| irstupid said: huh? you can go online and play with other people or what? how do you decide who is who in the party then? |
Character creation. You create your character at the beginning, choose their gender, control their appearance with equipment, and choose a job class. I'm assuming you recruit some preset characters that can also be modified like in some other Dragon Quests, because there are no definitive protagonists in any of the trailers or plot summaries. When you join up with other players you probably use your personally created main character.
Anoop Gayat tried multiplayer at the Jump Festa and detailed it on his site: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blogs/anoop/2008/12/20/jump09_dragon_quest_ix_hands_on
After my ten minute solo experience ended, I moved over to the multiplayer demo area. Square Enix had this area set up a bit unconventionally, with a costumed booth girl controlling one character while giving instructions to three other players. I was alone, but a Square Enix rep was making sure to get play groups as close as possible to three, and so I was paired up with a couple of kids.
Luckily for me, my copy of the game bugged out midway through my multiplayer session, so the Square Enix reps had to restart all our copies of the game. This gave me a chance to see how you go about getting into a multiplayer game in the first place.
You first start out the game as you would a solo game, in the Saint Shutain town, moving around on your own. As most have probably speculated based off an early December update from Square Enix on DQIX, to begin a multiplayer game, you head to the bar and speak to one of either Rika or Roxanne. I'm pretty it's Roxanne, as the staff member spoke to the girl at the far right of the bar.
Roxanne gives you two options when you speak to her, but the staff member selected the first option too quickly for me to see what the second option was. The next general DQIX update from Square Enix will detail the multiplayer part of the game, so we'll probably learn the specifics then (the roles for Roxanne and Rika have yet to officially be announced).
After selecting the first option from Roxanne, the game searches for other players. It took a few seconds, but eventually everyone appeared together in the pub and we were off on our multiplayer quest. Our multiplayer dragon quest.
One interesting point about multiplayer is that you don't actually have to move around with your friends. Upon first starting up, our navigator suggested that we try running around town on our own, exploring for a bit. Players are free to go into and out of buildings completely independently of one-another. I was even able to head out of town in advance of everyone.
When out on the world map, you're still free to move around independently of your fellow players, even going to completely different sections of the map. Your allies' positions are marked on a full world map that's shown on the top screen, so you should be able to find out where everyone is even if you go off track.
You can also get into battle on your own. If you run into an enemy when none of your allies are around, you end up fighting the enemy on your own. While you're in battle, the other characters see your sprite making an attack animation while the enemy bounces around (we were fighting mostly Slimes, so I'm not sure if the bouncing animation is just particular to them or if all enemies do the same thing). If you want to join in on an in-progress fight, you simply have to go up to the fight and press the A button or use the stylus to tap a combat icon that appears above the fight. You'll appear in battle after a slight pause.
I wasn't able to determine the exact criteria the game uses to determine when to put you into a fight on your own and when to force other members of your party in with you. It seems to be based on proximity.
As with the single player demo, there was no set goal for the multiplayer demo aside from running around and killing enemies. Unlike the single player demo, though, the multiplayer demo had the fields surrounding the main castle town packed full of enemies. The multiplayer enemies were far more aggressive and would chase you down for a fight.
Also similar to solo mode, multiplayer felt like it needs a bit of polish. There are lots of lag issues at this point. These issues make this version of the game feel like an online title rather than a local play title.
I'm going to assume Level-5 will be fixing up these buggy areas of the game as the late March release approaches. Likewise, I'm also going to assume that Square Enix will, prior to launch, clue us into the overall goal for Dragon Quest IX in both single and multiplayer form.
Tag - "No trolling on my watch!"
