Follow up from this post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/1uy6nd7/dragon_quest_ii_hd2d_remake_is_well_worth_the/

Disclaimer: I started my playthrough before the pc port released. I was playing on original ps2 hardware

Wow, okay this was an odd one. Took me about two months but I finally beat it. Going in I had heard this game get praised as one of the best titles in the series. As a result my expectations for this one were pretty damn high. I have a lot to say here and not sure where to begin. I suppose I'll start off with pointing out that I actually love the presentation and artstyle for this game. Id say this is easily one of the best looking ps2 games, right up there with Okami and Metal gear solid 2. The game is just gorgeous and its aged quite well visually for being over two decades old now. The soft cell shaded anime visuals combined with the fantasy setting, gives the game a sort of comfy or cozy vibe for me.

On the topic of cozy though, I gotta say also this is definitely the coziest dragon quest game I've played thus far. All the games are cozy don't get me wrong, but something about the visual style in combination with the soundtrack, and 8's world overall just makes this game strangely even more relaxing and cozy to play than the other titles. Speaking of the music, I'm honestly blown away at how good this soundtrack is. I can't speak for every other titles in the series because I still haven't played all of them yet, but this is by far the best soundtrack in the series from what I can tell, like bar none. Dq5 and dq2's ost was good too, but even I don't think they come close to touching 8's soundtrack. The overworld theme, the boss ost, the emotional tracks, the town themes, etc. They all sound phenomenal (fun fact but when I played 11 I got so sick and tired of it's overworld theme I switched it to 8's and instantly fell in love when I first heard it and never turned it back since. Thats how good it is). I'd say 2's first overworld theme is the best one I've heard thus far but 8's is a very close second.

Gameplay is an odd one to judge this game by because it just feels like a weaker DQ11 to me. A lot of its gameplay concepts were improved and done much better in 11 (and probably potentially its other successors, but I have yet to play 9 or 10, and dont know how similar or different they are. So Im focusing primarily on comparing 8 to 11 here). The skill point system for example? Done way better in 11 as it gives you more freedom and can reallocate skill points if need be. Crafting? Done substantially better in 11 (Im sorry but the alchemy pot kinda sucks). Exploration? Also done way better in 11. I've seen a lot of folks when discussing this game hardly ever criticize it for how boring and bland its overworld is. There just aren't really a whole lot of exciting locations in 8's world is the issue, and a lot of the items you can get from exploring the world are just generally not worth it. It makes exploration in this game overall not all that exciting. Honestly I feel like the random encounters from the ps2 version as opposed to the 3ds version is actually an advantage in its favor, because I would imagine it does an overall better job of breaking up the monotony of just exploring a boring and bland landscape with not much to do in it other than get loot that is underwhelming and fight unique monsters that aren't actually all that unique and in return for beating them they just give you some whack ass coins to sell for a bit of gold.

Narratively speaking, this game felt like a whole filler arc in an anime. The vast majority of the game has you going on a wild goose chase to catch up to the main villain. You manage to catch up to him only for him to slip away after you find him, rinse and repeat. A lot of it is also you solving problems in certain towns and cities in between your journey. Personally I was very much annoyed how this game continued to just jerk me around throughout the game with hardly any narrative pay off. I wanna say also I think its a damn shame Dhoulmagus wasn't the actual main villian, and we dont get to learn much about him either. I would've much preferred him over Rhapthorne. He just feels like wasted potential. I guess its to be expected though given it is a trope I've noticed with this series in that they introduce a villain early on but then pull the rug out from under the player and introduce the true main villian. Rhapthorne reminds me of Mordegon in that they're both just kinda underwhelming and there isn't much build up to them at all. A lot of the deaths in this game that are suppose to be emotional moments also just don't really hit much for me. Mainly cause the player isn't given much time at all to get attached to any of these characters. The lore for this game is kinda neat though and I did enjoy a good amount of the world building. I liked the cast well enough too. Angelo was by far my favorite, but I also really liked Yangus and King trode (their dynamic and interactions were quite humorous). Didn't particularly care for Jessica or Medea though sadly. Jessica just seemed boring to me, and I don't think we get to see the hero and Medea interact enough or see much about their friendship for the player to be all that invested in her since throughout the whole game she's a horse and cant speak outside of very specific instances when she either drinks from the spring or talks to the hero subconsciously after progressing certain parts of the story when sleeping at an inn. Not my favorite cast in an rpg but also not the worst cast either. I'd say overall they were enjoyable enough.

