Dragon Quest FAQ!
Apr. 5th, 2011 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fighting_alenaOkay, I'm far from an expert on all things Dragon Quest related, but I thought I'd write this up as a bit of canon-pimping.
Q: What is Dragon Quest?
A: Dragon Quest is a series of role-playing games created by Enix that have been released since the early days of the NES/famicom. The first Dragon Quest game predates Squaresoft's first Final Fantasy by about a year. There are currently (not counting all of the spin-offs) nine games in the series.
Q: What are they like?
A: Dragon Quest games all follow a certain sort of formula. It goes like this:
1. The character you control is some sort of hero prophesied to save the world from some evil demon.
2. You wander out and talk to people, find items, and explore dungeons until you are able to move on and gain levels.
3. You beat the evil demon. He'll have some sort of secondary form, and then you beat that.
That describes the first game well enough, and ones after that share the same basic idea, but there are all sorts of different twists used to keep each game interesting.
Q: How popular is it?
A: In Japan, I've heard it described to me before that Dragon Quest is like "Japan's Star Wars." That is, it has a lot of dedicated fans, and new additions to the franchise sell very quickly.
Outside of Japan, Dragon Quest is pretty much eclipsed by Final Fantasy and other recent jRPGs (to say nothing about non-Japan rpgs). This is partly because Dragon Quest IV came out in 1992, and then another English translation of a new Dragon Quest game didn't come out until Dragon Quest VII in 2001. That, and while Dragon Quest VII wasn't exactly a bad game, it didn't really spread out from niche appeal. (It took about three hours of playing DQVII until you entered your first battle!) Other than that, Dragon Quest I, II, and III were rereleased on the Game Boy Color around the same time.
However, Dragon Quest VIII released in 2005 had good popular success, and the recent remakes of IV, V, VI, and the new IX are bringing some new popularity.
Q: Is Dragon Quest the same as Dragon Warrior?
A: The name Dragon Quest used to be trademarked by another company, so DQ was released as Dragon Warrior up until 2005's Dragon Quest VIII. By that time it had lapsed and they began releasing the series as Dragon Quest.
Q: So, what were the early NES/Famicom Dragon Quest games like?
A: DQI: Your character is a descendant of the legendary hero of your world. You have to go out and destroy the evil Dragonlord before he destroys the entire world. Along the way, you have to save the Princess of the Kingdom. You do, then the King offers his Kingdom to you, but you decline it saying you'll found your own Kingdom. That's basically it, there are no other party members who can join you, and no really remarkable NPCs not mentioned.
DQII: This introduced the concept of multiple party members. The story was a direct continuation of DQI: you played as the three descendants of the hero from the first game, and you go around trying to stop a new demon from destroying the world. Interestingly, you can visit the same map from the first game, and even explore the old castle the Dragonlord lived in. If you do, you find the last descendant of the Dragonlord...! ...And he's a pretty nice guy, who just lives in his castle and doesn't bother the outside world.
DQIII: This was the first game that wasn't connected to the previous ones. Again, you're the son/daughter (the game lets you choose the hero's gender) of a great hero, and you're prophesied to save the world. However, while DQII had PCs with some personality, in DQIII, all of the characters are cyphers. You literally go to a place in the first town, say you want a "warrior," "cleric," "wizard," "fighter," or whatever and another party member joins you.
DQIII also introduced the concept of class-change. You could change a party member's class to something else if you got them to a high enough level. Finally, the ending of the game reveals: the game is a prequel of the first DQ game. You end up becoming the first hero referenced in the first game through traveling through a portal to another world.
Then there's Dragon Quest IV, and this really did some interesting things...
Rather than start you as the hero, the game started with four different chapters that would be played in order. Each chapter focused a story on a party member (or group of party members) who would have their own personal journey. It would progress on, all of them having an open ending, some happy, some not, until it reached the fifth chapter. The fifth chapter introduced the hero, who would then set out and eventually meet all of the party members from the previous chapters and they would join him/her. I think it's the first example of an rpg that focused equal time on individual characters rather than following one character around all of the time. (Think of it as sorta similar to that one part in FF6 where you choose between following Locke, Edgar/Terra/OldGuy, or Sabin.)
