which dragon quest has the most personality

Still too archaic?

ā€¦i have to hack my 3DS now

shit

archaic to play, by anyone? no
archaic in relation to every other game in the series, all of which iterate on every good and decent thing from i and ii, yes. there is nothing i and ii do that isnā€™t done better by later ones. you should play those ones if you want to see how the series began, and i in particular if you want a lightweight, grind-centric little ditty of an rpg. genesis of a lot of ideas. good to see its germination.

but in response to the OP, itā€™s too archaic, itā€™s not the most personable. itā€™s more or less obselete

As much as I loved playing through DQI on the GBA, I have to agree! For me it was great to see the origin of lots of the monsters in Dragon Warrior Monsters, and I love the basics of just playing a no-frills RPG, but it certainly doesnā€™t have the charm or personality of later games. Which yeah, was the original question.

Didnā€™t they update some stuff in the GBC version though? I am the type to check out the origin of stuff I like, I just donā€™t know when I will have time to get around to it.

the gbc version is good, but its still the same game. itā€™s incredibly basic.

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Yeah, you need less Exp to level up IIRC, and the language has been changed from pseudo-shakespearean to good old regular English. There may also be a quick save feature? Not sure.

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itā€™s a really basic dichotomy for me, when talking about games.
a) games i play for study
b) games i play for fun

DQ1 is the former
DQ8 is the latter

the ones that fulfill both are the best, of course

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I was quite disappointed when this series stopped using old English. I wonder what they replaced ā€œBut thou mustā€ with in remakes of the first game.

I just remembered that in Dragon Warrior 1 you have to select ā€œStairsā€ from the menu to traverse stairs.

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I think itā€™s ā€œYou gotta do it bro!!!ā€

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That reminded me of shitty fan translations in a way that made me giggle uncontrollably, jeez thankā€™s,

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i. . . .have a lot of issues with this type of rationale!! not only for dragon quest but, like, in general.

i have never ever ever distinguished in my life any kind of separation between study (of any sort, but most specifically in a restricted/focused scenario, which i guess is what you mean) and a possibility for a kind of pleasant/exciting moment-to-moment enrichment to take along in my memories.

the reason i recommended dragon quest i.ii is that i believe it to be one of the best casual game bundles one could ask for.

uh, but yeah, although the remake doesnā€™t make you select ā€œstairsā€ in the menu and it halves grinding almost entirely, the games do feature just the basics of what was later estabilished as its format. i canā€™t think of it as discouraging because itā€™s just removing barriers and abstractions and having you bask in whatā€™s around you and just, uuh, look around. i love every implementation they did afterwards of course, but to say these two lack because they donā€™t have them seems out of touch with its very existance? why should you shape your taste specifically on the basis of technological development or a frame of ā€œhistory developmentā€, though i understand that as generations move on our definition of ā€˜normalā€™/ā€˜expectedā€™ changes along so it get that it may be easier to read the whole picture at first if itā€™s closer to what itā€™s expected. what iā€™m trying (with /great/ trouble) to say is: the games are already Things That Exist. they are real outside of our heads and seemingly anyone can experience (play/watch/listen to/hear of) them, anytime. i believe the fact the others games ā€œdo it (whatever ā€œitā€ is) betterā€ donā€™t make them obsolete just because there are less system-interactions and they are smaller in scale. itā€™s still the same Thing.

i mean. . . . you know;; (i previously wrote more paragraphs talking about this and iā€™m afraid it wouldā€™ve made this into a whole other thread (maybe as it is it already does) and also iā€™m scared to sound too holistic while talking about very personal takes)

alright so: the text in the Superior Nihongo as in the most competent fan-made translations is brisk and fluid; it doesnā€™t make it unbareable for someone who have problems to properly read bullshit-old-english. itā€™s accesible.

the stories imbued in the gamesā€™ world are always revolving in simple terms but with great sincerity and heart. a woman loitering around a well in a village hidden in the forests talks about her husband who left to be a treasure hunter and now that an evil lord haunts the land sheā€™s even more worried. a while in play-time later, you find a man in armor who tells you about how foolish was his choice of leaving his wife far away seeking adventures, and that he misses her. he tells you about a hidden entrance in the building nortwest of radatome that is believed to have the silver harp of garin, which is the item the old man in a shrine in the east wants to trade over the staff that will help you make a bridge to reach the evil lordā€™s land. etc etc.

itā€™s also estabilished that thereā€™s an overlaping economy flowing in the world. depending on which part of the world, the cost for a night in the inn varies, and so does the prices of equipment. since the gamesā€™ system is based on simple math (if i defeat wimps, iā€™ll have enough money to buy a better sword that will make defeating wimps two turns faster ), youā€™re always making slight adjustments in planning.

as the game ends you get to walk to the very first castle in the game. there are no more monsters and every tile previously filled with poison is now a filled with flowers.

if i were to make an action button bottom-line review out of those two combined in remake form, it would be ā€œHuman Puzzlesā€.

these things are ā€“ if iā€™m to say ā€“ the core of any dragon quest game and the only differencce from any other game in the series is that the first ones donā€™t have a bigger sized party to manage or a job system or donā€™t last nearly as much to finish. if the topic at hand is ā€œpersonalityā€, it seems like as reasonable and comprehensible choice as any other.

