I think I might *gulp* be a DQ fan.

I'd never played Dragon Quest (or Warrior, as it was known, back in my day) because . . . I don't even know why. But my friend Casey raved about them whenever my friend Dylan and I would talk about FF.

I purchased DQVIII for the PS2 in a used game store because it was super cheap (I was looking for FFX, which I was finally going to play) and started it . . . and hated it. Call me old-school-nostalgist, but I didn't care for the 3D overworld stuff. I prefer my RPGs nice and pixilated and overhead, thank you very much.

But then DQIV remade for the DS was on sale for $9.99! So I picked up a copy . . . played part of it, hated it, and put it down.

HOWEVER! I ran out of games to play last week and remembered I had those two DQ games that I paid good money for . . . so I popped DQIV in and . . . LOVED IT! I played it non-stop until I beat it in a matter of less than a week.

I thought to myself, "Yeah, well . . . I'm sure I'll still think DQVIII sucks!" but gave it a go yesterday . . . and LOVE IT!

I'm pretty sure aliens abducted me and reprogrammed me to love DQ.

Or I accepted them for what they were . . . which is NOT FF.

Who here also loves DQ? Who here hates DQ? Anyone else go through a hate-to-love arc?

I played DQ8 but I couldn't get into it at all. I probably only played two hours or so. I always hear nice things about the series, but I have been reticent to try another game seeing as I always heard DQ8 was so good.

I think DQVIII only works for a person if they've already played the 2D DQ games. I can't put my finger on it, but there's something very OFF about DQVIII as a newcomer's first game.

I say try one of the 2D games first.

I have a love hate relationship with the series. When I break the game down into its basic elements, I can go on and on about how crappy they are and how a dozen games do it better but for some weird reason, all this crappy design, when combined, collapses in on itself and creates a series that keeps me hooked to the very end.

I've debated doing another playthrough of DQVII many times but can't bring myself to do it despite loving every minute of it when I was playing it. I've loved all the DQ games I've played so far and only stopped playing DQVIII cause another game caught my attention and I sorta never got around to picking it up again. I'll probably rectify that soon. I still need to play DQIV and V, though I have the ROMs I feel it would be better to pick them up; since I usually only own ROMs of games that never made it here or I already own. I have strict pirating rules... :shifty:

I'd love to get into DQ, if they add more DBZ references.

Never felt the motivation.
I don't understand what the draw is.Maybe I need to watch some videos of what are considered the best ones and see if I too change my mind.:roll2

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I still need to play DQIV and V, though I have the ROMs I feel it would be better to pick them up; since I usually only own ROMs of games that never made it here or I already own. I have strict pirating rules...

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I've always felt that if you weren't going to pick up the game anyways ROMs are completely legit. There are several titles that I would never had bought if I hadn't played the game for free first. But then again I am the type who will by a game after I have beaten the whole thing and just have the physical copy sit on my shelf unopened.

I was going to give them a spin on ROMs a little while ago, but damn Sony took away PS3 Linux support so I can't play them on my PS3 :(

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Originally Posted by ANGRYWOLF

Never felt the motivation.
I don't understand what the draw is.Maybe I need to watch some videos of what are considered the best ones and see if I too change my mind.:roll2

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Videos will not help you I'm afraid. The games will continue to look bland and archaic. I can't really put my finger on why I like them but I do attribute part of it to the fact that I don't mind grinding...

Really it has more to do with the games structures and the fact the stories really have some serious twists but because of the formulaic structure you never expect them so they always catch you off guard... My personal favorite twist being the one in DQIII.

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Originally Posted by VeloZer0

I've always felt that if you weren't going to pick up the game anyways ROMs are completely legit. There are several titles that I would never had bought if I hadn't played the game for free first. But then again I am the type who will by a game after I have beaten the whole thing and just have the physical copy sit on my shelf unopened.

I was going to give them a spin on ROMs a little while ago, but damn Sony took away PS3 Linux support so I can't play them on my PS3 :(

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My views of ROMs are the same as fansubs in anime (which is where I get my code of conduct), which is that I usually try to be supportive to the industries I love, if I really needed the desire to try it first I can always borrow or rent it so ROMs never had much use for me outside of playing titles that will never get here.

My only exception to the rule is if the game/video in question is incredibly rare or discontiuned, or some other issue that makes acquiring a legit copy a serious hit to the bank account. I would own a ROM of Suikoden II for instance but I wouldn't for Suikoden I or V cause I could acquire them easily either through a game store or DLC.

