We done it, guv! We only went and bleedin' done it!
I was afraid I wouldn't be able to beat the game before The Hero dropped, because I've been very busy around the house helping my family this entire month. If I wasn't so busy I'd have beaten it, say, a whole week ago. But anyway...
That was a super entertaining Dragon Quest game.
- The voice acting was hit or miss, but all the core cast members (like your party members, King Trodain, Princess Medea, and Marcello (edit: and Charmles for being intentionally unlikeable lmao) hit it right out of the park. I'd put this set of party members right up there with the party members of Dragon Quest IV and Dragon Quest V, a high honor imho. That said I wish Jessica in particular had more focus and attention story-wise, aside from revenge for Alistair which she achieves, she mostly just gets possessed by Rhapthorne and then forgotten about after you save her. Yangus gets treated similarly by the story, for all fans love him, as we see his backstory pretty early on with Eight saving him, then his history with Red, then his strong dialogue and voice acting carry him the rest of the way. Angelo is the one with the most consistent focus throughout the game if only because of his strained relationship with Marcello and the church coming up time and time again.
- Though at first the skill point system in the 3DS version can be initially frustrating as it won't clearly indicate what level you should be at before it lets you allocate more skill points, it stops mattering sometime after the halfway point. I really liked the level of customization it gave while still including reasonable limits on who can learn what, it's like a condensed vocational system from Dragon quest VII and VII which is really cool.
- The difficulty is as fair as ever, aside from the Empyria fight which is understandable as she's a goddess testing you. I was biting my nails during the final fight against Rhapthorne.
- At first I was worried the exploration wouldn't be as intricate as previous games, because there are 4 major continents and they're pretty easy to parse, but the fact that this is the first fully 3D Dragon Quest game in the series means that just looking around and surveying the landscape with the camera is tricky enough by itself.
- The alchemy pot thing wasn't really for me, especially since it could be pretty easy to accidentally cancel completely out of the menu with the way it's set up in the 3DS version, but it was a good way to encourage me to hold onto old gear and see what I could cook up with it, which is a nice alternative to constantly selling old gear for money all the time.
- At first, I wasn't a fan of how, no matter how many times you cornered Dhoulmagus / Rhapthorne, he ended up getting away anyway, or you ended up letting someone die, but I admit it does make FINALLY defeating him at the end all the more satisfying.
- As an EarthBound fan, I enjoyed the gimmick of getting all 4 party members to use the Godbird Scepter in one turn seven times to destroy Rhapthorne's shield. You're not beating him nonviolently or anything but it's still a nice callback to EarthBound Beginnings' final battle with the Sing command there.
- The music is pretty good, but I stand by my opinion that the version of To A Vast World in the 3DS western port isn't good because of the high pitched sound that genuinely hurts and irritates my ears (here's a link to my original post about it with a timestamp for the sound). If you didn't hear the sound or you somehow don't mind it, more power to you I suppose, and the rest of the soundtrack doesn't have any high pitched sounds that hurt my ears so it was fine. I will most likely listen to the symphonic version of the soundtrack from now on as that was the one used in the western PS2 version which I couldn't play this time.
- Overall I think the strength of this Dragon Quest game in particular is how fully realized of a game it is.
- It's in full 3D for the first time, so you walk around and talk to realistically proportioned NPCs, realistically sized houses and buildings, caves and towers feel as big as they should.
- You physically open doors with a button press, and you even have to walk up to the doorknob rather than just any part of the door.
- Your ship and the godbird soul of Empyria's child are as huge as they should be.
- There's an in-story explanation for why King Trode and Princess Medea can't follow you everywhere, putting realistic limitations on why you can't always use the alchemy pot.
- You find a preserve of sabrecats and that's where you learn to run around the overworld faster, which is needed given how much more vast and intimidating the land is to explore this time. There's even limits on where to summon sabrecats, the party only discovered Empycchu by boat after all, for example.
- And of course, there are no overworld sprites of forests or towns or castles, the forest trees and towns and castles are just, like, right there, fully modeled and in view before you physically reach them.
- This game in particular is as thoughtful as previous Dragon Quest games, but the thoughtfulness means much more this time because it's a fully realized 3D JRPG.
- Gigagash as an upgrade of Gigaslash is hype and all, but it's no Sword of Ultimate Power from Dragon Quest VII.
Normally I skip the postgame to move onto something else to play after beating a Dragon Quest game, but since it isn't practical for me to buy a new game right now, and because internet is still out at our house, I'm going to dabble in the postgame for Dragon Quest VIII for a little bit and see if I can at least get that sword Eight is depicted with in Smash Ultimate before The Hero DLC drops this month or early next month. But yeah, I'd put this Dragon Quest game in my overall top 5.