DRAGON KWEST NEIN

It'd been a hard sell for my girlfriend.

She refused to believe that it would feel good, that falling back on the traditional games would be good enough. I told her it would be odd at first, but new experiences were healthy, and I was sick of the familiar motions. Besides, I had tried it already, and could state with confidence that despite my initial misgivings, it really was pretty enjoyable.

Eventually I just threatened her with anal rape, and she decided to bite the bullet and play Dragon Quest IX.

Neither of us had really played the Dragon Quest series before. I tried the initial game when I was a child, and after getting wiped out by a wizard I met after exiting a cave, I told my dad to take the game back to the rental place. The girlfriend tried the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV, and dubbed it boring at shit. At the time I decided to shill DQIX, she had finished Final Fantasy Tactics: A2 and was trying to beat Disgaea.

Let me digress for a moment to note that I sort of hate both of these games. Part of this can be traced to the fact that both of the games clearly hate me. After two hours of giving Disgaea a chance and sleeping, I discovered that my flash card apparently refuses to save files from that particular game. Worse was Tactic's treatment of me, which was killing me in the goddamned STARTING TRAINING MISSION as the enemies used attacks that apparently weren't even supposed to occur. It also doesn't help that tactics and disgaea both feature a literal endless parade of frustrating forced grinding and careful stat management to protect yourself from having to repeat teeth-gratingly bad cutscenes.

I'm also going to admit that generally speaking, I'm not really a big RPG player, and an even smaller RPG-finisher. I usually get halfway or three-quarters through a game, and then get distracted/frustrated with the inevitable plot slowdown and just play through the Metal Slug series again. So, it was surprising that I not only beat Dragon Quest IX, but I beat it with a minimum of "god damnit I don't want to fuck with this dungeon wanna blow up tanks because I am a manchild."

One thing that alot of HARDXCORE rpg enthusiasts bitched about was the total lack of plot, or more specifically, the lack of a grand unifying story. They're not really wrong there, as the central plot of Dragon Quest IX is forgotten a dozen hours at a time. The basic gist of the story is that you are a Celestrian, which is basically a race of Christianity-style angels who exist to do good deeds and engage is retarded cutscenes that don't really go anywhere. Aside from the beginning and tailend of the series (the latter of which features the most awkwardly shoehorned in EVIL EMPIRE introduction seen to man), the plot consists of episodic visits to towns, which always have a Problem, which can always been solved by going to a Local Dungeon to beat a Bad. This is literally every town, aside from some tiny variations (such as go to Local Dungeon, then go back to town to beat a Bad). However, where I differ from people that have no problem in spending 200 hours in Disgaea's Item World (when my girlfriend explained that to me, my reaction was akin to shoving a cross in Dracula's face), is that this isn't really a problem for me.

Aside from the town's problems, there really is very little personality about the game. You have no moral choices throughout the game (not even the false refusal BUT THOU MUST trope), and the people you fight with, along with yourself, are customizable both in ability and appearance. As a result, while you are forced to help everyone, I could just pretend that helping the people was simply so I could get along with my ultimate goal of leaving these terrible places are quickly as possible. I really appreciated the game not giving my party members any actual personality, as there was no chance that I would run into that bad RPG conundrum where the best characters gameplay wise are easily the worst character wise (FUCK YOU AYLA WHY IS YOUR STRENGTH SO HIGH). My only regret was naming my nuke mage character "Snooks," as I realized halfway through the game that season 2 of Jersey Shore is really fucking awful.

Probably my favorite aspect of the game is how they implement job skills. At any job, you will gradually level in stats, as well as gain ability points that can be allocated into different sub-skills, which include weapons and job-specific trees. As you allocate points, you unlock various perks, including new abilities and increased stats. Relatively early in the game, you can switch out jobs, but with the penalty that you start the new job at level 1. While annoying, you can always switch to your previous jobs at whatever level you stopped at, and you always retain the perks from your job point allocation. In essence, it prevents easy exploitation that would break the tiny challenge the main game holds, while also encouraging experimentation with character build since you're never heavily punished for putting your points into stupid things (protip: knifes are so fucking awful it's not even funny).

