/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.5682891]

Why do japs like this series so much? Literally everything about it was done better in other games.

[Anonymous No.5682895]

>stop liking things I don't like!

[Anonymous No.5682901]

Just played 1 and was blown away by the dungeon theme changing every time you go down a level. Also a big fan of having a "bad end"

[Anonymous No.5682904]

>>5682891
>everything about it was done better in other games
like what

[Anonymous No.5682906]

>>5682895
Imagine using a cup and string as a phone and pretending that it's as good, if not better than. an iphone. That's what you retards are like

[Anonymous No.5682909]

>>5682906
at least the cup works

[Anonymous No.5682926]

>>5682891
>Why do japs like this series so much?
I've been curious about that too. It's a cool game but this is like their Zelda.

[Anonymous No.5682929]

>>5682926
zelda is also japanese, you know

[Anonymous No.5682931]

>>5682891
Some people's favorite flavor is vanilla

[Anonymous No.5682937]

There's nothing like Dragon Quest. The series has its personality.

[Anonymous No.5682938]

>>5682931
But final fantasy is the vanilla

[Anonymous No.5682939]

>>5682929
Ya and it's also historically sold way better in the US.

[Anonymous No.5682941]

>>5682938
No Final Fantasy is the literal flavor of the month

[Anonymous No.5682945]

>>5682941
>flavor of the month since 1990

[Anonymous No.5682951]

>>5682945
for most of the series each final fantasy game is different than the last. DQ only changes the pace and adventure structure in the games, everything else never changes.

[Anonymous No.5682952]

>>5682945
Yes
Every time you go back there, the slot reserved for that flavor you had last time is a different flavor, but in the same slot, and it's always some experimental flavor. Some of them are good, some are not so good, and the ice cream shop makes a big deal whenever they bring back an old flavor that people really liked

[Anonymous No.5682953]

>>5682951
>>5682952
Name me a bad retro Final Fantasy game.

[Anonymous No.5682956]

the encounter rate in DQ6 is like a nightmare

[Anonymous No.5682957]

>>5682953
2

[Anonymous No.5682959]

>>5682953
2 and 3, one's a rough experiment with horrible dungeon design, and the other is a poor DQ3 ripoff. But what does this have to do with what was being said?

[Anonymous No.5682969]

I'm currently playing DQIV on iOS and I just got to the Colosseum with Alena
When does it get good

[Anonymous No.5682975]

>>5682957
>>5682959
>snes FF
>bad
Jap shit doesn't count.

[Anonymous No.5682978]

Because I'm nostalgic for the old Pokemon games and Dragon Quest plays more like them than the new Pokemon games do.

[Anonymous No.5682990]

>>5682945
>>5682953
>>5682975
what's with the bizarre goalpost changing?

[Anonymous No.5682995]

>>5682990
It's not really flavor of the month if changing up the game works extremely well every time.

[Anonymous No.5682996]

>>5682969
when you play a version without broken English

[Anonymous No.5682997]

>>5682995
are you on drugs? do you know what you're replying to?

[Anonymous No.5683001]

>>5682997
I'm confused about calling Final Fantasy flavor of the month because they make a new game.

[Anonymous No.5683009]

>>5682996
Fuck you mean? The accents are the best part about this game

[Anonymous No.5683015]

>>5682906
Imagine making a bad metaphor and thinking that it somehow means that we need to accept your opinion as correct. That's what you are like

[Anonymous No.5683020]

>>5682891
They're fun, light hearted DnD like adventures that are just simple and pure rpg mechanics. No deep philosophical story on what it means to be human or if religion is evil, no huge flashy special moves that take ten minutes to watch, and no battle system which only opens up 50 hours into the game. They're simplicity is a nice change of pace from time to time.
>>5683009
Interesting, many fans despise the accents as they find them to be difficult to read as well as too extreme.

[Anonymous No.5683029]

>>5683020
The entirety of chapter 1 is literally just an hour and a half on scottish twitter
You've gotta be a real sour motherfucker to not get a chuckle out of that

[Anonymous No.5683036]

>>5683029
You've gotta be a stupid kid with no understanding of what the series is about to get a chuckle out of that.

