r/dragonquest

Even though DQ 3 nearly broke Japan when it first came out, I wasn’t sure if I was the right target audience.

I recently played through 11 and thought it was great. My favorite aspects were its story, amazing personalities of party members, visible enemies that I can easily avoid, and the fast turn based combat.

With 3 hd2d, I saw that it was going to have a much leaner story, no personalities on the party members, random encounters (with pretty high rates), and traditional turn based combat that is more phase-based rather than acting immediately. So on paper, it did not sound like it was for me.

I honestly went in playing it for completionism since I am really looking forward to 2 HD2D…but I ended up loving every bit of 3 hd2d.

Its visuals were so amazing that I somehow even preferred it to 11’s full 3d visuals.

I grew up on Pokemon Gen 1-3 and Super Mario RPG, so I have a soft spot for 2d sprites. The character sprites with the 3d backgrounds, vibrant lighting, and beautiful animations really brought the game to life for me.

The story, while lean, felt serviceable for most of the game. BUT the ending was extremely amazing and bittersweet and actually made me tear up.

For the party members, I really enjoyed the ability to customize them and change jobs. I probably changed jobs too many times lol.

Thief (until mid 20s) > Priest (until 37 for Kazing) > Merchant (until 20 for Service Call) > Warrior

Priest (until mid 20s) > Gadabout (until 20) > Sage

Merchant (until mid 20s) > Priest (until 37 for Kazing) > Gadabout (until 20 for Sobering slap) > Martial Artist.

If I were to go back in time with the knowledge I have now, I probably would have made the Merchant (and possibly the Thief too) switch to Gadabout for 20 levels and then into Sages to get both Priest and Mage abilities until 37 instead of them initially being Priests. I just really wanted them to have Kazing for more guaranteed resurrection abilities.

It definitely would have been challenging leveling. I felt a lot of pain when I had a Gadabout and 2 priests and could not get the Green Orb with that party. So I grinded a lot until having everyone at their final jobs and crushed the boss fight.

It’s interesting that in the early game, it felt extremely punishing and difficult. But after doing all of those vocation changes, the game felt really easy. I loved that rewarding feeling of being powerful after hours of grinding.

I went into the game mostly blind besides for researching the jobs a tad bit. I didn’t know that Padfoot worked in dungeons and for some reason thought it only worked on the overworld like Holy Water. So until Alefgard, I fought every single enemy I encountered on the field, while sailing, and in dungeons. So dungeons took me a long time to finish until Alefgard lol.

I mostly played on Dragon Quest difficulty but I switched to Dracky Quest whenever I was farming metal slimes so that I could be watching YouTube on another monitor while playing and not worry about dying. I think that was a great QOL. It kind of felt like using a booster in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games. Whenever I was done with grinding sessions, I would switch back to Dragon Quest difficulty to have that fear of possibly being killed in dungeons.

With this only being my second ever DQ game I’ve beat, it was nice that the spell names were consistent with 11 for the most part. So it was easy to jump into.

I did not play any of the post-game content yet because I’m just really excited to play DQ 1 and 2. After beating 2, maybe I’ll go back and do the post-game content for each of the hd2d games.

I think this game was a masterpiece and I’m very glad I gave it a chance. I now understand why the original game broke Japan back in the day!

I'm actually impressed. I didn't care much for the original, but somehow I found this version much more endearing, so much that I bumped it up a few slots in my personal ranking list of the franchise. It felt just a tad better in pretty much every measurable capacity.

I do think it does still drag on a bit, though, in the slow burn you expect. The Wilted Heart region was especially tedious because it was just a bunch of running back and forth talking to people nonstop for an hour.

And so my ranking of every DQ game I've played becomes thus:

1. XI (PC)
2. II (HD Remake)
3. VIII (PS2 version)
4. III (HD Remake)
5. IX (3DS version)
6. VII Reimagined
7. I (HD Remake)
8. IV (DS version)
9. V (DS version)
10. VI (DS version)

*spoilers. Overall i liked it. Its a shame you get trapped in Alefgard but at least you killed the big bad and everything is peaceful love, so thats good. I feel for the mother honestly😕. Pretty good game.

Incredible series that I'd been sleeping on.

I had fond memories of playing Dragon Warrior in the 90s with my older brothers, but I never returned to the series since then (or even knew about the passionate lore of it all).

Fast-forward to a few years ago when I was looking through highly rated games to play on the Swtich, and Dragon Quest XI was on there. "Sure", I thought, "Let's see what they've done with it." I was completely hooked by the end.

In fortuitous timing, DQ1-3 had recently been remade and released. having recently played Octopath Traveler 2 and given my nostalgia for Dragon Warrior 1, it was a slam dunk decision to jump right into DQ3-HD as the game designers intended. Then DQ1 and 2. And wouldn't you know it, DQ7 Revisited is about to be released, so of course I had to jump into that!

Now I HAVE to play DQ5 and DQ8. So down the emulation hole I went -> Started with DQ5, then played DQ4 and DQ6, just to stay in the Zenithian trilogy. So, finally I could get to DQ8, and it really met all the high praise. (Played the fan-modded version on PC.)

So of COURSE now I have to play DQ9, even though the heyday of the DS years and playing endlessly, locally with friends is long gone and past. It's the only one that hasn't aged as well in my humble opinion, but I can see it being spectacular if they remake it one day.

DQ10 Offline is the last one I threw on, using a combination of machine translation mods and google lens to get through, and it really is a great middle ground between DQ9 and DQ11. Was a lot of fun warping around maps, buffing up characters, running quaint little sidequests. Probably my 3rd favorite game of the whole series. One of these days I'll throw myself into online and play V3-8, but that's a dream for another day.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

I can't complement the franchise runners enough for turning Dragon Quest XI into such an effective nostalgia vehicle, and then leaning into that to remake DQ1-3 and DQ7, incredibly well-executed, and they can just print money at this point with the zenithian trilogy and DQ8 / 9 waiting in the wings.

I recently wanted to upgrade to a New 2DS/3DS XL from my base 2DS, and the option I was greeted with wasn't what I was expecting- I saw a listing for the Japanese Dragon Quest New 2DS LL, with the slime on the top of it. It was a good deal, and I thought it looked silly, so I picked it up.

Problem is, I've never played a Dragon Quest or Dragon Warrior game in my life.

So, I feel like a poser for having this cool piece. I'm going to start now! I wanted your opinions on the games I've picked up so far:

• Dragon Warrior III on the Game Boy Color is currently being shipped to me, this was my planned place to start.
• I got Dragon Quest IV on the DS when I traded a bunch of broken controllers to GameStop. Pretty sure this is a remake.
• I snagged Dragon Quest VIII on the PS2 last weekend.
• I got DQ11 on PS4 as well as the first DQ Heroes game and the first Builders game.

So! If you're bored and hanging out reading my post, do you think these are good picks? I've seen this franchise has a ton of spinoffs, I think Monsters is one that was recommended to me too. Are there other games in the series that you think would be good for a noob to experience?

Ignoring everything besides what name you like the sound of more, which do you like better?