Favorite mainline Dragon Quest game

[Bolivar]

Ooh, finally someone mentioned VI! I rarely see anyone say anything good about it on the Internet, which is disappointing, since it sounds like it has a lot of things I would like. Is it just forgotten about because it was released in the West too late?

DQVI was when they switched developers from Chunsoft to Heartbeat. I don't know how big of a difference that made, as I've heard it had a lot of the same team members but for whatever reason, it just didn't have the same excellence of scenario and pacing as the previous games. The dungeons and puzzles also didn't bring the same novelty I came to expect in the series. Both DQIV and V had a lot more unique ideas in them, although the dream world/real world dynamic in VI was cool. It's a good DQ in its own right but the Heartbeat installments (DQVI and VII) seem to be the black sheep of the franchise - they just don't get the same love that III, IV, V, and VIII seem to get. That might be why they switched developers again, with Level 5 taking over for DQVIII.

Also, one of the features that made it stand out at the time was the graphics, as DQV didn't really have that generational leap you might expect. The team just came off of Chrono Trigger, so they felt they had one last chance to make a title with the excellent art design the SNES library is now revered for. Since we only received the DS remake in the West, which uses the same art assets as the previous games in the trilogy, it more or less gets lost in the shuffle with the more memorable DQIV and V.

[Fynn]

I've actually heard tons of good things about VII on the Internet. It seems to have a pretty fantastic reputation, with a lot of people saying it's one of the best along with V and VIII.

[Wolf Kanno]

VII is odd. It's main story set-up works incredible well with the DQ Formula and it greatly expands the job system introduced in DQVI, but it's also one of the longer games with some questionable design choices. I'm curious to see if the 3DS Remake may have addressed some of these issues as the game could use a bit of editing. With that said, it's probably my third favorite entry and quite frankly it may even be one of the darkest entries in the series.

[Fynn]

I read that they wanted to fix it a bit for the 3DS release. They said they want to make it more accessible and some things more obvious, while still retaining that "having fun getting lost" feel

[Wolf Kanno]

I read that they wanted to fix it a bit for the 3DS release. They said they want to make it more accessible and some things more obvious, while still retaining that "having fun getting lost" feel

If they can reduce some of the backtracking, it will make the game a lot nicer. They are already fixing some of my other issues with the game such as characters actually changing outfits with their jobs and such. Not looking forward to the cheesy localization though...

[Fynn]

I've gotten used to it, honestly. While I still can barely stand the puns, and think it's a really cheap way to reinforce the light atmosphere of the games, as a translator myself, I appreciate that effort, and I think the dialects are really well done. I vastly prefer it to the butchered quasi-Early Modern English of I and II.

I heard that the overworld works like VIII's now, as in it's fully sized and you view your character from behind, but sadly, it's split into smaller segments instead of being one continuous space like in VIII.

[Omni-Odin]

Only played 1-4. So I'm going with 4. With 2 being the most stale.