How are those Dragon Quest games?

[Kumo]

Ended up buying DQ VIII for $10 and DQIV DS for $15 at Gamestop today, both used but in good condition. I was pretty psyched to find them so cheap, but I'll do what everybody says and play DQ VIII first.

[Flying Mullet]

I'm about eight hours into DQ IV and towards the end of Chapter 4, almost ready to jump into the meat of the game and all I have to say is, "Wow". It really is impressive how they've overhauled the game. The general feel and difficulty remains, but they've added so much visual flavor that only adds to the experience.

[FFIX Choco Boy]

I got DQVIII for Christmax, and I can barely stop playing it. I love the game.

[Bastian]

New DQIVs are 9.99 at Game Crazy today, Imma buy it and let y'all know if I like it better than VIII.

[Wolf Kanno]

I have a love/hate relationship with the series. I generally dislike most of its game design and predictability but it doesn't stop me from playing them religiously.

I love DQI, III, and VII. I hope to play IV and V when I get the chance but right now I have VIII on the backburner. I had fun playing with it but it feels like a huge step back from DQVII from a design perspective and most of VIII's improvements are simply cosmetic. The more I play VIII the more I want to play VII instead.

Still, its a great series but its very "old school" so your mileage may vary depending on what you expect from a RPG.

[RedPouch]

I have a love/hate relationship with DQ games as well. They are good and enjoyable [especially I-IV, which were my favourites], but at the same time the art style really drives me insane. I feel that it's not really a very serious art style at all [to say the least, I actually think the style is terrible] and it makes it seem like too much of a joke-cartoon more than anything else, which makes it hard for me to take the game seriously. Truth be told, I actually enjoyed them more on the NES than anything else. I'll never be an Akira Toriyama fan, but the games are still good.

As far as storyline and game journey goes, sometimes simple can be a good thing. I feel that something simple and predictable lets your guard down and allows you just enjoy it for what it is [this is why I truly loved Fable]. Complex, amazing and compelling can be good in different ways, but they're risky. If the designers don't achieve "complex, amazing, and compelling" properly, then it backfires and ruins the game or at least makes it seem lame or ridiculous. I'm still pondering if Dragon Age did this well or not.

[Mirage]

I've only played DQ8, which I found pretty boring in terms of gameplay, and I think good gameplay is very important in any game. I'm not a big fan of akira toriyama's character designs either, so it might not come as a big shock that I put the game away after not too many hours.

[RedPouch]

I'm not a big fan of akira toriyama's character designs either, so it might not come as a big shock that I put the game away after not too many hours.

I know what you mean. I hate to be petty and be discouraged by one thing which in actuality is minor and irrelevant to key gaming elements, but I can't help it if I'm constantly irritated by what I'm looking at while playing a game. Still, I try to be fair and impartial as much as I can and at least give it a chance. But in all honesty, I really disliked VIII for several reasons, not just the fact that it has Akira Toriyama's slobber all over it.

[Mirage]

I could ignore the character design if I thought it was fun to play, I do things like that in lots of games already.

[leader of mortals]

Well, I've only ever played the original Dragon Warrior for the NES, and VIII for the PS2(Along with Joker and Rocket Slime, but those are different), and for VIII the only time I ever grinded levels was because I wanted to, not because the enemies were too strong.

[destinyislands]

I personally have only played the NES game for a bit and some of the GB games, and those retro-classics were amazing. Other than that, can't say the newer generation are good

[Flying Mullet]

I had fun playing with it but it feels like a huge step back from DQVII from a design perspective and most of VIII's improvements are simply cosmetic. The more I play VIII the more I want to play VII instead.

My biggest complaint with DQ VII is that you reach Dharma well over a quarter of the way through the game. I would have enjoyed the game more if I could have reached Dharma and started playing with the various classes roughly 5 hours into the game.

[Wolf Kanno]

True, but VII is such a time consuming game to begin with. Yeah your a good 20 to 30 hours in but seeing as how the game is like 100+ hours long using a guide I don't see the harm especially since the Job system is really awesome in this game if a bit on the broken side. Shepherds kick ass

VIII's has an amusing system but it lacks the depth of the Job system and well... I'm bias here.

Not to mention its only possible to actually max out two of the categories in VIII and that's only if you get max levels which is an act of god in a DQ game.

[Breine]

I only have Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2, but I haven't played it yet. I probably should since it's supposed to be this really great game, plus Level-5 is awesome.

[RedPouch]

True, but VII is such a time consuming game to begin with. Yeah your a good 20 to 30 hours in but seeing as how the game is like 100+ hours long using a guide I don't see the harm especially since the Job system is really awesome in this game if a bit on the broken side. Shepherds kick ass

VIII's has an amusing system but it lacks the depth of the Job system and well... I'm bias here.

Not to mention its only possible to actually max out two of the categories in VIII and that's only if you get max levels which is an act of god in a DQ game.

I did make the effort to max out the main hero in Dragon Warrior IV for the NES once just to see if he could solo the final boss. Oddly enough, I wasn't able to. I dealt about 150k damage to him but he still didn't die, and I had run out of resources and MP by then, thus unable to keep myself alive anymore. I'm pretty sure he has far less HP than that, so either there was some sort of glitch or there's some invincibility code that gets put on for god knows what reason in case you aren't using party members. Lame.

Oh yeah, and getting him 99 took forever-and-a-half despite wandering through the forest near that last town hunting for King Metals all day.