/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10097327]

>japanese boomers shat their pants when they played this
I can't fathom how a game like this, in our age only touched by genuine masochists, somehow grabbed the attention of the entire Japanese general public and set the stage for the legendary dq3 launch. The first part is genuinely great but after you've explored with the boat a bit the game takes a nosedive as you never unlock proper fast travel like how zoom works from dq3 onward, the sun crest is nigh impossible to find because although the location is hinted at, you won't know you're in the fire monolith when you're there, and finally the end is literally untested and messily thrown together at the last second. The SFC remake fixes the balance but didn't address the crest shit and no zoom, and the mobile port which fixed those is ugly as sin. This game is such an enigma. Only other game like this I can think of is Ultima 7 which boomers laud as the pinnacle of retro CRPG when the awful combat and dungeons make it a masochist endurance test

[Anonymous No.10097336]

>>10097327
It's almost like DQ was still figuring things out and establishing what would later become the standard of JRPG genre

[Anonymous No.10097339]

>>10097327
DQ2 came out before MegaTen, Phantasy Star and Final Fantasy. Japanese console gamers didn't know any better. This game is pretty interesting aside from balancing towards the end. As for the cryptic shit it's not worse than Zelda 1 and 2

[Anonymous No.10097343]

That's heckin' valid, anon. But you are being needlessly hyperbolic and it shows your mind has been thoroughly poisoned by the internet.
Unplug for a month as you play through Dragon Quest 2 to cleanse your mind of those impurities.
Become the Japanese child.

[Anonymous No.10097351]

>>10097327
The soulful box art. My god, it even has a watermark.

[Anonymous No.10097385]

>>10097351
The original Famicom and Super Famicom covers had wonderful artwork, it's a shame they didn't believe they could market this internationally at the time.

[Anonymous No.10097390]

>>10097351
>>10097385
DQ5 SF is one of my favourite covers.

[Anonymous No.10097428]

DQ2 is pretty good, I like it about the same as Final Fantasy 1 and Phantasy Star 1
Mind you I only played the Gameboy port, not the Famicom version

[Anonymous No.10097440]

>>10097351
>>10097385
I will never play any Dragon Kusoge because of the disgusting phoned-in copypasted Vegeta character ""design"" by that tired hack Toriyama.
Also he absolutely cannot draw an attractive woman.

[Anonymous No.10097448]

>>10097440
>Also he absolutely cannot draw an attractive woman.
Nice bait anon, but I will NOT post Toriyama tiddies.

[Anonymous No.10097467]

>>10097440
Fuck of Final fantasy Fantard.

[Anonymous No.10097550]

Aside from the absurd difficulty spike near the end, DQ2 is a ton of fun.

[Anonymous No.10097561]

I played through the original trilogy on Switch and I don't understand what all the fuss is about. The second game didn't feel any worse than the first only longer and slightly more complicated dungeons with hole traps. The third game really blew my mind by how big it was by comparison though. Now I'm playing 11 since it's a prequel to the original three games iirc?

[Anonymous No.10097563]

>>10097561
Yeah you don't find that out til like the end of the game though. 7, 8, 9, and 10 were all stand alone, and 11 circled back to 1, 2 and 3 for some reason. It's good though.

[Anonymous No.10097571]

Slap zoomers. stir-fry zoomer's broccoly heads. Drop zoomers in the middle of a forest. Take away a zoomer's cellphone. Make zoomers do physical labor. Delete the social media accounts of zoomers.
TZR
Total
Zoomer
Rehabilitation

[Anonymous No.10097572]

I like Dragon Quest, but I totally get why it never caught on over here. You literally have to enjoy the grinding (which is most of the game), and I think some people (especially in the 80s, when most games were about sports, action, or shooting) just didn't get it, or understood why anyone would find that interesting. I imagine even the people who played DND back then simply didn't get it and didn't understand why it was an RPG.

[Anonymous No.10097573]

d'you think 12 will be a sequel to 456? DQ5 was pretty "dark" in some places compared to the other games since I heard they're getting American and edgy with 12.

[Anonymous No.10097579]

>>10097573
>I heard they're getting American and edgy with 12
Fuck that, I sincerely hope they don't. Shit has worked out for 40 years, no reason to appeal to the shit western market.

[Anonymous No.10097586]

>>10097573
5 isn't really edgy, outside of the slavery stuff, at best. I don't think any audience (especially Western) would ever find DQ5 to be dark.

[Anonymous No.10097614]

>>10097572
I've only played 4 and 5 but didn't feel like they required much grinding at all, granted I played them on DS so I don't know if those versions changed the balance. Are 1-3 really grindy?

