JRPGs

I always completely forget you can use the Vita like that, does it run decently with DQ11? that's a pretty sick idea lol

The items are super rare, I think I got 3 in 70hours, might be a way to farm them but it's not really something you find commonly. The way the system seems to work though, you'll generally get one pep per tough boss fight(if you're not stomping it too fast it'll do enough damage to you that you'll end up procing it at some point). For trash and stuff it doesn't matter too much. The hero also gets a skill to force pep on himself, good since he has pep skills with everyone else, while other characters only have pep skills with one other character besides the hero, so whenever someone pep if you want the hero combo pep you can force the hero and use it. And everyone else gets like 10-15% bonus to pep so it goes faster lategame.

Overall it's a pretty meh system. There's a few sidequests requiring it, and the early ones are especially bad but once you have multiple chars so you can swap them out to keep pep it's not much of an issue really.

Can be helpful to start a fight with several characters pepped up though, especially harder ones, some of the pep are pretty OP. Serena+Sylv+Hero = +2buff +2oomph +2 accel and hp/mp regen for like 6turns on everyone for example, and there's another 3man pep that makes a character invincible for I think 4turns and all attacks are directed at them(aoes and abilities can still target other stuff). The ones that do damage tend to be garbage in comparison since you're sacrificing pep on several chars and a turn just to do what generally is only slightly better damage than usual. Rab's aoe sleep pep is super good too, seems to stick very often, and it's just a single pep(need the hero in the party but doesn't consume/need his pep).

Chanur said:

I have had a really hard time enjoying JRPG's for several years now. I mostly feel like their story lines are pretty pedestrian and stuck at age 12. I used to love DQ when I was younger and want to get this but am worried I may not enjoy it.

Is the game okay or is it great?

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I was the same way. Bought a ton of RPGs and havent been able to get into any of them (witcher3, DDOS2, PoE2 etc..). This is the first one i've actually put more than 40mins into.

Chanur said:

I like your avatar. I might check this out then.

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I'll say, and obviously this will depend on people and stuff, that it's not really great. It's a good game, but it's DQ, it doesn't do anything new really, like at all.

Maybe for the series but that's cause so many of the systems were archaic shit, so you have fast travel in a decent way now and you can use various types of saves and you can carry more items and whatever other shit but it's still very much DQ, you find out you're a Hero in the first 5mins and go on a quest to save the world, visiting town after town which each have their own little story and you solve them, acquiring new companions along the way and SOMETIMES learning very little about your main quest, until you've done that a lot and actually get to the meat of the story for a little while, then you resume the sidequest-ish progression that advances the main story bit by bit.

It's a long game(50-70hours for the main story depending on side activities and wether you play normal or hard difficulty) and it's fairly repetitive in its execution, although the world, characters and story are pretty charming and interesting at times.

The combat is basically your very average turn based JRPG combat, you can switch characters so that's nice and the characters can be built in several ways to make them do different things so that's also interesting, but there's nothing new here either.

The music ranges from shit to ok, definitely the worst part of the game, which is fairly standard for DQ due to an issue with terrible license rights and their insistence on basically reusing the same music from game to game with only a few original pieces or arrangements.

The graphics on the other hand are fucking amazing, this is easily one of the best looking game that keeps an "anime" look, it's detailed and well animated, some scenes are just really awesome to look at and the actual cutscenes are fabulous(there's not many mind you, mostly for the main story bits).

If you haven't liked any of the recent RPGs or whatever though I'm not sure you'll like this one. Maybe, but again this depends on people, it's hard to tell. It's a good game and I'd recommend it to someone who wants to play a JRPG, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who doesn't, it doesn't transcend the genre limitations, doesn't even try really, it's just content being a good JRPG.

Finished DQ11, 140ish hours, pretty much all done other than stupid ingame achievements. Quite a lot of content in this one, even if you don't do as much side shit as I did. Post game especially was very meaty, it's like 25% of the entire game and felt more like 3rd part than postgame.

turbo said:

Dragon Warrior 1 was the first game i ever got and beat if memory serves me right before FF1 when i was a little kid. Got a free DW1 when I used my birthday money to get a Nintendo Power subscription so killing slimes was one of my first RPG experiences ever. Loved all the dragon warrior games but never played anything on hand helds/Wii etc.

On this one do you just have 4 characters or do you get to pick? Do you pick classes for them or get to multi-class etc? Considering picking up for old time sakes but also don't want to waste the time if the character development doesn't have some options.

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There's 8 characters total, you can only have 4 in combat, but you can swap in combat at any time(although they'll start with their turn spent, so they can't act until the turn after). They come with predetermined "classes", in the form of a skill tree you put points in to get specific skills, separated in various part. Each character has multiple parts to their tree however so they can fit more than one role, usually.

For example your healer can also equip spears and do damage like that, the caster can equip whips and do damage like that and so on. Most of it is a bit meh and you'll tend to prefer keeping them with their default setup(so wand/staff), but even then there's some choice since you get 1 damage caster, 1 healer caster, 1 caster that does both and then a bunch of other characters who can also be played as casters to a certain extent, and same for damage dealers you get a bunch and some can be switched from more supporty role to more active DPS and change their focus from single target to multi target. Since you can swap in combat you also get to play with most of them if you want to, I was switching stuff around a lot in post game fights to fit the situations. You can also swap weapons(or gear in general) in combat without spending a turn, so it's not so bad to pick some good skills for a weapon just so you can swap, hit with it, then swap back for example.