Dragon Quest IX

[DANGERMAN]

Amazed there isn't a thread for this already.

It takes a bit of time to get going, lots of hitting A to get past exploratative text you dont really need to know. But after about an hour it starts throwing fights at you, which is a very good thing, and the pace picks up massively, with people joining then leaving your party, and new locations every 30 minutes. Maybe it's because I've played so much DQ over the past year, but it feels easy, granted if you just try ploughing through to the first dungeon then you'll take a beating, but spend 5 minutes levelling up outside the first village and you'll be unstoppable in no time.

There's bonus quests to do, some just exploratory fetch quests, some involve helping the dead pass over. There's the multi I dont think I'll ever be able to try thanks to the age of my DS, and interestingly there's the option to add characters to your party. You get a kid at the start who soon leaves you, and I'd assumed that one of the other story characters would join you before long and was happily plodding along on my own until they joined me. But it turns out that a the inn in the 2nd town you can recruit helpers. Annoyingly they start at level 1 and earn less exp than you do so will never match you for strength (until the point where it matters significantly less). For about 20 minutes I was regretting splashing the cash equipping them, thinking it might have been better to just over level myself, after all so far I've not faced a group of enemies greater than 2. But one of them in particular is rapidly turning into a bit of a tank, the mages have gained a decent amount of MP pretty quick too, so I'm thinking that maybe keeping them until we beat the Wight Knight might not be the worst thing

So far though I'm really enjoying it, it feels fresher than I was expecting, and once I got past the first hour I got over my DQ hump

[Sly Reflex]

Have you shown your dad how you have equipped your guy up yet? I hear it is one of the main features.

[retroed]

This is awesome. I'm about 9 hours in, and have just defeated Morag. I've been spending a while just grinding along the way, and it hasn't been a chore at all. My staple hate of jrpg's is the random battles, and I like that in DQIX you can always see where the enemies are so you can choose whether you want to fight them or not. Looks and sounds gorgeous, I'm having a great time with this.

The multiplayer is local only btw, the online is for trading goods or something.

[DANGERMAN]

Where's everyone else up to on this? I've just got to the point where I can change jobs, which I'll be honest I dont really see the point of. I'm sure the FF players will be able to tell me, but as it stands I've got a decent team set up, me as a mix, a strong attacker, a healer and a attacking mage. Aside from maybe changing my martial artist (my strong attacker) to something that can use a shield and has more damaging abilities, I think I need everyone else as they are?

Also i cant work out how to charge my tension, I can charge everyone elses, but my character cant charge his own.

Aside from that I'm still enjoying it, I've barely done any of the side quests and I've not done any alchemy yet, might have to look at a guide to see what I've got that can be used

[stoobie]

Where's everyone else up to on this? I've just got to the point where I can change jobs, which I'll be honest I dont really see the point of.

I'm at Bloomingdale which I think is about 4 or 5 main locations after where you are. Still really enjoying it. So far the only thing I have had to change jobs for is to do some of the quests. eg you need to be a lvl15 martial artist to accept a quest.

I've been finishing quests of as I can and have downloaded a few but I'm not the right level for them yet. Alchemy - not really bothered with. I needed some magic water for a quest so created that but apart from that nothing else.

Have you shown your dad how you have equipped your guy up yet? I hear it is one of the main features.

The advert is shit isnt it - although it is good fun to dress them up!

Sadly, I left my DS on tag mode for the week I was away and the week before and didnt tag anyone

[retroed]

I'm just over twelve-and-a-half hours in now. I am a level 16 Minstrel, and alongside me I have level 15 Priest, Warrior and Mage. I've just returned to Coffinwell after defeating the (third?) boss, and

Phlegming is a cock, and Catarrhina is dead

.

Still loving it.

[stoobie]

The priest in Batsureg is brilliant! The translation work on DQ9 is fantastic - so many bad jokes.

[DANGERMAN]

I've just done the stone mason bit. Weird section in that it's quite hard to get to in terms of monsters, then the level itself is quite hard, but the boss is pretty easy in comparison, especially if you've been back and healed before hand.