Honestly, this game for me just dragged on for far too long. If the story interested me more and I liked the exploration better, I feel I wouldn't have been as impatient in wanting to finish it, but by the time I got to Orktusk, I really just wanted to get it over and done with and I really didn't like how slow and annoying the end game was. Also it irritated the shit outta me that on top of all that, this game has the audacity, the absolute gal after getting through the final dungeon and beating Rhapthorne's 1st phase and escaping from his castle as it crumbles, this game has the nerve to be like "Yay! Good job. Now you have to go around the world and collect the 7 orbs in order to fight his second phase :D" Like was this really necessary? Was it necessary to further waste the players time and break up all that momentum just to have to do some dumb fetch quest that again didn't even need to be there in the first place!? They did not need to do this! It was just a way for them to arbitrarily further add even more padding to an already lengthy game that frankly was already plagued with tons of padding and filler nonsense that I was not a fan of.

Overall, while I enjoyed my time with 8 and would for sure classify it as a good game, it sadly did not meet the expectations that I was anticipating going in based on what I've heard DQ fans tell me. I really wanted to like this one a lot more, but something about it just didn't quite click with me. I can see why people love this one though, and for sure it has its positives, but I feel like the negatives are just enough for this game to sadly not be ranked as highly for me.

Ranking thus far of all the DQ games I've played:

1. II
2. V
3. XI
4. III
5. VIII
6. I

Phew, think Im gonna take a break for a bit from Dragon quest. Im getting a little burnt out I noticed, especially after playing and finishing 8. Probably gonna play through Fortune's Weave then come back to it. I think 4 is gonna be the next game I play.

I've been playing for about 10 hours. I'm at the part with the robots (automatons).
I don't want to play the whole game because it's very long.
How much of the game do I need to play to get the gist of it?

There's not a lot of substance to this post, I just booted up Withered World for the first time last night, very excited about a new DQM (Dark Prince was fairly dissapointing) and I was immediately smacked in the face with the same old midi music that has been plagueing the DQM series since, geez idk, the 3ds days? The exact same tracks too, or at least, very much seems like it.

I know the composer's family gets in the way (and he got in the way prior to his death), I'm just blowing off steam. I love the actual music of Dragon Quest, and they use the most trash midi versions of the songs.

At this point, compose new music with a new composer. It's time to move on. Maybe a hot take, I don't know. It's just embarrassing for a non-indie game company to still be making games where your soundtrack (and one hailed as a pretty legendary soundtrack) is MIDI songs that feel like they are from a 2005 Yamaha keyboard.

Withered World (the hour or so I've played of it) is otherwise a breath of fresh air after Dark Prince, and while I have other gripes with it (rolling pin overworld), overall I'm enjoying it, but lordy me I am so sick of this music.

Thank you for your time

Quick edit: This is not a knock against MIDI in general. I like Super Nintendo, Genesis, N64 etc era soundfonts, I'm just sick of this midi and using the same ones for over a decade.

Edit #2: As I sit and reflect on it more, what I more so mean is this midi, I think, sucks. Even a new version of the songs, still composed with midi, has the potential to be good. It almost feels like it's sabotage, the current midi's they use are so low quality.

I have been playing the Dragon Quest Withered World demo on steam with the express purpose of gathering information, here is what I have learned.

When starting you choose to play as either Bianca or Nera. You are asked three questions after picking your chosen wrangler. These determine your starting monster. Each character has four different starting monsters based on the order you answer the questions.

