Playing Through The Backlog: Dragon Quest IX

I know it's been like 354 years since I last posted anything here, and for that I am dreadfully sorry. The first reason which I will get into greater detail at some other date has been a hectic work schedule since New Year. I've already been to China and Germany this year as well as playing host to customers from America and Dubai so the time I have to actually write anything greater than a couple words has been pretty much non-existant. I have been using Facebook to a greater degree as well as my truly awesome tumblr site, Mustaches of the 80s! The other reason I have not written here in nearly 4 months is because of the game pictured to the right, Dragon Quest IX. Every year at Christmas my mom sends a box of gift-like items to my wife and I. I say gift-like items, because usually it consists of food stuffs that are hard to locate in South Korea (taco seasoning and Duncan Hines cake mixes are prenial favorites) and assorted odd items. Each year we usually get one or two items that could legitimately be considered gifts. This year among the haul were the DVD of the back half of R. Kelly's Trapped In The Closet, and this DS game.

Back when I was a youth, Dragon Warrior was the first Nintendo game my family purchased (at a Silo if memory serves me correctly) outside of the Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt game pak that came with our system. I remember going with my dad to get a game. I wanted Zelda, but we ended up getting Dragon Warrior instead. Both of us were hooked, and for a time getting and playing a Dragon Warrior game was something that would happen over the Christmas holiday (except Dragon Warrior III, which I think was gotten during spring break). The Dragon Warrior series stopped being released in America for whatever reason after Dragon Warrior IV (which was released in such limited quantities, that I never played it until years later when my friend bought it from some used video game dealer). Ultimately the series was superceded in my household by the Final Fantasy series which pretty much continously released games.

I liked a lot of the Final Fantasy games, but around the time they made it to the Playstation 2, a lot of the stuff that had made them great was gone, replaced with angsty teenagers with oversized weapons and shitty haircuts. Dragon Quest IX has none of that, and in fact the game has kind of a retro feel to it. The first enemies you will fight include Dragon Quest/Warrior's iconic slime. The protagonist is a silent, nameless figure, your party starts off armed with bamboo poles, and many of the goals in the game are decidedly small scale. Only as the game progresses does it become clear that the fate of the world rests upon your shoulders.

That's not to say the entire game consists of throwbacks to an earlier age of gaming. Dragon Quest IX also features a lot of uh...features that are seemingly inspired by online games like Everquest or World of Warcraft, mainly multi-player capabilities, downloadable content, and Warcraft style quests.

The multi-player modes I did not have much experience with since it only works with the DS local network, and no one in my neck of the woods was playing. Though from what I've read, it seems like it would be a lot of fun.

The other thing that Dragon Quest IX borrows from more contemporary gaming is its accomplishments list. I don't know what game or system first came out with this, since there was a good 5 or 6 year period where I didn't really play any video games. My first exposure to it came from World of Warcraft, but I have no doubt some other game innovated it first. Anyway Dragon Quest IX has an insane number of accomplishments awarded for everything for achieving a certain level, or killing X number of monsters to wearing a particular outfit or defeating the game in a certain number of hours.

These accomplishments coupled with quests, optional dungeons, and downloadable content really increase the ammount of time one can spend playing Dragon Quest IX. I actually "beat the game" on a flight to Germany back in January of this year, but defeating the final boss was hardly the end of the game. If fact only after beating the last boss do a lot of quests become available. The quests are of the standard MMORPG ilk (kill X number of Y, bring doodad W to random guy Z), but on a portable system allow the game to be played in bite sized bits and still feel a sense of accomplishment. ("Oh I can totally kill 5 magi wyverns using inferno before the train gets to my stop!")

Anyway, the game is a ton of fun, especially if you're a fan of RPGs from the late 80s or early 90s. I've got a ton of writer's rust, so I'm going to toss up a random score for the game and hit the "Publish Post," button and call it a day. Catch you later Bill and Ted!

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