Bregalad wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 3:54 pm
Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 1:41 pm
I didn't mean FF4-6, I literary meant Final Fantasy fourtysix (which of course doesn't exist, yet). I just meant about any modern JRPG with low difficulty level, my most common complaint with many modern games. DQ11 is a good example, battles are so easy that they are almost pointless.
Oh, but Final Fantasy games continues to be made but aren't even RPGs anymore, let alone JRPG... aside of the name, there's absolutely no continuity to what they used to be. You'd think that with the ridicully conservative mindset of DQ, keeping even the sound effects from DQ1 even though it makes no sense anymore, you'd think that they'd keep everything the same and if they don't improve at least continue to make decent games... but... but...
I haven't played anything newer than FF10 so I wouldn't know, but yeah it sounds like they pretty much destroyed the FF series. I'm really glad that the DQ series is ultra conservative or it would also suffer the same fate. They wanted to make battles action-based in DQ9 at first and I was dismayed when I heard these news. But thanks to fan-retribution (I wasn't alone) they abandoned that idea. You don't play DQ games because you want to play an RPG with new groundbreaking ideas and a storyline that fits into the modern society. You play DQ because you want to go on adventures with dragons, princesses, magic and swords. And you want the black windows and and sound effects to look and sound like they always did. DQ11 is doing all this so I don't have many complaints about it besides the ridiculously low difficulty and the lack of text-based battles. It also tries to incorporate new ideas into the series without destroying old ones and that fits into it. Like crafting for example, and it works very well.
My praise and complains about the game are summarized
here.
Bregalad wrote: ↑Sat Apr 04, 2020 3:54 pm
Yeah DQ5 is probably my favourite in the series, due to its setting and story, not due to its mechanics.
They even released an anime based on the game apparently I'll have to... legally watch it.
Yeah they really choose the right game to make a movie of. I heard DQ5 is the favourite of Yuji Horii as well.
Apparently they are not really using Toriyama's drawing style though which sounds like a very strange decision to me. Apparently because they want the movie to be popular in the west as well. So they apparently totally forgot that Dragon Ball is absolutely humongous all over the world...
I'm all for premade characters. They're what makes a game world, unniverse full of something interesting. If you want to create your own characters, you don't need a computer or game console, just a sheet of paper, some pencil and some immagination, and you'll create your own characters without being annoyed by a video game. More seriously, custom-made characters in games=no dialogue=no personality=no emotional attachment (or annoyance/lohate/etc...)=no storyline=you'll play only for battles, so if battles aren't really fun and challenging then the game is going to be average at best. (DQ9 I'm looking at you, but also applicable to DQ3)
Yeah knew you would, and I partly agree with you. FF1 and DQ3 both suffers from the lack of story involvement of the party members. Really only the hero in DQ3 plays a role in the story. The other party members has a few lines of dialogue in some very rare cases (notably in the puff-puff/fortune-telling scene), but their dialogue solely depends on their gender and are the same for everyone of the same gender.
Being able to create your own characters is a staple RPG thing and didn't change when the genre became a video game genre at first (I think Akalabeth the predecessor to Ultima was the first video game RPG). DQ, which took great inspiration from both Ultima and Wizardry, changed this a bit by making the story more involving (and saving with passwords also limits character creation). FF changed this even more and totally abandoned the concept after FF1. DQ games at least still have the hero that you choose a name for, and sometimes gender.
I'm a bit split on this matter. I love to being able to create the main character yourself, and let it be "mute" to let the player decide on its personality. You can not choose class in DQ games, but I wouldn't want to choose any other class than hero for the main character anyway. But creating the whole party in FF1 and DQ3 is like you say, not good for a story oriented game like JRPGs tends to be. It's fine if you have a general dungeon crawler or something where mechanics are more important and the main characters has no direct integration with the story. I think DQ4 is perfect because you create the hero while all the others are premade.
I'm actually thinking of making a character creation in an RPG where you can choose everything, including name, gender, class, race and appearance. For appearance that would be like choosing face, hairstyle and hair colour or possibly even letting the player draw it himself using a simple drawing tool (although if that is done I'm sure some players will draw a head shaped like male genitals).