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oh god i hope my throwaway comments didnā€™t make bad things happen (i havenā€™t read this yet)

i like all the dq games, ok

i was trying to be helpful i swear

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lol iā€™m so sorry i swear i didnā€™t realize my post was that big while writing

wow, ok

i, uh, was not advocating a comprehensive philosophy of things

regarding ā€œstudyā€ and ā€œfunā€

studying is fun to me. when i was younger, i had a silly dream to have access to every game on every system. i knew this would be a completely overwhelming quantity of games, but something about seeking that complete knowledge of a consoleā€™s library appealed to me very starkly. as i grow, i find learning more and more about games is more and more fulfilling. studying older games gives me more insight and joy into descendents, and i love seeing what developers could do with any particular piece of hardware, the way trends emerged and dissipated over time. in essence, iā€™m a student of gaming history and i consciously thirst for more knowledge.

on the other hand, iā€™m also a jaded and time-crunched consumer. depending on my mood, i may not be seeking something new. i might just want to load up x-com: ufo defense (a game i have already studied in rare depth) and play. because itā€™s fun! i have nothing left to learn from it, but itā€™s still immensely enjoyable.

thereā€™s no conflict between the two, though. i began playing kingā€™s field because i wanted to know (study) what came before demonā€™s souls, but i ended up liking some of those games better than some of the souls games. itā€™s fluid, but my original ambition for trying any game usually favors one end or the other. i hope this clarifies?

at any rate, iā€™m not sure we disagree. i believe dq1 is great! but who is it great for? if i was going to show someone just a single DQ game, it wouldnā€™t be 1! itā€™s simply not that palatable. all of the details and charm require putting up with the very unguided, grindy core game. itā€™s from a different era, and i just wouldnā€™t personally suggest going all the way back, particularly because A) as you alluded, the games have not fundamentally changed. thereā€™s not much youā€™re missing when you fast forward to a later entry - all of the important elements are retained, while much more is added. and B) because you donā€™t have to ā€œfinishā€ a DQ to get great enjoyment out of it!

anyway iā€™m still mostly responding to OP but it sounds like you just want to talk about DQ in general, which i guess we should just shift all discussion toward at this point

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anyway if your purpose was to get me to play DQ1 all the way thru, youā€™ve succeeded

(but iā€™ll probably bounce off of it again because iā€™ll be wondering why iā€™m not investing my time into getting further in 3, which is roughly 13x more fun to me ;_:wink:

itā€™s still a really conflicted point of view to me because, erm, as we acquire more and more memories and experience different moods every previously experienced thing is prone to change based on the fact of our own constant change? watching a movie with a friend is different than watching it alone on a friday night after work/school that is different than watching it alone while feeling cold etc etc. so like i find it impossible to ever not find anything new in things, regardless of how many times i go through them or how specific is my mindspace at the time. anyway i guess Itā€™s Just Meā„¢ or whatever and that has nothing to do with anything anyone cares about.

but no yeah the thing with my post is that i got sidetracked over the word ā€œpersonalityā€ and forgot the thread was actually just about a recommendation lol

as you can see iā€™m garishly uncapable of reading or writing and stuff;

i did it

Iā€™ll elaborate on what makes DQ2 a bit neat now that Iā€™ve replayed it on mobile.

In your party you have one fighter and two mages. If you stick to the Attack & Heal standard RPG strategy, you have two thirds of your team not contributing much in battle, and the game is difficult.

The game also lacks traditional bosses until the end, so there is no reason to conserve MP.

This very much compels you to use all these interesting weird spells with weird names that youā€™d never use - attack spells and even status spells, the things no one use in any RPG.
Dazzle actually saved my team a lot during the beginning.

Anyway hereā€™s some dialogue:

"Brave friends! I knew in my heart that there was meaning in your coming hither to find me in my prison!
But had I known then that ye were destined to destroy foul Hargon, I would assuredly have shown you more deference!
Pray, what manner of men are ye? ā€¦Hm!?
The Princes of Midenhall and Cannock, and the fair Princess of Moonbrooke!? Zounds, and zounds again, I say!
And you are all three descended of Erdrick, hero of legend? Gadzooks!
Then trouble not yourselves with the likes of me! Be on your way, I beg of you!
Pray worry not for my sake. I shall soon be free once more. Now begone, and take my thanks at company!"
And itā€™s all like this in DQ1/2. Liked it a lot

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This drove me crazy