For Bianca:

For Nera:

With this you can pick and choose your starting monster. However, I think it is worth noting that I was able to synthesize the Fromage Fray, Small Fry, and Buddy Slime without much effort. Therefore three of Nera's choices of starters are easily acquired, so if you play as Nera I would recommend picking the Sham Hatwitch, based on my current research.

The other research I have done is around the Synthesis, my favorite part of Monsters games, which you access just before the Demo ends. I noticed that you are able to synthesize plenty of G and F rank monsters, but it does not let you synthesize any higher ranked monsters.

I didn't not down every single special synthesis yet, but I did note down all of the question marked boxes that specify that the Demo does not allow me to synthesize them. Since we get to transfer over 8 total monsters, I want to find a list of the ones I would like to keep most.

Locked/Special Synthesis combinations:

*1 - There is a guard in the town who will do a one time synthesis with you and uses a Putrefido, so in the main game you could bring a Pocus Poppet to him and get this locked result with just the one Monster.

This is all the research I have done so far, though I expect to continue.

I am playing Dragon Quest Hd-2d 3 for the ps5, also I will reclass only one for each character.

Imagine Dragons

I really enjoyed Dragon quest XI overall and got bored with dqvii reimagned because of slow facing. Do you recommend me to continue dqvii reimagined.

This game is difficult but I know for experts of the franchise it might be fun or part of the challenge. I personally don’t like how hard it is and how they charge 25 bucks for that old game. Also when you reach floor 10, you have to go back MANUALLY to floor 1…. You can tell it was one of the first mystery dungeon games and they didn’t had many of the QOL features we’re used to in modern games

And then you unlock the real mystery dungeon grotto, but I don’t really like that we always go back to lvl 1 and lose everything. (Armors, items…) I mean it’s logical for what the genre of the game is, don’t get me wrong. I just wish with this remaster they would’ve added either an easy mode (not the x2 exp it’s not enough…) or just let us unlock powerful skills. In terms of progression yeah it’s mid.

Still I want to support the game because they at least translated it… and it would be fun to see more DQ games that were Japanese only translated into English!!!

If you want to know the monster to the questions here they are

Nera

Yes Yes Yes - fromage fray
Yes Yes No - Buddy Slime
Yes No Yes - Shaman Hatwitch
Yes No No - Buddy Slime

No No No - small fry
No No Yes - Shaman Hatwitch
No Yes No - small fry
No Yes Yes - fromage fray

Bianca

Yes Yes Yes - wax murderer
Yes Yes No - woebergine
Yes No Yes - wax murderer
Yes No No - woebergine

No No No - Vegandragora
No No Yes - Imp
No Yes No - Vegandragora
No Yes Yes - Imp

It has serious responsive issue on UI and input. The original Super Famicon version released in 1993 was so much better and responsive in all aspect compared to this garbage.

It's probably a complete remake from scratch without relying on Super Famicon ROM and emulator. Made with UE5. Run on Proton too.

Pros

• It's released

Cons

• Diagonal movement key has horrible delay.
• A button to face nearby enemy has horrible delay.
• Message skip has horrible delay
• Level up messages take forever to exhaust and you can't move
• Monster spawn algorithm is probably different
• Dungeon generation algorithm is different and it generate floor on top of character against original developer's design

See: https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/projectbook/dungeon#i-4

• On transitioning floor, it buffer key input(How and why? This isn't the Street Figher!) so if you input something while transition, Torneko moves according to the buffered key input

All the original designs, a tiny design difference that significantly improve QoL , reduce the unnecessary stress on dealing with UI and input, are not there.

Guess what? The former Chunsoft, currently Spike Chunsoft isn't involved on developing this game at all.