[Anonymous No.10097640]

>>10097440
stay mad faggot

[Anonymous No.10097667]

>>10097614
Download a ROM of 1-3 and try not to grind. It's literally impossible.

[Anonymous No.10097782]

>>10097586
I feel like DQ8 was "edgier" than 5, mainly in the second half.

[Anonymous No.10097834]

>>10097572
I'm of the belief that DW would've done reasonably well had it not been released AFTER FF1 in the west. Despite the grind it's still a relatively simple game that's short and easy to get into and features a fair bit of exploration. Mind you that the first RPGs before DQ in Japan were action like Dragon Slayer and Black Onyx. Many RPGs around this time are noted for being grindy, but DW3 and 4 were progressively less grindier than the preceding games and their peers.

[Anonymous No.10097837]

>>10097327
Back when Toriyama's art was good; before the Namek arc

[Anonymous No.10097910]

>>10097428
The game boy port has some improvements, like making the prince of Cannock less useless or toning down the difficulty of the last dungeon.

[Anonymous No.10097921]

>>10097440
Yeah Toriyama's art sucks. Like many dumb kids I was a Dragonball fan and I used to draw his style, now the thought of it makes me want to barf.

[Anonymous No.10097935]

>>10097440
>>10097921
I remember being like 19 and going through my "Toriyama's art is bad and for dumb children" phase. You'll get over it, don't worry.

[Anonymous No.10097949]

>>10097935
I'm old. I had DBZ figures back when they were unarticulated bricks with glued on plastic wig hair.

[Anonymous No.10097962]

>>10097327
Helps of you aren't a slobbering retard.

[Anonymous No.10097995]

>grind
Isn't DQ more about your gear than levels? I always saw it more like a series of pilgrimages. When I think of grinding, I think of walking in circles just waiting for stuff to hit with your sword--and sure, you might do that if you're low on HP and right next to a town, until you're low enough to need to sleep at the inn. But not make a routine out of it. It's more like, you pick a direction because the games are fairly open, you go as far as you can, and when you notice that you're probably not cut out to get to the next point of interest, you head back to town. Use the gold you got from that pilgrimage to get more items to help you last longer, get one or maybe two new pieces of gear, etc. and repeat. I think this is what's intended from the fact that DQ halves your gold when you die--you're supposed to be accruing and managing it wisely. Just grinding, that's like, I don't know...going up against fastball pitcher and going for bunt. Like sure, you can, it's viable, maybe even recommended from a meta standpoint. But it's gay.

[Anonymous No.10098010]

>>10097995
>I think this is what's intended from the fact that DQ halves your gold when you die--you're supposed to be accruing and managing it wisely.
A lot of Dragon Quest's mechanics stems from creator Yuji Horii being a gambling addict. You're expected to gauge the risks and know how much you're willing to lose (money, supplies, etc.) before you take the chance. Which is why I'm not a fan of mechanics from more recent DQ games like in-dungeon save points and free HP/MP healing on every level-up, because now you can just steamroll everything with no risk.

[Anonymous No.10098102]

>>10097995
In a certain sense games like DQ1 and DQ2 are actually less grindy because so much of the map is open to explore that you have very little reason to stay in one place and grind, as opposed to modern RPGs where everything is so linear that if you get stuck grinding might be your only option.
The problem is that if you've played DQ1/2 before and you already know where everything is and what you need to do, you don't need to explore and don't get lost so you never pick up the EXP and gold you were expected to grab while finding your way, and end up way weaker than you're supposed to be.
This is especially true of the original releases which were balanced around the idea of being someone's first RPG.
I imagine a lot of the complaints about the games being too grindy come from players who heavily used guides and blazed through the game way faster than a normal player would. (That, and people who never played the games and are just repeating a secondhand opinion.)

[Anonymous No.10098450]

>>10097995
>>10098010
This is one of many reasons why I prefer older RPGs to newer ones. Venturing out, whether on the map or in a dungeon, exploring, mapping it out, gauging if my resources will last, retreating, gathering supplies and then diving back in, gaining more and more ground with each expedition. With modern RPGs, they're designed so you can steamroll through any area on your first attempt and they even had the gall to dumb down the level design to the point where it's basically just a curvy straight line which completely kills the exploration aspect. They completely removed the tension and anything that involves even the slightest bit of thought or planning, I don't see the point in playing them.

[Anonymous No.10098471]

Western DQ fans have always been weird to me. Most of them are DB fans who like larp to Japanese. I keep imagining a Westaboo pretending to like NBA2K

[Anonymous No.10098494]

>>10098471
Not like all those other Jrpgs that westerners play right.
T/N The J stands for Japanese.

