DQ1 is such a pure, distilled RPG experience. I can’t say I’ve played the original (I played the ugly mobile-to-Switch port), but it’s a perfect like…two-afternoons experience. Real charming and lean. I played it and was immediately like, oh yeah, OK, I see how this has had a stranglehold on Japan for nearly 40 years.
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im always gonna remember my playthrough of NES DQ1 where i tried to avoid any “walk back and forth outside town” grinding and it turned the last 5 hours of the game into a grueling dungeon crawl, walking all the way from Tantagel to Charlock and getting as deep as i could before dying, over and over until i had HEALMORE. it was fuckin sick. i don’t think I’d ever do it again but im glad i did it once. that’s also how i ended mapping all of Alefgard across multiple sheets of graph paper since thats what i was doing to make sure i got even the bare minimum levels
the exp/gold curve still gets a liiitle top brutal for me by the end but i think its pitch perfect for at least the first 1/2 of the game, and i like how differently the other numbers are balanced from later games e.g. casting HURT or SLEEP is more cost-effective than HEAL and herbs are expensive, encouraging more aggressive play
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the only spells I used were heal snooze evac zoom fizzle and midheal I’m sure the rest of them do something cool but I sure didn’t find out. I ate herbs like three times cuz idk maybe the mp costs were too low or the world is small enough that you can go to inns all the time. It was very interesting compared to 5. I still felt like the combat was largely strategic except for the first dragon I fought to rescue the princess cuz that felt very beholden to how long the nintendo was going to let the snooze spell last
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All the DQ love here would make kid me, who picked a shelf full price copy of DQ1 as his first game selection for his new NES and then was so weirded out when none of the other kids liked it, very happy.
Also I managed to hack my PS3, copied my PS1 memory card that I had been playing DQ7 on on my PS2 to the PS3 memory, then pulled those files onto a USB drive, then loaded that onto my PC and converted it, and now it is up and running on my Mister. Hell yeah.
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Ok so I did switch to Draconic difficulty on the DQ3 remake and it did indeed improve the experience significantly. This should have been the default difficulty. I actually need to think about regular battles now! Good thing, because I’m amazed how long you go before you fight whatever the first boss is gonna be.
I just got to Robin Hood’s tower. I guess it’s time to steal a crown back for a king just because the king dared me to… lame.
Game continues to rock though.
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I’m at the exact same spot in DQ3. Running Hero-Merchant-Cleric-Mage, Cleric keeps getting taken out, had to resurrect her three times now, hero got dropped once while trying to get back to town after an ill-advised jaunt. Just blew out my cash reserves beefing up everybody’s armor, hopefully that’ll make getting to and getting through the tower a little more viable…
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I started a new DQ3 HD game last night and installed mods that removed healing on level up, quest markers, the ability to cast zoom indoors, dungeon minimaps, and maybe some other shit I don’t remember. Oh yeah and I added gender bending
Even though I’m not totally sure what it does to clowns
Anyway I’m back on my bullshit wish me luck
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After having met the Dragon of the Dragon Quest (1), survived the encounter (what do you fucking mean he gets to act twice at half health), and then given the ability to princess carry the Princess across the entire world I get it. I get where the phenomenon started.
And I am trying to hold that feeling in my heart, because at other time, the fight with the Knight Seargant and his boner bros, and the current mist monster assholes I’ve stopped on, it really feels like winning in this game is just playing the slots.
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It’s good when you can’t be 100% sure. Sometimes it’s just luck.
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Gambling is the finest thing a warrior can do…if they’re good at it
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I’ve been playing the I remake on normal difficulty with the level up heals because I wanted to cruise through my first time, then try again, and it does do some fun stuff with difficulty later on. Is been blasting along but maybe a little too fast, so I definitely was under levelled by the time I was going to Cantlin and that got real brutal, real fast. Pretty funny.
