Man I wanted to love this one. The artwork and the graphics are immaculate. It has one of the best scores I've heard in a videogame period. It's so close to being one of the GOATs of not just JRPGs but RPGs in general, but the character progression system ruined it for me. For comparison I've played DQ1-3 and this, haven't played any of the others yet, but it doesn't even hold a candle to 2 and 3 honestly. I wont even hold the animation slowness against it as it can be fixed with a fast forward button and a lot of it has to do with the limitations of getting this to run on the PS2, whatever. What annoyed me was the class system or lack thereof, and the shitty fucking alchemy pot the game practically forces down your throat. The Hero is a fighter, spellcaster and healer, but so is Yangus, Jessica and Angelo. There's very little separation between the characters. You'd think Yangus would be the damage dealer but the hero's falcon slash ability + oomph makes him far more powerful offensively. Jessica becomes a weak link whos always dying and just ends up using the powerful endgame items. I played most of the game without even using the alchemy pot because I hate it, then I got to that gay fucking purple bird which raped my ass 3 times before it hit the grass and so I looked up a guide and crafted some of the "essential" late game items (sage stone, tension timbral, falcon sword) only for all the subsequent bosses to be complete pushovers. I didn't even craft any armor or resistance items. The last 4 bosses just went down about halfway before I expected to and I was like "that's it?" No sense of accomplishment that I felt from 2 and 3.
>>12841440The only problem with the progression system is where some of the abilities are placed and that you can't respec the skill points. Before skill points, the Hero is an all-rounder like all DQ heroes, Yangus is a warrior/thief combine, Jessica is the offensive spellcaster who has little else outside of that and Angelo is just a healer who can equip some good weapons too. Skill points change that and as a result all characters become damage dealers if you give them the right skill point loadout. Even Jessica with enough points in whips to get twin dragon lash becomes a damage monster.The game is still harder than DQ3 where you end up getting a sage stone towards the end and most things end up doing nowhere near enough damage to outdamage its healing. Dragon Quest games are not hard. Play the Torneko roguelike spinoffs if you want that.
The game just goes on too long, especially with such a simple growth system. It should end right before the shadow world
>>12841440play 6 and 7 if you want DQ kino
>fast forward button Well this is why you can't enjoy DQ8. Dragon Quest has always been slow, it's the entire point of it. It's supposed to be an hypnotic soothing experience, the slow rythm is part of that, it's like a song at 120 BPM which syncs with your hearbeat.And DQ8 doesn't leave you a choice. It's not just the animations, it's the voice acting too, which is purposely delivered slowly and with long pauses. Either you get in tune with the game, or you're not going to enjoy it.
Should I play the PS2 or 3ds version?
>>12841781The pacing is slower though than normal DQ up to that point and it dies come down to the unnecessary battle animations. Compare delivering an attack in DQ3 where the enemy briefly flashes to the drawn out animations in 8. Multiply that by the whole round, then the whole fight and then the whole game and you can really see how it fucks up the battle flow.