In my opinion, DQIV is the best in the series. While the focus in DQ has always been more on gameplay than story, DQIV has some really interesting characters and a real story-arc that flows very naturally and is well thought out. The only real problem I have with it is that the original game used a combat system sorta similar to Persona3: you couldn't direct the actions of your other party members, you had to pick a battle plan for them to follow.
Q: Wait, why weren't DQV and VI released outside of Japan?
A: Actually from what I've read, this isn't because they thought there was no interest or that it would sell badly: this is because the development team didn't want to do it. They finished DQV, and then rather than translate it, proceeded work immediately on DQVI. Considering a lot of Japan gamers think DQV is the best in the series, this was probably a loss for English-speaking gamers.
Q: What about the remakes?
A: Remakes had been done since the SNES days, with SNES versions of DQI, II, and III. These were later ported as Gameboy Color games.
DQIV was originally remade for the playstation back in 2001. This time, Enix really did plan to release it in the United States. If you bought Dragon Quest VII, you could even see an advertisement on the manual that stated a Dragon Quest IV remake would be released within a year. It never happened. A company Enix owned that coded DQIV went bankrupt, and the cost (in both time and money) of hiring a new team to translate the code made the project unfeasible. :(
In 2007, it was remade again for the Nintendo DS by the new Square-Enix, and then localized and released in other countries.
DQV was remade for the PS2, but again was never released outside Japan. Recently it was remade for the Nintendo DS as well, and that version was localized. DQ VI was also remade and localized very recently. (Like, in February.)
Q: Are the remakes any good?
A: Considering they all include the core of the original games, just with graphic updates and nice bells and whistles, pretty much. However... I have some gripes about the English localization of Dragon Quest IV:
1. The Dragon Quest IV remake for the playstation added a new feature called 'party talk'. In the old NES version, once a character joined your party, he/she would then only be a party member to help you in battle, there were no 'cut-scenes' that would show the player sides of their personality such as in any Final Fantasy game from IV onward. "Party talk" addressed that issue: if you selected for your character to talk to someone and there was no NPC around, the party members would instead have conversations with each other. These were very specific and detailed, you could talk to an NPC, and then use Party Talk to see what every character's reaction was. It added much needed characterization and really fleshed them out.
And then when the DS version was localized, they didn't bother to include it. WHY?! Why did they do this?! This decision in my mind, is bizarre. Unless there's yet another remake (which... will probably be a decade or so at least) there will be no official translation of the party talk.
(Fortunately I both own the Japan version of the game and there's a continuing open translation over here. ♥)
For DQV and DQVI, these games also included the addition of party talk which was translated to their DS versions.
2. The localization decided to add some really horrible regionalism. Every country in the game now had a different dialect that was written to approximate a phonetic reading. Alena's Kingdom, for example, has every NPC speaking with a bad Russian accent, and she's changed from being a Princess to being a Tsarevna. It's awkward, adds nothing to the characterization or the plot, and distracts from the text.
3. They changed all of the translations of the names and places from the original NES version. Maybe this could have been forgiven if they were changing them to be more accurate to the original Japanese text, but more often, it was to add puns and pop culture references. For example, there is one Kingdom in the game called ブランカ (buranka). This was translated in the NES version as Branca. Then it was localized in the DS remake as Casabranca.
Gameplay-wise, it's great.
Q: I'm interested now in trying these.
A: Watch for a future post!
The DS versions of IV, V, VI (which just came out), and the new IX are all still being sold and are easy to get. DQVIII for the PS2 should be easily found in any used game store. Finding an old PS1 copy of Dragon Quest VII on eBay is doable, but a bit pricey. The Gameboy Color DQI-II and III games are a lot cheaper, but you'd need an old GBC or GBA to play them since the DS can't play GBC games. As for original NES carts of DQI-IV, they can be either dirt cheap (around $1 for just the game) or ridiculous overpriced. I once saw a sealed copy of DQIV sell for over $500 USD. ...But those are only for collectors, really.
Q: The style used in the official art for Dragon Quest looks familiar.
