Dragon Quest IX

In my recent bought of fanwankery about the Final Fantasy series, I said something along the lines of "Final Fantasy's development teams are run by monkeys* and the 'Dragon Quest IX' team is an example of people who know how to make a proper RPG".  Funny thing that, because at the time I hadn't played a single second of "Dragon Quest IX".  I just sorta had a very good feeling about it.  And since my gut has been right about the games I play nine times out of ten, I figured that a "good feeling" was enough to recommend it prematurely.  Now having played a few hours of "Dragon Quest IX", I know for a fact that once again my gut was absolutely 100% correct in every way as usual.  This game is awesome!

I mean, this is just about the best game I've played all year, I love it!

And that's so surprisingly considering how really basic this game is.  Nothing this game is any way more advanced than say, "Chrono Trigger" which came out fifteen years ago.  I mean, its a turn-based RPG straight out of the SNES days.  Its like my last post was accidentally a wish upon a star, and now the Blue Fairy has come down and delivered it.  Its crazy.  Well, it isn't exactly my idea of a perfect modern RPG (if this were in fact "Final Fantasy XV" I don't think I'd be half as enthused with it), but this is about as good as this genre gets.  Even as it celebrates the classic RPG formula it adds in new details that these games should have thought up years ago.  The gameplay is simple (hardly more complicated than "Final Fantasy IV DS" from two years ago), the storyline is entertaining enough without being an obstacle to overcome to get back to the gameplay, and the graphics are easily the best performance the DS has ever given.  Read on if you want to know more, but already my recommendation is complete and unconditional.

Your main character is a mute hero who is little more than a tiny little digital avatar of yourself.  But this isn't simply Zelda-style where you inhabit the body of Link, no it goes deeper.  You customize your character from beyond name, but also to gender, height, hair color, and face.  So you have the option to create a character from a whole slew of Akira Toryama stock characters**.  Do you want your hero to be Ayla from "Chrono Trigger"?  Well here you go.  Do you want Gohan from "Dragon Ball Z", Namek haircut?  Thanks to this system, you got your wish.  Most tempting, you can even make L from "Death Note" - even though Toryama didn't even draw that manga!  But the main character isn't the only character you can design:  you create every single playable character in the game.  So when it came time to create my party, I made just four dudes in the classic RPG party formation:  two physical attackers, one healer, and an offensive mage.  And yes, one of them was indeed L, now returned from the dead to help me defeat the forces of cartoony evil.

But even this is not the entire story.  Your characters actually wear the items you equip to them.  Usually in an RPG you can give a character a Mythril Helm, but all that will change is a few stats in the menu.  However, "Dragon Quest IX" goes in and actually changes your character's appearance - something I've personally been asking for from RPGs for years now.  If you give them hat, they'll be wearing that hat.  I know lots of games have certainly done this before, but I never played them, so this is something of an exciting notion to me.  If you want, you can have your party wander right into the throne room decked out head to toe in full combat gear.  Its a very liberating feeling, like this is actually your party and your story, not the main character's party and not the story of some pretentious Japanese author half a world away.

Bad news for perverts like myself:  you can't strip your female characters completely down.  When your characters are equipped with nothing they wear a T-shirt and shorts. (sigh)

In story terms you play as Whoever You Want, who is the guardian angel for a small town.  Whoever You Want's job is to fly down to Earth, and protect the villagers while doing random acts of kindness.  Its a nice feeling knowing that the people down there depend on you to clean up after them, protect them from monsters, and are always thankful when you make their lives better.  Its a great feeling to help people, even little digital ones.  I would have loved this game if the whole thing was nothing but a dozen hours of watching over these dozen people, but in order for this to be an RPG, something needs to go horribly wrong.  A mysterious power attacks Heaven, causing Whoever You Want to fall right off to Earth where he/she awakes in human form.  Now its time for Whoever You Want to somehow make your way back to Heaven, defeat whatever evil force is out there, and of course, along the way keep on doing his/her job of protecting humanity as best you can.  Along for the ride is everybody's favorite video game cliché:  an unnecessary Fairy Companion!  Thankfully this Fairy knows to shut up most of the time, so don't worry.

