Dragon Quest is a series that maybe I just don't understand. Nintendo and SquareEnix are making the big push to finally get North American gamers to latch onto the teat that Japanese gamers have been suckling for so long. I think that putting the game on the DS is a huge part of that push: get the game out to the largest possible audience. I wish them all the success in the world, but I won't be buying Dragon Quest IX.
I given Dragon Quest so many chances, and I actually really liked Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest 1) on the NES way back in the day. But I've played DQ4 and DQ5 on the DS, and I just cannot connect with the game. Just a few days ago, I GameFly'd Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2, just to give the series one more chance to ensnare me and convince me of DQIX's merit. I was off to a pretty solid start: navigated my way through a little town, and was sent on a quest to a cave. I ran into a few random battles along the way, no problem dispatching the slimes and shit. Then I went inside the cave... and got my ass kicked.
And that's the major problem I have with Dragon Quest: the endless grinding. It was basically the first level in the game, and my party of 2 wasn't up to the task. Imagine if on World 1-1, Mario couldn't jump high enough to squash the first goomba until he stood and jumped a couple dozen times. Look, I don't mind grinding as games go on, in fact I often do it voluntarily. But having to grind from the very start: no no no. Sorry, SquareEnix, you may have lost me for good this time.
Oh well. My thirst for an RPG will hopefully be quenched by Arc Rise Fantasia later this month.
One last thing: the podcast will be up on PodBean tomorrow. We've had to switch servers, and I'm still getting the lay of the land on PodBean, but I'll get it worked out.
No comments:
Post a Comment