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Forums - Sales - Why dragon quest isn't popular in West?

FinalEvangelion on 19 January 2009

1. Level grinding - many people in the West don't like that aspect of jRPGs

2. Anime-style - Just like Tales of Vesperia or Valkyria Chronicles, 95% of the gamers will be turned off just because of that style no matter how good the game is. It has to do with Western perception that animation is for kids - something not present in Japan.



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emilie autumn on 20 January 2009
neotea said:
Because dragon quests games are not graphic whore. Its just one of them story driven old school type of rpg which i'm hooked on since the first one. Hell I know almost all the Dragon Quest story and they all connect in one way or the other.

1-3 are the most directly conected with loto and stuff. 4-6 have slight references to each other with the castle in the sky. 7 and 8 are independent have no conection whatsoever.

 



 

emilie autumn on 20 January 2009
neotea said:
Because dragon quests games are not graphic whore. Its just one of them story driven old school type of rpg which i'm hooked on since the first one. Hell I know almost all the Dragon Quest story and they all connect in one way or the other.

1-3 are the most directly conected with loto and stuff. 4-6 have slight references to each other with the castle in the sky. 7 and 8 are independent have no conection whatsoever.

 



 

Johann on 20 January 2009

Not enough advertising? Far as I know is the reason any game sells. Quality never had anything to do with it. And DQ is quality stuff.



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neotea on 20 January 2009
emilie autumn said:
neotea said:
Because dragon quests games are not graphic whore. Its just one of them story driven old school type of rpg which i'm hooked on since the first one. Hell I know almost all the Dragon Quest story and they all connect in one way or the other.

1-3 are the most directly conected with loto and stuff. 4-6 have slight references to each other with the castle in the sky. 7 and 8 are independent have no conection whatsoever.

 

 

In my warp little world I like to think they are all connected.  In 7 my OWN belief was it was a parrallel world of light and dark and 8 just take place many centuries after the them all. 4-6 does have reference to 1-3, but thats what made it felt good, since unlike FF each game is a world and creation onto itself.



I TAKE NO SIDES

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The Anarchyz on 20 January 2009

1 - Advertising. Enix never had a great promotion for their products in the West, while Square used resources in the NES/SNES era that brought better results, then the PS1 era began with Sony putting a massive ad campaign for FFVII (they were publishing it in the West), the Square-Sony alliance made them extremely popular in the West while Enix was conformist with Japan. All that changed with the merger, SE began to promote highly Enix titles like Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean and Dragon Quest in the West, that's why DQ8 is the highest selling DQ title to-date.

2 - Name. Dragon Quest name is new to the West: Since the NES era, Dragon Quest was known as "Dragon Warrior", that caused confusion. When the merger occured, they registered the DQ name, and that ended the confusion.

It will be very interesting seeing DQ9 numbers in the West...



arsenal009 on 20 January 2009
Train wreck said:
Because DQ requires you to grind and has a difficulty bent to it. Westerners want easy rpgs like Fable...

 

Or you could argue that Westerners don't want to waste their time grinding since it's just an gimmicky way of making a game much longer.



Barozi on 20 January 2009
Blacksaber said:
Barozi said:
Train wreck said:
Because DQ requires you to grind and has a difficulty bent to it. Westerners want easy rpgs like Fable...

yeah and games like Lost Odyssey... oh wait that game was hard and almost impossible without grinding in some parts !

Odd I have done 0 Grinding and I'm on the 4th disc with only dying once. That was only becuase I did not know the boss relfects all my magic back >_>

And I could get through many of the dungeons with only 3 or 4 fights, so my characters weren't strong enough to kill several bosses. It was the worst with the second boss. I needed to grind about 3 hours or I wouldn't have had a chance.

I died also when I went through the mirrors in Kaim & Sarah's mansion and fought the strong enemies there. The enemies are sometimes just ridiculously hard and they can cause too much damage with one attack......

 

@Oyvoyvoyv

The OP asked why Dragon Quest can't sell one million units in the West and I came up with a game, which sold well in the West and which will break the million mark soon.



Xen on 20 January 2009

Westerners see beyond its utter mediocrity...



Pristine20 on 20 January 2009

...because the DBZ look is annoying



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