Hello!
I managed to pull off a glorious victory in Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of The Cursed King, and finally can put that game to rest for a while. The final boss battle was actually quest fun, staying just tense enough to keep me on my toes (most turn-based games suck at this, being heavily in my favor or that of the boss). The ending itself was fairly satisfying, and had the added bonus of being playable, letting the hero tear around a bit and revel in accolades and a bit of daring-do.
Now that we've reached the end of the main game (there's some serious post-game content, but I'm staying away for now), I have some final thoughts to share.
The Alchemy Pot mechanic is horribly flawed; I know I've been beating this poor mummified horse, but in the end this mechanic stretched what have been a 60 or so hour game into just shy of 90. Thirty hours devoted to grinding and keeping the equipment up to snuff. I'm grateful that they fixed it in the remake.
The Monster Arena is far more enjoyable, letting my collect a few critters and conquering other critters. The final rank was very enjoyable, with some fun cameos, spectacle, and a very tense final battle (with Hackzilla the dinosaur lumberjack snatching victory in desperate combat for my team, all hail Vanguard Critters). This was a side-game done right!
Speaking of which, the monsters themselves were an absolute blast, with just the right combination of ebullient silliness and danger to keep things fresh. They were part and parcel of how this game and the series advocates that video games should be fun. Fun fact: Most of the spells are funky onomatopoeia, and there's an explosive elemental set (!) named Bang, Boom, and Kaboom. Yes we have a game where you can spam Kaboom to harvest your foes if you so wish (or you can Fizzle, Sizzle, Crackle, Zap, Woosh, or Whack them). And you can summon a swarm of angry geezers to trample your foes!
In any case, it was an absolute blast; The Harvest Has Triumphed once again. I'm staying away for overwrought angst-fest RPGs for a little while longer, and playing Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny once again. Bring on the crafting!
Thursday, July 27, 2017
Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Slayer of Kings
Well, things are finally coming to a close in Dragon Quest VIII. One last dungeon and what may or may not be a bullcrap fetch quest is about all that remains.
It's been a fun ride, though it have some serious pacing issues going. The story itself and going from point A to point B is just fine, but there is one glaring problem that really slows things down and turns this game from a nice RPG romp to a numbing exercise in grinding and cash farming. That problem is the Alchemy Pot. It really isn't a bad concept; you toss two or three items in the pot, go about your business until it cooks, and ding! out comes a new goodie for you to enjoy. The problem stems from the fact that the 'cooking' time can be very long (it seems to be longer the more powerful/valuable the end result), you can't access the pot if you're in a dungeon so if it finishes you have to evac if you want the item and/or keep making things, and the pot's cooking pace is accelerated while running around outside of towns and dungeons. The end result is that you wind up wandering around some place or other for protracted periods farming mooks and waiting for the pot to ding. I'm grateful that they eliminated the cooking time in the remake.
On the flipside, every cloud has a silver lining and in this case, the silver lining is Metal Slimes, lots and lots of Metal Slimes. To wit: Metal Slimes are Dragon's Quest's traditional experience piñatas. They're extremely tough, extremely evasive, are immune to straight magic spells, and flee combat at the drop of a hat. But if you can manage to kill one of these boogers, you get loads of EXP, moreso if you kill the Liquid Metal Slime and the elusive Metal King Slime. Fortunately, an endgame area is just crawling with Smiles, including all three Metal variants. So while the Alchemy Pot is taking its sweet time giving me endgame equipment, I've been tearing through King Slimes and their gooey vassals on a cartoony regicide rampage. It's awesome, rewarding, and oddly cathartic.
The storyline is wrapping up fairly well, I just through beating the crap out of a possessed bigass demon dog with wings. That was the most tragic and hardcore game of fetch the stick ever. Then my party winds up in the local Pit of Despair while the one competent not-quite-evil guy turns into a megalomaniac Pope. Seriously, its like Caesar Borgia by way of Sephiroth here. You give him what for, but then the local Evil Deity of Evil manages to break out anyway, and doom is upon us all. You know, the usual. The Harvest Never Rests!
It's been a fun ride, though it have some serious pacing issues going. The story itself and going from point A to point B is just fine, but there is one glaring problem that really slows things down and turns this game from a nice RPG romp to a numbing exercise in grinding and cash farming. That problem is the Alchemy Pot. It really isn't a bad concept; you toss two or three items in the pot, go about your business until it cooks, and ding! out comes a new goodie for you to enjoy. The problem stems from the fact that the 'cooking' time can be very long (it seems to be longer the more powerful/valuable the end result), you can't access the pot if you're in a dungeon so if it finishes you have to evac if you want the item and/or keep making things, and the pot's cooking pace is accelerated while running around outside of towns and dungeons. The end result is that you wind up wandering around some place or other for protracted periods farming mooks and waiting for the pot to ding. I'm grateful that they eliminated the cooking time in the remake.