With CHR-RAM this should be doable on NES I think.
It almost is. I like the characters, but the story is basically they're gonna save the world. Also you don't even see them in battle, when you know you have to hot interesting looking gypsies in your pary, that's quite a shame.
Of course any DQ game is very similar to DQ1. It is because they improve things that needs to be improved and don't change things that don't needs to be changed. That way the keep the identity of DQ.
I didn't only play the remake, but I only finished the remake. I only did the 1st chapter with the NES version, and I was tired of having to do hours of grinding with Ryan.
Sound like my first attempt to play DQ4 back long ago when I was entirely new to the RPG genre. A game with a middle-aged man in pink armour and a jellyfish-like friend was simply not very appealing to me, and the lack of animations didn't help either. But there was some things that touched me, like all the guards spread out in various dungeons looking for the lost kids, this made it feel like Ryan wasn't the only one looking for them. These memories turned into nostalgia when I replayed the whole series years later and fell head over heels of the series. After I had played through DW1, DW2, DW3 then DW4 I was totally amazed by the worlds they take place in. The lack of superficial things like animation didn't bother me anymore, since I was already in love with the text-based battles. It works a lot like reading a good book without pictures, and this derives from text adventures. WRPGs usually also have a log window that displays everything that happens, in and out of battle (or at least had, nowdays WRPGs looks like FPS games, I guess every modern western game is an FPS because it's the only genre western game developers can make). DQ started as a more visually appealing version of Ultima and Wizardry. This is because western game developers apparently lacks any aesthetic skills and only cares about game mechanics (another common complaints of mine about western game developers).
Although you don't see the characters in battle in DQ you see them on the map. In FF1-3 it's the other way around since it doesn't use the "caterpillar party formation". And if you play the game again now you will probably notice that there are no "hours of grinding with Ryan". It is just normal EXP training like in DQ3 and FF3, and it takes just a few minutes to be strong enough to proceed in the game. If the game didn't require any training at all it would be pretty pointless to have an EXP system at all.
Not necessarly. Healing spells hurting monsters is something that was introduced in FF3 and kept in the series since. I think it's a good idea, but definitely FF (even though it was probably copied from somewhere else, FF3 seems to be the game that brought the concept in the video game world, I could be wrong). DQ never had to copy what FF does good, but it could have stayed DQ, while having more developed characters, more dialogue, more interesting battles, and, 1st of all, better graphics for it's time with battle animations or backgrounds.
Yeah well the healing damage undead is one example of RPG things that I like but DQ doesn't do. It's not like every RPG does it. I like it because it gives a new interesting use of the heal spell and a weapon for clerics that are otherwise considered a very defensive class. Another thing I'm missing is that
undead are usually weak against fire. Even Zelda does this in A Link to the Past where there is even an undead-themed dungeon full of enemies that are weak against fire magic. The weakness to certain elementals in general are missing in earlier DQ games. Also FF makes an interesting system where a character can not only be immune against a elemental but even absorb it if they have negative weakness to it. So a pure fire elemental enemy heals by pure fire spells. This is one of my favourite game mechanics in FF games.
I think
healing damages undead comes from Dungeons & Dragons (supposedly the first pen-and-paper RPG and the main inspiration of all video game RPGs thanks to Wizardry, Ultima and FF) where the undead are powered by a kind of negative life energy and are therefore affected negatively by positive life energy that heals the living. There is also a negative heal spell that hurts the living and heals the undead. I think more recent DnD editions removed this system, so healing spells heals the undead too (like in DQ). I'm not a fan of that change though.
The cleric class (also introduced in DnD) was inspired by vampire hunters and such so it's a kind of warrior monk that specialize in hunting demons and undead and in exorcism. FF1 didn't have healing damage undead, but the white mage has the Dia/Harm spell as one of its only offensive spells, it only works against undead and is powerful to boot. It makes the class specialized against undead. DQ priests also has a few offensive spells: Bagi/Infernos which is a wind spell family (sometimes with crucifix-shaped vacuum cutters befitting of a priest) though it has no undead hunting properties or anything.