I love the DQ games because they are old school. Can't wait until VI and IX come out in the US for DS. Those are the only two I have yet to play.

The games can get boring and require some grinding, but I find them relaxing to play because the gameplay is simple yet effective.

I had a big smile on my face when I walked into the Gamestop by my work today, they have posters for DQIX out and I couldn't help but feel a bit excited for it.

I didn't like VIII all that much. But I loved IV and V. Even when I went back to VIII after playing those two, I couldn't get into it. Dunno why.

The only one I couldn't stand was VII. It was way too long to get going and also very hard. This was right when the FF series was going through a revolution of sorts with it's emergence on the PS1 and I expected something similar for the DQ series. This game was not that. VIII was though, that game rocked. It's probably my favorite PS2 game besides Kingdom Hearts.

DragonQuest VIII is one of my favorite RPG's ever. I adore everything about it. I haven't played any of the other ones :aimmeh:

DQ III and IV are fantastic NES games. I enjoy the series.

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Originally Posted by Bastian

I'm pretty sure aliens abducted me and reprogrammed me to love DQ.

Or I accepted them for what they were . . . which is NOT FF.

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I think this is exactly it. I hated when I tried the older games. But when I played DQ VIII, just to get the demo for XII, I really fell in love with the series. It's one of the most beautiful games I've ever played but its as true to a JRPG as you can possibly get. I ended up liking it a lot better than Final Fantasy XII, ironically.

Going back to the older ones after DQVIII, I absolutely love the series. I guess it's true what they say: a spoonfull of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Playing DQV right now and am having a great time.

I have a copy of DQVIII, but I haven't really played it yet. I need to give it a chance at one point, though.

I played a few hours of DQVIII and I just couldn't get in to it. It's still sitting there so I'll eventually give it a try again. However, in saying that DQIX looks like it'll be a really good DS RPG.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing that a major installment for this franchise is coming first to DS.

I'm not too surprised, DQ is huge in Japan, they have to release the games on weekends cause if they release a title on the weekday people call in sick to sit in line for hours to get a copy.

The DS is also one of the best selling gaming systems of the last decade and almost everyone in Japan seems own one. Really combining a popular franchise with a popular console seems like a no-brainer. ;)

I'm more surprised DQ X was announced for the Wii to be honest; but the Wii needs better third party support so god knows I'm not complaining.

Yeah, it seems like they always want to put Dragon Quest on the most popular console in Japan, can't blame them for the cultural and monetary justifications behind it.

The day DQX was announced for the Wii was a sad day. Level-5 has already done and is doing more work on the PS3. I could only salivate at what they would be able to do with DQX on that platform considering what they did with DQVIII on the PS2. However, I heard Yuji Horii is not really impressed with the current "cutting edge" graphics and sees no real advantage to them. More power to him, I'm still gonna buy his games (maybe not DQX for a while, though).

DQ was never really about the graphics and the Wii is good enough to make a game on scale with DQVIII in terms of world building. I don't know, I haven't really been as impressed with DQVIII as you were Bolivar, sad to say. Course I might just be bitter cause the game did away with the infinetly more awesome job class system of DQVII. :colbert:

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

DQ was never really about the graphics and the Wii is good enough to make a game on scale with DQVIII in terms of world building. I don't know, I haven't really been as impressed with DQVIII as you were Bolivar, sad to say. Course I might just be bitter cause the game did away with the infinetly more awesome job class system of DQVII. :colbert:

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I would agree DQ was never really about the graphics...

until Level-5 got on board the series. DQVIII and IX are two of the most beautiful games I've seen on the PS2 and DS, respectively. In fact DQVIII was one of the first games that really changed my opinion about cell shading in video games. Looking at how Valkyria Chronicles used cell shading on the PS3, I think DQX would be amazing, at least visually, on that platform.

But like I said, Horii really doesn't care about stuff like that so it will probably not happen.

Sorry to hear you're not impressed with DQVIII. I guess you have a job-system fetish, to me the real enjoyment of DQ games comes from the sum of all the parts - the artwork, the music, the setting, the characters, and the traditional gameplay coming together in the joy of the adventure itself. I get lost in that reaaal easy.

I really dislike DQ games, they just feel really boring and the characters do not excite me at all. Compared to FF, DQ just seems unoriginal and boring.

