Dragon Quest: The Definitive Thread

Rajaah said:

That looks like Saro from DQ4. If so, good choice for a game. I've never played any of the DQM series, so if anyone wants to do a quick rundown of it be my guest.

DQ12 and DQ3 Remake seem to both be pretty M.I.A. considering I made this thread a couple years ago to put news on them down and we've pretty much had nothing since...

I still haven't beaten DQ7 (3DS) or DQ8 (PS2) but I decided I'm gonna make a concerted effort to run both of them over the holidays finally. Only did DQ7 PS1 in the past and it was such a PITA that I fell far short of doing everything. Hear the 3DS version is a lot better, we'll see.

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DQM is like Pokemon but with an increased emphasis on breeding (or melding/synthesis, for Joker and after) and decreased emphasis on elemental rock-paper-scissors (although there are still specialized skills like Metal Slash). Most of the spells are the same as mainline Dragon Quest (so Frizz, Zap, Zam, Blizz, Woosh, etc).

In the first two DQM games for the Game Boy Color, there was more emphasis on letting your monsters determine their own moves rather than you directly controlling them; you basically set whether you wanted them to focus on offense, healing, or support, because doing so improved your monsters' personalities, and with high personality values, they had a chance of special procs based on their role (offense=auto crit; healer=MP cost to zero; support=cuts through spell resistance). They mostly got away from that and switched to direct control in Joker, although there are still certain passive monster traits that will let them attack twice or thrice if you don't issue a direct order.

You can even breed the Demon Lords if you want to (they're in what's usually called the ??? family), and they're usually the strongest options you have (although Gem Slimes make excellent healers because of how fucking fast and evasive they are).

And yeah, that is Psaro and Rose.

Rajaah said:

So it's

Game Boy Color - Dragon Warrior Monsters (1 and 2)
DS - Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker (1/2/3)
3DS - Terry's Wonderland
Switch - Dark Prince

Did I miss any? And did all of these get US releases? HLTB has them all at around 30 hours which is a lot, as much as I'd like to check them out. If they were like one third of that I'd totally do it. Maybe I'll get the new one though, since DQ12 is taking so long...

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lol. 30 hours maybe if you had a guide, only did the story content, and knew exactly what to breed. For me as a junior high kid trying to fill up the monster compendium, the GBC games were basically a sandbox before sandboxes existed; talking hundreds of hours, because the dungeons were procedurally generated. Joker's story was a little more streamlined, and it had static dungeons; I could probably see the 30-hour figure there, yeah.

Joker 3 and Terry's Wonderland were Japan-only.