[Anonymous No.5683042]

>>5683029
defend the incoherent English for a "Russian" accent, and I'm pretty sure Scottish folk don't type in their accent

[Anonymous No.5683047]

>>5682891
DQ did it all first.

[Anonymous No.5683054]

>>5682891
Grinding is ingrained into their culture. I actually think DQ has less grinding than the WRPGs that inspired it, but it really resonated with them.

[Anonymous No.5683057]

>>5683047
ahahahahhahahahahahhahahhahahahahahahhahahahahaha

[Anonymous No.5683060]

>>5682891
Historical context:
Tabletops and PC rpgs were popular but expensive and almost no one had access to them.
Dragon Quest came to a broadly available system, with mechanics similar to those, especially Wyzardry and Ultima. It was unique for the time, as no one had done those before (in nipland, at least).
The serie is extremely vanilla, so you never encounter over the top plots, characters or gameplay. Basically an ice cream that anyone can enjoy, anywhere and anytime.

[Anonymous No.5683067]

>>5683036
It's a by the numbers RPG with a layer of goofy campy soul on top of it. What don't I get?
>>5683042
Everyone from Alena's kingdom literally just talks like Ivan Drago, it took me a second to figure out but after that it was really cute and immersive

[Anonymous No.5683070]

>>5683067
>soul
stopped reading right there

[Anonymous No.5683107]

You know what you're getting into with DQ, and they're all reliably done well like a palate cleanser of the genre. And despite the reputation of being cookie-cutter, DQ manages to integrate interesting concepts without throwing the entire game off, like recruitable monster allies in DQ5.

They're also really solid at pacing and resource management as RPGs, at least up until they decide to give you some stupid infinite use healing item like the Sage's Stone.

[Anonymous No.5683114]

>>5682938
FF can't be the vanilla because DQII did the party system before it even existed.

[Anonymous No.5683120]

>>5682969
Chapter 3 is a little better because the goal of Torneko's section is a bit more interesting (or at least different), but the game doesn't really start until chapter 5. I like DQIV, but its major issue is that each chapter starts you at level 1 with a new character so it's like forcing yourself through the first boring hour or so of a JRPG five times before you can get to the more interesting stuff. It's pretty good when it does pick up, but it's a bit of a slog to get there.

>>5682996
Outside of the Scottish characters I like the accents.

[Anonymous No.5683146]

Ive seen this exact same thread with these exact same replies hundreds of times and Ill encounter it again in the future too
Im not alive Im in purgatory

[Anonymous No.5683427]

>>5682906
>an iphone
A rock with an antenna glued on is better than an iphone.

[Anonymous No.5683460]

>>5682891
DQ is nothing like any of its clones. Practically nothing was copied efficiently. It's hard to understand when you haven't played it when its clones look so similar, but in reality the diference is night and day. Don't think you know what DQ is like from your experience with other jrpgs.

[Anonymous No.5684136]

Done better in what sense? Maybe the combat, but combats in jrpg are easy and simple anyway. Maybe is the story? I think that RPGs provide more things than simple story and characters.

On the other hand, DQ excels at giving a character to every npc, making the world exploration enjoyable, I has a good control on how much time you should spend in dungeons, wilderness and towns.

I think that the best quality of DQ is being a round game while doing things like exploration better than any other game.

[Anonymous No.5684142]

>>5682891
wrong

[Anonymous No.5684151]

>>5683120
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mYoEpVXFbs

[Anonymous No.5684153]

>>5682904
>everything about it was done better in other games
>like what
let's face it: as far as the earliest installments (Dragon Quest 1 and Final Fantasy 1 on NES) are concerned, there's really no contest. Final Fantasy is the superior software. It's got better music, more items, more spells, more monsters, a richer world, and a more interesting storyline, and this is all just quantitative. Final Fantasy's customizable four-man crew eclipses the first two Dragon Quests' one and three-character parties. The expanded and improved turn-based battle system makes for a deeper game, inasmuch as the player isn't sitting around drooling for hours at a time while his one character trades 1 HP blows with a single monster. The concentration of early-genre bullshit is significantly reduced: there isn't as much EXP grinding, the player doesn't have to buy or find keys to open a hundred thousand locked doors, and never has to stress over how many torches he's got left. There's none of that "press the A button and select the 'Stairs' command to walk down a flight of stairs" nonsense, either. Dragon Quest may have come first and concocted the JRPG, but Final Fantasy made it good. This trend continues in the following Final Fantasy games that rebuilt the game again and again, the FF games are all radically different - while DQ is content repeating the same old principle to this day, and giving the player base the same menial task in every installment.