On the flipside, every cloud has a silver lining and in this case, the silver lining is Metal Slimes, lots and lots of Metal Slimes. To wit: Metal Slimes are Dragon's Quest's traditional experience piñatas. They're extremely tough, extremely evasive, are immune to straight magic spells, and flee combat at the drop of a hat. But if you can manage to kill one of these boogers, you get loads of EXP, moreso if you kill the Liquid Metal Slime and the elusive Metal King Slime. Fortunately, an endgame area is just crawling with Smiles, including all three Metal variants. So while the Alchemy Pot is taking its sweet time giving me endgame equipment, I've been tearing through King Slimes and their gooey vassals on a cartoony regicide rampage. It's awesome, rewarding, and oddly cathartic.
The storyline is wrapping up fairly well, I just through beating the crap out of a possessed bigass demon dog with wings. That was the most tragic and hardcore game of fetch the stick ever. Then my party winds up in the local Pit of Despair while the one competent not-quite-evil guy turns into a megalomaniac Pope. Seriously, its like Caesar Borgia by way of Sephiroth here. You give him what for, but then the local Evil Deity of Evil manages to break out anyway, and doom is upon us all. You know, the usual. The Harvest Never Rests!
Tuesday, July 18, 2017
Exit Light, Enter Night
Well, Dragon Quest VIII finally managed to surprise me today. It took some doing but I got my butt in gear and started playing this beast again. After beating the hell out of Evil Jessica (read, Frieza with a rack) and going through Dr. Zhivago Dragon Quest Edition, I managed to find a nifty little dungeon full of aquatic freaks and Aquaman-wannabes.
It all wound up being very enjoyable, and fairly profitable in-game. It was capped off wonderfully with a fight against a boisterous ghost pirate that obviously had a complete blast fighting my party. Then I wound up setting said to an obstensibly unreachable island chock full of palm trees, friendly natives, and more absurdly cheerful monsters to mulch.
Then some mystical shenanigans ensued, and wound up in this parallel plane where just about everything is black-and-white. Imagine a greyscale version of just about anything, then take that image and ramp up the contrast like crazy. That's how dark everything is here; the places, the things, the monsters, even the people look like they're made out of living ink. Contrast this with some things (mostly water features, torch flames, and treasure chests) still in their original vibrant hues, and it's actually pretty unsettling. Some of the monsters actually look scary when rendered this way. It actually works really well overall, and is a wonderful touch of eldritch weirdness to things.
On top of this, I've found some really fun and useful 'gimmick' skills and weapons. In most RPGs, trying to do anything except straight up lots of damage is usually impractical or outright suicidal. In others, breaking out the status effects and debuffs is the only way to survive. DQ8 seems to have found a happy medium, with things that give extra effects that prove useful here and there. They tend to be more of a happy bonus then a dramatic game-changer, but they're nice. Small stuff like a sword that returns a small amount of dealt damage as health (and skills using the sword keep this effect) that you can upgrade using the craft system to near-endgame stats, plus unlike most effects like that, undead don't reverse the drain (which is why Final Fantasy's Blood Sword usually sucks). Or a passive charm effect that actually goes off frequently, even on very dangerous mooks (but no bosses), or mass debuffs and insta-kill moves that are both economical and functional.
There's this sense of polish, and well, craftsmanship to just about everything. They've taken the basic JRPG formula that the original Dragon Quest pioneered and just kept adding new layers. It's still an old-school style grindfest right out the Nintendo days, but with Playstation 2-era production values and sensibilities layered on, making this game very much a happy marriage of both. Even better, since Dragon Quest has a major sense of tradition, Square Enix didn't try to reinvent the wheel like just about any other RPG franchise from the PS1 forward. It makes for a really fun ride for the old-school RPG fan. The Harvest Never Rests, after all.
It all wound up being very enjoyable, and fairly profitable in-game. It was capped off wonderfully with a fight against a boisterous ghost pirate that obviously had a complete blast fighting my party. Then I wound up setting said to an obstensibly unreachable island chock full of palm trees, friendly natives, and more absurdly cheerful monsters to mulch.
Then some mystical shenanigans ensued, and wound up in this parallel plane where just about everything is black-and-white. Imagine a greyscale version of just about anything, then take that image and ramp up the contrast like crazy. That's how dark everything is here; the places, the things, the monsters, even the people look like they're made out of living ink. Contrast this with some things (mostly water features, torch flames, and treasure chests) still in their original vibrant hues, and it's actually pretty unsettling. Some of the monsters actually look scary when rendered this way. It actually works really well overall, and is a wonderful touch of eldritch weirdness to things.
On top of this, I've found some really fun and useful 'gimmick' skills and weapons. In most RPGs, trying to do anything except straight up lots of damage is usually impractical or outright suicidal. In others, breaking out the status effects and debuffs is the only way to survive. DQ8 seems to have found a happy medium, with things that give extra effects that prove useful here and there. They tend to be more of a happy bonus then a dramatic game-changer, but they're nice. Small stuff like a sword that returns a small amount of dealt damage as health (and skills using the sword keep this effect) that you can upgrade using the craft system to near-endgame stats, plus unlike most effects like that, undead don't reverse the drain (which is why Final Fantasy's Blood Sword usually sucks). Or a passive charm effect that actually goes off frequently, even on very dangerous mooks (but no bosses), or mass debuffs and insta-kill moves that are both economical and functional.
