I think my last question before I pull the trigger is how much of a factor is the wi-fi feature? I know that you can download quests and random maps but would I need to have people join my game to stand a chance in later fights or would I be able to use my custom party for it?
As far as I can tell, in multiplayer games, anyone that joins only takes a space away from your own crew of 4, so that aspect makes no real difference in terms of content, since you can just create a party yourself capable of handling any challenging fights on your own. There is never any mention of any boosts or bonuses with MP linked games.
The wifi mostly seems to make a difference in the tag mode, where you exchange treasure maps for optional dungeons. You will be able to download a lot of quests and optional dungeons direct from Nintendo via Wifi as they are released periodically over time; but the tag feature just has you walking about in public with the game ‘on’ in that specific mode hoping the DS gets in range of ANOTHER DS player that happens to also be playing DQ9(also in tag mode?). It’s that content that might be unavailable to the bulk of us. But it’s hardly worth agonizing over from what I can tell.
Correct. And it also had a level cap for every area. That is if you were higher level than the area you were grinding in, your battle wins wouldn’t count towards your job advancement.
Also it had the hybrid skills which the game didn’t really explain how to get and the best way to get involved a specific sequence of job changes. The individual town stories in DQ7 were possibly the best in the series, but the overall flow of the game was just bloated.
I put 40 hours into it and I don’t think there was an antagonist and the only goal at that point was to keep collecting shards. 40 hours was enough time to finish any of the first 6 Final Fantasy games.
The shard hunt never ended, and it got worse and worse near the end game. The most glaring problem was that you had to constantly warp to different islands on a massive endgame hunt using the shard gates, but the game didn’t actually label any of the gates. I have not-so-fond memories of bouncing around between the temple and all the different islands hoping I chose the place I wanted to warp to correctly. Just absurd stuff…
It was a cute game, but all DQ games kind of are. Puns a plenty, and lots of slight vignettes without too much focus on the endgoal.
It’s really frustrating that there’s no way to speed up dialog in 9. I also haven’t figured out how to skip it.
I guess you only get skill points every other level, starting at whichever level you get them (5?). I went up 2 levels after the first boss fight but only got 3 skill points.
Honestly, that’s what frustrated me back then to the point of putting the game down and I never got around to picking it back up. When I give it another go this year or next year, I’ll be printing out a labelled map of the temple to avoid that issue.
Wow, opening up the secondary classes is kind of a pain in the ass here. All of them seem to involve killing a few specific monsters in a specific rather tedious way. Such fun!
Got my first treasure map last night, but didn’t manage to beat the boss at the bottom of the little treasure dungeon so I don’t know what the rewards will be. I’m actually kind of sad I know no others around me that own the game. I’d love to get more of these little treasure maps in the future!
The first part of the gladiator unlock is to kill 3 slimes with a fully-psyched Dragon Slash. I think my plan to get the gladiator is to change my warrior to a martial artist until I can get “psyche up” for her. Then change her back to warrior, so between my main dude’s “egg on” and the warrior’s “psyche up”, I can raise her tension pretty quick.
Uh, maybe.
Exactly! Such fun… Or the fact that I’m going to switch my Mage to a Swordsman for a few levels so I can get Metal Slash to then change him back to a Mage so I can then go kill two metal slimes with the Magic Barrier skill up. Really game? Thanks! I know they are secondary and optional, but little progress bars and percentage completion meters and quests that beg to be completed are part of how I play these types of games. I can’t not do it.
Optional is no excuse for poorly designed. Mind, I haven’t gotten this far yet, and I like job systems that allow me to mix/match abilities on characters. It sounds a little tedious, like I have to grab this or that class. That would bug me normally, but we’ll see.
For this one I just had my main character (who had learned metal slash) hit the slime once with metal slash and then let my mage finish the slime off. This one was pretty easy. The Gladiator one was a bit more annoying because the slimes would run, so what I started doing was having my Monk use War Cry to freeze them while the main character used Egg On. The quest I’ve had the most issues with so far is the one where you have to kill the Scarewolves RIGHT AFTER hitting them with Warcry. I think I just need to wait until my agility is higher.
Yep, I used a faq(Head to X Island->Go to second from top right warp pedestal!)…gah.
To be fair, some of the actual tasks you are given during that lategame section were interesting though. Lots of time-travel use involving changing the future by manipulating events in the environments and world to work in favor of your goal. But again it did require a lot of really irritating guesswork in terms of getting around. A LOT.
This was probably my one complaint with DQ8. The tension gauge pretty much dominated the endgame stuff, especially trying to do all the optional bosses. The game pretty much devolved into three of your party members working constantly to get tension maxed for your strongest attacker as close to every round as possible(with the occasional round of healing and buffing). When I heard Tension returned in this game I got a bit weary.
I don’t care for the tension mechanic.
Same, what was really a smack in the face in DQ8 is when you start fighting bosses who can reset the entire groups tension gauge with one attack. That drove me crazy when I have the entire team all full and the enemy went first wiping it all out.
Ugh, yeah.
I think it takes away from combat tactical choices. It’s clear they design swaths of the game around it, meaning you just need to be able to build it quickly and survive building it. What fun is that?
I unlocked the Gladiator class last night. It wasn’t horrible, but did take a few minutes. South of Alltrades Abbey, I was able to find a group of slimes that I was able to spam with Snooze spells while I powered up my sword guy. I also did the first Minstrel and Mage quests, though it looks like I’ll have to wait until level 40 to continue with those? I’m not sure quite what comes next.
You’ll run into the person soon for the Ranger quest and I’ve also found the Paladin guy as well. It’s funny. I’ve stopped the main quest almost completely as I’ve been running around building up levels and completing quests and earning gold for more pretty shiny things to equip for my little team. Still trying to figure out the skillset that will work the best for my team here. Not sure yet.
I’m having a little trouble on the Dark Knight. I finally leveled my other party members to 9. I guess I’ll use the main character’s tension to get my theif’s attack way up (she does the most damage) and focus on that. The mage’s damage seems to lag my main characters by a goodly amount.
Paladin gets some incredible skills and I found it was the key member of my party. Not sure if going into detail would cross the spoiler line or not.