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/vr/ - Retro Games

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4417043 No.4417043 [Reply] [Original]

>Glitches out the ass when DQ is so polished
>Limited character customization compared to DQ3
>Boring town design, most unique settlement is a dwarf cave. Doesn't even have NPC homes
>Bland dry script, most NPCs are useless or say nothing even interesting
How did this series ever take off when DQ had it blown the absolute fuck out? It can't be that it was successful in the west while DQ wasn't, because at least DQ had all its NES games localized.

>> No.4417067

Okay. Thanks for stopping by.

>> No.4417162

>>4417043
>FF had 3 games on the NES; only one made it outside of Japan
>DQ had 4 games on NES; all were released in NA

I don't understand why you are so butthurt.

>> No.4417210

>>4417162
I'm just more perplexed how the series took off and went to make better games when the first was absolute shit and outclassed by other games on the market.

>> No.4417216
File: 127 KB, 256x192, dungeon-scrolling.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4417216

>>4417043
They're both pretty pleb tier compared to the true king of 80's RPGs.

>> No.4417218

>>4417210
Side view battle system was more appealing than shitty first person one.

>> No.4417394

>>4417216
The true king of 80s RPGs is Xak

>> No.4417496

>>4417218
this, also uematsu

>> No.4417509

>>4417043
>Glitches out the ass when DQ is so polished

The number of bugs is unfortunate and pathetic, yes. But the game works in the ways that matter. The bugs mostly affect various subtleties of balance in the battle engine, and yet in a basic, standard JRPG (which is certainly what this is) there isn't nearly enough pressure on the player for subtleties of balance to affect much of anything. Like oh no a black mage is only 60% as strong as he should be or whatever--I mean who cares when he's still 1000% as strong as he NEEDS to be? And the spells that are glitched are boring status-effect ones that would either be too weak or too strong, and kind of unsatisfying to use regardless, even if they did work. The game's design limitations mask its bugs. The fame of the bugs here is just a stupid bandwagon effect. To a player who is unsophisticated enough to deeply enjoy a basic JRPG like this (and I certainly was that in 1990, so I ought to know), this was a fantastic game whose bugs were not apparent. Seriously, I adored this game as a kid and I never noticed a single one of them.

>Limited character customization compared to DQ3

DQ3 was not its competition. It came out two years before DQ3 in Japan, and two years before DW3 in the US.

>> No.4417513

>>4417043
Final Fantasy was pretty much viewed as a inferior DQ clone in Japan until they started changing things up with VI and VII. It sold well enough to be Square's top selling game, but it never even approached DQ's level. The first two games didn't even sell a million copies, FFIII, which was a vast improvement over the first two, was the first game to do that. Meanwhile DQIII moved over 3 million copies just on the NES.

People today think of FF and DQ as always having been the two biggest JRPG franchises, and that may be technically true, but for most of the NES and SNES generations, FF was a very, very distant second.

>> No.4417519

Because there was plenty of room aside from Dragonquest. Megaten also started around the same time.

>> No.4417527

>>4417210

DQ made you play as one lone guy, DQ2 was much uglier audiovisually, and DQ3 wasn't out yet.

>> No.4417658

>>4417496
To this day, corneria castle ost is still my favorite.

>> No.4417662

>>4417509
As far as video games go, EVERYONE was unsophisticated in 1990.

Final Fantasy was an ok story with ok gameplay, which was far and away better than other contenders of the time. It was great simply because there was no frame of reference to compare it to a better game.

Today, there are hundreds if not thousands of better games, so it's easy to bash it now.

>> No.4417775

Well, no other 8-bit RPG can compare to DQ3, and most 16-bit ones as well to be honest. It's just a masterpiece, if you were only to play 1 game in the genre I'd give you that one. So it's no wonder FF1 is disappointing.

>> No.4417807

...Does no-one in this thread remember that what we got in the west was a cleaned-up version of Dragon Quest 1? Go look at the original Japanese release- just as janky as Final Fantasy 1.

>> No.4417812

>>4417043
Yes, but the original Phantasy Star shits on both of them.

>> No.4417909

>>4417509
>It came out two years before DQ3 in Japan
Two months

>> No.4418119

>>4417216
This really was a masterpiece. If it were on a nintendo console you'd never hear the end of it.

>> No.4418124

>>4417909
I would argue that beyond square's already shit financial situation(a meme that kept repeating for them) they made sure to release before DQ3 to make sure it didn't have to compete with it.

>> No.4418237

>>4417509
What confuses me is people had to know half the spells and some of the stats did nothing but no strategy guides/magazines appeared to mention it back in the day. Maybe they just said "fuck buff spells attack or heal spells only" and I missed it. Still, spells like Temper are pretty useful in a patched game

>> No.4418373

>>4417043
Square has always been about graphics first and foremost.

>> No.4418376

>>4417662
Phantasy Star was already on 2 in the west at that point. Might and Magic 2 was on console and was incredibly sophisticated for its time. Plenty of PC RPGs were very sophisticated. Even by the standards of its day FF1 has little other than music going for it.

>> No.4418418
File: 7 KB, 320x224, Might and Magic - Gates to Another World (UE) (REV01) [!].2017-11-24 23.21.57.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
4418418

>>4418376
>Might and Magic 2 was on console and was incredibly sophisticated for its time.
When was MM2 released for consoles? The Genesis version gives me a 1991 copyright.
What makes you say it's sophisticated?

>> No.4418451

>>4417043
It was the 80s.

>> No.4418501

>>4418418
I may have been off by a year there, my bad. It is a huge open world with tons of enemies, dungeons, encounters, quests and spells. The instruction manual alone is a testament to the game.

>> No.4418936

>>4418119
This. End of the millennium remains my favorite game of all time. The first two are way too fucking hard though.

>> No.4418962

Still DQ sucks and is trash, boring characters, boring stories, no progression
through the games. FF and SMT franchises are the way to go.

>> No.4419694

>>4417043
Throughout its early years, SquareSoft's business strategy consisted almost solely of stealing other people's ideas. Many of its first efforts were inferior copies of other games, which might have been why the company performed so poorly to begin with. Final Fantasy itself was a Dragon Quest clone that never would have existed had Enix not broken the mold. But the difference was that it was the first time one one of Square's ripoffs was an improvement on the original. Not that that in itself was some momentus achievement, mind you. Dragon Quest is something like a Ford Model-T within the video game sphere: innovative, popular, and tremendously influential, but ultimately a damn jalopy.

I've taken some flak for badmouthing Dragon Quest before, but let's face it: as far as the earliest installments are concerned, there's really no contest. Final Fantasy is the superior software. It's got better music, more items, more spells, more monsters, a richer world, and a more interesting storyline, and this is all just quantitative. Final Fantasy's customizable four-man crew eclipses the first two Dragon Quests' one and three-character parties. The expanded and improved turn-based battle system makes for a deeper game, inasmuch as the player isn't sitting around drooling for hours at a time while his one character trades 1 HP blows with a single monster. The concentration of early-genre bullshit is significantly reduced: there isn't as much EXP grinding, the player doesn't have to buy or find keys to open a hundred thousand locked doors, and never has to stress over how many torches he's got left. There's none of that "press the A button and select the 'Stairs' command to walk down a flight of stairs" nonsense, either. Dragon Quest may have come first and concocted the JRPG, but Final Fantasy made it good.

>> No.4419713

>>4419694
Dragon Quest wasn't innovative at all.

What FF1 ripped off the most was DnD. Most other companies didn't overstep certain bounds but Square plundered the entire Monster Manual which iconic creatures like beholders or mind flayers or not so iconic ones like the Remorhaz.