Dragon Quest IX Hype Thread - Target July 11th

[lestatdark]

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

lestatdark said:

Kenryoku_Maxis said:

I'd be willing to participate online with any and all people who wanted to.  That is, after I fully complete the main single player campaign.  And seeing as how I usually take my time with DQ games...that could take upwards of 150 hours.  Dragon Quest VIII took me 168 hours the first time.  Mostly due to my love of collecting and customizing items.

But seeing as how Dragon Quest IX is a handheld game and they've already said the gameplay is quicker, it probably won't take quite that long.

Also, to enter into the current topic at hand, my favorite Dragon Quest is actually Dragon Quest VIII.  Though I've played them all (aside from VI, which I'll be playing when it comes out here).

I'm the same as well. DQVIII took me almost 150 to complete 100%. Most of that time was leveling up in Howling Mountain (that area acessible with the Godbird), to get my MC to 65. Dragon Soul was an amazing move, but Gigagash was also spectacular. 

Monster Arena was also amazing, but once you got the My Three Golems team, it's pretty much a walk in the park. 

If DQIX is a more westernized DQ game, then it wouldn't be crazy to think that the overall time to completely finish the main quest and get every item will be higher than in previous DQs.

When Nintendo talked about trying to get the game to be more 'westernized', they were talking about it from a localization point of view.  On the flipside, Yuji Horii has been trying to do subtle things to make the series more popular (IE: Open) for western gamers since Dragon Quest VIII.  From making the game fully 3D in Dragon Quest VIII to removing random battles in Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker.  But these things have never meant to radically alter the overall style and gameplay of Dragon Quest.  I don't think we're going to see 'Fallout: Dragon Quest' anytime soon.  The series is one of the best at taking what worked previously and just improving it in the next title.

In hignsight, a lot of the improvements Yuji Horii has been specifically trying to add to the series seemingly trying to get western gamers involved in the series have been lost due to SquareEnix completely ignoring the series in the west (no marketing) and some rather lackluster localizations (total name changes for characters, silly accents and puns, alteration or lack of party chat in some games, etc).  In short, Dragon Quest is not being handled at all well outside of Japan, despite certain games (Joker, Swords, Remakes) having specific features that target the western market and the not japanese market (voice acting, party chat, character customization, etc).

Is this yet another example of a group in SquareEnix working to cater to the fanbase while the 'bigwigs' are fighting against them?

Dragon Quest's handling in the west has always been an issue, even since Enix days. It's a shame though, I don't know why they have so little faith in western gamers when it comes to, arguably, their biggest franchise. 

I agree with Dragon Quest's best feature is the ability to improve on the foundations that each previous game built, that's it's soul essence. Not only it improves on those features, they add new twists to them in order to feel fresh. You never play a DQ game and have that feeling of "Oh, I saw this before". 

That's a very rare quality, that I've only seen in a very restrict number of RPG series in my video-gaming life.