Finally in the hands of US gamers after a 15 year wait, Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation brings a close to the Dragon Quest Zenithia trilogy following the earlier releases of of Dragon Quest IV and V for the Nintendo DS. Not to surprise anyone but Dragon Quest VI is a Dragon Quest game; for better or worse (depending on your standing with classic JRPG mechanics) the changes between games in the series mirror baby steps rather then some of the giant leaps that modern gamers have come to expect between big budget releases and their subsequent sequels. Unfortunately, coming off of Dragon Quest V, which is often regarded as the best of the series, the sixth installment is a bit lacking in comparison, yet still provides a robust and satisfying role playing experience.
Game: Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Artepiazza (Enix)
Genre: Japanese RPG
Price: $34.99
Verdict: Mechanically perfect but weakest story of the SFC/DS Trilogy (IV, V, VI)
Cons: Disjointed story and confusing mechanics shows age worse then the previous DS ports
Purchased by Reviewer
Anyone that has spent time playing a Dragon Quest title will instantly feel the cushy embrace of nostalgia wash over when traversing through the expansive overworld and engaging in random encounters with the familiar roster of enemies. The Dragon Quest series has perfectly skirted the line between providing the right amount of nostalgia coupled with just enough new content to keep the games from feeling stale and overwrought with the same content across each iteration. By keeping the core mechanics consistent across each title, the narrative becomes increasingly important with VI coming up a little short compared to the rest of the trilogy.
The best way to describe the story without spoiling too much of it is by boiling it down to the idea that differentiates it from the other titles in the trilogy,namely a familiar multiple world scenario that sees the player freely traverse through a supposed ‘real world’ and ‘dream world’ while exploring the differences between the two. Dragon Quest VI is somewhat of an oddity for RPGs as it is an incredibly front-loaded experience that keeps a great pace through the early going, and yet it suffers through a terrible middle-game drought. The drought comes via an opening of the game world with relatively no clear cut objectives besides a nebulous “Quest to find yourself,” which in an older RPG that lacks just about every modern convenience afforded to open world games–a useful map, list of objectives, or modern level design philosophies–all amount to a portion of the game that is annoying at best and down right anger inducing at its worst.
Take the game’s job system for instance, which makes its first appearance on the DS. It does exactly what the typical video game job system is supposed to by allowing a character to specialize and gain abilities and spells that aren’t normally doled out through normal level progression, but actually using and for that matter, finding the place to implement the system is somewhat left to chance. While the comparison is a tad unfair, imagine in Fallout 3 or New Vegas having your whole character customization system hidden until accidentally stumbling upon a place that would allow you to finally fill in your points. Other annoyances, such as having to talk to every person in a given town before whatever is supposed to happen will happen, are simply a product of the time, and can be forgiven to some extent. It’s evident that Enix was proud of their dialogue and story so much that by necessitating these NPC interactions, you became much more invested then you do in a game like Pokemon.
Despite the minor misgivings that make this the weakest of the three DS games, Dragon Quest VI is still a great game–owing a lot to the fantastic localization by 8-4 Productions. When Final Fantasy III was finally ported and released on the DS, it was immediately evident why it never made it to America (it wasn’t very good), but with DQVI the absence seems far more inexplicable. With all this said, unless you have played Dragon Quest V (and maybe IV), or are incredibly curious (as I was with Final Fantasy III), there is no pressing urgency to invest the hours into Realms of Revelation.
GrE Grade: B
Although it didn’t effect my review score, with Nintendo handling publishing on this installment (Square Enix had handled IV and V), the spine of the game changed, making it look STUPID sitting next to IV and V on my shelf.
Popularity: 2% [?]
