the old games have very playable remakes
snes 3 is fuckin’ excellent
they cut like 60 hours off the length of 7 on 3ds
DQIII GBC and DQIV DS are extremely breezy.
From what I’ve played of the first game, it’s also shockingly breezy.
Endless grind is something that mostly got added to JRPGs later. Like, most PS2 JRPGs are slower and more grindy.
I have a FRIENDLY disagreement with this notion that DQs in general are so breezy, as though the series later versions QOL and streamlined installments are wholly reflective of DQ.
Plenty of factors withstanding (like being so young) but Dragon Warrior/Quest 1-3 are absolutely grindy in the sense that you have to hang within a few areas you have already traversed, to level up for stats to do reasonable damage and acquire abilities, or gold for gear, items, resurrections. I never played the SNES ones till more recently, but 7 to a good degree and 8 lightly here and there, you needed to stop and build sometimes. 9 was very battle centric and fun but still, the grind was part of the equation.
Like on a certain slope they’ve managed to make repetitive battling feel much more perpetually rewarding, but the idea that DQ in general was never grindy is kind of a myth imo, maybe moreso from the entire setup being charming and less maddening or dull than your average…?
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i love me some dragon quest but i wouldn’t describe any of the ones i’ve played as “breezy” necessarily. there’s almost always points where you would be remiss not to stick around and do some grinding. most of the games have some deviously difficult sections, especially in the originals but even in the remakes. the iOS port of III still has the pyramid dungeon where magic is sealed and once you snag the treasure you are attacked by powerful enemies every few steps - brutal stuff, even with a fair bit of grinding and a reasonable amount of resources
As booji or I come into this threas to talk about how six is bad? The two worlds are not visually different enough and with DQ’s sprite reuse also looked the same. Then when it opened up I never knew which world I was in and there were all these little decisions they didn’t make to improve it.
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I recently saw the guy from Stop Skeletons From Fighting say that there are like five or six Good mega man games and they’re different for literally everyone, and I’m realizing that’s Dragon Quest too.
the best one is rocket slime
honestly you could make a full DQ podcast out of everyone being isolated and just recording a ten minute audio clip of them explaining their tier list, then putting all those clips together side by side and seeing how they clash.
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I mean best DQ is absolutely Rocket Slime followed by Dragon Quest Monsters 2, then Dragon Quest Builders. Obviously
oh if rocket slime counts thats the best hands down and also how i got into dragon quest
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My gateway drug was DQM but rocket slime solidified it
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I WAS JUST LOOKING FOR THAT TO POST IT but my brain farted and i had typed ‘dont want to look at slime coochie’ thank you thank you
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Me PS2 blue goo friends
The one I released from its plastic prison got a real dust n grime film for a while, then I found a decent cleaner to shine my guy
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Shoulda let the grime accumulate until he turned into a king slime
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I played it on my phone last year or the year before. It’s tight and well paced like 1. It’s short but interesting to see how they’re evolving and building off what they learned making the first one (you have a party now!) but it’s really kind of a bridge game between the first one which was more of an experiment in some ways and the third game which is the first true modern Dragon Quest as we know it.
Yeah the film layer these got is VERY REAL and VERY GROSS.
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Yeah, 6 is the only one that I just completely bounced off of.
i respect 6’s maximalism a lot but hoo boy it starts extremely slow and feels less charming than 7 (which also starts slow, but kind of leans into it more and feels more palatable as a result)
definitely worth reiterating that 6 has a top-tier soundtrack, though
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6 and 7 are the only ones I haven’t played. The glacial pace they supposedly have just seems completely inpenetrable to me even as a huge DQ fan.
vi might sound slow based on this thread but it’s still a regular game, it’s nowhere near the hilarious pace of vii (on psx at least)
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The only DQ game (other than Builders) that I’ve ever really had any interest in is 7
I want to play a game once weekly for the next ten years, that sounds nice
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