Dragon Quest IX Battle System Revealed

1up is reporting on the combat system for the upcoming Dragon Quest IX . Rumoured to be a departure from the classic turn-based style, the DS title is now confirmed to be much more like previous iterations of the game than initially thought. "Enemies will be visible on the field, and players will enter into battle once in contact with them. Like Dragon Quest VIII, the battle will be presented in 3D with players selecting commands for attacking enemies, casting spells and others. In the case of multiplayer, each of the players will select commands for their characters shown at the bottom part of the screen. Dragon Quest IX will also be the first time players can customize their appearance including physical features such as your height, weight, face, hair as well as your costume. It is not yet known whether the costumes will be dependent on the class you have selected."

Comments

Re:I can't believe this is a "feature" in 2007

[Jerf]

Grandia 3 was released on the Playstation 2. (It may have been released elsewhere, I just know that that statement is true.)

The combat system worked as in Grandia 2, but was otherwise just... unfinished. The world map is simplistic, the story has some big jumps in it like content was cut out and smoothed out afterwards, characters feel unmotivated, and in general, the only thing going for it was the combat. The story in 2 was interesting, 3 felt abortive; not thought out, things happen for little reason unless you fill in a lot of blanks on your own. (Which isn't all bad, but that shouldn't be required.)

Also, the main villain's motive for destroying the world is pretty pathetic. (This is not an uncommon problem, though.)

And where in Grandia 2 if you're not careful you can break the combat system (I find that about halfway through, if you stack all the fire bonuses on one person, you can take out the entire combat field with one area-effect fire spell, which is cheap enough that you can use it all day), in Grandia 3 you had to do such things to survive. Initially, I thought that was because they realized they had a problem, but in hindsight, I think it's because entire sections where you were "supposed" to level up were cut. The end result was, at least for me, actually a smoother difficulty progression than in Grandia 2, but I think that was accidental and a newbie probably wouldn't have experienced it that way.

If somebody were to have a choice of starting with 2 or 3, I'd say 2 in a heartbeat. Preferably on the Dreamcast, but I'd take even the slightly choppy PS2 version over Grandia 3. Very sad.

Screw "Revolutionary"

[Valdrax]

Some of us are quite frankly tired of the old-school, turn-based combat systems disappearing in console RPGs to make way for real-time or "action" combat systems.
Hearing that the next DQ game will stick with a more traditional approach is a relief for some of us. The summary is a bit clumsy, but it gets the point across.