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Originally Posted by Bolivar

I would agree DQ was never really about the graphics...

until Level-5 got on board the series. DQVIII and IX are two of the most beautiful games I've seen on the PS2 and DS, respectively. In fact DQVIII was one of the first games that really changed my opinion about cell shading in video games. Looking at how Valkyria Chronicles used cell shading on the PS3, I think DQX would be amazing, at least visually, on that platform.

But like I said, Horii really doesn't care about stuff like that so it will probably not happen.

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I'm not surprised, one look at DQVII shows how much he cares, released right after FFIX in Japan and a month before FFX in the US and PAL regions. The game looks at best like an early PS1 game or a late 16-bit game. Course the battle animations were extremely well done and fluid but that's the extent of the games graphical prowess.

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Sorry to hear you're not impressed with DQVIII. I guess you have a job-system fetish, to me the real enjoyment of DQ games comes from the sum of all the parts - the artwork, the music, the setting, the characters, and the traditional gameplay coming together in the joy of the adventure itself. I get lost in that reaaal easy.

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I've always had a mental disconnect with the series, when I'm playing the game, I enjoy the hell out of it. When I'm not playing them, I have to muster up the will to actually put it back in. As I said before in another thread, for me, DQ tends to embody many of the elements I don't like in RPGs but for some reason, taking all these bad elements together in a game creates some weird inverse parallel paradox where suddenly everything works perfectly well and the elements become super special awesome.

I enjoy DQVIII but so far the elements that make it standout are the elements that make it mostly different from previous installments which is mostly the graphics. I'm a little concerned the game sacrificed (more like slimmed down) game play options in exchange for some visual appeal. Oh well, who knows. I'll get back to it eventually, I just have a lot on my plate right now.

As for the Job class junky thing, I do openly admit I'm a sucker for a well done job class system but funny enough, my favorite entry in the DQ series is actually the very first game. It's just so well made and a lot of thought was really put into the story and pacing for an old school 8-bit game. :D

Huh, I thought I posted in this thread already.

Kind of got into the series all haphazardly, my first one being 3 on the Gameboy Colour before going back to 1 and 2. Then I picked up 8, and most recently 4 and 5 on the DS. I also like 8 the least, the biggest reason being that it seemed a little more drawn out. One thing I dig about DQ is that the battles are pretty fast, DQ8 seemed to slow down considerably from the early games. Totally getting 9 and 6 as soon as I can when they came out.

Even though I have my issues with Japanese RPGs in general, DQ manages to do something that hooks me. Dragon Quest 5 is one of my favourite games across all genres. I don't think there's another Japanese RPG that I would consider among my top favourite games.

I finished VIII. That's IV and VIII now. I'm not sure which one to do next. V or VII?

The thing that I really like about these games is how extremely NOT emo they are. And how very fantasy/castle/magic they are. I wish FF hadn't given that up after FFV, but at least now I've discovered a love for DQ to take its place. :P

I don't think you can go wrong with either V or VII.

I have not played V but JKTrix adores it and him and I tend to think alike on games so I'll say that's a good recommendation.

I have played VII and can say its pretty damn awesome if a bit slow in the beginning but good god is the game awesome. I should only warn you that you may need a guide to reference when you get stuck (and you will get stuck) cause trying to find some of the map pieces can be a pain unless you literally talk/click/murder everything you possibly can come across to find those map shards...

I would also recommend DQV. Yes, it's a great game, also the characters develop with their own set path like in IV and VIII which you already played, plus it's the next chapter in the trilogy starting with IV. The game is just epic from the moment you start it.

I played Dragon Warrior I - Dragon Warrior IV on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I lost track of the series, as most people did, after that because they were not released in North America. I am surprised by how the recent titles still play so similarly to the originals.

Played and beat I, II, III, IV, VII, and VIII.

Love DQ. And Dairy Queen.

I hate RPG's where I can't see the characters during battle. Sad I know, but it's part of the reason I could never get into Dragon Quest or Phantasy Star. Tried them, but never really enjoyed them. However, I am interested in DQ IX.

When it comes to JRPG's, the battles have to interest me, or I don't really care to play it at all. Hence why The World Ends With You is one of my favorite games. Also why I enjoy the Tales Of... games and Star Ocean... the battle system.

THE JACKEL

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Originally Posted by Laddy

Played and beat I, II, III, IV, VII, and VIII.

Love DQ. And Dairy Queen.

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Ha! Everytime I type DQ for DragonQuest I think of DQ. I'm addicted to their Peanut Buster Parfets . . . except that I don't ever eat them because they're bad for me. :(

Anyway, I'll take everyone's advice and start in on V . . . except that IX just came out and I want to play it so bad! I think V will have to wait.

