(If you really can't be bothered to tackle this immense wall of text, just skip to the bottom for some images of Maribel and a link to the 15 chapters of the Dragon Quest VII official manga!)A very late night post just to say that after playing a bit more Tales of Eternia I felt in the mood to play another RPG rather than just ploughing through ToE and decided to eventually start playing Dragon Quest VII.
Just to explain that, I have a horrible tendency to just play RPGs for way too long in each session and then forget most of the plot points. It also takes things out of perspective; when I first played FFVII it took me several play sessions to get out of Midgar - I must have been playing for less than an hour each time. When I finally got onto the world map it felt like some epic acheivement since my journey through Midgar had taken almost a week in real time at one hour a day. It also fitted in with the characters' experience since the events leading up to their arrival at Kalm are obviously meant to take several days, not just six hours.
Recently I'll do things like play Persona 3 in 14 hour sessions which really takes away that slow but steady sense of discovery and progression that can really add weight and scope to an RPG's story. It's horrible to think that had I had this tendency back when I played FFVII, I would have not only got through Midgar in one go, I would also have got through Barret's hometown at least. I'd have gone from being totally new to the game and being introduced to Barret to pretty much completing his sub-plot in one go, via all the events of Midgar, Kalm, Fort Condor, Junon, Costa del Sol, Corel Town and the Gold Saucer all in one long session.
I decided to pretty much force myself to play in smaller sessions. I've sort of managed to do it with ToE so far, splitting my 12 hours of progress into 3 different sessions and one of the ways I've done it is to switch to playing another game rather than playing the same one until I can't keep my eyes open any more.
In this case I turned to DQVII and - bearing in mind that I haven't properly played V or VI yet and that I've only now played VII for a couple of hours - found it to be a really nice mix between the things I found so great about VIII with the old school things that I to IV had but VIII didn't seem to. Even slightly negative things that you still get attached to, like the bits when you think "What the fuck am I meant to do now?" and just wander around helplessly are in DQVII but didn't occur in VIII (for me, anyway). My only complaint is that it looks pretty ugly - I'd definitely say they jumped the gun when it came to making the switch to 3D (never mind moveable-camera-3D).
Anyway, now for some related goodies. First of all there's the official manga which has been translated by fans... Arbiter of Time, a member of Dragon's Den, posted a link to the official manga of the game. You can get every chapter released so far from here, direct downloads.
And here are some pics of Maribel. It seems that fan art (particularly hentai) of DQVII
Hentai/sexy stuff:
Innocent stuff:
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5 comments:
Heh, I remember reading that DQ7 manga back when it was first released. It's pretty hilarious at parts and is actually what motivated me to start playing the game. To be honest I actually liked the manga better though. The game kinda took all of the monotonous parts of old-school RPGs and added 10x as much of it... It picks up after awhile and it was enjoyable, but still nowhere near as good as some of the previous games.
You really should play DQV though. It's easily the best in the series and one of the best games ever IMO.
In DQVII I've only just got to the point when you can first fight monsters. It's all been quite linear and story-based so far, so I suppose I've yet to see the monotonous parts that you and others have mentioned.
Though oddly, I'm kind of looking forward to things like grinding since I've just completed Mother 3, which is a very good game and has a battle system similar to DQ but has a game progression more similar to a platform game - you basically move from area to area in a totally linear fashion. There are no sidequests or any distractions whatsoever - you just progress through the plot by progressing through each area in a straight line, probably never to return to them again.
DQV has always looked like one of the best DQs to me. It'll be hard for a DQ to top VIII for me in the overall quality stakes since it seems that DQ tends to go for exploration being its strong point, rather than much in the way of character development or plot. For me, DQVIII's charming 3D graphics and seamless overworld make it the most fun DQ world to explore AND it seems to be the one with the most plot and character development. All that said, DQV also seems to put a lot of effort into the characters and, literally, the growing of those characters. It might not have the impressive 3D world of DQVIII but it certainly looks like this is when they first really got the characters right in a DQ game. I just hope it has party talk this time around...
As a massive fan of DQ, I have to say, VII is the only one I couldn't get into. I played over 30 hours of it, and that's saying something as I hardly even TOUCHED it still. And I think that was part of the problem, as the game, even by massive JRPG and even Dragon Quest fans, wears you down.
I absolutely adore Dragon Quest games. I have played every one I have started either to completion or had to stop due to outside interference. However, VII was the only one that I stopped due to...just not wanting to go on. And really, how many times can you run back through the cave and plop down another piece ofthe world map or run through the SAME cave trying to figure out what part of the story to trigger?
DQ games are long and I love them, but the game seemed to have no real drive or....well, all the little things that made past DQ games great along the way. In other words, it felt like the 'Metroid Prime 2' or 'Warrior Within' or what have you of the series. A game that was trying to do something grand and different, but at the same time sticking too close to its roots and stretching its length out till it was dragging its feet and just....not fun.
Though all of Japan and a number of fans are totally against these views.
Well I know that feeling - I got it with Phantom Hourglass. Not only did I not care to have the same old Zelda story wheeled out in front of me for the umpteenth time, I couldn't take another trip down that dungeon that you have to keep revisiting. Not only was it repetitive and dull, I also hate time limits on things, especially ones that you may find out about 15 minutes down the line that you can't possibly do it in time so you have to redo all that shit over again. If it was a 2 minute time limit it'd still be annoying but at least you'd only have wasted 2 minutes when you fail.
I haven't actually got that feeling from DQVII yet. If anything, it's the first DQ I've played since VIII (I played them in this order: VIII, III, I, II, IV...) that actually feels like it has realistic characters (i.e. more than just sprites with a very basic archetype attributed to them) and a plot beyond "You kill bad man".
I can see your point, though. Despite those two flaws I just mentioned that apply to most DQs, one thing that always makes them enjoyable is the ongoing feeling of exploration and progression. With DQVII I do realise that you move in circles quite a lot and also that the shard idea really highlights the JRPG trope of each new village having it's own totally disconnected little story that leads to a mission you must fulfil before moving on.
Well, while Phantom Hourglass wasn't my favorite, the whole going into the dungeon over and over wasn't so bad for me. But I probably just got lucky since I found myself completing its tasks just in the 'nick of time' more often then not and feeling a sense of a reward from that. But that might put me in a minority or make me lucky.
In any event, the problems I had with VII probably come from the fact that I like RPGs (and especially Dragon Quest games) for 1) Gameplay; 2) Item Collecting/Crafting/Sidequests and 3) The Characters. And All the other DQ games (Save the first and VII) hit exactly the kind of gameplay/item/character focus I like to see in an RPG. VII just seem to....be a weird, slow 'trigger' based game much like many other JRPGs, more about little self-contained side quests and 'go to this town, complete mission, defeat boss, set off next map (story) trigger, repeat'. People say it changes after a while...but I didn't want to wait 50+ hours to see, lol.
Maybe someday in the future I'll play it again and see.
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