[Anonymous No.5684168]

>>5684153
>better music
stopped reading there

[Anonymous No.5684172]

>>5684168
DQ music is extremely forgettable and it all blends together. It's all generic orchestra music regardless of what's happening. I would even go so far as to say DQ's music is pretentious.

[Anonymous No.5684178]

>>5684168
quite without a doubt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMga6n9BW7M
vs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjPF3AwVPM4

FF wins.

[Anonymous No.5684184]

>>5684172
>DQ has bad music
Could there possibly be a more "zoomer that just learned of the series' existence last year" opinion than this?

[Anonymous No.5684185]

>>5684172
>DQ music is extremely forgettable
no
>and it all blends together
no
>It's all generic orchestra music
define 'generic orchestra music' you clueless retard

>>5684178
both battle themes are shit
dq has better overworld music

[Anonymous No.5684197]

>>5684178
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMga6n9BW7M
that is fucking embarrassingly bad even by NES standards. FF battle theme is way better.

[Anonymous No.5684236]

>>5682891
You can't deny nostalgia is a huge factor for its popularity. They're fun and simple, easy to pick up and play and usually the only thing stopping you from winning is just how much time you have to grind. The stories are simple and have that old fashioned childhood fantasy vibe to it. It doesn't try to be anything gigantic and epic. Just your standard plotlines with personality. The characters and mood draw you in, not much else.

Also Dragon Quest 5.

[Anonymous No.5684390]

Except along the way FF stopped being a turn based actual JPRG. Now it's MMO shit and RPG/action. DQ has stayed true to the original form.

[Anonymous No.5684394]

>>5682906
>iphone
at least a cup and string will complete calls all the time, every time

[Anonymous No.5684403]

>>5684390
DQ has an mmo though

but in its defense, its actually somewhat original as opposed to FF11 being an Everquest clone and FF14 being a World of Warcraft clone

[Anonymous No.5684470]

>>5682906
At least cup and string doesn't have planned obsolescence

[Anonymous No.5684569]

dragon quest was the first RPG to target kids, that was part of its early appeal in japan. It had A popular shonen jump artist doing character designs and cover art, and the story featured a young hero. Gameplay was simple and very casual friendly.

Up until that point RPGs were very western focused with older heroes (often Conan style warriors), a more strict following of D&D "rules", and they were on personal computers and targeted much older and experienced players. Japanese had foreign ports of ultima, wizardry, and black onyx, but none of these were kid friendly games. Black onyx was the first hit RPG in japan on the MSX, at 150,000 copies, but again that was an older audience.

Druaga was an adventure game, but it felt way more "japanese" than the western ports. Dragon quest took the druaga asthetic and paired it with somewhat simplified western RPG mechanics. Hydlide tried to do this too but it remained a pseudo action RPG with dogshit mechanics. Dragon quest was just the perfect mix of shounen art, simple stoy, basic mechanics, and the perfect 'babbys first RPG" for Japan at the time.

[Anonymous No.5684631]

>>5684153
I do think that there is a kind of tone and style to Dragon Quest games that no other RPG quite itches (kind of like how a million and one modern indie games want to be Earthbound without ever quite getting it right.) that being said someone would have to be fucked in the head to say that Dragon Quest I or II are better than Final Fantasy.