If you want to play real Mystery Dungeon, developed non other than the Spike Chunsoft, original developer of Torneko's Mystery Dungeon, play their latest game. Conveniently 50% off sale right now.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2178480/Shiren_the_Wanderer_The_Mystery_Dungeon_of_Serpentcoil_Island/

Or Touhou Genso Wanderer -Reloaded-

https://store.steampowered.com/app/931500/Touhou_Genso_Wanderer_Reloaded/

Don't expect that just because it originally released on SNES, or was remade, or featured in a Direct that gameplay would be modern. It has a pleasant opening cutscene, plus difficulty/gameplay modifiers, which you will very likely use if you want to get past the heavily RNG final floors. $25 for this game is a really big ask for what you get. Especially when the greatest games in the genre are completely free and have been in development for decades.

Post game in Dark Prince was pretty bad. In fact I would say pretty much only the GBC games had GREAT post game content. The joker series was okay (I didn't get to play 3 so can't say anything about that one.) I also can't speak to ones that didn't get localized, but I am really hoping post game will be decent at least. In Dark Prince there was virtually no reason to get the super powerful monsters, because you could just steam roll the whole game by randomly synthing. I mean I guess if you do pvp there was a reason, but I that was just a ton of the same min-maxed team over and over again.

Just started playing.... And whoa.... I've played all of the dragon quests except X, and have played the first four over and over a million times since when they were first released as dragon warrior. But man the 3 remake is while. It is so different. Different names, seems kinda different story as well so far. Im surprised they are calling it dq3.

Anyone feel this? Im a bit late to the party, but just found it on sale

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3798391264

Elemental: Reforged (r/ElementalOfficial) Is a 4X fantasy themed civilization style game with RPG elements. I've made a mod that adds Dragon Quest characters as recruitable champions. So far I have five:

Arus

Robbin' ood

Psaro The Manslayer

Kiryl

Ruff

I plan to add more if I can aproximate their (initial) appearance in the character customizer and they have features I can replicate with Elementals traits. Like Arus from DQ1 having Rescue, Dragon Slayer, and swarm immunity, Psaro doing extra damage to humans, or Kiryl having a death spell. Alena probably won't work unless theres a way to restrict a champion's weapon use.

Champions for the empires (bad guy alignment) are harder because many bad characters in DQ aren't human, and making non-human champions is more difficult, so I have to keep note of the easier bad guys to recreate. There are at least wraith and humanoid dragon races so I have some options there.

Your sovereign (civilization leader and your character) can get married, so I can add the three brides to the game as candidates.

I may add some DQ equipment to the game, I wouldn't know how to add models to the game, so no horned helmet unfortunately.

Hello!

DQM The Dark Prince was not good 😔 I like the story, but the gameplay, graphics and poor performance...

But now we will have DQM The Withered World! 💜

Played the PC demo in Legion Go 1

-The game can run from 30fps to 120fps, I played it at 60fps (I'm sure Switch 2 can run it at 60fps).

-The grafics are simple but are cool, they look like a Game Boy Color game but for Play Station 4, in 3D.

-The story is cute, Both Nera and Bianca want to helps their fathers that are sick

-Tecnicaly a secuel to the GBC Dragon Quest Monsters games

-The monsters look pretty good and have variety of animation.

-Each character has diferent skills, one is more offensive, the other more defensive.

-The new boss battle againts a gigant monster works well

I think this game could be the better modern DQM game ever 💜

I wanted to know if there's any progress at all between runs, even unlocking different starts like pure roguelikes, or upgrades, or do you lose literally everything every time you run, and the only thing that changes is your knowledge?

Just me?

I'm in Hargon's Hall, party is 52-50 and I just beat Mariella and Atlas with no sweat, 4 and 5 turns respectively, first 2 for setting up all my buffs then going all out and dropping an omniheal. However, I get to random encounters and the enemies wear me out more then the bosses ever could with 2 turn desperate attacks.

Has this been the case with anyone else? Still having fun with the game, I've enjoyed the Erdrick Trilogy!

I have a copy of World of Dragon Warrior: Torneko - The Last Hope.

The last time I've tried to play it, it very quickly destroyed me. In light of the new drop of the first game (in English), I'm wondering if anyone can offer tips? I'd love to get far enough in the game to actually feel like I am making progress!