Combat is a really simple throwback to older console rpgs (the only real change from the fight/magic/item scheme are randomly appearing limit breaks that are pretty much useless and will pop up exactly when you could gain no worthwhile use from them), and the challenge is always at a reasonable level. I tend to play RPGs carefully and with a somewhat autistic attention to MAXX STATS, while my girlfriend just basically grinded only when a boss completely stomped her. Both approaches worked well, as it's not really very hard to feel like everything you're fighting is hilariously unprepared for a guy wearing a hood shaped like a slime.

Speaking of slime hoods (OR SLOODS IF YOU WOULD), one reason I would wager the game's massive popularity is in the sheer amount of equipment within the game, and that the equipment directly impacts the character's visual appearance. Thus, part of the game is basically playing dolls, which appeal to all of you SICK FUCKS out there. But really, the amount of customization is almost overwhelming, and thankfully aside from weapons, stats play such a minor role in your character's strength that you can afford to choose a slightly worse outfit if it makes you feel like a boss.

However, I'm going to have to say that while it was fun for a little bit, Dragon Quest 9's post-game content isn't really all that good. Yes, in that quest for extending playability, there is a post-story aspect of the game that easily surpasses the actual story. However, while I did play through it fairly extensively, it just wasn't that fun. Let me break this down.

1) I HOPE YOU LIKE FUCKING GRINDING. Post-game consists entirely of "grottos" which are sort of randomly generated dungeons that consist of several to many floors, culminating in a boss that drops a treasure map to another grotto. The quality of the grotto from that map, which affects the boss, quality of treasure, and enemy types, depends on several things, most most especially on the level on your hero. Put another way, if you want the toughest monsters and best gear available, you're essentially going to have to level your main character all the way to level 99.

Ha ha, just kidding. Actually, to get the best, you're going to have to level your main character to 99, then go to a place where you "revocate," which drops your character back to level 1, then level back up to level 99 then revocate again and then revocate to level 99. To grind to this level, you better have a grotto map that spawns a rare slime type that gives insane amounts of experience, or you're essentially in this shit for the long haul.

After you do this, you can then fight Legacy Bosses, which are essentially final bosses from previous Dragon Quest games, and are all hard as shit, and require you to grind up different jobs so you can allocate skill points to every possible stat-increasing perk. Oh, and to get the best possible gear from the Legacy Bosses (note, said gear has a 2% drop rate unless you have a romfile or employ a really surreal programming trick), you have to kill each Legacy Boss dozens of times, as each time the boss is killed, you can choose to have the boss "level-up," meaning better stats and occasionally new horrible abilities.

Granted, I know the game wasn't forcing me to play through the postgame, but the sudden reliance on massive amounts of dull grinding in order to progress was just a little depressing.

2) NOTHING IS REALLY RANDOM. I would have been able to deal with the grinding if the post-game experience had been more random. By that, I mean the sort of Diablo II random, where once you get to a certain level, a vast amount of really great stuff can come out of any enemy, though the chances of that happening were fairly low. At first glance, the random nature of the grottoes made me hopeful for that sort of experience when I first started plowing through.

However, any aspect of randomness is totally illusory. Every enemy can only drop two treasures, and even the treasure chests can drop a certain level of treasure depending upon their "quality type," which stays the same no matter how many times you enter the same grotto. There apparently certain tradeable grottoes so heavily done that people have plotted out what sorts of items can drop from each chest at any given moment. This is amusing, but it basically removes any sort of interest from the game, transforming the game from an entertaining, rapidly progressing yarn about a jerk angel who just wants people to leave him alone into SQUARE-ENIX'S SPREADSHEET ADVENTURE.

In conclusion, at the very least it's a game worth picking up, and almost as good as anal sex.

haha kidding