There's this sense of polish, and well, craftsmanship to just about everything. They've taken the basic JRPG formula that the original Dragon Quest pioneered and just kept adding new layers. It's still an old-school style grindfest right out the Nintendo days, but with Playstation 2-era production values and sensibilities layered on, making this game very much a happy marriage of both. Even better, since Dragon Quest has a major sense of tradition, Square Enix didn't try to reinvent the wheel like just about any other RPG franchise from the PS1 forward. It makes for a really fun ride for the old-school RPG fan. The Harvest Never Rests, after all.
Friday, July 7, 2017
Nineties Metal Roosters
Well, things really have been cooking along rather well with Dragon Quest VIII. I've actually managed to take out the ostensible big boss of the game, and surprise surprise, he was being controlled by the real big bad boss of the game. To be fair, he still put up quite a fight, even managed my only party wipe thus far.
I must say, DQ8 is still coming across more like something from the 16-bit era; I'm still a bit on the fence about whether or not that's a good thing. It's slow-paced and very grind-y, but the exploration and combat is actually very fine-tuned and enjoyable. I can say that so far, I've been having a lot of fun, and it actually feels like I'm going through a vast land on a big adventure.
My characters have progressed well enough along to be a competent and deadly team. Even the moves and spells most RPGs like this would consider pedestrian have a flair, flash, and practicality to them that shows that the traditional turn-based formula still belongs with the big boys. I do have something of a heads-up on how to build everybody (forewarned is forearmed, and the skill system in place can leave you gimped in a hurry), but even so there's still a bit of discovery to be had for the experienced player. Even the 'joke' moves can be worthwhile; watching a grim-looking bandit like Yangus hop around and dance using boxer shorts like pompoms is something to see, freaking out the baddos and shocking them into paralysis just makes it better.
The crafting system is finally coming into its own. The one big negative (at least for me) so far for DQ8 is that it's pretty stingy with the gold drops, and the item drops tend to be very hit-and-miss. The upside is that when the RNG decides to be in a good mood, you can gets lots of materials to make fairly expensive goodies for resale, and the game has no qualms letting you buy lots of cheap curatives to make better ones, either for your own needs or to fatten your wallet. It has worked out pretty well so far, but even with this in your favor we have a pretty big case of RPG Economy Type 1 on our hands (Type 1--formerly known as Capcom RPG Economy Syndrome, is characterized by leaving a party impoverished after purchasing two-thirds or less of a given towns equipment upgrades without excessive grinding). On the other hand, the crafting system can give you great upgrades without loads of cash farming.
And the monsters are still loads of fun. Aside from the dinosaur lumberjacks of doom, we've got killer Zeus statues, freaky dog samurai that kill you with chain-chakram things, metal head roosters, evil beetle Mighty Mouse wannabes, and crazy Muppet marauders. And their miss animations can be hilarious. Watching some monstrosity slip and fall right on their butt is great for morale.
Well, I must be wandering off. The Harvest Never Rests!
I must say, DQ8 is still coming across more like something from the 16-bit era; I'm still a bit on the fence about whether or not that's a good thing. It's slow-paced and very grind-y, but the exploration and combat is actually very fine-tuned and enjoyable. I can say that so far, I've been having a lot of fun, and it actually feels like I'm going through a vast land on a big adventure.
My characters have progressed well enough along to be a competent and deadly team. Even the moves and spells most RPGs like this would consider pedestrian have a flair, flash, and practicality to them that shows that the traditional turn-based formula still belongs with the big boys. I do have something of a heads-up on how to build everybody (forewarned is forearmed, and the skill system in place can leave you gimped in a hurry), but even so there's still a bit of discovery to be had for the experienced player. Even the 'joke' moves can be worthwhile; watching a grim-looking bandit like Yangus hop around and dance using boxer shorts like pompoms is something to see, freaking out the baddos and shocking them into paralysis just makes it better.
The crafting system is finally coming into its own. The one big negative (at least for me) so far for DQ8 is that it's pretty stingy with the gold drops, and the item drops tend to be very hit-and-miss. The upside is that when the RNG decides to be in a good mood, you can gets lots of materials to make fairly expensive goodies for resale, and the game has no qualms letting you buy lots of cheap curatives to make better ones, either for your own needs or to fatten your wallet. It has worked out pretty well so far, but even with this in your favor we have a pretty big case of RPG Economy Type 1 on our hands (Type 1--formerly known as Capcom RPG Economy Syndrome, is characterized by leaving a party impoverished after purchasing two-thirds or less of a given towns equipment upgrades without excessive grinding). On the other hand, the crafting system can give you great upgrades without loads of cash farming.
And the monsters are still loads of fun. Aside from the dinosaur lumberjacks of doom, we've got killer Zeus statues, freaky dog samurai that kill you with chain-chakram things, metal head roosters, evil beetle Mighty Mouse wannabes, and crazy Muppet marauders. And their miss animations can be hilarious. Watching some monstrosity slip and fall right on their butt is great for morale.
Well, I must be wandering off. The Harvest Never Rests!
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