I don't think DQ needs more developed characters and story. DQ and FF each has their own style but I don't think either is better than the other, and I wouldn't like one of them turn into the other. Earlier DQ and FF games has a story that is solely told by the intro, ending and by dialogue with NPCs. This changed in DQ4 and FF2 which both has many cutscenes (DQ2 and DQ3 also has some happenings that could be considered cutscenes but they are few and far between) and premade characters with personalities.
The lack of elementals works OK in DQ1 and DQ2 which doesn't have as many spells, but from DQ3 there are lots of different spells that seemingly only varies in power, MP cost and range.
It's not as consistent as you say. Floor damage might been gradually removed as it makes no sense in a 3d environment to step on a poisonous tile, since there's no tiles. I wouldn't be surprised if DQ9, a "modern RPG", still has poison floors, although I'm not 100% sure.
Just because the game is no longer tile-based doesn't mean you have to scrap the whole concept of poisonous marches, damaging barriers and traps all together (which are staple RPG features). I don't see why the player can't be forced to cross harmful terrain even in 3D. DQ11 has no damage floors at all. I think this concept ended with DQ7 or something. FF games also abandoned it making dungeons much more boring ever since FF7 introduced 3D and pre-rendered backgrounds IMHO. DQ2 even has lava floors that doesn't do damage if you are protected against fire which the Water Hagoromo/Flying-Clothes does (oddly the Toramana/Stepguard spell doesn't work against it though), making for an interesting cross of battle and field concepts.
What I meant is that modern JRPGs has a clear distinction between field mode and battle mode. This distinction did exists in earlier JRPGs as well but was far less pronounced. In WRPGs (especially those based on pen-and-paper RPGs) this distinction hardly exists at all. A spell can be cast in or out of battle and the effect lasts equally long in both cases. Pokemon games is a series of JRPG that kept the classic way even in modern instalments. In these games even the sleep status is in effect after battle and I don't think they changed this in newer games either, although I think it should recover automatically like it does in battle (paralysis in DQ games works this way). For not mentioning all the monster moves that can be used outside battle.
I don't think there's any place where you have to be frog, but FF3 requires you to be mini in at least 2 places
Yeah some earlier FF games did have this concept. Seiken Densetsu games also does this with Korobokkuru and Moogle status effects, and there is a Korobokkuru village you must be small to enter. FF5 also has some skills that helps you against damage terrains and pitfalls, and one for spotting hidden passages, so the FF series definitely has skills effective in field mode, although less often than DQ. They are almost gone in newer JRPGs though.
When you party is defeated in any Final Fantasy game, you have to start over from the last save. This is particularly disastrous in the earlier game, FF1-3, who lack saves points before bosses. DQ on the other hand, only takes half of your money for loosing, that's pretty light IMO. The only compensation for having so much boring grinding to do, at least you keep all your precious-earned EXP, but still loose half of your precious-earned gold.
...
Usually those items aren't that rare at the end of the game, also I'm fairly sure there is spells to "revive" characters, but fails half of the time, so it's just a raging f*** waste of mana when it doesn't work and certainly doesn't contribute to make DQ games fun to play. I don't know why japanese public likes gambling so much, personally I prefer hard strategies that don't rely on luck.
Halving the money was necessary in DQ1 and early on in DQ2 where you only have one party member and dying is easy, and it does offer the player to avoid loosing a lot of time spent for the expense of loosing a lot of gold. But it also makes you invisible in the late game when you already bought everything money can buy. No the Leaf of the World Tree is an item that you can only have one of at a time (although you can get it for free directly from the World Tree itself). Normally I don't accept dying, so I save often (in DQ1 and DQ2 this means writing down a humongous password so I do it a bit less often in those two games) and reset if I die. In Pokemon games where you can save anywhere I simply never accept defeat.
