Game: Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
Publisher: Nintendo USA
Developer: Square Enix
Genre: RPG
Price: $34.99
Verdict: Only for hard core fans
Pros: Easy to play, some interesting storylines
Cons: Fairly stale gameplay; we’ve already played this game
It’s not often that I don’t find something to like in a game, especially one with the might of two venerated publishing/development houses like Square and Nintendo behind it, but honestly, the Dragon Quest franchise needs a refresh. I am by no means an RPG expert, but I did own a GameBoy with a couple of Final Fantasy games on it. I’ve managed to play through classics such as Chrono Trigger, Mother 3, and Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and XIII, along with several of the Atlus JRPGs like Class of Heroes, Persona, and Knights In The Nightmare. I even recently grabbed a copy of Final Fantasy IX for my PSP/PS3 and find it highly entertaining.
One thing all of the above games have in common is that they are more entertaining, sadly, than Dragon Quest IX. To be fair, I’ve only played the Dragon Slime iteration in the franchise on the Nintendo DS in the past, so I can’t compare this game to the other eight. I shouldn’t have to, however, as many potential customers will pick up a game based purely on promotional coverage or word of mouth recommendation. It should be an engaging game from the outset, one that keep me coming back for more, right? Wrong. I just kept finding this game boring and downright conventional. I’ve played this game before.
The initial story revolving around a Celestrian society of angels (wings, halos, mentions of god) searching for a way to the god-world, is a nice bit of world-building. I enjoyed the whimsical music, well-designed tutorial quests, and manner that the mentor gently chides my character. I got to choose my character’s name, gender, skin tone, eye color, and hair style. I hit the ground running, noticing the lack of random bosses and the streamlined battle commands. This is a conventional, turn-based battle system like all the other traditional RPG video games I’ve played before. There’s a limit break system, called “Tension,” to go along with different characters and classes to make up the battle party. Once the story gets going, you choose NPCs (or friends on local multiplayer, or chance encounter quasi-NPCs) to fight along side you, leveling up along with you. It’s a decent system, and allows you to form a bond with the characters you choose, leveling them and equipping their loadouts according to your own wishes. Not a bad way to start, really.
Once the main storyline opens up, somewhere around the second hour or so, the grind appears. Ugh… The grind. Get from point A to point B, fighting goofy, bouncy monsters that may be visible on your path, but continue to follow you if they “see” you, thereby making a journey that could take 20 seconds into interminable epic slogs across fairly generic landscapes. Fight the monsters, choosing a combination of spells, ranged and melee weapons, healing your party along the way, and gathering experience points. Make it to point B, only to find that you have to now get to point C, which conveniently lies just beyond a whole bunch of bouncy monsters out to do nothing else but slow you down. If you’re lucky, there’ll be a town along this new quest path, in which you can head to the church and save your progress. And, as typical of many of these kinds of RPGs, talk with the townsfolk, some of whom are helpful and quest-specific, some of whom are random time wasters as helpful as the monsters outside.
Designed to be a handheld game focusing on multiplayer, Dragon Quest IX succeeds in continuing to be exactly what hard core fans of this type of game want it to be: typical. What gets touted as groundbreaking by PR folks and Wikipedia alike is merely, in this reviewer’s opinion, a re-arrangement of the set dressing. If these games are to survive in a gaming world with so much choice and so much competition, they’re going to need to focus on other things besides the grind. The story might be a nice thing to emphasize. Having played Final Fantasy I, a similarly typical game, I’m still interested in playing through it due to the shifting perspectives, the exposition handled in various ways, and a storyline with characters that actually behave in different ways.
Dragon’s Quest IX, which is supposedly all about player choice (you can have BLUE hair!), seems to forget that bland characters doing bland things interspersed with LOTS and lots of grinding battles (to the point where players forget what exactly the POINT of it all is, anyway) is not really what the non-hard core are looking for. That said, We’re not looking for a dumbed-down experience, either. We’re looking for intelligent, humorous, well-told stories, that we can take part in, maybe fulfill some power fantasies along the way, and bring things to a successful conclusion. Many RPGs have inspired me to do just that, even not-quite-perfect games like Knights In The Nightmare or Final Fantasy XIII. This game, however, never quite got me to invest my interest. And that, to me, is the failure of any video game. Unless you’re a die-hard fan of this series, or have NEVER EVER played ANY kind of PRG before, I can’t recommend this one to you.
GrE Grade: C-
Popularity: unranked [?]
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