This was the second mainline Dragon Quest game to be released in Europe and the first to get a number. Dragon Quest VIII was just called Dragon Quest here, so if you're going off the titles it seems like we skipped 8 games. The series had made it over to the US though, where it was known as Dragon Warrior for a long while, and I tend to use the titles interchangeably when talking about earlier entries just to be unnecessarily confusing.
Previously, in Dragon Quest IX:
A user-made silent JRPG protagonist became the guardian angel of a town called Angel Falls just as the angels finally finished their task on this world and were ready to ascend to the heavens on a flying train. But the train was shot down, and the protagonist fell too, losing their wings and halo. They're still determined to be a guardian though, even if it means going to the Hexagon to rescue a missing traveller who took the dangerous way to Angel Falls when the pass got blocked.
And now, the continuation:
I've spent long enough fighting cruelcumbers outside though; I'm ready for anything this place has to throw at me.
No MP left means no healing spell, though I've found a few medicinal herbs to keep me alive on the way back at least. Getting killed likely isn't a big deal, she'll probably just respawn in town with half her money gone, but I need that money for swords!
I think I've figured out why they call these ruins 'The Hexagon' at least. Though I'm a bit surprised that the layout has been entirely straightforward so far. Dragon Quest VII started off with an elaborate puzzle dungeon, but what I've seen of 8 and 9 has been relatively puzzle-free. Maybe it's because 7 was by Heartbeat and the next two were developed by Level-5, I dunno.
I decided to put my points into 'Sword Skill', seeing as I don't plan to drop my sword any time soon, and got the 'Dragon Slash' skill. I looked it up online and it does 50% damage... to dragons. Why would the game make that the first skill? How many dragons am I going to be fighting at level 5?
Anyway, I made it back home for sleep and saving, and found that I had enough cash saved up to buy the soldier's sword! Now I'm ready to take on anything the Hexagon has to throw at me.
LATER, AT THE END OF THE HEXAGON
Fortunately the monster mostly just jumps up and down. Sure getting bits of ceiling knocked down onto my head is annoying, but it's probably less painful than getting impaled on one of those horns. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure he's not a dragon, so I won't be testing my new skill here.
In fact all I could really do was press 'Attack' each turn, but it eventually got the job done. Patty has been successfully saved and returned to Angel Falls! Though somehow the people in town still haven't suspected that the hero's their guardian angel despite the fact she's got the same name, she's doing all the same stuff, and she's dressed as an angel.
EVENTUALLY
It's revealed that Patty came here to recruit Erinn to run an inn in the nearby city of Stornway, as her dad was a famous innkeeper and apparently innkeeping superpowers are genetic. But Erinn ran off instead of accepting the offer!
Erinn's dad's ghost told me that there's something buried behind the inn here that might help... and I really hope it's not his bones, or something worse.
Erinn learns the whole sad story here, that her dad gave up his award-winning inn to move to this quiet town in the hope that the special water would heal her. He buried the award so she wouldn't find out what he'd sacrificed for her.
So Erinn decides to go to Stornway with Patty to take over the inn, her dad is able to move on from his ghostly purgatory, and I get to collect the benevolessence! Except the hero can't see it anymore. That's not a good sign.
It told me the quest I'd acquiesced to had been "transgressed with finesse!" and I'm not sure 'transgressed' is the word they should've used there, but whatever, I got a sleeping hibiscus in return so I'm happy.
Stella thinks that we'll get some help from the Almighty if we get their attention, so we've got to go around the world doing lots of good. Absolutely ridiculous amounts of good. Sounds easy enough.
I keep worrying that I'm going to stray into a difficult zone, especially considering I'm still on my own, but I'm doing fine. Enemies are going down in just a hit or two and I'm accumulating levels. I've also acquired some new gear and you can actually see it on the character model in this game! It's a miracle.
Those knickers raise my defence and they weren't cheap, but they were designed to go with a dress not a turtle shell. I've decided to keep all my old gear because it's barely worth anything and I'm paranoid that it'll be used in alchemy. I'd feel like a real idiot if it turned out I could use the copper sword and five piles of horse manure to make Excalibur... 40 hours after I dumped them.
Being able to see the armour you're wearing had been a feature of RPGs for a long long time even in 2010, so Dragon Quest wasn't doing anything particular innovative here. It is impressive however that they then went and took out the feature for Dragon Quest XI! They must have been really keen on that hero looking exactly like does on the box.
Have I mentioned how much I like this art style yet? The mismatch between the 3D hero and the NPC sprites should bother me but it's fine. They don't actually look that different at this resolution from all the way up here.