A: It's all done by Akira Toriyama, best known for Dragon Ball.
I think I'm done. Thanks for reading.
Q: What is Dragon Quest?
A: Dragon Quest is a series of role-playing games created by Enix that have been released since the early days of the NES/famicom. The first Dragon Quest game predates Squaresoft's first Final Fantasy by about a year. There are currently (not counting all of the spin-offs) nine games in the series.
Q: What are they like?
A: Dragon Quest games all follow a certain sort of formula. It goes like this:
1. The character you control is some sort of hero prophesied to save the world from some evil demon.
2. You wander out and talk to people, find items, and explore dungeons until you are able to move on and gain levels.
3. You beat the evil demon. He'll have some sort of secondary form, and then you beat that.
That describes the first game well enough, and ones after that share the same basic idea, but there are all sorts of different twists used to keep each game interesting.
Q: How popular is it?
A: In Japan, I've heard it described to me before that Dragon Quest is like "Japan's Star Wars." That is, it has a lot of dedicated fans, and new additions to the franchise sell very quickly.
Outside of Japan, Dragon Quest is pretty much eclipsed by Final Fantasy and other recent jRPGs (to say nothing about non-Japan rpgs). This is partly because Dragon Quest IV came out in 1992, and then another English translation of a new Dragon Quest game didn't come out until Dragon Quest VII in 2001. That, and while Dragon Quest VII wasn't exactly a bad game, it didn't really spread out from niche appeal. (It took about three hours of playing DQVII until you entered your first battle!) Other than that, Dragon Quest I, II, and III were rereleased on the Game Boy Color around the same time.
However, Dragon Quest VIII released in 2005 had good popular success, and the recent remakes of IV, V, VI, and the new IX are bringing some new popularity.
Q: Is Dragon Quest the same as Dragon Warrior?
A: The name Dragon Quest used to be trademarked by another company, so DQ was released as Dragon Warrior up until 2005's Dragon Quest VIII. By that time it had lapsed and they began releasing the series as Dragon Quest.
Q: So, what were the early NES/Famicom Dragon Quest games like?
A: DQI: Your character is a descendant of the legendary hero of your world. You have to go out and destroy the evil Dragonlord before he destroys the entire world. Along the way, you have to save the Princess of the Kingdom. You do, then the King offers his Kingdom to you, but you decline it saying you'll found your own Kingdom. That's basically it, there are no other party members who can join you, and no really remarkable NPCs not mentioned.
DQII: This introduced the concept of multiple party members. The story was a direct continuation of DQI: you played as the three descendants of the hero from the first game, and you go around trying to stop a new demon from destroying the world. Interestingly, you can visit the same map from the first game, and even explore the old castle the Dragonlord lived in. If you do, you find the last descendant of the Dragonlord...! ...And he's a pretty nice guy, who just lives in his castle and doesn't bother the outside world.
DQIII: This was the first game that wasn't connected to the previous ones. Again, you're the son/daughter (the game lets you choose the hero's gender) of a great hero, and you're prophesied to save the world. However, while DQII had PCs with some personality, in DQIII, all of the characters are cyphers. You literally go to a place in the first town, say you want a "warrior," "cleric," "wizard," "fighter," or whatever and another party member joins you.
DQIII also introduced the concept of class-change. You could change a party member's class to something else if you got them to a high enough level. Finally, the ending of the game reveals: the game is a prequel of the first DQ game. You end up becoming the first hero referenced in the first game through traveling through a portal to another world.
Then there's Dragon Quest IV, and this really did some interesting things...
Rather than start you as the hero, the game started with four different chapters that would be played in order. Each chapter focused a story on a party member (or group of party members) who would have their own personal journey. It would progress on, all of them having an open ending, some happy, some not, until it reached the fifth chapter. The fifth chapter introduced the hero, who would then set out and eventually meet all of the party members from the previous chapters and they would join him/her. I think it's the first example of an rpg that focused equal time on individual characters rather than following one character around all of the time. (Think of it as sorta similar to that one part in FF6 where you choose between following Locke, Edgar/Terra/OldGuy, or Sabin.)
