Dragon Quest

[chimp]

This thread is where we can talk about one of my favorite series: Dragon Quest/Warrior.
STOP RUNNING AWAY, METAL SLIMES.

Also included: Dragon Warrior Monsters, one of the my favorite games of all time. Are the DS Joker games good?

This thread is also where we mourn over DWM 3DS not being localized. Please, SquareEnix, please.

:(

 

[MagicMaster87]

Dragon Quest is my favorite game series, and I've played at least one version of each main game and Monsters game, except DW3. DWM2 was one of the first DQ/DW games I ever played, and to this day it's probably my favorite game in the entire series.

Joker 1 is pretty good, iirc the breeding system is simpler than the one in DWM 1 and 2. It's a HUGE pain to get around to certain places, though, since there's only one Zoom location on most islands and some of them are pretty sizable. Joker 2 kind of fixes this by introducing Zip which allows you to teleport between different designated spots in a region. It also introduced monster sizes in this game, where bigger monsters take up more slots in your party, and a reserve party which you can use to swap with monsters in your active party while you're roaming around, essentially letting you carry up to 6 monsters at once. However, Joker 2 removed almost all touchscreen functionality (you only can use it to input names now) and the battle animations just seem... off somehow, it's hard to explain. Granted those two are rather minor since the touchscreen didn't have many more uses in Joker 1, but they really bothered me while playing the game. Also, there was almost NO information on monster breeding combinations for Joker 2 when I last played, while there was a huge, exhaustive FAQ (practically a mini wiki) on GameFAQs for Joker 1's monster breeding. Part of what I enjoyed most about Joker 1 was planning these huge breeding chains to make these overpowered beasts with powerful movesets, but it's kinda hard to do that when there's nothing to look up. I haven't actually beaten this one, though, so perhaps I'll give it another shot soon to see if I can look past its flaws and see if it shapes up to be as good - or better - than Joker 1 overall.

 

[chimp]

Dragon Quest is my favorite game series, and I've played at least one version of each main game and Monsters game, except DW3. DWM2 was one of the first DQ/DW games I ever played, and to this day it's probably my favorite game in the entire series.

Joker 1 is pretty good, iirc the breeding system is simpler than the one in DWM 1 and 2. It's a HUGE pain to get around to certain places, though, since there's only one Zoom location on most islands and some of them are pretty sizable. Joker 2 kind of fixes this by introducing Zip which allows you to teleport between different designated spots in a region. It also introduced monster sizes in this game, where bigger monsters take up more slots in your party, and a reserve party which you can use to swap with monsters in your active party while you're roaming around, essentially letting you carry up to 6 monsters at once. However, Joker 2 removed almost all touchscreen functionality (you only can use it to input names now) and the battle animations just seem... off somehow, it's hard to explain. Granted those two are rather minor since the touchscreen didn't have many more uses in Joker 1, but they really bothered me while playing the game. Also, there was almost NO information on monster breeding combinations for Joker 2 when I last played, while there was a huge, exhaustive FAQ (practically a mini wiki) on GameFAQs for Joker 1's monster breeding. Part of what I enjoyed most about Joker 1 was planning these huge breeding chains to make these overpowered beasts with powerful movesets, but it's kinda hard to do that when there's nothing to look up. I haven't actually beaten this one, though, so perhaps I'll give it another shot soon to see if I can look past its flaws and see if it shapes up to be as good - or better - than Joker 1 overall.

Sounds like I should give them a try. Breeding is definitively one of the best parts of that series.

 

[Shinryu]

Always been a fan of Dragon Quest, at least it keeps to its roots for the most part unlike a certain other RPG series...

The Monsters series was always great as well, just about neck-and-neck competing with Pokemon in terms of gaming time spent. Always thought its breeding system was pretty nifty. For Joker and Joker 2 though...eh...I didn't like it as much, something just got lost in translation. Didn't care for the 3D or renames at all.

In fact that's one thing I dislike in general regarding the direction it's gone, all the damn renaming of spells and monsters. I grew up with Explodet dammit, not Kaboom. I blame Squenix FF shit influence for that, like how they did their spells with a base name and alternating prefix/suffix. And how did Watabou turn into Fluffy ffs? /wrists

 

[chimp]

Always been a fan of Dragon Quest, at least it keeps to its roots for the most part unlike a certain other RPG series...

The Monsters series was always great as well, just about neck-and-neck competing with Pokemon in terms of gaming time spent. Always thought its breeding system was pretty nifty. For Joker and Joker 2 though...eh...I didn't like it as much, something just got lost in translation. Didn't care for the 3D or renames at all.