Well I can certainly run into enemies and press 'Attack' a few times, but I feel like I'll need backup for this job. Fortunately Erinn has got her inn set up now, so I can drop by and see if there are any mercenaries to recruit.
I don't get to choose stats, only the class. After that I get to play around with the character creator again and decide which of them gets the scary eyes. The trouble is they're all going to be brand new level 1 characters, so now I have to face the hardest challenge in the entire game: giving them all names. If I knew how to give characters names I'd be writing novels instead or something!
My semi-Celestrian hero is kind of a tank right now with her shield, so I decided to create a Martial Artist for dealing damage, then add a Mage to the team for offensive magic and a Priest for healing, and stick the two of them in the back row where they'll be safe.
I wasn't entirely keen on the bit at the start when I was trapped in town chatting to NPCs, but now that I'm out in the world the game has gotten a lot more interesting for me. Sure I'm only going around grinding, but at least that's a choice I'm making to achieve a goal I've set myself. I'm in an addictive 'get more kills to get more cash to get more gear to kill more stuff' gameplay loop, which isn't all that interesting on its own, but it gives me something mindless to do while I'm listening to a podcast. Which is sometimes exactly what I want from a game.
MANY LEVEL UPS LATER
I've been doing well, beating up lots of monsters, getting lots of loot, and walking up and down all kinds of staircases, but I feel like I must be getting close to the Wight Knight boss fight, so I'm going to run home with the money I've earned and see if I can afford to buy my crew the best weapons yet. The Mage and Priest really need something they can do any kind of damage with, because right now they're mostly useless unless I want to burn through their limited MP.
Fortunately running back home won't take long as I can just jog around all the monsters. Or I suppose I could just use a chimaera wing and teleport there instantly, but I'm saving my stack of them until I really need them!
BUT THEN, ON THE RETURN TRIP TO BRIGADOOM
My fairy sidekick reappeared to point out that this is where we're supposed to be meeting the Wight Knight, and it's a good thing she did as I would've had no idea. I mean it doesn't exactly have a sign next to it saying "Loch Storn" does it?
I guess we just wait here for a bit then?
The Wight Knight wasn't all that impressed to find us waiting here instead of the princess so now we're fighting. This means I've finally got a reason to switch each character's AI from 'Fight Wisely' to something more class specific that uses a lot more MP. Or I could take direct control. Or I could just leave it as it is, as they seem to be doing fine.
He eventually came to realise that trying to fight us wasn't going to work out for him, and decided to talk instead. He seems genuinely surprised that his beloved Princess Mona didn't come here herself. So we had to break it to him that his princess is in another castle. Stornway's princess is called Simona, so it's Brigadoom's princess he's looking for.
So we did a bit more plot and figured out where Brigadoom is! Which I already knew because I'd been there already.
The AI system isn't exactly as complex as you'd find in some other RPGs (like Final Fantasy XII), but I've got few options available to me and I've decided to use them for once. I've switched my Mage's AI to 'Show No Mercy' and my Priest to 'Focus On Healing', which turns out to also mean 'focus on buffs'. I made it to Morag with a full tank of MP so I can go really go all-out in this fight.
Unfortunately Morag's going all-out as well.
I should be annoyed that Morag just formed a block of ice above my Priest and dropped it on his head, but it's kind of hilarious. She could've frozen him, or made the floor slippy, or shot icicles at him, but she decided 'Looney Tunes' was the way to go here.
I wish I could say I pulled off some clever tactic to snatch victory at the last moment, but I just kept hitting her until the fight ended and Morag finally evaporated. But she just had to twist the knife a little more before she was gone, reminding the Wight Knight that he can't turn back the centuries and he'll never be reunited with his love.
Yeah, I didn't think this story was going to get a happy ending somehow.
The two of them dance and the Wight Knight is able to find peace at last, which allows him to cross over to the afterlife... and to the real Princess Mona.
That's a really nice ending! I'm glad Simona figured it out on her own based on their local legends and the hero didn't have to do everything herself. And when she leaves the room we get to see that she came to the castle with an armed escort, because she's not an idiot.
I teleported to Stornway with a chimaera wing, and her father offered me everything in the castle's treasure chamber as a reward! It wasn't anything great though. 1000 gold, a Gleeban groat, a strong medicine, a phial of aggressence and a goal rosary. I wanted swords!
I played the game a little longer than I played Dragon Quest VIII, but got the same fights-per-minute rate, which is interesting seeing as I chose my battles in this and VIII has random encounters. It also turns out that I never got my team wiped, though I came damn close in the Hexagon at the start. Okay, I'm turning it off.
CONCLUSION
Dragon Quest IX is a lot like Dragon Quest VIII, I know this isn't a huge revelation but it's the truth. It's not exactly like it though, and whether you think that's a good thing or not is probably subjective.
