Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Thad]

TBF when you die you respawn at the church. Which leads me to believe that's intentional. "Yeah, you lose if the hero gets killed; save/respawn point is churches just like in Dragon Quest."

Which, on the one hand, is actually a pretty solid show-don't-tell approach to design, but on the other hand that's information you really should be sharing with me sooner.

[Brantly B.]

I would say don't feel about about not being able to deal with Shining Force's old-school, people-still-read-instruction-manuals clunkiness and skipping straight to SF2. I still love SF1, but it's a despite-everything kind of love.

The main argument for playing SF1 first before 2 is that it will become even harder to go back to the original after that, because 2 improves on absolutely every aspect of the game twicefold or more, like, everything. It's almost-but-not quite the level of improvement of Phantasy Star 4 over 2, or... I dunno, Dragon Warrior 3 over 1. It plays like an actual 16-bit game.

Shining in the Darkness is bad and you can just go watch the speedrun where they pick up a guest NPC and never finish his quest so he does all of the work for the entire run.

[Thad]

I would say don't feel about about not being able to deal with Shining Force's old-school, people-still-read-instruction-manuals clunkiness and skipping straight to SF2.

That might be the best solution if I ever intend to actually getting around to playing 3.

Anyway, back to Lunar 2.

[Thad]

(I'm not even going to tell you how long it took me to figure out where "save" was in that one, because frankly it's embarrassing. In my defense, who the hell splits up a menu like that? Just put the whole damn thing onscreen!)

[Thad]

"She says she's actually a baby red dragon, but I don't know if I quite believe her."

Motherfucker, she flies and breathes fire. What's she gotta do, frolic in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee?

[Destynova]

I go back and forth on who I hate more as the mascot character, Morg or Teddie, but at the end of the day Teddie isn't holding you hostage to your bed.

get it

at the end of the day

Also I'd have liked P5 a lot more if the three best romance options were not off-limits

Yusuke and Pancakes because Atlus has a terminal case of the not-gays, and Sae because they have no taste

sigh, I guess I'll settle for my sex maid sensei

Lala at the bar would be the best mission control/most stable person since they have their head screwed on right and give great advice/look out for the MC.

[Friday]

In a world full of Shidos, be a Lala.

My favorite thing about the P5 anime is how it turns sex maid sensei from a fairly realistic woman with major reservations about dating the MC into SEX MAID, SHUTUP AND GET SEX.

[Thad]

I forgotten to even mention that going with polka for the town theme is...a unique choice.

[Thad]

The horrible off-key version of Corridors of Time in Mt. Zozo

Weirdly, it sounds fine on the MiSTer. I commented before that the audio on the MiSTer doesn't quite match the audio on my SNES. I suspect the core isn't quite 100% accurate, though it's also possible I've got some capacitors going south in my SNES and its sound is off as a result. (Aside from the audio I haven't noticed any other imprecisions in the reproduction; everything I've tried so far looks and plays like I expect it to. And the audio imprecision is only occasionally noticeable.)

So presumably it sounded fine in whatever emulator the dev tested it in.

What's weird is that it's a different version of the track at all. A lot of the SNES tracks sound exactly like the original versions, to the point that I'm pretty sure they must be straight-across copies. Even among the CT tracks on Mt. Zozo, the battle theme sounds like the original version to my ears, so why is the Zeal theme different?

[Thad]

Relm learned Curaga!

Holy balls!

[nosimpleway]

If Mt. Zozo music isn't ear-destroying I'm curious how the music to the Underground Castle plays. It was so grating in SNES9x I had to mute the game while I was there.

The first thing I found to teach Curaga was the reward for talking to Owzer after defeating Deathgaze.

[Thad]

If Mt. Zozo music isn't ear-destroying I'm curious how the music to the Underground Castle plays. It was so grating in SNES9x I had to mute the game while I was there.

Even weirder once I remembered that this is an MSU-1 mod and the tracks are prerecorded. Obviously playing back a recording can be impacted by individual sound hardware, but still, I wouldn't expect that noticeable a difference in audible pitch.

The first thing I found to teach Curaga was the reward for talking to Owzer after defeating Deathgaze.

Yeah, that makes sense considering it's where Starlet/Lakshmi is in vanilla. But Relm learns it naturally, apparently.

And Flare, which was pretty helpful for taking out the Wind Dragon.

(That took a few tries -- in part because I had Cyan in my party instead of somebody good -- but Relm hitting him with Flare and Gau with a Sniper Eye and Zephyr Cape raging as Intangir eventually did the job. And when I say "eventually" I mean yeah there was a good little while at the end where I went and did something else because everybody but Gau was dead.

Still way less tedious than the time I beat it with Gau/Intangir on vanilla.)

[nosimpleway]

I've seen 1-5 LPed enough -- some on this very forum! -- that when I went to Quest a Dargon I skipped straight to 6.

Which is, from my outside observation of the series as a whole, not really one of the more popular ones? Like, Dragon Quest 1 basically invented the streamlined-for-consoles RPG. DQ2 went "oh, here's a party of adventurers you can use". 3 introduced the vocations system. 4 had Princess Alena in it. 5 let you tame monsters and add them to the party.

But if you compare DQ6 to the stuff that came before it, and to the other stuff that was coming out at around the same time, it's kind of... samey? lackluster? This came out around the same time as Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger, after all.

[François]

I enjoy and am fairly knowledgeable about the Dragon Quest series. I've played all of the numbered ones except 5, 6, and 10. I have a basic idea of what's going in 5, I've seen some character art here and there, there's the monster catching stuff and I guess you play as your character's kids like in Phantasy Star 3 or something like that? I know 10's the MMO.