The story isn't over-arching or character driven, sadly.  Voice acting is gone as well, as are most inter-party relationships***.  These are a consequence of having a party full of mute generics who largely cannot affect the storyline.  If you're the type who desperate needs a love story for your RPG to be entertaining, than this game isn't for you.  Try "Final Fantasy IX" if you haven't already.  I mean, if you desperately need inter-party interaction, you can just use - you know - your brain and imagine some yourself.  Make your own story!  For everybody who didn't walk out in a huff and curse my name as they slammed the door, keep on reading.  Though I have yet to find much of an overarching plot beyond "go to town, fix town's problem by defeating boss X in dungeon Y", what storyline there is so far is actually quite compelling.  Yeah, the characters are all out-of-party, but there's been at least one truly touching scene so far, which I have a feeling will not be a lone event.  There's a great mystery here which I cannot wait to see resolved.

Plus the entire game has this overall feeling of silliness and unseriousness, which is sorely lacking from the glib whine-fests that the last couple Final Fantasy games have been.  The enemies are straight out of Kindergarten picture books - its all so goofy as to be completely lovable.

In gameplay terms the game is more or less the standard Job Class-based RPG with just one major variation that I am eternally thankful for at the start of every battle:  no random battles.  Enemies do not just pop out of nowhere while you're exploring, but instead spawn around the field, attacking your party if they spot you.  The higher your levels the less likely weak enemies will try to attack you - they even run away.  Random battles are the most awful punishment God gave Adam and Eve after the Fall.  Look up the word "misery" in the dictionary and you'll see just two words "random battles".  Plus even though the battle system is more or less turn-based, your characters don't spend the whole battle stuck in solid rows like this an 18th century battlefield, they run around and attack the enemy in visually appealing actions.  Gameplay-wise this is completely meaningless, but it makes playing so much more dynamic and fun.

One minor complaint here though:  they messed-up the item system.  Each individual character has to be given a dozen or so items that they can use, and no others.  So there's this huge annoying thing to manage.  Gotta give this guy nine potions and then this other guy an Ether and blah blah blah.  I just don't use items in battle and avoid all this nonsense.

Another issue I have here is how despite how cool the appearance changing feature is, it also has a negative consequence:  you have to juggle stats with fashion.  I can never bring myself to equip helms because they cover up the lovely hair styles and colors I picked for the characters.  Sometimes I just won't wear equipment because they're so ugly.

But little issues aside, "Dragon Quest IX" is the best original RPG you'll ever find on the Nintendo DS.  Its closest cousin is the half-assed "Final Fantasy IV" remake (read my walkthrough if you want to know more about that sad chapter in my life which I would prefer not to relive) and it blows right past that game in just about every way.  It may not be a major new paradigm shift for video games, but its still really fun.  It may not have the world's best plot, but what plot it has is exciting enough to keep my interest.  There's a mystery here that's keeping me guessing the entire way.  So unless this game cheeses out pathetically in the later hours, this is my final word on this game.  I don't think I'm going to go Dragon Quest crazy and play every single other game in the series like I've done for some other RPG franchises in the past, but this one right here, this is a classic.  BUY IT!  BUY IT!

Update:  At the time of this post's writing three days ago I didn't yet have a ship to sail along the oceans of the world.  Well, a doll just gave me one (long story), and I've discovered something odd about the high seas.  RANDOM BATTLES.  There are random battles in the water!  What the Hell??  The only reason I bought this game was because it looked like a cool classic type of RPG that notably removed the worst feature from the RPG formula, random battles.  And here they are!  They just snuck 'em into the game right under my nose.  Nobody told me "there are no random battles - except for the oceans".  They just said "no random battles".  A thousand Japanese nerds complained that the random battles were removed, and yet none of them said anything about this.  The world lied to me.  And they're just annoying as you'd imagine.  Lucky thing its only when you're sailing, but still one random battle is too many for my taste.  Goddammit.

ツ

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* This should be made clear:  the vast majority of programmers and designers who make video games are probably all brilliant, competent, and immensely talented people who did their jobs with excellence.  They deserve a medal for making a game as graphically complex as the average Final Fantasy come into existence at all.  But its the other 1% (who I suspect are the guys at the top) who just railroad these productions right into a sand dune.  I mean, there had to be just one guy who decided that FFXII should have nothing but random chests everywhere.  So that meant that a team of very talented people had to spend months making complex algorithms created chest spawning and the random treasures, and they did their jobs perfectly.  But that doesn't mean that having random chests still isn't ANNOYING AS HELL!!!  So one guy makes a good game decidedly worse.  See how just a few of these decisions can absolutely ruin a game?

** I think the character creation system may indeed be the one that Akira Toryama uses himself, sadly.  The guy really does only have like six human faces.

*** There probably could have been an internal system of generic characters conversing amongst each other and building relationships automatically like its a "Fire Emblem" game.  But since the party is limited to only four members, I don't think this would have been practical.  Maybe they can do something like this in "Dragon Quest X".