11
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BadAstronaut posted:Is it like that in the DS version? Surely not... I found Mudo much easier in the DS version. That said, I'm not sure how much of that is "The DS version is better balanced" vs "I learned my lesson on the SNES version and was better prepared the next time around."
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Jul 27, 2014 23:39
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It probably helps that you can easily see descriptions of what items do so you know that the cleric dude's staff is an infinite use Healmore, instead of muscling through without using it in the Snes patch. ... 
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Jul 28, 2014 02:56
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Finished DQ5 DS, no I'm not doing the post-game. Probably. I want to play 6 and 7, and then take my sweet sweet time with 8. 7's gonna take like 100 hours though isn't it? As far as 5 went, I felt like everything was great and the pacing was pretty fast. I never needed to grind for XP or money, just vendoring loot was enough to keep me going on equipment until the very very last town. Turns out I didn't need the stuff from there anyway. The game still ended up being like 23 hours on my save, and only about 40 minutes of that was loving around in casinos. I love the idea of the casinos, but gently caress actually getting anything good from them. I didn't get any interesting monsters, really, but I didn't try very hard. I had a slime knight, a bad apple, a mud guy, and the sabercat that I relied on for a lot of the game. Once the kids showed up though, I pretty much only used the slime knight. It could use a lot of good gear and weapons, and of course it had heal spells. Oh and gently caress Sancho, his dialog was hard to read.
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Jul 28, 2014 15:52
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DQ7 can take some time though it helps to plan out your jobs for everyone, because the advanced ones like Godhand take forever to reach. There's a bunch of monster jobs too but they're a chore to deal with to put it mildly. I think Hustle Dance is in DQ7 as well but I forget if it's as broken as in DQ6. Getting stuff from casinos requires ungodly amounts of time, inhuman luck (I managed to double or nothing a poker hand in DW4 to 54k coins once as a kid then cashed out and bought my only MBS ever(until emulators)), or save states. I think even with save states it takes a long time to get a sword, let alone the whip, in DQ5's casino.
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Jul 28, 2014 18:46
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Evil Fluffy posted:DQ7 can take some time though it helps to plan out your jobs for everyone, because the advanced ones like Godhand take forever to reach. There's a bunch of monster jobs too but they're a chore to deal with to put it mildly. I think Hustle Dance is in DQ7 as well but I forget if it's as broken as in DQ6. It is. It's still free healing for about 75 damage per person; what's not to like? (Note: I can't speak for the 3DS version of 7 because I've never played it, only the PSX one)
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Jul 28, 2014 20:47
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Evil Fluffy posted:Getting stuff from casinos requires ungodly amounts of time, inhuman luck (I managed to double or nothing a poker hand in DW4 to 54k coins once as a kid then cashed out and bought my only MBS ever(until emulators)), or save states. I think even with save states it takes a long time to get a sword, let alone the whip, in DQ5's casino. I still like casinos a lot though, and I lament their omission from 8 and 9. It's basically grinding money while I do something else, just so I can get the best gear in the game that's not the legendary weapons and armor. It's basically abusing saves though if you really want those high-end rewards, and lots of slots. I also just like the fact that casinos exist in Dragon Quest just because Yuji Horii really likes gambling.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:07
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Allarion posted:I still like casinos a lot though, and I lament their omission from 8 and 9. It's basically grinding money while I do something else, just so I can get the best gear in the game that's not the legendary weapons and armor. It's basically abusing saves though if you really want those high-end rewards, and lots of slots. I also just like the fact that casinos exist in Dragon Quest just because Yuji Horii really likes gambling. 8 has a casino. Correction, it has two casinos.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:23
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Zurai posted:8 has a casino. Correction, it has two casinos. Huh, so it did. Didn't actually finish my playthrough of 8 so that was a bad assumption to make.
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Jul 29, 2014 00:21
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Playing DQ3 and I decided to roll a Fighter instead of a Soldier for some reason but now I'd like to change that. Would it be a waste to class change from Fighter to Soldier? I feel like the Soldier just ends up being better overall, though much more expensive.
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Jul 29, 2014 06:19
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Adam Bowen posted:Playing DQ3 and I decided to roll a Fighter instead of a Soldier for some reason but now I'd like to change that. Would it be a waste to class change from Fighter to Soldier? I feel like the Soldier just ends up being better overall, though much more expensive. No, and in fact in the NES game that's what I usually did; you end up with a soldier with higher agility than the average. It certainly won't hurt them.
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Jul 29, 2014 07:00
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Crimson Harvest posted:I didn't get any interesting monsters, really, but I didn't try very hard. I had a slime knight, a bad apple, a mud guy, and the sabercat that I relied on for a lot of the game. Once the kids showed up though, I pretty much only used the slime knight. It could use a lot of good gear and weapons, and of course it had heal spells. I was lucky enough to nab two Slime Knights on my first playthrough on the DS, practically one after the other. I rotated most of the other monsters until I got a Golem and that pretty much made my staple monster party to bring along with the human cast for most of the game. I found the Sabrecat underwhelming and falling behind in the later levels though. It always bugged me how there were several low level monsters that couldn't be obtained until much later in the game because you no longer had access to their areas. And most monsters beyond outclassed them. Hell, anything from the last area was a keeper, though those fuckers were rare catches. Unless you get lucky, you'll probably pout on a couple dozen levels trying to catch them. I know I did.
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Jul 29, 2014 08:27
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Just started my first playthrough of DQ3. I'm playing the SNES remake (does anyone know how that translation patch is), and I gotta say, the personality test borders on verbal abuse. The game gave me a lot of tough love about my 'vain' personality before the game even started.