Of course Final Fantasy had the benefit of looking at DQI&II and using them as a template to improve upon. DQIII came out roughly the same time as FF so those two are more contemporaries for comparison and I would argue DQIII is the better game although a fair case could be made for either. I don't think that throughout the rest of the 8 and 16 bit generations either series eclipsed each other in scope or ambition. It really wasn't until the Playstation where Dragon Quest fell into a the habit of being overly beholden to tradition, but when you're number one you have the unenviable position of having to appease traditionalists. I think the merger made that worse because Square Enix has the two biggest franchises so they dictate one to be the experimental franchise and one to be the traditional one so for better or worse it doesn't have to innovate to compete, but it stays the course as a company mandated niche in the market. That being said to get a polished big budget traditional JRPG every four of five years isn't such a terrible thing.

[Anonymous No.5684634]

>>5682891
Finally, someone has the balls to say it

[Anonymous No.5684651]

DQV was the only good DQ.

[Anonymous No.5684664]

It's so vanilla it hurts

Everyone tried to praise and sell V on me, played it. Felt unimpressed as fuck. I guess it was better than your standard SNES era RPG (talking about BoF, Lunar, Lufia I, among others) but honestly it wasn't that good

Played a couple other entries and probably the one I liked the most was the first. You pick it up, play, and it feels timeless. Length is perfectly fine

[Anonymous No.5684693]

>>5682891
>japs like this series so much
Endless grinding for negligible improvements over 80 hours? Fuck, that's basically a week in the life of a Japanese Salaryman.

[Anonymous No.5684703]

>it's another "dipshits who have only played 2 jrpgs in their life try to explain why dragon quest is a bad franchise" thread

[Anonymous No.5684714]

>>5684693
Dragon Quest is actually
>grind for literally five minutes for freaking amazing shit that you'll never ever again see in a fucking vieo game to happen
Anyone who's carried the princess from the dragon's lair or went through that cave with Bianca (you know which one) knows why everyone loved DQ so much. You have absolutely no idea, man.

[Anonymous No.5684763]

Dq is fucking borefest
as bad as generic rpgmaker trash

[Anonymous No.5684789]

>>5684714
I think you deeply overestimate how good those parts were.

[Anonymous No.5684790]

>>5684789
Beating the final boss with your wife and the kids you've trained yourself from level one--it's hard to overestimate this kind of unique stuff.

[Anonymous No.5684817]

>>5684714
>you know which one
I don't know which one. The one for the water ring? That was nothing interesting. Also I married Flora so I don't know what else you might be getting at.

>carried the princess from the dragon's lair
Which one was this? I can't remember.

[Anonymous No.5684846]

>>5684790
To me it didn't have much impact.

[Anonymous No.5684859]

>>5684790
Was kind of a pain in the ass, since your wife and daughter generally suck ass because >DQ casters of yesteryear.
I remember distinctly that I liked to use the son, but otherwise third-wheeled a Slime Knight since they're like a lite version of Erdrick: heavy gear, good access to support magic, and stocky to take hits more often than not.

[Anonymous No.5684872]

>>5684859
>DQ casters of yesteryear
what does this even mean? Daughter is a solid mage, and Bianca was never that great at it if that was your wife. Flora is the best mage.
Then Debora is supposed to be a joke character yet she's the heaviest hitter in the whole series when you get her nails.

[Anonymous No.5685573]

>>5684872
>bitch Italian wife hits the hardest
what did they mean by this?

[Anonymous No.5685653]

I've never played a substantial amount of any DQ, so I don't go around telling people I think it sucks, because in actuality I don't have an opinion at all. Part of the reason for this is because there is like, no salient entry point to the series. I'm sure every DQ fan has their opinion on where that point is and the majority might even be able to agree on one or two that are good for this, but I guess more importantly there's nothing that really resonates with me as an individual looking in from the outside.

With Final Fantasy — and again, I'm not saying it's better, I can't compare it to anything — if I hadn't played most of them already, I could still probably tell you some things about many of the games just because its traits just really pop out at you from screenshots, hearsay, artwork. It'd be easy for me to figure out which one might best align with my expectations.

I can name some odd quirks about different DQ games that set them apart from others in the series. Like I know in the first game you only have one character, VII is disproportionately longer than the other games for some reason, but they're all just sort of incidental differences. It gives me the feeling of a game that's not being sequelized per se but just being patched endlessly, or given expansion packs, or re-skins, or something. Like an MMO or a sports game franchise. Sure it doesn't seem bad, but I don't feel like it's a good use of my time to continue playing these each the same game as the last with slightly broadened mechanics, same Toriyama designs, etc.

