Just started Dragon Quest VII & a huge wall of text about taking your time in RPGs

(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).

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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 is pretty rare, especially compared to DQIII, IV and VIII.

Hentai/sexy stuff:

Innocent stuff:

DQIX Trailer

Well as I'm sure some of you know, particularly those from Dragon's Den, someone recorded part of the new DQIX trailer on what seems to be their mobile phone and uploaded it to YouTube. It's just an anime-style intro and doesn't show any gameplay. There's also word going around that it may just be the old trailer from TGS 2007.

It's unlikely that this sort of FMV will occur in-game since it looks like your party's appearance is fully customisable. Of course, there could still be FMV used for introducing new areas or enemies. I'd say a lot of DQ fans, particularly the older ones, won't be too happy with FMV since it may remind them a little to much of Final Fantasy. However, since DQVIII has set a standard for DQ being a beautiful game to look at - many people put it alongside games such as Okami for being one the best looking PS2 games - it would be nice to see DQIX keep this up in some way and FMV may be its best shot since it's on a console far less powerful than a PS2.

The image in this post is taken from this NeoGAF forum post. Credit for finding the video goes to Fates. Credit for telling us about the NeoGAF post goes to Sinceday1. Both are members of the Dragon's Den forum.

Yuji Horii Interview

RPGamer interviewed Yuji Horii about the DS remakes, his favourite DQ game and puff-puffs.

We have to ask… could you explain the origin of the running "puff puff" jokes?

Horii: The joke originally comes from Akira Toriyama's comics. In Japanese, it sort of mixes the sound of a woman applying makeup and that of someone getting a massage, while also leaving quite a bit to the individual player's imagination. Unfortunately, what "puff puff" means to me is top secret. My lips are sealed.

You can the full interview here.

Haven't played Dragon Quest VII?

Those of you that haven't played, or don't own, Dragon Quest VII should find this forum post quite interesting.

First impressions of FFIV

OK, to get straight to the point: I'm impressed. Square Enix have done a great job with this remake. There's more to do than in the original and the graphics are updated just enough to enhance the game without losing the charm of the original.

However, since I'm also playing Dragon Quest III at the moment, I'm struck by how very linear this game is. In DQIII you create your party by choosing between zero and three party members to accompany your hero. You can choose their class and edit their stats within reason. You can actually make more than three characters and swap them in and out of your active party. The game's mostly linear at first, though there are usually a few ways to approach something, but after a while it totally opens up and you can sail around the whole world in your boat and find your own adventures, the story being related to you through conversation with NPCs rather than through cutscenes.

By contrast, Final Fantasy IV forces your party selection on you from the very start, you can only go to the single next location; no room for exploration here. Because your party selection is forced, you can't overcome challenges by creating a great team that works together, you just have to hope you're already at the level where you either do enough melee damage or have been given the right spells for the job. Of course, the good side of the total control the game exerts over its players is that the game is far more cinematic (in terms of being story-led) than DQIII and you're going to be playing in order to see what happens to the characters or to see what the next location holds whereas in DQIII it's more of a general sense of adventure and exploration.