Okay so can I suggest 9 even though everyone here has talked about it being an odd one? It was the first DQ I finished and what got me into the series proper. It’s pretty breezy, the battles are mostly optional, and you can make your own party. Everyone’s a silent protagonist now, baby.
But yeah, I found it really charming and goofy.
is that the 3ds one (or was it regular ds)? if so i DID start that one and was into it but got distracted by psp ogre tactics
then i had to sell it
im torn between playing 6 or 9
9 is chock full o’ gear visible on characters, party building, running around maps WANTING to fight hours.
Story is light but very honest about it, I find it one of the most easy going and just plain fun! In the breezier direction cuz its so fast paced. Really fuggin’ cute too
Yeah the regular DS one. I pirated it. Love flash carts. Pirate the establishment.
oh wow you’re right! i should play more 6!
the NES music is truly fantastic, i agree!
i have a soft spot for the tunes used in the untranslated(?) PS1 version of 4 as well:
The DQIV battle theme is probably my favorite.
I’ve said it before (probably in this thread) but if all armor and weapons in DQ11 changed your appearance like they do in DQ9 it would honestly probably be my favorite RPG of all time
One of the things I really appreciated about DQ11 is (for me at least, playing on normal) is it totally inverted the “battles get boring after 40 hours” thing typical of games like this, because in the first 1/2 of the game or so I only fought when it was absolutely necessary, and then towards the end I started doing it more to experiment with different abilities and party configurations, and then in the post game I basically decided I liked it enough to grind all of the party to lvl 99 just for fun, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before.
Anyway I guess my point is JRPG battles start out boring as hell because you have such a limited variety of options to choose from–letting people get through those parts quickly is the secret. I feel like most bad JRPGs have an inverse difficulty curve, where the first few hours are just punishing, and then by the endgame you can kill everyone in one turn no matter what happens.
re: music
I REALLY WISH I COULD HAVE LISTENED TO MY OWN MUSIC OVER DRAGON QUEST 11. the game blocked spotify! i had to listen to FIVE SONGS FOR 150 HOURS
like at that point it really doesnt matter how good the soundtrack is, im gonna end up sick of it. and they wouldnt even let me preserve my joy for the music by keeping it from getting old!!!
that dq4 battle music is ace tho
you’re right its the first jrpg i ever had fun getting to max level in
I think I have the answer here! The combat math in Dragon Quest is (basically) additive (DMG = Atk - Def).
What this means, mechanically, is that a single point of Attack can double your damage, if you go from 1 over to 2 over. You get really quick growth right around the point where Attack and Defense are roughly balanced. Normally this is avoided in RPG systems because it creates really tight banding, so everything just slightly more powerful than the player is impossible, and everything just slightly underleveled is impossibly easy. But Dragon Quest is linear enough that each zone can map to just slightly over the player’s attack when they arrive, and just slightly under when they’re done grinding in the area.
What this means, experientially, is that you enter each new monster zone and find it really tough, but within 2-3 level-ups, you dominate. So you’re repeating the basic RPG progression loop over and over again, and feeling the power growth really quickly.
They combine this with XP rewards that drastically drop off if you’re overleveled, to discourage ‘incorrect’ grinding and keep the player level in a tightly controlled band.
9 & the 3ds versions of 7/8
your posts in this thread have inspired me to listen to Mahler symphonies and i am very grateful
(listening to 3 now and it is incredible)
I was very excited for 9 to be real time multiplayer dungeon crawling, disappointed to hear they switched back to turn based, surprisingly satisfied with whatever they ended up doing, and unimpressed enough to remember what exactly they did.
The visible gear on characters in 9 ruled. I wish they did it in DQHeroes (also I wish they had character customization, and uh… good combat…).
Did anyone ever even try to play X, the MMO?
i think IV is probably my favorite. out of all of the games, i feel like it just comes together so well and does so many cool things for an NES game. like, most jRPGs aren’t even half as good as IV.
i haven’t beaten XI yet, because i got distracted by games (and which is why i’ve been avoiding this thread 
).
but anyway, i love Dragon Quest. my completion rate of them is not particularly great, but it doesn’t matter. they exist as beautiful videogame objects in a cruel, cold world.
V is my favorite and it being a valentine’s gift from my wife before we were married makes it even better, even if I lost that copy when someone borrowed it and never gave it back.
IV was previously my favorite, but i have major soft spots for III, VII and VIII (that orchestral score!!!). i think III might have taken over as my new favorite, but it’s close.
some day i will get back to VII. i played it for like 30-40 hours on my PSX copy back in the mid-aughts and had yet to get to the class shrine (i think that’s right after where i stopped, actually).
V is (obviously) good and deservedly beloved, but i don’t really gel with the coming-of-age story. i’ll give it some more time eventually but my first take after a dozen or so hours was that i didn’t like it nearly as much as IV.
i am a hater who is bored to death by I (the music’s still incredible, tho)
oh and i bounced off IX as hard as i’ve ever bounced off anything. probably the worst dragon quest OST i’ve heard (don’t know much about the scores to X and XI)
VII is amazing and I love it and I will never finish it.
I saw that there were 80 new posts in this thread and thought to myself if this is about the smash bros thing I’m gonna scream but no, it’s all high quality discourse. thanks, sb
I watched about an hour of someone playing it on youtube. the guy spoke English and the game was in Japanese. I don’t think he understood most of the things that were said but he was really addicted to it and had spent hundreds of hours in it if not even more. It looked not as cool as FFXIV but I could have gotten addicted to it if they had ever released it in the west, just because of the IP. It’s… a bit barren? But it’s DQ, so, I would have played it