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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."
Yeah, I didn't get that far in DQ2. I didn't really know where to go after getting the boat either.
It's also one of the truly old-school games. There's one area in particular called Rhone that is legendary among DQ2 players. (I'm writing this based on memories of watching my brother get through it, so take it with a grain of salt.) Now, to get to the Rhone Valley you have to go through a truly evil dungeon -- not only are the monsters considerably more powerful than your characters, but the dungeon itself is filled with invisible pits that you can fall through. The only way to get through is to map out the dungeon floors on a sheet of graph paper. If you're lucky, you'll get out of the dungeon after several tries with maybe only one or two characters dead (remember, this is DQ, so reviving people is the duty of the church), but you're in a forested valley with no idea where to go, and the monsters there are even tougher than in the dungeon. If you're truly lucky, you'll manage to find a shrine where your characters can be revived, restored, and saved. Healing is free there, which is kind, considering that the next several hours of game play will involve wandering no more than two tiles away from the shrine on the overworld map and attempting to defeat monsters for experience.
Anyway! I've played much of DQ3 for it's Gameboy rerelease, and didn't have much trouble with wondering where I should go. Again, once you get the boat there's suddenly a lot of world to explore, but by that time you've already traversed much of the overworld, so it's a matter of finding your way to places you couldn't get to before, and the clues are much simpler. Then again, this is the Gameboy version, so it might've been simplified, and I'm fairly certain that monsters were weakened.
That said, DQ4 rocks. Rocks rocks rocks. I played through almost the entire game via emulator, and only stopped at the final dungeon (mainly because I didn't want to do the necessary grinding to power up). I can't say whether or not I got lost in the game, for it's been quite a while, but I absolutely enjoyed all the chapters, liked the characters, loved the cart (if the cart is behind you and your party is wiped out, the characters in the cart enter the fray), and enjoyed the story, which it actually had. It's still old school, but it's terribly accessible and honestly fun to play, despite the graphics and old gameplay.
Old school console RPG: You visit every possible city talk to eveyr possible character and someone will give you vague instructions to your next quest. You will also have to level for 5h to be strong enought o survive the 6h dungeon crawl.
RPGS have come a long way
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