[Anonymous No.5685709]

>>5684153
Except that most of the spells do not actually work properly, NPCs are virtually meaningless window dressing and the decisions about exploration that you make before you get the airship are arbitrary as you are corralled into linear SETTLEMENT->DUNGEON funnels that happen to be placed on the world map to advance the "story".

Yes, FF lets you pick classes and build synergy but the first DQ game places you in a sandbox where you are tasked with investigating the world to find out what to do next, you must find out about the world by talking to the NPCs and writing down notes, you make tactical decisions about what gear to bring with you as your inventory space is limited and this has a huge impact on surviving in the wilderness and dungeons earlier on.

Yeah, the numbers are smaller but that's simply because they aren't arbitrarily inflated to tell you about a supposedly epic game when DQ shows you that with the adventure it takes you on. I will give you the clunky menu hampering exploration but I guarantee that you will not be pulled into the world of FF by necessity whereas you would have drawn maps and taken down notes if you were playing DQ before the internet.

[Anonymous No.5685873]

>>5685709
This

[Anonymous No.5686094]

>>5685709
>Except that most of the spells do not actually work properly
Only the NES version had the spells that were bugged (SABR, TMPR, LOCK are fucked).

The other "bad" aspects of the magic system is that they followed first edition players handbook too literally and had the same imbalance that real AD&D spells had.

In AD&D there is a lower level spell called "hold person" that is a great stun spell and can work regardless of enemy hp, and a 7th level "power word stun" that has a hp cap (and this is why the FF version of the spell also has a hp cap). Then there is the 8th level time stop, which is aoe paralysis in its FF version. Three different paralysis spells in one simple RPG seems excessive but thats because it was literal with the way it copied the spells from the TSR players handbook.

The same is true with the various redundant death spells in FF. They have the lower level cloudkill(BANE) and like in AD&D this is poison based, so in FF enemies immune to poison are immune to it. Next is the unreliable Death spell (RUB) at 6th level, followed by flesh to stone(BRAK) as a level 7 death spell based on petrification, and then power word kill (KILL) at level 8, which again has the hp limitation from AD&D. Also at level 8 is Imprisonent(Zap) which is a death spell that banishes the enemy to another dimension. There is also the Earthquake spell(QUAKE) hat causes instant death from falling into a crack, and is a death spell that works on enemies resistant to death in both AD&D and FF. That is six variations of death spells, all following the TSR rules and limitations. Very, very redundant.

All this redundant stuff makes FF a very authentic first edition AD&D game but it leaves the spell system very fucked because it is so faithful to a flawed pen and paper rule set.

[Anonymous No.5686127]

>>5686094
so you mean to tell me that they just cut and pasted spells from a D&D book without even considering any balance or usefulness?
I can't think of many useless spells or abilities in DQ compared to all the junk in FF.

[Anonymous No.5686139]

>>5686127
It is. FF1 is 100% copy-paste spells from the first edition players handbook, and monsters from monster manual (except warmech).

More example is the spell structure. Burning hands is the levle 1 fire spell, and shocking grasp is lit. at level 3 you get fireball and lightning bolt. Level 4 is cono of cole (blizzard or whatver it is called). Later on you get chain lightning and meteor shower. Almost al lthe spell levels match, except FF only goes to 8th tier magic and AD&D goes to 9th, so some later ones are shuffled.

cleric/WHM spells are the same with cure light wounds, cure moderate, cure serious, plus the reverse of those spells (cause light wounds was HRM or DIA only they limited them to undead). Unlike magic user/BLM spell tables, the levels of TSR and FF spells dont match up. They also moved some of the defensive magic user spells to the WHM, such as mirror image(blink) and invisibility(INVS).

[Anonymous No.5686153]

>>5682891
>Literally everything about it was done better in other games.
What game released around the time of DQIV did better than it did in presenting a compelling cast of characters and story?