Earlier FF games does this the right way, although revival items was a bit more common than in DQ games. It is the 16-bit FF games that introduced Phoenix-Down-vending-machines, and other games copies that.
It doesn't rely on luck at all. You just have to avoid dying as much as possible, and you must prepare a plan B when you do. The thing is that letting a character die (or swoon, get KO'd etc) isn't very punishing in newer games, and that combined with unlimited of cheap healing items makes battles dull. Especially boss battles are just long cycles of healing and dishing out damaging attacks. Since you have almost unlimited resources, the only thing you need to worry about is that you don't all get downed at once. It makes sense in FF games for the reasons I stated in my last post. In classic RPGs like DnD, Wizardry and DQ (and subsequentially also in Dragon Ball due to its connections to DQ), revival of the dead is just part of the worlds they takes place in, and are not always possible. FF games (other than FF1) just doesn't have that concept.
FF5 who is retro has this, but FF9 who is more modern doesn't.
I forgot that FF9 doesn't have this. But FF9 also has unlimited resources so poison, petrify and KO are not particularly dangerous situations unlike in FF1 where you always has to plan ahead for this.
Item micromanagement
This came gradually, FF2 has very tight and limited item space typically filled with story key-items, FF3-4 have limited inventory but you can use the big chocobo to store your extra items with unlimited space. FF5 introduced unlimited items and they didn't go back since. Wearing 99 shelters makes no sense but so does using magic etc... and this doesn't prevent the game to be fun, and some items are still expensive or sparse, the game engine allowing you to carry doesn't mean you will. Not being able to open treasure chest because your inventory is full sucks and discourage world exploration. At least latter games allows you to first open the chest, see what's inside, then decide what to do with your full inventory. This makes sense, unfortunately none of the NES DQ games allows you to do this, or I'm seriously mistaking.
Yes it's the FF5 system I'm criticizing for the reasons I mentioned above. It's not about making sense, it's a game mechanic thing. Not being able to open treasure chests just means you have to carry less medicine or other things. As I said, DQ games doesn't necessarily does this perfectly (especially not DQ2).
Mother 3 is another game that does this poorly by showering the player with items he can't carry, so he is forced to constantly eat healing items even when not needed. Then when you meet a boss and run out of PP you soon run out of healing items anyway.
Yes I think DQ6 introduces the bag which basically is a portable storage and allows you to hold unlimited with items. So yeah, DQ also abandoned this concept in the end (for the worse IMHO).
Magic is defenitily not useless. Each spell only has a use at a certain part of the game though because of the fixed damage. Also there are many monsters that are strong against magic. Strong against magic in DQ means the magic has a larger chance to fail and have no effect, there is no Magic Defence wich absorbs the damage. This is a DnD thing that made its way into DQ.
But for reasons I said before, magic indispensable, just not something you can use all the time, and most weaker spells generally becomes useless as you progress in the game. The exceptions are the buff spells which are very useful against bosses, including the last boss.
Inns in DQ games are so cheap that they make about zero impact on the economy.
Except at the very begining of the adventure, the part that all your players will play and where the most grinding is required.
Well I guess it works well early on in DQ1 in that it helps preventing the player from affording the strongest weapons right away. But most of the time it hardly has any effect on the game. In DQ3 you can even sleep in your home for free at the beginning.
As I already mentioned I dislike gambling but apparently Japanese people are very fond thereof.
Gambling are a large part of RPGs though. I guess you must love Fire Emblem for that reason as well. Basically the only things you need to gamble on are evasion and critical hits, but with good strategy you can usually keep the chance of loosing a unit to a minimum. RPGs works this way as well but there are usually many more things that can go wrong, so you need more backup plans.
Exactly, you have to grind hours for either EXP or money (being able to buy better equipment for your party), and your only consolation is that you get the other "for free". In FF3 and later you can usually collect the weapons of the whole game, in DQ forget about it you'll definitely have to sell your weaker equipment or you won't be able to afford the new one.
What are you talking about? If the game allows you to keep all the weapons from start it definitely has broken economy and is too easy. If money isn't worth anything it's a useless concept in the game. You can buy all weapons at the end of the game when you have more money than you will ever need, just as long as you keep all the unique items around.