43ert

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Originally Posted by ljkkjlcm9

I hate RPG's where I can't see the characters during battle. Sad I know, but it's part of the reason I could never get into Dragon Quest or Phantasy Star. Tried them, but never really enjoyed them. However, I am interested in DQ IX.

When it comes to JRPG's, the battles have to interest me, or I don't really care to play it at all. Hence why The World Ends With You is one of my favorite games. Also why I enjoy the Tales Of... games and Star Ocean... the battle system.

THE JACKAL

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Battles are extremely important to me as well and it was this very same aspect that turned me off from DQ for so long. I think VIII really eased me into it quite a bit, I loved every minute of DQ IV (well, most minutes) and feel the same way about DQ V.

You can see the characters in DQIX. They're cute too. :)

You get over not seeing your characters. It's not a big deal. I like DQ's style, it's refreshing after so many years of FF.

DQ is certainly extremely different from FF. Where FF strives to reinvent the wheel each time, DQ is content with using the exact same gameplay each time. And it doesn't get old.

I'm almost done (I assume) with DQ V now. That will be IV, VIII and V. I can't wait to start IX, and I'm extremely curious about X!

I've recently figured out what I really like about this series (besides the castles and magic and spells and such): it's always goofy. Even when dealing with the major villains, it's a bit silly. It just feels like a fluffy fun time.

That's not to say I don't like serious games. FFIII, IV, V and VI excel at the opposite of that style. They're a bit emo and serious and dramatic, but they do it well.

I guess at this point in my life I'd rather play something simple and silly rather than serious and emo.

Yay for DQ!

Now, has anyone played DQ Swords? Because I have to admit, I'm sort of curious about it...

I loooooove DQ.
I seriously think that they are just as good as some of the Final Fantasy games. I mean, it has a very 3D type world, but the battles are still kinda like turn-based, and it's just great. Journey of the Cursed King was my FAAAAAVORITE. I played it forever, and beat alllll the mini quests. It was so much fun.

I've never played any of the DQ games, however.....


http://www.wdexpo.org/wp-content/upl...servegroup.jpg

I finished DQ V. That means I've now completed DQ IV, V and VIII. I've just started VII but what I really want to play is IX but can't because I'm too poor to buy it right now. So VII it is. :( But I'm really enjoying VII regardless. I'm just worried that I heard it is over 100 hours of gameplay. Unlike the rest of RPG nerd-dom, I do NOT like super long games. I get bored of them if they last longer than 40 hours. So I don't know how I'm going to manage to finish VII. Has anyone here?

Well let's put it this way, I have played every DQ game released in the US (I-V, VII-IX) and have beaten all of them but VII and IX. IX because it's new and I'm still playing it, and VII for the reasons you stated. It is VERY long and, in my opinion, often tedious.

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Originally Posted by Bastian

I finished DQ V. That means I've now completed DQ IV, V and VIII. I've just started VII but what I really want to play is IX but can't because I'm too poor to buy it right now. So VII it is. :( But I'm really enjoying VII regardless. I'm just worried that I heard it is over 100 hours of gameplay. Unlike the rest of RPG nerd-dom, I do NOT like super long games. I get bored of them if they last longer than 40 hours. So I don't know how I'm going to manage to finish VII. Has anyone here?

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Its like FFXII in the fact you don't notice how long it is once the game really gets going. I actually really enjoyed VII even if I would highly recommend using a guide from Gamefaqs just so you don't get overly frustrated from trying to find the puzzle shards to activate the next story point.

I finished the first disc at 80 hours and the second at about 120 or 130. I didn't even "complete" the game, by which I mean I didn't try to master every job class or get every monster class. I believe BG-57 did all this and his clock is some ungodly high number but really you don't need to do all that to complete the game. I'll admit I was probably over-leveled when I finished the game but I never noticed how long the game was until I looked at the clock. Its story is set up as a bunch of mini-stories building into a long over arching plot that doesn't really become relevant until the 3/4 mark of the first disc. There are also tons of side stuff to do like collecting the Mini-medals, going to the casinos, a monster park, and even building your own town so its not like all that time is straight up story rushing you to the next story point.

The puzzle pieces have so far been easy to find. I haven't ever had to look. Because it seems pretty formulaic. Find puzzle piece, place on pedestal, new land appears, explore, defeat boss, go back to present, visit same land in present, find puzzle piece in same place boss was, place puzzle piece on pedestal, new land appears . . .