It loses the more modern camera perspective of VIII, zooming back out to a classic overhead view, so you could consider that a step backwards. Personally I think I actually prefer it, as it's a better match for the classic gameplay. Though it doesn't have you running into random encounters every 15 seconds either anymore, so the gameplay has evolved a bit. I definitely prefer having visible enemies roaming the overworld as it replaces the frustration of constant interruptions with something that almost requires your attention. It's up to you whether you feel like fighting or exploring, as long as you're good enough to keep dodging them monsters.
I'm not sure taking away the typical Dragon Quest party members and replacing them with silent combat drones with no personality or opinions has done the game any favours, but it's not necessarily a bad thing either. The standard Dragon Quest silent protagonist seems less out of place when their whole party is silent. Instead the fairy Stella does most of the talking, and I can see her really getting on some player's nerves. She's got a... distinctive personality. Personally I had no problem with her; she's much better than Navi from Ocarina of Time. And I definitely had no complaints about being able to customise my team's appearance and see them wearing the outfits I just spent all my money on.
The game's a JRPG so I can't really tell you about the combat as I've only played it for 6 hours, but so far I pressed 'Attack' and knocked some charming and creative monsters into the dirt in a couple of hits each. There were some enemies that hid behind shields so I had to defend and wait for my chance, but otherwise it's been pretty mindless. I was fine with that though, as what I really had on my mind was how I wanted to build up my team. Well, that and the podcast I was listening to. It's a very podcast friendly game, as it gives you just enough to keep you occupied without demanding too much attention. Well, when it's not asking you to chat to a bunch of NPCs at least. To the game's credit when it wants you to talk to NPCs it'll straight up tell you to it, it doesn't mess you around, and you can bring up a page with the story so far on it if you ever forget what you're doing.
A lot of JRPGs have huge stories with epic stakes, and I'm sure this does as well, but so far my jobs have been small scale. I've just been helping people out, and they've generally been really grateful for it! Which is what you'd expect I guess, seeing as you start off collecting crystallised gratitude. It's nice though, going around being a positive force in people's lives and seeing them do better as a result. Like now Erinn moves into the Stornway Inn and basically makes it your home base to operate out of. It's a bit more childish than the Final Fantasy series maybe, but it's very endearing.
What else can I say about it? It's still got a lot of Dragon Quest DNA, but the interface is pretty slick and supports the stylus. It also doesn't require the stylus, as there are no touch screen gimmicks, thankfully. The music is all synths instead of orchestral, but it's a DS game so that's what you'd expect. It's got multiplayer... which I never tried. All I know is that it works perfectly well as a single player JRPG.
Oh it's got some post-game content too, though I've got no idea what that's like. I'm not sure I ever played it, though I have definitely finished the game in single player before.
So the game's not exactly memorable for me, but it's addictive enough for me to have played through the whole thing so there's that at least. I think that has to earn it a shiny 'Not Crap' star. Actually screw it, I'm gonna give the game a shiny trophy as well! I've finished like 10 JRPGs in my life and 8 of them had Final Fantasy in the title, so there has to be something special about this.
Thanks for reading all my words in all my articles this year, but that's the last of them I'm afraid. No more games until the end of next January. I do still have that 'Screenshots of the Year' article to publish though, so you've got that to look forward to at least. Hopefully I can find enough good screenshots to at least make a top ten list out of.
You should leave a comment by the way, give me something to read. Me, and everyone else who's made it this far I mean.
The post-game in this is horrifyingly boring. Randomly-generated dungeon maps that just consist of endlessly copy-pasted hallway assets over potentially dozens of floors with no maps or landmarks to guide you, and a vanishingly small chance of being rewarded with anything worthwhile. And you're expected to do hundreds of these things to reach the end-post-game. And it's all dependent on finding lots and lots of other people with Nintendo DSes and copies of DQIX, so if you don't live in Tokyo in 2009 you're out of luck anyway. Oh, and parts of it are reliant on Wi-Fi servers that have long since been shut off. I remember taking one look at it and deciding I was done with the game after all.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how I'm supposed to guess the next game based on that clue, Ray.
ReplyDeleteOh wait, I've got it, it's Syberia!
But I don't want it to be Syberia!
DeleteI don't have any idea whatsoever what the next game's going to be to be honest, all I know is that I'm taking a break! I'll figure it out in January.
Come on, there's got to be a "Top ten games given away for free the most" list or something out there so you could still cram in Syberia!? 😉
DeleteYour denial that the next game is Syberia reminds me of Andrew Garfield saying he's not in the new Spider-Man film even though we all know he is, which leads me to conclude that the next game is definitely Syberia.
Delete