Dragon Quest thread

Im not surprised.

If it has a PC release.

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Like this numale would have played it in the first place.

I haven't watched the gameplay footage yet but I really hope they give you more room for your towns in DQB2. That was one of my biggest complaints about the first.

Why the fuck are Japanese games so expensive?

Sequel to comfy game now coming to comfiest platform? Fuck yes I will get it.
I'm hoping SE pulls off some weeb magic and manages to get DQXI running decently on Switch.

Givu molu dollu. We must pay bad amelica voicu aktolu so you no need to leed gamu.

I got DQXI from play-asia, it should arrive this week. I can't fucking wait to play it. I talked to a few nerds living in Japan who already finished the game. Apparently it's pretty much DQVIII in everything but setting/characters, it's a 60 hours long game, excluding sidequests, but here is the big one, if you beat the whole 60-80 hour long game once you get a shitty ending, then you travel to the past which is basically NG+ with a different story and enemies on steroids to get the real ending. Fucking madmen.

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I will unironically buy a Switch at/after Christmas when they put out bundles, or secondhand. There are more worthwhile exclusives on there right now than than any other console, probably more than the Xbox One or PS4 had after the same amount of time since launch and there are console-exclusives as well.

On the topic of Dragon Quest, as I've only played 7, 8, Heroes 1/2 and Rocket Slime, where should I go to next?
I thought about going in order, but I've never been a fan of random encounters, which is why I stayed away until the 7 remake, so that only leaves IX to play.
And is X worth playing, or is it just a generic MMO grind on top of the DQ grind (which isn't actually that bad)

Then I don't know what are you looking for, famalam. DQIX is widely regarded as a short, dumbed down piece of shit. The best DQ after VIII is DQIII by a long shot, I am particularly fond of the SNES fan translation. Then again, it is also one of the hardest games in the franchise and it also relies on DQ1 for the final plot twist, so you may not even bother if random battles aren't your thing.

How different are the 3DS and PS4 versions? Is it just graphics?

Play either the Erdrick or Zenithian trilogiy depending on what mood you're in–if you want more freedom and simple battles go with 1~3, and if you prefer more story and slightly more complex battles do 4~6.

Its just graphics, no story content was altered and the only dialogue changes reflex control inputs.

So what are the odds that the game won't be raped by sjw tier bullshit?

DQIII is the hardest DQ right after the SNES version of DQII. Unless you keep re-rolling your characters for hours, it is has the hardest beginning of any DQ, period, due to HP pools being even smaller than usual and starting dungeons being pretty long. It is one of the very few DQ where I was forced to buy 20-50 fucking herbs instead of relying on magic to heal. Mid-late game actually may get even harder, even with a mix-maxed "optimal" party, getting the good stuff from the Pachisi boards and a moderate amount of grind most late game boss fights are still absurdly difficult. I suspect you either played the NES version using some exploits, used turbo and save states to grind fast and defy the RNG or more likely, you don't know what are you talking about and are just baiting.

I would say 80/20 in favour of rape. They already raped DQVII's remake and DQIX. There was hardly a single town, enemy or NPC name that wasn't a forced pun, since the tasteful ones from the original were not enough, and most characters had stupid, unreadable accents because "XDDD so funny, lets fix this boring problematic cliche JRPG full of tropes with shitty 4th wall breaking puns, dead memes and accents, b0OM, its me, the penguin of dOOm ROFLMAO". I give it a 20% they may not butcher it since
a) DQVIII had a tasteful localization with very good voice acting and the right amount and sillyness of humour, same with DQBuilders and the DQHeroes games, though the Heroes ones had story and dialogue pretty retarded to begin with.
b) SquareEnix has an in-house translation team that is actually good at this and also kept under fucking control, they probably kidnap the localizers' families and chop one finger from every youngest kid's hand for every GamerGate joke that makes it into the final script. Unfortunately this is not perfect, actually it failed in that FF chibi spin-off which's name evades me right now, but it was butchered and filled with doge memes to hell and back.
Then again I am talking about the PS4 version. It is a 100% guarantee NoA will force puns, force personality changes to be more quirky XDD and surely they will find something to censor in 3DS. I am erring on the safe side and importing the nip PS4 version of DQXI, if the localization is decent I will gladly pay again to be able to replay it in English and my native language.

COR BLIMEY

Did they show what the 3DS/PS4 versions of DQ 1, 2, & 3 are going to look like?

Was the GBC version of 3 pussified or something? I had absolutely no trouble with it even as a kid.

The GBC versions of 1-3 are ports of the SNES remakes which had increased XP and gold drops from the NES versions. Which should really just decrease the grinding time.

