Board 8 > "Just beat Dragon Quest IV already."

(+) Yeah! (+)

I say to myself as I realize I've been playing this title on-and-off for the past year now. It probably doesn't help that the game is a total grindfest for boss battles. Getting lost is also part of the fun, right? Thank God for guides.

IMO no Dragon Quest will ever top XI. VIII was also great especially the 3DS version. But going back to play the older ones is like...you gotta give them credit for existing and building the bridge to the better titles. But trying to get into them today is a struggle to say the least. Note that I'm playing the Mobile version, itself a port of the DS version which in turn is a port of the PS1 remake.

Despite everything else, it's a solid JRPG title but definitely more for the challenge enthusiast crowd who doesn't mind getting lost and grinding.

I've pretty much built my party around Solo (Hero), Alena, Kiryl, and Borya. Alena for crits, Kiryl for Multiheal (which I still don't even have), and Borya for ice magic to compliment Solo's fire magic. I don't have any reason to use Ragnar or Torneko. It's not DQ11 where your all-melee tank has incredibly useful abilities for defense. Meena doesn't even get Multiheal and, outside of Boom, I don't see myself using Maya over Borya.

I finally beat Estark and plan to eventually beat this game. Though I'm not sure if I want to play V, VI, and VII or skip right to IX which I heard good things about. But out of all my games on my current backlog, this one has been here the longest. Guess I'll finish it sometime.

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play Dragon Quest VI imo

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V and VI are much, much better than IX

Can't speak much for VII as I never got that into it for whatever reason

To sum up DQIX:

10% of it is barebones story
40% of it quest spam, a significant amount of which gives little to no reward
50% postgame grind in a semi-repetitive cycle

Half the quests are effectively the same quest repeated dozens of times. The other half have ridiculous requirements to fulfill them that force you to pointlessly grind, like the one that requires you to kill 3 Golems... Specifically with critical hits landing the killing blow, and critical hits executed by abilities don't count.

It's certainly playable, but by DQ standards it's pretty disastrous. It's a Dragon Quest game in name only.

V is good, but I struggled to get into VI and I didn't really get anywhere. VII I never finished because I got caught up in grinding classes before my exp got too high to do it. The Alltrades scenario is flat out unfair to the player, but otherwise the game seemed alright.

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Shame IV didn't have gambling on monster battles like III (or there were silly tokens instead of money), I made a fortune from that one in III.

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I recently beat 1, 2, 3 & 4. Took a break from DQ before I start playing 5.

The only other games Ive played in the series are 7 & 9. I beat 9 back when that came out. As for 7... I think it just wore me down. I was like 50 hours in and it felt like I hadnt scratched the surface yet.

Oh, and I also played and beat Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors on the Wii. We dont speak of those days anymore.

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V is absolutely amazing, and still the best Dragon Quest game.

I did not really like VI and still have not beaten it.

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Well I'm stalling on VI, but the last time I played it I got into it after a little while.

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I'm surprised at the negative reception of IX. I've heard nothing but good things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_IX#Reception

Since it came between VIII and XI I was hoping for better. At the very least I might look it up on YouTube.

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IX just doesn't have a story and its gameplay is basic Dragon Quest so there's no real reason to play it. maybe it makes sense in Japan where it was fairly easy to do DS multiplayer.

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Yeah, without local multiplayer and a working online server for the extra quests and online shop, it will be hard to get the most out of IX today. Seems ripe for a Switch remake though.

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But the multiplayer functionality in 9 was largely pointless. The only important function of the online part was the long-since-taken-down DLC that means new players will never 100% the game.

Maybe the critics loved IX, but the general review I hear from someone I know about it is "it's ok". I am fairly sure most players would agree with my 10%/40%/50% statement.

You can burn a whole lot of time on the game -- Easily topping 100 hours (150-200 if you hardcore it: Grotto diving rarely produces good items, so you have to spend 50-100 hours doing it just for a decent set of equipment to fight legacy bosses with, even if you have a good map you can replay hundreds of times). You can have the story, which is bland and barebones, done in just 15-20 of those hours.

To even try to compare IX's story to VIII is a grievous insult to VIII. Admittedly, DQ games have never exactly been story driven, and the game itself certainly is playable. But this is not a 40/40 masterpiece. It's a flawed 25/40 that's ok but not great.

As for VI, it simply did nothing to grip me at all. I dragged myself along for a while, eventually got myself to class changing, then decided I simply didn't want to bother with the grind because the game just was not interesting enough, and have never touched it since.

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