I'll even give you the list to chose from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_role-playing_video_games:_1988_to_1989

The only thing that even comes close is Ultima V which was a different country to a different audience on a different system. I'd argue DQIV was better at storytelling, but in terms of overall experience the two games are close enough that it's hard to say one was unequivocally "better."

[Anonymous No.5686159]

>>5686139
This is also the reason FF has Trex and the allosaurus. for reasons unknown TSR also included these specific dinousaurs in the first edition monster manual, and therefore they had to be in FF1.

Final fantasy 1 was a better AD&D game than virtually any real licensed product from TSR was at the time. It wasn't until SSI goldbox games came out that real AD&D ruleset was implemented that matched FF level of detail, and few if any matched the entire beastiary from monster manual the way FF did (at least not until baldurs gate a decade later).

[Anonymous No.5688086]

>>5682891
>>5682906
>>5682939
>OP is a seething smashturd
begone

[Anonymous No.5688430]

>>5686127
Kawazu designed the entire battle system behind FF and FF2, being a massive tabletop nerd and being disappointed with how other JRPGs of the time failed to properly implement a lot of standard tabletop mechanics he took it upon himself to make his very own Goldbox game by translating most of the old AD&D manual into a game.
Being his first RPG he obviously didn't think about just how much redundancy there is to applying a system that works more or less well on a P&P basis but doesn't on a videogame one at all, especially one that has so little classes to spread all that spell toolkit on, which is why FF ends up the way it is even without considering bugs.
Even something as simple as the basic elemental spells getting AoE versions is something taken straight out of D&D, Fire 1 more or less is Burning hands, Fire 2 is Fireball and Fire 3 is Greater Fireball, if you look at the SaGa games there's plenty of spells that are either literal D&D spells like Missile Guard or Summon Elemental or insider jokes on certain others, like Simulacrum creating a cute, cartoony snowman.

Now the sad thing is that while he did in fact learn a lot from this to the point that there's basically no redundancy whatsoever with the spell systems in SaGa games, the other FF designers didn't.
Worse yet, they went backwards with each game, think about how you had spells like Warp which allowed you to move around dungeon floors out of battle and instakill enemies inside of battle, those utility spells that you could cast out of combat completely disappeared after the SNES games, which were already simplified and streamlined coming from the first two NES games, even a lot of spells got reworked completely, like Haste.

[Anonymous No.5688468]

>>5684714
i think i just physically cringed.......

[Anonymous No.5688692]

>>5686159
>(at least not until baldurs gate a decade later
BG was all gibberlings, kobolds and bandits. Absolutley not even a tenth as good an exhibition of the D&D beatiary as FF1.

[Anonymous No.5688739]

>Why?
Akira Toriyama.
His art was god tier in the late 80's to mid 90's.

[Anonymous No.5688743]

>Party of Fighter, Priest and Sage (f. Goof-Off) is around level 36
>tempted to class change Priest into Fighter but not sure what to set Fighter to
>Kind of want a Soldier pretty badly as well
I'm playing the SFC remake, so there's actually good armor available to the Fighter. I feel like Fighter -> Soldier would be incredible even without spells

[Anonymous No.5688836]

>>5688692
baldurs gate 1&2 combined, I should have said. BG1 had the lower level stuffs, and BG2 had the beholders, liches, demons, dragons, etc. But even together you are right in that they didnt have everything and the kitchen sink the way FF1 did.

Aside from copying the entirety of MM1, I believe they only pulled two monsters from the 1983 monster manual 2: The pyrolysk and the dracolisk. Unlike a cockatrice with its petrification, the pyrolisk caused spontaneous human combustion with its gaze. It was instant death by burning. When FF used it as a recored cockatrice. The Dracolisk was called zombie dragon in FF.

There were also a few left over monster manual entries that didnt make it into FF1, like the displacer beast (A big black panther with tendrils). That wasn't added until FF2 and was known as the Coueurl. Most subsequent games used the cat with tendrils as monsters or housecats.

[Anonymous No.5688847]

>>5688836
On the note of the Coeurl, TSR got the original displacer beast from the short story"The black destroyer" and it called itself the Coeurl.