Actually, the original DQ3 was the NES one (easiest), which was then ported to GBC (middle difficulty), which had bosses/enemies with almost twice the HP, but also increased players' stats to crazy amounts and finally SNES (hardest one) which kept the huge HP pools, but reduced player stats and most importantly softcapped them, leaving seed farming as your only way to grind. Aditionally they buffed Baramos an absurd amount and gave him auto-heal for 100HP every round, making him probably the hardest story boss in the whole franchise.

Squeenix I beg of you, give me the fucking Monsters remakes before the 3DS fucking dies. I just want to play DQ1 and 2 with the new party and synthesis system.

Failing that just give me Rocket Slime 2(3), I shilled the first game as hard as I could back then, cant you just let us have your superior spinoffs?

This. Also, I didn't really say DQIII is a particularly hard game, but is the one of the hardest in the franchise. You have modern FF which you play for muh story and muh feels, and can beat them in auto-combat, on the other extreme you have grindan Japanese dungeon crawlers which ask you both to grind and know how to build a party. Dragon Quest sits right in the middle here, you certainly can't beat most of them on autopilot, building a good party requires a generous grind and at least a quick look at guides to see what is viable to do and what not but even entry level dungeon-crawlers like say, the first Etryan Oddysey are far more demanding.

Learn Japanese, user-kun

All of dragon quest is easy because it has no game overs or any punishment for losing a battle outside of the revival priest taking half your gold, where as other rpgs flat out delete all of your progress and effectively means you wasted time you will never get back.
Please tell me you're just pretending to be this much of a pussy.

3 isn't that hard. Hell I would simply call it moderately challenging in the sense of it's not ball busting or too easy. I died a total of like 5 times while playing that game. I didn't reroll my party or even knew how to alter my team's personalities outside of books. Nor did I know what personalities did to my growths. For most of the game my MC had Honest and Wordly. Those are just decent. I just used a fighter, cleric, and mage for my team. Later changing the mage into a sage. I didn't grind though there was one time I got lost finding the last orb but that's about it. I died once against Zoma and immediately realized how I had to play to beat him. I don't even remember having a rough start. No clue if the SNES version is the easiest of all of them but that's the one I played.

Baramos and his explodete was annoying. As hardest bosses would go, I think Deathamoore from DQVI was absurd.

You didn't really thought this through very well. DQ wastes actually MORE of your time than most other JRPGs, simply based on the fact Chrono Trigger, FFs etc have save points right before a boss so if you die you lose nothing. Shit even Etryan Oddysey games let you open a shortcut back to town every few floors. Otherwise it is the same: you save before the dungeon, go through the dungeon and if you die you start from the last time you saved in town. Secondly, in DQ games you are a hobo: most of the time, losing half of your accumulated gold is far more devastating than losing 15 minutes worth of experience grind as in other RPGs. Finally you should perhaps read my other posts, I never said Dragon Quest games in general are hard, though they are definitely harder than most popular RPGs in the west like FF, Chrono Trigger or lately the Sen no Kiseki games.

DQVI was one of the easiest DQs for me. Not only was grinding absurdly fast and easy, pretty sure you were actually required to grind your ass off, master all jobs and turn into a god to enter the last bonus dungeon, so there was not much place for challenge there. SNES Baramos on the other hand was pure suffering.

VI was easy besides that guy in Dharma Temple and the final boss. I went through the whole game without multiheal because that healing staff was so damn good at keeping everyone alive. Essentially I didn't need a dedicated healer since everyone could be one. Going into the final boss without multiheal though is suicide. And maybe he was so tough for my team because I didn't master many jobs.

Speaking of which. Are there really any hard RPGs? Most are pretty simple to beat even if you refuse to grind. It's like all the difficulty is reserved for DRPGs and TRPGs. Like Natural Doctrine and Dungeon Travelers 2.

7th Saga is legit hard as fuck and not just because of the grind. The Japanese version is supposed to be way easier though.

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The real question is what would make a turn-based RPG really hard? It can ask you to grind your ass off, but grinding, as comfy as it may be, isn't exactly challenging. Or, it may require knowledge of obscure mechanics, builds, etc. This is as easy as looking a walkthrough or getting lucky, otherwise you are fucked. Good examples are the absurd amount of missables in Legend of Heroes games, or the skill points you get in DQVIII where you can easily make really underwhelming characters if you go in blind. If you really want challenge you go real-time, but there is few games there since it's incredibly hard to make melee combat feel good, meaningful and skill based, though stuff like Ys or From Software pulled it off pretty well and will give you a healthy dose of challenge.

I don't think that crap is really going to fly here, my friend, most people here is going to be immunized against the "git gud" god-gamer types. Maybe if you try on Reddit or GameFaqs you will get the reaction you are looking for. Maybe the FGC? No idea, but I know somewhere out there is a place you can call "home". Don't give up, user-kun.

