Dragon Quest IX Sentinels of the Starry Skies
As a long time fan of the franchise, and the developer, I picked up Dragon Quest IX this week. I think this game has a lot going for it, starting with the timing. There really aren’t any games out, or coming out in the near future which really gives me a chance to actually stick with the game. I feel like I should qualify that statement because it comes with some implications, so I will. First and foremost these games are long, and the story is historically not enough of a draw on its own to keep me playing the game. On top of that games in this series don’t tend to evolve to the point where thats the key driver for me. What DQ is to me, is a simplistic approach to a tried and true formula of RPG gameplay that I loved and grew up with. One that doesn’t need to be cluttered with things like ATB, street fighter button press sequences or any other time sensitive, or non-menu based gameplay elements in combat… TO HELL WITH THAT, I love me some menu combat, and going to get a sandwich mid boss battle. I love the humor, and how the art style has evolved along the way. I find the experience often forgettable when I eventually finish it or simply move on to something else, I ALWAYS remember that I had a lot of fun with it while I was playing, and to me, thats all that matters.
I’ll probably approach this similar to how I tackled FFXIII only with less commitment to cause. This is mostly because of the DS, I really can’t get into long sessions with the device… I don’t have particularly big hands, but I do have fairly long fingers (at least I think thats the problem), I have trouble finding a comfortable way to hold the DS for extended periods of time so I often don’t. I also tend to be doing something else while I play DS, like watch TV, so I’ll end up looking away for 10-15 minutes at a time since I’m easily distracted.
Anyway, with all that aside, the game started out well, I especially liked the cut scene at the typical spot at the end of the introductory chapter where the plot is setup. It may have been the most interesting and effective cut scene I’ve seen on the DS so far, it really got me pumped to see what I’m going to see next. The humor is still fully intact, as is evident from the first foe I encountered when my journey began, the dreaded cruelcumber, which was a happy looking cucumber with a pike who’s motives are clearly to impale you… bringing a smile to my face already.
I started out doing a few simple quests, the gameplay was even more simplistic than simple since starting out the only skill I have is ‘attack’, and frankly even now that I have more skills all I ever really seem to need at the moment is attack. I’m at about level 10 with my hero, and I’ve only just gotten by the point where I could choose to fill out my party, so I’ve been grinding a little to catch the new party members up since they started at level 1. I’ve encountered 1 ‘boss’ character I guess at this point, and he did kill me the first time around because I wasn’t prepared for him, I was out of mana when the encounter started and I had also just moved all my healing items into the ‘bag’ so I couldn’t use them to heal. He was pretty easy once I had the ability to heal myself. I’m only a couple hours in at this point but I figured it was a good time to get things rolling over here.