I think we already established that the only games you need to grind in are DQ1, FF1 and FF2, and a bit in certain parts of DQ2. All the others have normal EXP training, not something I would call grinding. Generally you can gradually afford better weapons as you gain gold from EXP training and dungeon crawling (you get lots of gold in treasure chests in these games).
Yeah easy is not the opposite of grinding, but a game where even a beginner don't need to train his party members before proceeding is automatically easy. EXP and gold would have no meaning in such a game. An RPG with a balanced difficulty level whould require you to get some training in before you can proceed. That way a beginner player would need more training while an advanced player could proceed with less training to get a bigger challenge. The more training you need the harder the game is without training.
I really like the FF10 battle system, and I don't think they destroyed anything. Actually FF10 in general is pretty underrated in my opinion, sure the story is not as good as it was in FF7-9 and there's this weird looking laughing scene, and too much asses on screen. But come on it's still OK, the story and characters are not that bad and the fighting is actually nothing short of amazing. Unfortunately it was the last good game in the series before it went totally downhill. Such a combat system would have been technically feasible on NES, imagine DQ4 with sphere gird and turn-based battle instead of round-based, now that would be much more interesting to play.
Oh I love FF10, especially the battle system. I'm criticizing the EXP system here (the sphere grid system). I especially love that they finally introduced the "caravan system" of DQ4 and up. It allows you to have all party members with you at all times and you can even tag them in battle. I hated the FF6 system (although I love FF6 in general) where you have to pick your party members so they are levelling uneveningly and affects cut-scenes. You have to play the game a trillion times i you want to see all possible combinations of characters and cutscenes. I also like that the story is a bit simpler after FF7 and FF8 having almost overly complicated stories, but it still has that FF feeling. I also love Blitzball BTW.
The sphere grid is great fun and great pain. Why do I have to get these rare items (like luck spheres) to get stronger? It's not as bad as FF7's materia system but I still don't get the point. It just feels like an abstract rule to prevent the player from becoming stronger if he doesn't play the game in a specific way.
Well in Europe we got Final Fantasy Adventure as "Mystic Quest" and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest as "Mystic Quest Legend", the latter is also rare. FF7 is the first real FF which was released here.
For some reason there was some racism and japanese gamedevs thought westerners couldn't enjoy JRPGs, which was of course completely wrong.
Yeah you are right. I'm not sure we got Mystic Quest Legend in Sweden though. It was thanks to the hype of FF7 that the JRPG genre became mainstream in Europe.
I think European publishers wasn't interested in the RPG genre at all. They only wanted action games. Mystic Quest was also made to teach Americans of the RPG genre, which is quite ironic considering that it was the Americans that invented the genre and introduced the genre to Japan.
I think you're targeting the DQ4 remake, well there's so few story anyway that they tried to make it funny.
Yes DQ4 remake is one of the few games with the new localization that I've actually played. But I've also played a few English versions of Morimori Slime and Itadaki Street series and they all did the same thing. And it appears to me that localizations of other new DQ games does this as well. When DQ8 was released it was necessary to do something different since DW7 apparently didn't do well in America (not that strange considering the Americans were missing DQ5 and DQ6 and then suddenly recived a new instalment not too different from the NES games in an era when polygons were being worshipped). But I don't see why they still have to turn everything up to 11, why not just keep DQ as DQ. As I said before, I believe DQ is popular partly for the same reasons Dragon Ball is popular (they both create a similar beautiful world, same character design and have similar humour etc), and DB is extremely popular all over the world, so it's not a cultural thing. DQ has the potential to boom all over the world the same way.
The original Dragon Warrior localizations has a similar history. Toriyama was still not famous at this time so they switched out all his art for more western fantasy art, which isn't exactly bad, but was in the hindsight a very bad decision considering that Toriyama's art is part of the series identity and reason why it's so popular. Similar things can be said about the "olde English" language that the first two games used. DW3 and DW4 had fine translations though.