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really pleased the i+ii remakes are changed so much. finished dqi hd last night, it’s a real thorough reinterpretation of dqi. i’ve always yearned for more exploration of the single-party-member quest, and in lots of ways this is different enough that it’s a whole new completely-single-party-member dq. great exploration of all kinds of ways a single-character fight can be interesting. a big handful of bosses that you need to take real varied approaches on. just great stuff
while i think you could comfortably cut at least 40% of the words from the script, it’s nice that so much of it is grim and somber… reframes erdrick as a pretty tragic figure. the trilogy seems to be arraying everything around hargon as mastermind, which is fun… very curious to see the last bits of ii hd now. i also keep thinking about the idea of revisiting a trilogy 25 years later but putting them in a different order this time, just conceptually… is yuji horii inventing something here…?
for real scholars of the corpus there’s some new ground being broken… i know we’ve all read the thinkpieces about the introduction of scrolls that teach spells/abilities to the dq cosmology. but there’s this way crazier thing introduced partway through where skills/spells can become more powerful versions of themselves or just alternate skills altogether when you’re under 50% health. you access the alt versions by holding the Y button to select the skill. that’s already crazy. but you can also access them by selecting them normally and then holding Y as your turn comes up, which is crazier. so then– beautifully!- there are times when you’re pining for one of the beefed-up skills but you’re not weak enough yet, but you know the boss usually goes before you, and you know there’s maybe a 2/3 chance he’s going to hit you… so you could select the basically-pointless skill but then hold onto that Y button, knowing if the boss hits you first you’ll get to do the super-powerful skill instead… we got a whole new, perfectly dq-sized, dq-adorable way to gamble in the middle of a fight in here!! i wonder if something like this is already in xii?? (or maybe six months from now i’ll discover it was already invented in dqx lol)
anyway what i’m saying is i wish it wasn’t kind of ugly but otherwise the new dqi remake sort of owns
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Last night I tried to go to the dungeon in the poison swamp south of Kol and absolutely ate shit in there. I gotta grind just a little more…also I need to learn that nothing good comes from staying in a fight with two of those bag dudes who alternate healing one another and using Weird Dance to fuck you over.
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I do enjoy that DQ1HD gives a valid combat purpose to the run button. Some enemy formations are just not worth your time to deal with. Two annoying enemies but there’s a bird flying inbetween them? 3 different enemies who together form the tank/healer/dps trifecta? Fuck that, hit the bricks.
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where do I read a think piece about dragon quest scrolls
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I had to run away from every fight on the way to cantlin the first time I went there. dragon quest 1 was always about that hit the bricks lifestyle
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Whelp, so much for playing this game more, as my kid put his fist through the TV and not like I can replace that right now. All because he didn’t want to do his homework. This was also after he threatened to smash a table over my head and then literally smashed that table across the floor of our living room.
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i remembered i had incomplete playthroughs of NES DQ2 & DQ3 so i decided to pick em back up and finish em but i think 2 might just fucking finish me first with how goddamn brutal it gets from the Cave to Rhone onward. mmmboy love that Mt Itoi style unplaytested flavor
this TPKO happened ONE step away from the Rhone Monument where you can rest and save. i hope my neighbors didnt hear my scream of anguish
some other very mean encounters. the second one made me laugh really hard when it first popped up
the fakeout at Hargon’s is still very cool, less cool is how every time you go through the first floor you either have to have the Prince of Cannock blow 16 MP on Stepguard (cuz it runs out every time you step OFF the damage tiles! fuck!!) or you just let him and the Princess eat damage. oh yeah and he’s the only one who can cast Revive and if you want an Yggdrasil Leaf you have to leave Rhone altogether and walk back through that damn cave. So it’s basically got to be a perfect run all the way from the Monument to Hargon. In my dozen or so attempts i made it to the castle successfully 4 times and died to Atlas two of those times. Have not made it past him yet! At least once i get him he’ll stay dead if i don’t turn the game off!! Wheeeeee!! Can’t wait to take another spin on Yuji Horii’s Wild Ride
i wasn’t there for the meetup with DQ2, i cant fathom how long the endgame took or how the fuck y’all even managed to get through it
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the intro of nes dragon quest 2 was so intense. great game to play while high honestly. i was like holy shit when the demons were attacking and it was using the battle sounds. the way the messenger guard moves slow because hes hurt…its so good. i love being impressed by the finest in 1990 technology
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