[Anonymous No.10098512]

>>10098494
Normies play FF but for some weird reason DQ is only played by turboweebs

[Anonymous No.10098590]

>>10097995
>Isn't DQ more about your gear than levels?
It's both. And money requires grinding anyway.

[Anonymous No.10098606]

>>10097834
>had it not been released AFTER FF1 in the west
It wasn’t
DW1: August 1989
FF1: May 1990
Dragon Warrior still came out 3 years too late though

[Anonymous No.10098642]

>>10098606
It's insane how fast the medium was developing at that time. Meanwhile nowadays companies just fuck around for a year doing nothing like with TotK and don't care lol. Even stranger is how bad the translation was even with all that time, with a typo even in every battle

[Anonymous No.10098757]

DQ2 is the best in the series

also
>HoW weRe yOu sUpPoSeD to KnOw??!!!

2023 zoomers get filtered by jRPG aimed at 80's kids

[Anonymous No.10098807]

>>10098757
Wow it sure would have been nice if I could zoom to the cities easily so I could speak to everyone again if I forgot some detail

[Anonymous No.10098809]

>>10098807
Too bad, fuck you, travel manually, pussy.

[Anonymous No.10098810]

>>10098757
Working my way through the franchise now and I'm near the end of 2. I really like the big easter egg hunt concept. Are the rest like this? Or at least any others?

[Anonymous No.10098817]

>>10098807
> I forgot

That is your problem right here. Anyone familiar with 80's and early 90's RPGs knows that they have very little dialogue and what NPCs say is important. You should have remembered or wrote it down if you knew you were likely to forget, or in the worst case, used the flute everywhere you go.

[Anonymous No.10098906]

>>10097563
>9, and 10 were all stand alone,
X takes place on the promise land from IX, there Celestria created a bunch of deities who created the different races, the Celestrians served Celestria until she was defeated by one of her sons (dragon one) and the big baddie from 5.0.
This is all hinted not confirmed, similarly to the other games.

[Anonymous No.10099004]

Every time some zoomer posts a wall of assmad /v/-style text about how they got filtered by an old JRPG, I make a mental note that this is a game I should play.

Yknow, OP is probably a secret fan and just wants to have discussion on a game he likes

[Anonymous No.10099036]

>>10098810
> I really like the big easter egg hunt concept. Are the rest like this? Or at least any others?

Yes and no, there are similar moments in DQ3 and 4 but there is nothing quite like DQ2. The series got increasingly more linear with each entry pretty much, in 5 and 6 it's super ridiculous how you get a thousand different means of transportation but each only lead to 1 or 2 places at the most.

DQ8 does nail down the exploration factor in a way though, it's still linear but exploring huge 3D overworld areas is tons of fun

[Anonymous No.10099045]

It came out in 1987, what else do you want?

[Anonymous No.10099862]

>>10099045
I'm just saying if I were a nerd in '87 I'd never pay 60 bucks for this or however much it cost and keep playing tabletop games, reading books or watching movies

[Anonymous No.10099924]

>>10097336
>bro, that one doesn't count, it was a warm-up game
Why is the RPG genre allowed to get away with this?

[Anonymous No.10100190]

it looks like DBZ, that's why

[Anonymous No.10100460]

Why are endurance tests considered masochism but getting good at sidescrolling platformers isn't? Is this just an action gamer bias? Grinding is fun, fuck off

[Anonymous No.10100481]

>>10099924
it came out in January 1987, less than a year after DQ1. It came out before FF1, Zelda 2, Castlevania 2 and Mega Man 1, to put things into perspective. Super Mario Bros came out in September 13, 1985. So DQ2 came out just a year and 4 months after it. give it a break

[Anonymous No.10100553]

>>10097385
Yeah, that seems pretty common though. Localized art often loses a lot of the SOVL.

[Anonymous No.10100894]

>>10097327
>American zoomers shat their pants when they played this rip off

[Anonymous No.10100903]

>>10097440
>waaaah why isn't the protagonist drawn like Shinji and Conan :((

[Anonymous No.10100930]

>>10097995
>>10098102
I admit I might just be retarded or have a not good enough grasp on what a "grindy game" really is like, but as someone who's not really touched RPGs and played DQ1 a while back, I found myself grinding quite a bit. I did try to explore around and take risks on going to more potentially dangerous areas to gain more money and experience, but usually by the time I had narrowly avoided being assblasted multiple times and came back to town, I was still a long way from being able to buy anything of significance. Perhaps I just didn't understand the combat? Like I was able to discern pretty quick the real main point was to manage your stats, wealth, and items, but I felt going against more dangerous enemies was worthless most times because I couldn't like outwit them or anything, I could only slap my sword at them and hoped they died before they got me, maybe disable their magic in the final parts of the game but that's about it. I also found healing to only be useful between battles. Anytime I faced an enemy strong enough that healing seemed necessary, they would do enough damage to undo it in one turn, so I never felt I could strategize that way. What you're saying seems logical on paper, but I feel like I did spend a really big chunk of the game staying in one spot grinding enemies.