In my opinion, DQIV is the best in the series. While the focus in DQ has always been more on gameplay than story, DQIV has some really interesting characters and a real story-arc that flows very naturally and is well thought out. The only real problem I have with it is that the original game used a combat system sorta similar to Persona3: you couldn't direct the actions of your other party members, you had to pick a battle plan for them to follow.
Q: Wait, why weren't DQV and VI released outside of Japan?
A: Actually from what I've read, this isn't because they thought there was no interest or that it would sell badly: this is because the development team didn't want to do it. They finished DQV, and then rather than translate it, proceeded work immediately on DQVI. Considering a lot of Japan gamers think DQV is the best in the series, this was probably a loss for English-speaking gamers.
Q: What about the remakes?
A: Remakes had been done since the SNES days, with SNES versions of DQI, II, and III. These were later ported as Gameboy Color games.
DQIV was originally remade for the playstation back in 2001. This time, Enix really did plan to release it in the United States. If you bought Dragon Quest VII, you could even see an advertisement on the manual that stated a Dragon Quest IV remake would be released within a year. It never happened. A company Enix owned that coded DQIV went bankrupt, and the cost (in both time and money) of hiring a new team to translate the code made the project unfeasible. :(
In 2007, it was remade again for the Nintendo DS by the new Square-Enix, and then localized and released in other countries.
DQV was remade for the PS2, but again was never released outside Japan. Recently it was remade for the Nintendo DS as well, and that version was localized. DQ VI was also remade and localized very recently. (Like, in February.)
Q: Are the remakes any good?
A: Considering they all include the core of the original games, just with graphic updates and nice bells and whistles, pretty much. However... I have some gripes about the English localization of Dragon Quest IV:
1. The Dragon Quest IV remake for the playstation added a new feature called 'party talk'. In the old NES version, once a character joined your party, he/she would then only be a party member to help you in battle, there were no 'cut-scenes' that would show the player sides of their personality such as in any Final Fantasy game from IV onward. "Party talk" addressed that issue: if you selected for your character to talk to someone and there was no NPC around, the party members would instead have conversations with each other. These were very specific and detailed, you could talk to an NPC, and then use Party Talk to see what every character's reaction was. It added much needed characterization and really fleshed them out.
And then when the DS version was localized, they didn't bother to include it. WHY?! Why did they do this?! This decision in my mind, is bizarre. Unless there's yet another remake (which... will probably be a decade or so at least) there will be no official translation of the party talk.
(Fortunately I both own the Japan version of the game and there's a continuing open translation over here. ♥)
For DQV and DQVI, these games also included the addition of party talk which was translated to their DS versions.
2. The localization decided to add some really horrible regionalism. Every country in the game now had a different dialect that was written to approximate a phonetic reading. Alena's Kingdom, for example, has every NPC speaking with a bad Russian accent, and she's changed from being a Princess to being a Tsarevna. It's awkward, adds nothing to the characterization or the plot, and distracts from the text.
3. They changed all of the translations of the names and places from the original NES version. Maybe this could have been forgiven if they were changing them to be more accurate to the original Japanese text, but more often, it was to add puns and pop culture references. For example, there is one Kingdom in the game called ブランカ (buranka). This was translated in the NES version as Branca. Then it was localized in the DS remake as Casabranca.
Gameplay-wise, it's great.
Q: I'm interested now in trying these.
A: Watch for a future post!
The DS versions of IV, V, VI (which just came out), and the new IX are all still being sold and are easy to get. DQVIII for the PS2 should be easily found in any used game store. Finding an old PS1 copy of Dragon Quest VII on eBay is doable, but a bit pricey. The Gameboy Color DQI-II and III games are a lot cheaper, but you'd need an old GBC or GBA to play them since the DS can't play GBC games. As for original NES carts of DQI-IV, they can be either dirt cheap (around $1 for just the game) or ridiculous overpriced. I once saw a sealed copy of DQIV sell for over $500 USD. ...But those are only for collectors, really.
Q: The style used in the official art for Dragon Quest looks familiar.
A: It's all done by Akira Toriyama, best known for Dragon Ball.
I think I'm done. Thanks for reading.