But if they start putting them in strange places, I might just have to use a walkthrough, because I am not all that interested in spending huge amounts of time playing hide-and-seek in a super long game.

I've really enjoyed it so far, though. I like the formula.

But WolfKano, you said 80 hours for just the FIRST disc and the second was even longer?! WTF?! The longest RPG I've ever played was at like 70 hours. That's a bit daunting.

But if a lot of that inflated time is maxing out every single job class for every single character and doing all the casinos and stuff, I guess it will take me significantly less time. I have zero interest in the casinos. I DID play the TnT board or whatever it was called in DQ V and liked those.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should just pause DQVII and move on to DQIX when I have the money to buy it. At this rate it might take me a year to finish DQ VII and I'll need to be done with it by January for thew new Zelda anyway. :P

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Originally Posted by Bastian

The puzzle pieces have so far been easy to find. I haven't ever had to look. Because it seems pretty formulaic. Find puzzle piece, place on pedestal, new land appears, explore, defeat boss, go back to present, visit same land in present, find puzzle piece in same place boss was, place puzzle piece on pedestal, new land appears . . .

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That's one of the reasons I didn't like it. It got very repetitive for me and the story moved very slowly. Also the bosses were insanely hard sometimes and I didn't feel like grinding for two hours just so I could beat them and do the whole thing over again in the next 'new' area.

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Originally Posted by Del Murder

It got very repetitive for me and the story moved very slowly.

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I think there's some sick part of me that LIKES that. I do an "area" a day. :p
But I suppose over 100 hours of that would get annoying. I'm not annoyed yet at about five new areas in.

As for the bosses, I haven't found them to be too difficult yet. But that's probably because I'm obsessed with first purchasing all the best armor and weapons, which results in grinding. :/

The second disc is about 20-40 hours in terms of story. It mostly involves backtracking to a few places and exploring the parts of the world you didn't the first time. So the game is total about 100 hours to beat give or take 10 hours. You could probably finish it even faster than that but you will miss a lot.

The story really picks up once you get to Dharma Temple as well as the game itself since all the job classes start opening up (btw don't be fooled, the Shepard is an awesome class and I highly advise you make one of your characters into one when the job first becomes available, also make sure to unlock the Teen Idol class as well cause it has a great healing ability that costs nothing) at least for me that is. I would recommend to at least try to get one if not two third tier job classes for the final boss. You can ignore the Monster Hearts cause they have an abysmal chance of dropping and only the Tier 3 monsters give you anything worth using.

As for side stuff, Mini-Medals are pretty easy to do and its fine to ignore the town and casinos but one I recommend doing cause frankly it doesn't require much effort on your part are the pageants. They are based purely on your stats and equipment so basically just playing with equipment or just simply leveling and then dropping by and entering can net you some decent stuff without really forcing you to spend hours on it. Still, I would say to at least play around with everything cause VII has a ton of stuff to offer, especially for a non-remake DQ game.

I've played DQ I, II (haven't defeated), III, IV, V, VI, and IX.

I'd say that III, IV, V, VI, or IX would be my favourite. I can't really pick one since each have something I really like about the game (III's class system, IV's story with Psaro, V's Monster Recruiting System, VI's having both Monster Recruiting and a class system, though the monster's you could get were limited and most of the classes lowered your stats quite a bit, and IX having lots of character customization and sidequests).

I am . . . not playing an official version of VII, shall we say, because the USED ones on eBay are much more than the game actually originally cost (I even saw an "unopened" one for $225!).

So I'm breaking my own rule and playing it on my PC. But the sound is all wonky and it latches onto a midi sound and will not let go of that note, creating all sorts of "lovely" dissonance not originally intended. Grr. Has anyone encountered this and knows how to fix it?

Wow, it's worth that much? Maybe I should sell mine...

In celebration of having a NES again, Peegee and I started playing Dragon Warrior tonight! We're level 7, bitches!

It's actually pretty fun for being such a grindfest. I didn't realize how tired of imps, w. wolves, GrOgres etc I was! For some reason, the archaic mode of speech doesn't bother me in this game (it was really irritating when I started DQ 4 on ds, for some reason). I also really like infinite lives :D

I played DQ8 once. It was like playing a NES game with prettier graphics. Needless to say, I put it away pretty quickly.

