Dragon Quest Builders 2 coming July 12.
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i liked the ps2 dragon quest enough but it didnt actually CLICK with me until 11 and builders. now im one of those people who wants slime themed everything
im excited to play definitive edition in a few years, i cant go back to it so quickly after doing everything possible in the ps4 one
i like how hundred hour jrpgs respect your time way more than all the AAA western games these days
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this is a good line
I really want to know how they build stuff in Dragon Quest XI, I canāt even imagine having the conversations that this much stuff is worthwhile because what we really do all the time is try to offload everything into systems because we really canāt just keep making custom everything when it keeps getting more and more expensive to do so
Welcome to the Dragon Quest Gang! If ur curious about playing more games in the series, know that 8 is a decidedly mid-tier DQ. I mean, I think all of them are great games, but 8 isnāt in the upper echelons.
Best ones are literally all the odd-numbered ones, weird enough. If you like:
a) systems and adherence to form (both in mechanics and in narrative/macro structure), play 3 and 9
b) just a god damn great story with excellent pacing, play 5
c) all of the above, except SLOW and SAD and A BILLION HOURS LONG, play 7 ((the best one))
d) a proof-of-concept of the entire genre that still holds up today, even though itās super simplistic, because of its delicate construction, and also itās only like 8 hours long so why the fuck NOT, play 1
EDIT: ok let me pitch u more on 7 lol: yāknow the parts of 11 and 8 where you go to a town and get a little self-contained story that isnāt really related to the main plot, and it makes u cry a little at the end? (my favorite so far (havenāt beaten 11) is the mermaid story in the first act of 11) Dragon Quest 7 is just that, two dozen times in a row.
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wellll ok i mean i have to uh
dqviii is terrific and imo crucial, and so is iv, and ix is basically a gaiden and certainly not comparable to the excellent iii
!!!
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3 and 4 are god-tier imo
3 for the perfection of the original idea
4 for forging into a more detailed story and a wonderful cast of characters
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Look your opinion is valid as hell and I respect it. I might explain my beef with 4 later if I feel like it 
I bounced off 9 like three times between its release and April 2018, but for SOME REASON i fell FUCKING IN LOVE with it last year. It makes a lot of outrageously smart changes to the typical system, most of which were carried over to 11. I donāt think itās āāāas good asā"" 3 (but really, what is?), but as a sort of sequel to it (aka the only other dq game where you construct a blank slate of characters and have a smallish number of classes) I think it is an excellent game to play and play and play for a zillion hours.
Also some of its little stories are excellent. Uh, the game actually has a lot to say about faith and religion, weirdly enough? 7, 8, and 9 all of a sudden started being About Religion in a way none of the previous games were. Itās cool.
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actual top 3 dragon quest sequels
3 . FFVIII
2 . FFVI
1 . FFVII
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IX is the only one Iāve really liked, and thatās because the world map feels more like a massive dungeon to explore than a typical JRPG map. Everything else about the game felt like it was actively trying to waste my time. But otherwise I think the pacing and storytelling in these games is kind of stale, and I tire of it really quickly. I do really like the super melodramatic music in VII that plays when you visit each sad town.
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FYI as the official 6 guy, in case anybody didnāt know, 6 is also exactly this, if youāre into that
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i like a lot of stuff about ix for sure, but
its balance is comically out of whack
thereās this spectre of multiplayer just hanging over it
it has a bizarre post-credits infinigame of grinding out randomly generated dungeons forever to max out all your stats and the whole regular game is just laughably easy so you can get through it and get to that part
thereās a bunch of dlc sidequests that you canāt get anymore unless you hack it
it all gives the game a really weird tone and makes it feel like a multiplayer dq co-op dungeonpunching experiment than an actual dq, which i admit might be a silly distinction to make, but like
if i had played xi or v or viii and then picked up ix next without knowing anything about it i would be like what the hell is this
but yes your opinion is valid and respectable too, at least until you start talking shit about iv~~
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vi is mad underrated!!
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iv is one of The Best Videogames
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seems like you canāt really go wrong with Dragon Quest. the only one I havenāt seen mentioned is 2
Yes they are all special but my reccs in no partic order
I
III
V
VIII (if not for being older the quality of presentationcould rival XI, and music is top tier)
XI
runners up
VII
IX
Admittedly only played a few hours of 4, do not know 6. 2 is fine just not as important as playing 1 or 3 imo.
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6 is totally that! Except I think itās just A Bit Too Much in general and itās all muddled. For example:
- Lots of characters but ALSO lots of classes, so itās hard to figure out party dynamics
- Two dimensions AND day/night cycles so you sorta visit everywhere 4 times.
- Individual stories (some of which are fantastic) AND trying to weave it all into a more complex overall plot, I think it dilutes the impact
- I think the writing for the stories just gets better from 6 to 7 across the board.
7 is on one hand maximalist (itās long as fuck and has a billion towns and stories), but it ALSO streamlines things mechanically (you donāt have to choose a party until the very end, so youāre picking classes with set characters) and narratively (the overall plot is a VERY slow burn and almost doesnāt exist for the first disc of the game), which allows it to focus on The Good Shit
but yeah 6 still rules! Itās just caught in between 5 and 7 which doesnāt do it any favors imo. The OST is by far the most elaborate, nuanced, and complex of the series though. Instead of cute classical-inspired poppy tunes, itās just straight up Mahler a lot of the time.
Hereās the thing about 2: it has a bunch of huge design flaws and is obnoxious as hell. But hereās the other thing: the English localization in the iOS version is absolutely incredible. Maybe the best NPC writing Iāve ever seen in a videogame. And they made it easier so the design issues donāt matter as much. OG 2 is a nightmare and only for True DQ Murderheads, iOS 2 fucking rules.
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holy shit people lots of posts
im not going to play any of the super early ones, games have come too far and if i have to play a game on fast forward its not worth playing
when i was a teenager i tried to play the gameboy color one, which WOULD have been cool but i didnt play anything outside of an arcade at that point, so all the weird character creation threw me off
is the ps2 one viii? i have it, i remember playing it when it first came out and being okay but i got distracted by shadow hearts and played those all instead because i like the ring system
i remember 7 and the stories of people without memory cards playing, and that was the one that held my curiosity the most
six sounds so divisive so itās definitely gonna be played next
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the GBC version of DQ1 is very playable without fast forward AND if youāre interested in seeing where so many JRPG tropes originated, is very very interesting. itās also much, much easier and breezier than the NES version.
plus itās incredible to see how the monster designs havenāt changed at all from the very first game
but yeah it definitely does not have many quality of life features one would expect from a modern JRPG. i still maintain itās worth playing just as like, a piece of living history though
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