Dragon Quest IX : DS
Nintendo have been putting a lot of money into promoting Dragon Quest IX here in England. We’ve never had a Dragon Quest game come out here in its first run, and as a consequence, I’ve never played one before and wasn’t a hundred percent sure of what to expect. My mind had decided it was going to be like Final Fantasy (it is a JRPG after all) but not as good, but I was looking forward to the vastness of the game (as advertised) and the multiplayer aspects (also as advertised). This is an example of someone being swayed by advertising!
Jen was good enough to pre-order us both a copy. This was important, as if we were to experience the multiplayer aspect, we’d need another player. In Japan, one hears tales of hundreds of players gathered on street corners to play this game (no exaggeration), and I knew that wasn’t going to be the case here in Walthamstow, so it was great to have someone to play with.
As soon as we started the game, we were impressed. Creating a character was fun, and it helps you get into the game when you’ve invested a little bit into it - even if that’s just a name and a hairstyle. The introduction of the story was different enough and interesting enough to make me smile, the graphics were immediately impressive and the familiarity of the system (menu based, turn based RPG fights) meant I could jump right in with a near to zero learning curve. Sometimes this is just what you want.
You don’t get to play multiplayer from the word go, so Jen and I set off on our respective quests watching cut scenes and seeing events almost seconds away from each other, however, such great things cannot last and we soon went in slightly different directions and levelled in different ways, plus I had a tendency to play more which meant I jumped ahead a bit. We were worried this’d affect multiplayer play, as we wanted to be around the same level when we did get to play this feature, and were pleased when we got to the multiplayer stage that this didn’t really matter.
The way the multiplayer aspect of the game works is that you jump into the other person’s world and join them in their quest. If they are following the storyline, then this means you are either watching cutscenes you are going to see again in a bit (if they are ahead of you) or watching cutscenes you have already seen, so we avoided that and just enjoyed grinding together which worked pretty well.
By the time we’d gotten to playing multiplayer, loads of aspects of the game had made themselves very clear. Firstly, this is the smoothest JRPG experience I have ever had. Someone else said (and I will steal) that where Final Fantasy attempts revolution, Dragon Quest works on evolution. It’s an interesting difference, and can be seen all over Dragon Quest IX. Nothing here is revolutionary, it’s all been seen before, but it has never been done with such expert skill. Almost everything about the experience is perfectly smooth from the quick and unobtrusive zone changes and the system for moving around the world to the random encounters, the item acquisition and the money.
Special attention must be given to the almost perfectly balanced power of fights. It is so often in games like this that you begin doing four damage, and six damage to monsters and end doing seven thousand, making the early numbers a little hilarious. In DQ IX, you begin doing four and eight and complete the storyline managing a little over 200. Experience points and money are similarly balanced, with each level feeling that you have achieved something but that it is just a slight enhancement on what you had before; there’s never a huge jump and talking about the multiplayer experience once more, this means a level fifteen character can join a level thirty five party and still be useful and enjoy their time.
Dragon Quest IX is large in its scope. Very large. There’s the main storyline, which doesn’t have the skill or depth of a Final Fantasy one, but still pulls you along with decent pace and development. There are the side quests, which range from very simple hand-the-man-the-item to complex defeat-the-monsters-using-only-a-feather-on-a-tuesday type of quests and everything in between. There are randomly generated extra dungeons for a little more battling. There’s exploring and grinding and then, last but certainly not least, there’s an extensive and very easy to get into item creation system which has you searching the world for recipes, ingredients and rare objects to make weapons just that little bit better. It’s this scope which gives the game so much of its appeal - when you get bored of questing, you can go off and find the rare ingredients you need; when you get annoyed with exploring, you can switch jobs and improve your characters in a sideways way; when you are done with grinding, you can get back to the main storyline. There’s always a little more to do, until you see those ‘percentage complete’ numbers reach towards the almost-impossible 100% mark.
Like any game, I consider it complete when I see the end credits roll. I saw that, after seventy-five hours of play, this morning. Unlike most games though (although becoming increasingly popular) this actually tells you to continue, and get on and do all the other stuff in the game. In this way, I think the main storyline is a little shorter than comparable games, but its no bad thing; my alchemy is only at 20% or so and I consider myself to have done a lot of it, my monster complete list is in the high 70s, and my items collected is little over 50%. There’s more to find, more to do and, I suspect, just a little bit more hidden storyline. I’ll be going back to this soon, and expect to clock at least another 75 hours.
It’s another testament to the variety in the game that I haven’t mentioned the other party members you get to create, the other multiplayer mode where you scan the local area for other DQ players, the different jobs, the skills system or the clever script and its dialects…
All this though, but is it any good? Well, time to be harsh. The story really is no Final Fantasy, which is a shame. The fact that you make characters rather than have pre-made ones means it is difficult for the designers to concentrate on character development in the script (though there is a little of it, and where it is, it is good). The script never takes into consideration the three other members of your party, as if they didn’t exist. Finally, and here’s the biggest flaw, it is too easy. For someone who has played their way through as many JRPGs as me, it’s a little too obvious how to beat everything. I died a good few times, to be fair to the game, but usually because I was trying to do something I knew I’d die doing. I fought the final boss with a casual disdain, walked through the last storyline dungeon without any real need to heal my party and generally trounced the game. I did have fun doing it though. Lots of fun.
Is it a good game? Yes. In fact, it’s a great game. I haven’t played Chrono Trigger yet (I know, I know..!), but without that to test against, I’d go as far as saying this is the finest RPG experience on the DS. This means, that as a game, I prefer it to the awesome might that is Final Fantasy IV. Scary stuff! Everyone with a DS should own this game, it’s that simple. Even if you only play the first 75 hours of the game and never go back, it will have been a worthwhile gaming purchase. Here’s looking forward to number ten.
Oh, and if anyone wants to play multiplayer and lives nearby, let me know!