I know literally nothing about 6. I can't remember it being discussed in any context before today. I can't recall seeing any character art I'd associate with it. The only way I know it even exists is that there's a 5 and a 7 and I don't think Enix would have just skipped a number.

Now I'm not saying this because I think that means it's bad. It just... From my point of view it feels like it went over like a cannonball dropping in the infinite mist off the edge of the world. I'm actually real curious about it now, but it's sort of in the "if I ever LP 5, then maybe I'll get to it afterwards" drawer.

[nosimpleway]

Impression 1:
The Jobs: DQ3 invented the Vocation system, with the Soldiers, Martial Artists, Wizards, Priests, Merchants, and the advanced Sage that you could graduate into if you practice as the Gadabout. DQ6 has a similar system with a few more basic jobs and a lot more intermediate jobs, and if you master every other vocation you can be a Hero, and if you have a special item you can be one of the dedicated monster classes. One of those is postgame only, so eh, whatever.

To advance in a job, fight battles as that job. But there's a catch! There's a level cap on every area in the game, and after you hit that experience level, you no longer accrue job levels. No, you don't get to know what the cap is for any part of the game you're in. You just go "Oh hey, this guy doesn't seem to be advancing in his vocation anymore, what's up with that" and go look up how the system works on the wiki or something.
The characters you recruit all start at level 2 or so when your hero is around level 15 or 20, and the lategame recruits start at 10 when your hero's pushing 30. So you end up in a weird equilibrium where your newer guys have better skills without the stat advancement to make them useful, while your high-level guys are constantly pushing up against the level cap and not growing new abilities.

That... sure is a way to do a class-change system, all right.

Impression 2:
God damn this game is slow. You thought FInal Fantasy could drag sometimes? Sheesh. The battle window prints exactly one line at a time, and every time someone takes damage they get a line printing how much damage they did. Compounding this, the AI loves the Multihit ability from the Martial Artist, so fights turn into "Carver unleashes his fists of fury!" *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." "Lizzie unleashes her fists of fury!" *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." *animation* "[Monster] took [X] damage." "Amos unleashes his fists of fury!" .......

It's amazing anyone plays these games without an emulator fast-forward button, tbh honest.

Impression 3:
Spellcasters seem pretty... underwhelming? Like, combat spells are useful judging by how often the AI falls back on using them, and there aren't a lot of buff or recovery abilities from other vocations that can compare to the ones given to Wizards, Priests, and Sages. But... MP is a thing for spells. Non-spell abilities are free. The dedicated spellcaster party members are fine, but I tended to keep them in reserve until I was up against the boss if I could. The high-Strength low-Wisdom guys were in my party more often, since I can always rely on Roundhouse Kick or Knuckle Sandwich to hit groups or damage-spike one monster without worrying about MP.
And spellcasting-for-free items are better still. Nevan I can take or leave, but he comes with a staff that lets someone use Midheal for free, and hoo boy does that carry you through a big damn chunk of the midgame with somebody's AI set to "Focus on Healing". Picking up a Fire Claw -- free Frizzle -- does much the same to replace MP-consuming attack magic for quite a while, too.

Impression 4:
The game is pretty bad about telling you what spells and abilities actually do, at least until you find them in the menu during a fight. As far as I can tell there's no way to get that description from the status menu. Since a lot of what I know about Dragon Quest comes from the original NES releases, and those used different spell names, it took a bit of adjustment.

The final boss is in three parts, a face and two hands. The left hand can cast the basic revival spell "Zing" if you kill the right hand. The right hand can cast the advanced revival spell "Kazing" if you kill the left. When I managed to get both of them out of the way, I half expected the face to pull out a heretofore-unseen mass-revive spell to bring them both back at once, and given the general tone of the game's translation, I assumed such an ability would be "BAZINGA"

[Thad]

I played the DS version (which I guess is what you're playing, judging by the modern spell names), and I never finished it.

For context, I've finished every other numbered game in the series up through 8. And quit 9 at the last boss.

I liked 6 okay, but I'm not sure I remember much of anything about it either, and I sunk dozens of hours into it. I think you're right that it's probably the most unassuming entry in a series that's already pretty iterative and conservative to begin with.

[nosimpleway]

What's Terranigma?

[Niku]

terranigmaballs

[nosimpleway]

I've seen 1-5 LPed enough -- some on this very forum! -- that when I went to Quest a Dargon I skipped straight to 6.

When you boot the game, the introductory cutscene has the hero Gohan and two other PCs, Android 18 and a guy who probably looks like somebody out of Dragon Ball but I don't know who. You're on a cliffside hyping yourself up to take on the Fiendlord. You walk up to a precipice, and Android 18 pulls out an ocarina to summon a dragon, who flies you to the castle.

"Oh, cool," you might say. "I bet that ocarina is important, and that dragon is important, and I find out exactly what/who they are over the course of the game.

You do not. You later find yourself on the same cliff, in the company of the same people, hyping yourself to take on the same Fiendlord. Android 18 pulls the ocarina out of nowhere in particular, you fly on dragonback to the dungeon, and neither the instrument of dragon-summoning or the dragon is ever mentioned again.

[Büge]

I've seen 1-5 LPed enough -- some on this very forum! -- that when I went to Quest a Dargon I skipped straight to 6.

When you boot the game, the introductory cutscene has the hero Gohan and two other PCs, Android 18 and a guy who probably looks like somebody out of Dragon Ball but I don't know who. You're on a cliffside hyping yourself up to take on the Fiendlord. You walk up to a precipice, and Android 18 pulls out an ocarina to summon a dragon, who flies you to the castle.

*gasp* Icarus?!