I believe creating groups or bosses that counter certain tactics or builds is a great way to make things challenging. There are other things like MP being finite and not easy to replace, exp having high diminishing returns so it's very impractical to grind, a low max item capacity so you have to pick and choose what you bring into a fight or how much you can take back with you. In Final Fantasy, most bosses can be easily dealt with using a battle of attrition strategy because you can carry an insane amount of healing items to the point that you question why it's even finite in the first place. At least Tales games only allow you to carry 15 of each item and even then they heal by percentage and not a set amount making them useful through the whole game but not useful enough to get you out of any bad situation.

A good example of a boss that counters certain strategies is the final boss in Etrian Odyssey. If you buff too much, he will team wipe you with his whirlwind attack. You need to prioritize which buffs to keep up at certain times while dealing with his onslaught. Then there's the final boss in Dungeon Travelers 2. She covers many things to fuck you. Like a full screen debuff that makes it so you have a chance of instantly dying from any attack. Puppets that can't be killed that will snipe your backline people for big damage. End game spells that are made to OHKO anyone who doesn't have high magic resistance. Her attacks can severely hamper your physical attack damage thanks to the attack down debuff. And a desperation mode where she will spam her full screen nuke that nullifies buffs until you or her die. And to top it all off she's fast as hell. You have to lower her speed or else she will overwhelm you unless you have a team that can lower her DPS through dances. That's not all though. She has 2 forms as well. A team build that's good against the final build is bad against the first form. So you have to consider that as well.

For these bosses, grinding usually doesn't help. A solid strategy and good decision making is what will get you through these fights.

Which one did you pick?

Death Lord.

DQ has a waifu system?

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Only 5. None of the others do. It's not even really a waifu system, you're just told to pick one of two girls(three in the DS version) for a wife at one point in the game.

Oh that sucks.

out of those three I'd pick Deborah

Right, it is true I can't recall a traditional JRPG which such difficulty. Perhaps for the best. I remember the post-game Ice Dragon from Etryan Oddysey.
He had a high damage Ice Wave party-wide attack with an insta-death effect. You could only counter it with the Paladin's Ice Affinity protection
but
If you leveled that skill to the max you'd get so much affinity all ice attacks would heal you. In other words, the dragon's attack would deal negative damage and the instadeath effect would wipe your party. No siree, you had to level the skill halfway through so all ice attacks dealt just 0 damage, neutralizing any side-effects. Of course you also needed a physical protection skill, otherwise it would one-shot any character and you also needed the speed buff otherwise you wouldn't be able to heal the wounded in time. Unfortunately the only class to have Haste was the Bard, an utterly useless class that noone would use so you had to level him to the cap only for this fight. Careful further buffing yourself with offensive auras, since postgame bosses would get pissed off against too many buffs, but also time your re-buffs perfectly otherwise you will lose one of them, screw the rebuff tempo and get killed in a battle that takes forever of course, since you only had place for defense buffs and no attack increase.
tl:dr the problem with strategic difficulty is that at some point it just becomes a stupid trial and error puzzle without much player creativity, just do exactly what you have to do or get BTFO. This fight for example, was by all means a Tower of Hanoi game with a spooky dragon skin on it. And if it's too easy, just grinding a bit, healing when necessary and using basic buffs is more than enough without much tactical thinking. Perhaps we should enjoy JRPGS for what they are: a journey where you start as a faggot than can be killed by three blue slimes and end as the biggest badass through grinding, preparation and a minimum of common sense.

Flora, of course, who else?

Enjoy the orgasm denial and your wife's son, user.

I chose Debora.

In the 3DS version of DQVIII, you can finally get the Jessica ending.
though game is censored but i think there's a fanmade patch to decensor the game

You are the first person I've ever heard of that picked Flora over the other two.
Good taste.

What makes Death Lord so hard and is it good? Also I chose Flora when I played. That pink bow is cute. I think DQV has the most NTR doujins out of any series all because of that horse faggot kidnapping your wife. Seriously, how many rape horse NTR doujins do we have?

You bring up a good point too. It needs to be restrictive but not to the point that it might as well be a puzzle. Strong but not to the point that it becomes a numbers game where you have to grind.

I swear her tits were bigger in the PS2 version.

I can't play RPGs on a 3DS anyway. I dunno how anyone can stand that tiny screen and low res 3D for so long.

Deliberate hatred for the player. The only way to beat it is to have as little fun as you can.
No, not really. Imagine Ultima if Richard Garriot tried as hard as he could to have his game not sell.
It's an entire sub genre at this point. I blame Berserk.