In fact that's one thing I dislike in general regarding the direction it's gone, all the damn renaming of spells and monsters. I grew up with Explodet dammit, not Kaboom. I blame Squenix FF shit influence for that, like how they did their spells with a base name and alternating prefix/suffix. And how did Watabou turn into Fluffy ffs? /wrists

This. It gets really confusing after a while. One small thing I kinda dislike about the series are all the re-colors. Like how "Brownie" is just a tanned "Hammerhood." It doesn't bother me all that much, but I'd like to see a little differences.

Also, I was looking at the Joker 2 Monster list, and apparently you can use Trode. Thats kinda funny.

 

[Mr.E]

Not to say it wasn't fun back in the day but the breeding system of Monsters sucked from an objective standpoint. Or maybe it was completely awesome depending on your viewpoint. You could max stat any species, so stats were entirely irrelevant making resists/immunities and learnsets all that mattered. On one hand, it meant your favorites could always compete but on the other it made striving for endgame super/boss monster species pointless other than for collection purposes or bragging rights. nerf goldslime

 

[chimp]

Not to say it wasn't fun back in the day but the breeding system of Monsters sucked from an objective standpoint. Or maybe it was completely awesome depending on your viewpoint. You could max stat any species, so stats were entirely irrelevant making resists/immunities and learnsets all that mattered. On one hand, it meant your favorites could always compete but on the other it made striving for endgame super/boss monster species pointless other than for collection purposes or bragging rights. nerf goldslime

I somewhat agree. I think the super/boss monsters should be given a little more power over the more common enemies in terms of maxing stats. But I do think learnsets are enough to differentiate most monsters, at least for in-game purposes.
I have to say that the best part of breeding is actually the process; collecting the monsters and training them and testing out new combinations has always been fun to me.

 

[Shinryu]

But it's so much fun maxing out a basic Slime with Mega Magic and all the other broken stuff XD

The minor part I did dislike was that you lost the parents, but that's just an unfortunate necessity I guess. Still, imagine if Pokemon did that...bleh...

 

[Zabel Zarock]

Call me a dirty casual but I did played quite a bit of Dragon's Quest 8 and I did enjoy it for the most part.

I'm not sure what's the general consensus on it but I loved it, even if the characters look too much of Toriyama's previous characters (which isn't a bad thing, its just I keep seeing Goku in the protagonist). I might check out more of the series whenever I can. We'll see.

 

[Shinryu]

In case you never checked, characters generally look almost the same in every game since it's Toriyama who's done the artwork for all of them. But like you said, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If you're interested in more, DQ 1-3 can be found as remakes on GB/GBC (under the name Dragon Warrior since there was some issue in the past regarding copyright with Dragon Quest), 4-6 were remade as DS games, 7 was a PS game, and 9 is a DS game also. I generally like the ones with the class system (a true class system mind you, not skill trees) the best, so I'm biased towards 3, 6, and 9, but they're all good, for example 5 has your choice out of 3 wives and sets of kids. For 1,2,3, and 7, they all use the old spell names and monster names, but they're still pretty clear as to what is what.

 

[baddjordan]

I played the rocket slime spin-off where two giant tanks or whatever fought each other by loading cannons and firing stuff at each other. Finished it twice, great game.

 

[coolbiz]

I have played Dragon Quest 8 and joker 1, both are extremely amazing games. Imo dragon quest 8 is the best RPG I have ever played, great gameplay, great story, and I have many of hours logged on to it, even though I never beat it. Joker 1 was likewise great, once you beat the game it still had plenty of fun, I made a goal to get all monsters created which I never did but did somehow have a king slime which rekt on wifi battles. Good times, I highly recommend both games, especially 8.

 

[MagicMaster87]

I played the rocket slime spin-off where two giant tanks or whatever fought each other by loading cannons and firing stuff at each other. Finished it twice, great game.

Rocket Slime was an excellent game, I really was not expecting such a weird spinoff to be quite so enjoyable. I actually imported a Japanese 3DS and the third Rocket Slime game (along with a couple other imports) after watching a short review of it on Youtube, but haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

Another random spinoff I played more recently was Torneko: The Last Hope. It's by the same company who made the first two generations of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and plays largely the same, except you don't have multiple attacks to choose from and you get reset to level 1 at the start of each dungeon. The story doesn't seem to be quite as good as PMD's from what I've seen, but I haven't gotten too far due to how hellishly hard the game can be if you're even just slightly unlucky. If you decide to try this game out: save before every single dungeon. Even the very first ones.