[Anonymous No.10100940]

>>10100894
No they didn't, because nobody bought this bomb when it came out

[Anonymous No.10100967]

>>10099924
Most genres took some time to find their footing. Doom wasn't the first FPS, Dune 2 wasn't the first RTS, Ultima 3 wasn't the first CRPG...

[Anonymous No.10101005]

>>10098807
>why isn't this game from the 80s extremely convenient and allow me to satisfy my instant gratification

what a weak excuse. Everyone knows to talk to every npc and exhaust all the dialoge. gtfo zoomer.

[Anonymous No.10101436]

>>10100894
Mother is faaaaar better than dq2 it's on the level of dq3/4. God I hate contrarians

[Anonymous No.10101445]

>>10098757
I should replay DQ2. I replayed FF2 last year, and that really made me realize how out of sync with the game the common complaints were. I wouldn't be surprised if that's true of DQ2 as well.

[Anonymous No.10101450]

>>10097995
It's not so much grindy as it is time wasting. Back to churches to cure status effects or revive party members. Terribly slow combat. No strategy or depth to any encounter, just pure stat and equip checks, so if you don't pass them you're forced to go fight mobs for an hour so you can.

[Anonymous No.10101580]

>>10097561
3 is what all the fuss is about: 1 is the first, 2 came before most RPGs (like Final Fantasy 1) and was far less than announced, then 3 came. Not only it was the biggest game of the trilogy, after you finish it you're back into the map of 1; it all happened in the NES so it blew everybody's mind. The cherry on top is that is very replayable.

[Anonymous No.10101659]

>>10097385

Turns me off that they mostly look like kids though. The Japanese fetish for children saving the world has never done anything for me

[Anonymous No.10101904]

>>10101659
That's why I have a DILF party only of mages and priests

[Anonymous No.10101994]

DQ2 defined what a JRPG should be. All the mechanics and tropes and expectations of what a JRPG should be came from DQ2, People in the west fail to realize that, but it's much more highly praised in that regard in Japan.

Before DQ2: Glory of Heracles (1)
After DQ2: Final Fantasy.

[Anonymous No.10102057]

It was fine for its time, but the sad part is JRPG gameplay barely evolved since then from grindy dungeon crawling, while the golden era of CRPGs added a lot of depth.

[Anonymous No.10102549]

>>10097351
Very nice... Let's see Paul Allen's Phantasy Star

[Anonymous No.10102658]

>>10100930
To give an example of what I would consider a grindy game, I'm currently playing the (non-retro) Arcadias no Ikusahime.
In this game there are hero battles and army battles. Both the heroes and armies have levels. Heroes level up with experience. Armies level up with money, but you can't level them up higher than the hero who leads them.
The army battles have very little interactivity, it's essentially just bashing your troops against theirs. Even if you have an elemental advantage the higher level army will win almost always. The game is 100% linear and you can't progress until you beat every stage (minus bonus stages).
The result of the combinations of these systems is that grinding is 100% mandatory. Progress in the game is gated by what level your characters are, not how good you are at the game.
This is what I mean when I say a game is grindy.

Dragon Quest is different because you have the option of grinding. Often times it is a very good option, and in some circumstances it might even be optimal (usually very early on in the game, when each level up makes a big difference). But you're never forced to use it, it's an option in your playbook.
Dragon Quest 1 is an extreme case because it's so early and basic. If I had to take a stab at what you're doing wrong it's that you're playing too defensively. The punishment for dying is much lighter in this game than most RPGs (lose money, rather than game over). You can push on very aggressively without being punished.
Defensive play is also a good strategy, but it's the one that involves more grinding.
I also would recommend trying to heal in battle more, even lasting one extra hit can really make the difference.

[Anonymous No.10104557]

>>10102658
Dq1 is arguably less grindy not just because it's non linear but also you can use snooze and fizzle against all bosses. Shame that they made them useless in tge remakes

[Anonymous No.10105867]

>>10097327
There was once a time when all the game had to do to amuse you was to be a game