FUCK YEAH DRAGON QUEST (Part 1)

i haven’t grinded at all really and most bosses have been a good challenge. first half of act 1’s are a little easy because they don’t start piling on debuffs and status ailments like later ones but its a good curve. i’m in the third act now and barely squeaking out victories against bosses like a guy that kept half the party uncontrollably dancing thru most of the fight, it rules

for a series that’s known for being Traditional there are a lot of great little things that smooth over the rough edges of the formula. the game is very generous with MP & regular battles are nice & speedy on normal since you have plenty of resources to spare. basically every character has their niche so there’s a reason to rotate folks in and out depending on what you’re dealing with. more JRPGs should let you swap characters mid-battle, i love not having to just let a boss wreck me & start over because i picked the wrong party for dealing with them. the semi-hidden “fully heal my party in the most efficient way” button rules and idk why they don’t call more attention to it.

I don’t know when the sky music changed to Heavenly Flight but don’t that just beat all :geoglyph: :musical_note: :hearts:

i still don’t really get why so much of the discussion around this is re: difficulty when there’s so much more to say about it (and like booj said these games have never been hard, i just got done with replaying the super famicom remake of 3 and that was much the same)

it’s more difficult than say… a typical final fantasy, and i’m a ‘nocturne is a better game on hard’ person, plus you can start with hard monsters and disable later if you want to

though i’m glad there’s pining for a super hard jarpeg, i can make a saga scarlet grace thread in a few months and it won’t be totally empty

i watched some japanese kid who speedruns romasaga 2 getting bodied by the final boss over and over

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One thing I will say is that the cat meows are just a tad too quiet, and I wish the dog could become a permanent party member

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I feel like This one of the longest posts I’ve ever seen from you

Huge testament to this game

lol come on i post a little bit sometimes

:heart:

i mean i’d get it. just so i could finally play as a giant oni woman

RE: difficulty in Dragon Quest has always been fairly nuanced and well-balanced, and basically since the series has been getting remakes (so, back to the SFC days) it has made for really satisfying, viable low-level playthroughs. The misconception is “an old school series where you gotta grind” when it’s more like “you can grind, and really easily and painlessly at that. or you can get smarter about using your resources. Or you can do both and completely crush the game under your thumb” which is my preferred approach :grinning:

11’s release got me all ginned up for Dragon Questing and then i ended up playing like the entire rest of the series instead of 11 lol, but i’ll probably still pick it up and beat it by the end of the year. It seems like a wonderful game for playing with tea and a warm blanket on cold winter nights.

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the tower of fear is really a ramp up in difficulty–being able to avoid 90% of encounters means the game is still not that challenging (i am not playing with any extra difficulty settings on because i have nothing to prove) but it is a pretty nice change of pace imo. i don’t think i have ever had a party member die to a non-boss enemy before this, but in this dungeon it has happened a couple times.

i also kind of like what being able to avoid enemies does to the emergent narratives of the game, especially when they are actively pursuing you. sometimes you can’t avoid fighting, other times you have to do it to get a creature to ride on, other times they are guarding treasure chests and stuff so you have to either try to sneak past or just brute force it. i think it’s pretty cool.

i was lucky to run into a metal king slime immediately after i taught erik the guaranteed critical hit ability so everyone has gained like 2 levels in this dungeon. i can see how this would be a place to grind if that were actually necessary, and probably is with extra difficulty settings on.

tryin to decide if im gonna take a break from this game after this and actually be a responsible person, but i will probably just continue going through it at the same moderate pace. i have avoided most post-game spoilers so far but unfortunately have a basic sense of the non-narrative aspects of the ‘third act’ so i guess at least i know what i am getting into now?

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Weird question, but is there a good point to put the game down for a little while? I’ve just gotten to the Mini Medal college, so 3 more macguffins to go before I can get to Yggsdrasil.

With all the talk I’ve been hearing about “season 2” it sounds like maybe there is a break in the game at some point, and I’m kind of burning out a bit and could use a break to play something else (probably RDR2), but much like every DQ game before it I know if I just stop playing now I’ll almost certainly never come back to finish it.

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Yes, the breaks between “seasons” / “acts” are really defined and noticeable… you’ll know it when it happens. I can’t remember exactly, but if you [non plot specific gameplay spoiler ahead]have 3 more orbs left, IIRC you will get them faster than you might think, but there’s still a few significant dungeon-type environments before ‘act 1’ ends. It’s hard to say whether that is a good place for a break without going into plot-specific spoiler territory, but what happens is so dramatic you’ll either feel like you have to keep playing to find out how the cliffhanger resolves, or you might just feel overwhelmed and put it down for awhile… idk?. So I’d say there’s probably not a huge disadvantage to just take a breather where you are now. After all the mini medal academy is a pretty chill place to hang out for a while…

I’d also add that act 1 is longer than act 2 (which is also itself apparently longer than the post game, or act 3), speaking purely in terms of plot.

Finally completed act 2, after 115 hours.
That final boss was a real doozy, took a while before I was even able to make a dent in him. The second form was much easier than the first though, thankfully. Took me a full week to get through that final dungeon too.

Onwards to act 3 with its bosses that are probably even harder :geoglyph:

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act 3 boss spoilers

i managed to roll calasmos on my first try?? everyone is around lv65 so i don’t think i was overleveled?

hendrik’s forebearance skill really trivializes bosses lol. things started getting a lil dicey when the big eldritch baby finally managed to drop him but it was otherwise just a matter of fullhealing him each turn while hero & rab throttled the boss. i thought the time freeze thing was gonna suck since he picked rab (who had 4MP left) as the lone unfrozen one but casting kamikaze immediately resumed time.

idk why people were talking that up, the dance boss was harder since hendrik can’t mitigate any of those full party debuffs. i can see thinking you need to powerlevel to beat that if you just like, don’t understand how to build a party that works together

i still really enjoyed this even if it was a bit anticlimactic! thank u hendrik for getting endlessly blasted with dark magic without complaint

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he was real brutal on hard mode at level 99, idk

did you use the item that makes it easier?

ok they seem to work now

if you don’t use the sword of light at the start calasmos is much harder capable of killing level 99s in one turn if you get really unlucky with rng even on normal
still not super challenging or anything with forebearance, omniheal and erik’s damage output

i assumed it was one of those “impossible unless you do this thing” boss fights? i didn’t realize it was actually possible to kill calasmos without it lol

MAJOR ACT 2 SPOILERS ABOUT A PARTY MEMBER:

Holy shit I can not believe they just straight up killed off Veronica! It’s really weird how they just rolled her powers into Serena’s. I assume there’ll be some way to resurrect her in act III or something, but the fact that Serena took all her powers makes me think I’m not getting her back in my party any time soon. That was a pretty effective moment when the party found her body. I was really surprised the game went there.

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weird late-game question:

is there… a post-post game? like after you beat the final boss, can you save and roam the lands to finish up sidequests etc? or do you have to just start from your last save before the last battle?