I dont think the attribute skills are as good on this as some of the others. I think its because there's more character types, but they dont feel like they make as much differences as in 8 for example.

And can anyone tell me how to use the alchemy pot? In 8 you carried it with you, but I can't find it in the menu for this one

[retroed]

Don't you have to go back to Stornway for the alchemy pot, same for the bank?

[stoobie]

Don't you have to go back to Stornway for the alchemy pot, same for the bank?

Yep - its all in the inn where you recruit members.

I'm stuck at the moment - Im not sure where I am meant to be going next and I keep getting destroyed by really hard hitting monsters so I think I have gone wrong somewhere

[DANGERMAN]

The priest in Batsureg is brilliant! The translation work on DQ9 is fantastic - so many bad jokes.

I've just got to this bit, you were miles ahead of the rest of us. I'm enjoying this again (not that i stopped, just moved on) and have put some serious hours into it over the last few days. Not that the game has been keeping proper track for some reason. I'm off to find out what the chiefs kid is up to, I assume he knows where the fruit is and what the monster is.

I quite like that the pace has picked up a bit. For the first few fruits you're spending ages levelling up and retreading areas because you're not strong enough to make it all the way. Now though the enemies dont spike as much and the dungeons seems to be smaller. A smart idea because there's clearly a 2nd half to this game, and too much time chasing fruit around gets a bit boring.

I've not really been bothering with the alchemy pot. As such I'm sure I could be making better weapons and armour than I've got, and could probably sell some stuff for more gold. I'm making do though, I think I'll grind a little more, then when I return to the village pick up some better armour with the gold I've earned before heading into the dungeon proper

[stoobie]

I stopped when I broke my DSi and then started again for a bit - managed to get all the fruit and move onto the second bit of the game. Then Pokemon Black turned up and I've stopped again. I will go back to it tho.

[DANGERMAN]

I'm on the 2nd part of the game now. Once I got all the fruit I did a few of the jobs around the school that suit my party. The rewards are new weapons, that for everyone else had huge stat boosts, but the sword for my character was worse than one I could buy in a shop. The spear mission nearly gave me a stress induced aneurysm, you have to kill 3 metal slime towers (3 metal slimes stacked on top of each other) with a move that can instantly kill them. Problem is the slimes are rare even in the place they're most common, your move costs mp, misses or does no damage 90% of the time, and to make matters the worse even if you find a slime it's very likely to run away before you land the hit. So yeah, doing that 3 times can take a while

The other thing that's increasingly bugging me, and maybe why 8 is a stronger game in some ways, is that because your party members are random, it's like they dont exist outside of battles. In 8 your party members were an active part of the story, I'm not sure it needs to go that far, but I'm starting to thing my character is mentally ill, fabricating friends to cope with the loss of his home

[DANGERMAN]

I'm into the final straight with this. I wont ruin things, not that the plot is all that important or interesting. But there was a cool animated cut scene involving a dragon, not the greatest thing ever, but nice that a game on the DS has something like that.

The problem is there's not that much to say about Dragon Quest, it's the same all the way through. You do get new spells, and I've been making use of stat altering spells in boss fights, but even at this late point in the game I still haven't got kabuff (a spell that raises your entire teams defence), and I'm pretty well levelled. It has mixed things up more in the past 5 hours than it has in the previous 40 though. According to the guide I read it's pretty much solid boss fights once I get through the castle

[DANGERMAN]

Completed this tonight, it's been pretty much all I've played in a week or so, so I'm glad it's done (and it'll leave a bit of a hole) but also makes the 70 hour clock seem a generous estimate.

I had less trouble with the final boss here than i did with 8, but I think there's a few reasons for that. I was slightly higher levelled than the guy who wrote the guide I checked, but then I didn't have any of the equipment he had (bar a better sword). But what this does, that makes the last few fights a lot easier, is let you nip off and heal. There's no save or heal point in the last level, so resting up is a bit of a chore, and getting back to the latter part of the dungeon means using your magic to heal. But then the 6 boss fights (i think) dont need to be done all in one run. And if you're going back and forth then you'll get into fights and level up.

The plot remains a nonsense to the end, but it does let you carry on once you've finished. not that I will