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Jul 29, 2014 09:40
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Bo Jackson posted:Just started my first playthrough of DQ3. I'm playing the SNES remake (does anyone know how that translation patch is), and I gotta say, the personality test borders on verbal abuse. The game gave me a lot of tough love about my 'vain' personality before the game even started. Same here. Truth kind of hurts.  Something tells me if you help the old man too much the game will call you greedy.
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Jul 29, 2014 13:19
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You can always change your personality later by reading a book.
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Jul 29, 2014 13:53
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That loving Sned posted:You can always change your personality later by reading a book. Or wearing certain accessories, which can also boost stats.
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Jul 30, 2014 01:33
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Bo Jackson posted:Just started my first playthrough of DQ3. I'm playing the SNES remake (does anyone know how that translation patch is), and I gotta say, the personality test borders on verbal abuse. The game gave me a lot of tough love about my 'vain' personality before the game even started. The result you get is basically random anyway. The only thing that matters in getting assigned a personality is how you perform in your eventual scenario. The questions only determine what scenario you get. And not only are the questions not relevant to the scenarios, a lot of the personalities don't even match up with the actions the scenarios have you take. The way NPC personalities are determined is even weirder. It's based off of how you allocate your bonus stats and to get the good personalities you need to give yourself a really bad allocation. Just roll four women and look up how to cheese it so that everyone is Sexy.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:03
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Draile posted:The result you get is basically random anyway. The only thing that matters in getting assigned a personality is how you perform in your eventual scenario. The questions only determine what scenario you get. And not only are the questions not relevant to the scenarios, a lot of the personalities don't even match up with the actions the scenarios have you take. For the Hero it's not random at all it follows a very complex chart actually.  It's so massive that I had to turn that into a thumbnail. Personally I prefer Lazy or Valiant for the Hero since they make the game easy without having to spend a lot of time in a dumb scenario.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:07
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I'm telling you. Make a lewd male hero named Charlie, and make 3 sexy girls. Of course, how you name them depends on what iteration of the show/movie you like the most. Of course I went with the one with Drew Barrymore 
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Jul 30, 2014 03:10
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Uznare posted:For the Hero it's not random at all it follows a very complex chart actually. Hero Ring makes me Valiant as long as I wear it. Is there any downside to mostly managing personalities through equippables rather than books?
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Jul 30, 2014 03:13
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Sexy Heroine with a harem of male followers.  In Princess Carrying I news I'm level 9 and am dungeon diving for the Silver Harp after picking up the sunstone from Tintagel. I mention this because it reminded me of the first time I played the game and-- upon hearing that the sunstone was in Tintagel Castle, proceeded to try and Search and find it. I didn't manage to search every tile, I got bored long before that happened. But I can clearly remember thinking how much of a cheat it was when I came back with a magic key and found the stairway. I was so mad because I had felt mislead.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:14
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Potsticker posted:Sexy Heroine with a harem of male followers.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:16
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Well, III isn't so difficult you need to min-max the entire party.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:24
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Potsticker posted:Well, III isn't so difficult you need to min-max the entire party. True enough, especially the remakes where personalities exist. They're loving easy in the late game compared to DQ3 NES.
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Jul 30, 2014 03:43
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When all else fails use Blazemost.
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Jul 30, 2014 07:38
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I've been replaying DQ8 lately. Did you know that if you do certain alchemical recipes as soon as all the ingredients become available, and invest your skill points correctly, Jessica can be the party's best physical attacker for a significant portion of the game?
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Jul 30, 2014 11:24
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Fenrir posted:I'm telling you. Make a lewd male hero named Charlie, and make 3 sexy girls. I already told you that you won the thread - stop beating a dead horse... A Charlie Horse that is... (wah wah waaaaaaaah) (I've been watching a lot of Rocky & Bullwinkle lately)
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Jul 30, 2014 18:18
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So apparently Square Enix recently announced DQ IV for iOS. drat it SE, don't skip III!  http://toucharcade.com/2014/07/30/square-enix-announces-western-release-of-dragon-quest-iv/
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Jul 30, 2014 20:27
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Continuing to share the love on garbage smartphone environments when there are two dedicated portable gaming consoles I see. I suppose they're just following market trends which further leads me to suppose people are poo poo. Seriously, how amazing would a DQ8 port (a la ffx) be on vita? Or how about localizing some of those tasty 3DS DQ games? Nope, here is a butchered version for you to fumble with on your lovely, bloatware-riddled, battery-challenged smartphone. Okay, most smartphones are pretty sweet these days but still.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:35
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I hope it'll have party chat this time in the localization, since the cast never talking was one of my big disappointments with the game especially given the colorful cast.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:37
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Nickoten posted:So apparently Square Enix recently announced DQ IV for iOS. drat it SE, don't skip III! Square Enix has a rule against using good sprite work on mobiles. It either has to be crappy DS 3D, or dreadful RPG Maker sprites. They even redid Final Fantasy IV: The After Years a third time for the mobile version to look like the DS version of IV, instead of using the PSP version. The only exception was All The Bravest, which had great sprites but terrible gameplay. However, I heard that Dragon Quest I and II were remade for the older flip-phones in Japan a few years ago, using the style of the Dragon Quest III SNES remake. I'd like to try those out, at least.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:46
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I swear to god if the next mainline game comes out on mobile I'm going to write a very angry email to Square Enix.
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Jul 30, 2014 20:53
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