I'm in the midst of DQ7. . . and I sort of lost interest. A guy just walked up to me and totally destroyed my party pretty instantly. Which is annoying because none of the bosses up until this point have given me any trouble at all, and I wasn't expecting that interaction to be a boss fight at all.

I had been playing the game daily, but since being destroyed in that unexpected boss battle . . . I haven't played the game since. Almost five days have passed . . . I might just move on to DQ9 now.

I wouldn't be so disheartened because of one boss. You may have just been ill equipped for the fight. If this was after Dharma Temple, chances are you may just need to play around with class changes to build a sturdy party to deal with bad guys. DQ isn't like FF where the job classes are standalone, you need to level them and quite frankly, they level faster than your party sometimes.

So which boss? What are your levels and what are your classes?

I remember giving up against some boss that had something to do with a tree. It was super hard compared to anything at that point and wasted my party. Finally I grinded enough to where I could take it out only to discover a second boss fight almost immediately after which destroyed me again. At that point I was like 'why am I doing this?' and played MGS or something instead.

Turns out I was a moron.

It was right after Dharma Tower and it was a scripted battle. I turned off the game before realizing that. :P I guess the battle is impossible to win because after I tried again last night and failed, a scene played out showing that that guy was SUPPOSED to beat me.

Life lesson: don't turn your video games off after you think you failed, because maybe you were just SUPPOSED to fail. :P

Of course, that being said the very next dungeon I went into I was totally destroyed by the bosses. I tried again with better tactics and was destroyed again. So... I think I'm back to where I was at in my previous post. :P I don't feel like level grinding. :/

Dharma Temple is the point in the game where the kiddy gloves come off so to speak. It's a pretty mean place but the reward for succeeding is humongous. The hard part is just trying to compensate without Keifer in your party whose departure has significantly weakened your offensive game. You should be level 15 or slightly higher by this point. Luckily the game gets a bit easier after this but the difficulty curve does start to jump around after this point in time.

Sadly, you may have to grind a bit and the more I thought about this the more it dawned on me that if you were only playing the remakes of games up until this point then there is something very important you may have missed since VII has never been ported and VIII is a bit more user friendly than previous installments...

DQ games on the ports tend to be nerfed a bit. Mostly from raising the amount of XP monsters drop by 50% and lowering prices in shop by a third. DQ has in my memory at least, been a grind heavy series hence why it deserves its reputation of being "old school". I was a bit thrown off by you saying you like DQ but hate grinding but if the DS ports are like the GBC ports (I could be wrong) then I could understand, cause you rarely have to stop to level grind or more often than not, grind for gold to buy new equipment.

VII is definetly more of an old school grind in some parts but its not so bad overall since the game is quite generous with giving equips and the job classes tend to compensate for levels a little bit.

I did quite a bit of grinding in DQ8, as well as 4 and 5. I just didn't feel like grinding at that point in time when I wrote that. I gr-.... Ground? Grinded? a bit yesterday and planned on doing it a bit tonight, but it got late fast. I will grind quite a lot tomorrow.

Dosn't "grind" also have a sexual connotation? Hm.

It does but pretty much any word can have sexual connotations with it depending on how you say it.

Celery.

Um, so I finally figured out that the SECOND boss battle that was kicking my ass was also scripted to do exactly that. Which I only found out by letting the scene play out after dying in it.

You'd think I'd have learned from last time.

So after figuring THAT out, I basically played all day long.

<.<

What? It's a great game.

But I have to admit, I am getting anxious about wanting to play IX. Is this Dharma thing the mid point of the game?

DQIX isn't going anywhere... :mad2:

As for your question, Dharma Temple is more like the quarter mark of the 1st Disc. The game is huge... You haven't even met your fourth and fifth party members yet. ;)

I just see the place as a highlight cause its where the job class system becomes accessible. Btw, my suggestion for each of the characters is the Hero should be a Cleric, Gabo should be a Shepherd, and Maribel should be a mage.

Cleric gives you good healing magic which is going to help you in the long run but its great in the beginning cause Clerics get decent armor and defense. Maribel should start with a class that continues what she's been doing up until this point and Gabo can pretty much go anywhere but Shepherd have a few skills that are incredibly useful later on and once again I highly advise you make everyone go through shepherd cause it has two incredibly useful skills that will make the first half of the game much easier until you get access to the Dragoon class.

I know DQIX isn't going anywhere... but it's NEW... I need to play and finish it while people are still playing it! :P But I probably won't.

Gonna go play it a bit now.

I am a little terrified that I'm only a quarter through, though. I feel like I've been playing forever already...