Rating: 9/10
This would be a 10/10 game if it had more to the story, a better flow to story progression, and less grinding.
Overview
Medieval style RPG with classes, spells, monsters, and kingdoms. Journey as a character to continue your father's quest to defeat the archfiend Baramos. The events in this game take place years before the events in Dragon Warrior 1. I would have loved to play and review the SNES/SFC version because of the improved graphics and music, but I wanted to play on an official version and not a translated version.
Story
Not much to the story. The game starts with you in a dream, and then waking up on your 16th birthday. You find out your father was a hero who was killed by Baramos. After that, it is just side quests such as helping elves or rescuing a merchant and his girlfriend from a gang.
Gameplay
Control a group of 1-4 characters throughout a massive world. Your main character is the Hero, who is his own class, and then you have the option to select from 1-3 additional teammates who can be 1 of 8 classes, including a Warrior, Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Dealer, Thief, Jester, or Sage. Each class has a unique set of usable weapons, armor, and spells, and 5 stats that affect them in battle (Strength, Vitality, Intellect, Agility, and Luck). Characters can change their name and class at the Shrine of Dharma if you like. Each character has a personality trait that can be changed, and personalities affect their stat growth as they level up. I'm not a huge fan of this, but it does not make too big of a difference as long as you have a somewhat decent personality. Maybe if it was easier to change the personality it would be okay. The only way to change personalities is to permanently change it with a moderately rare book item, or temporary with an equipable accessory. Each character is able to equip a weapon, armor, helmet, shield, and accessory. Bikini armors can only be equipped by female characters, and will change their appearance. It would be neat to have other armors and weapons change appearances for both male and female characters.
As with other DQ games, seed items can be found and used to permanently increase a characters stats. I have mixed feelings on these because they are nice to have another way to upgrade your character, but seem too rare to make a huge difference. Item drops from monsters can be increased by using the thief class, but I haven't tried this yet to see how much of a difference thieves make, so it could be okay.
Changing classes seems a bit confusing, but my understanding is that the character learns all the spells they knew in their previous class in additions to the new class. At the cost of starting at level 1 and each stat is halved. The main benefit to switching classes is so the character can learn more spells. An example would be changing a Mage to a Warrior, so you have a character that can use a Warrior's strong weapons and attacks in battle, but also knows spells that a Mage knows. Sages know the same spells as a Cleric and Mage, but Sages can only be gotten by using a Zen book on a level 20 character, or by leveling a Jester to 20.
While travelling in dungeons and the overworld, you will randomly encounter battles with monsters. The battles are turn based and you fight a large variety of monsters, increasing in strength as you travel through the overworld. The monster designs are interesting, with some recurring ones from DW1 and DW2. However, I don't like how these games use different colors to represent a different monster (Catapilla, Flamepede, and Venomworm all use a caterpillar sprite but a different color). The slime variations are an exception; they are nice. Monsters also have a variety of spells to use against you, similar to what you have, such as sleep, poison, or stun. Stun is annoying because it can cause your party to wipe if everyone is stunned, since stun effect can only be removed with the use of an item by another character. Monsters also have a variety of resistances and weaknesses against your attacks, some monsters have high defense and others are immune to fire spells, or maybe ice spells, or both. An example of this is the "metal" slimes such as Metaly and Metabble. Their defense is so high that only 1 damage can be dealt to them, and they are immune to all spells. However, their health points are extremely low so they will be defeated after a few hits and grant a lot of experience points for your party.
This is the first and only DQ game where you can create and select your team members, whereas in 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8, you are forced to use the characters that the story gives you. This means you can play through the game with whatever combination of classes you want, which is what I love about this game. You can deposit and recruit team members at any point in your journey, so if a class isn't working as well as you thought it would then you could swap that character for a character of another class. However, the new character would have to start at level 1, but you can equip him with gear that you already have obtained. Characters are stored at Ruida's Tavern, and 22 characters can be stored at once.
There is no item storage, but there is a "bag" slot that can hold any number of unique items, with a max of 99 for each item. These items cannot be accessed during battle, but each character in your party can hold 12 items, including their equipped gear. Items can be obtained through various methods such as a drop after defeating an enemy in battle, chests in dungeons, purchased from stores, reward from a minigame, tinymedals, or in pots and cabinets in houses.
The Pachisi Track minigame is a new addition to the series, and I have mixed feelings on it. I like that I can play it for some of the best gear, such as finding Wreck Whips and Dragon Robes on ground tiles in the Zipangu course, but question mark tiles randomly change your character's personality or stats. Stats and personality are already difficult enough to get correct, especially since stats max at 255, and to have them randomly change while playing this minigame is annoying. I usually save the game before playing it so if my stats do change, I can reset.
The new monster medal system is interesting too, and adds end game value. It is the only DQ game that has this system. However, it is very grindy because even bronze medals are very rare. Every time a battle is completed, you have a 1/16 chance at obtaining a bronze, silver, or gold medal of the monster you last killed. To get the gold medal, you must first get 2 silver medals, and to get a silver you must first get 2 bronze medals. It would be better if it was a combination of chance, and if you didnt get it through chance then it would be after X amount of kills. The option to exchange does exist, but is not available until end game after the final boss and post game boss. Another option could be to just have 1 type of medal (gold), instead of 3, and keep the odds at 1/16. This way you can still collect duplicates without having to grind or exchange for each individual tier.
Areas of the map are unlocked through obtaining a key, receiving a key item from an NPC such as the King's Deed, or new method of transportation, such as a boat. This is great because you can see places you can't visit yet just by seeing a new type of door or an area surrounded by mountains, which makes the player curious about how to get to that area later. Especially the treasure rooms that are locked behind a high tier key.
Talking to NPCs usually gives you hints to where a key item is located or where you should travel next. There is also a spell that can be used to "remember" what someone said. Some parts of the game are not obvious about where to go next, especially when you get the boat and have to collect the 6 orbs. Each town is different depending on if it is day or night, so it is tedious to have to talk to every NPC in every town during the day and then at night just to figure out what to do next. I have played this game before and remembered what to do at some parts, but I eventually used a guide to figure out what to do next. I think adding more locations to the world map would help with story progression, too, because some shrines and other areas are missing from the world map. For example, I was stuck in finding one of the six orbs because I had to go to a shrine that was not marked on my world map.
Graphics
Enemies are colorful and character units have their own colors as well. The world is very colorful as well. Enemies have animations when they attack which is a nice addition. Player spells and weapon attacks have some cool effects too. It would be nice for battles to have a background based on where you are located, such as in the SNES version, but a GBC can only do so much.
Music
Excellent music, in towns, dungeons, overworld, and shrines. All of the music is great and memorable, except maybe the battle music which gets old after a bit. Maybe have a different battle theme depending on if you're in a cave, tower, overworld, etc, would help a bit.
Controls
Menu actions are responsive, and movement speed in towns and castles is increased which is a nice improvement.
Replay Value
I've played through this game multiple times, but not much replayability other than to enjoy going through the story again. Maybe to try a certain challenge, such as completing it quick or only playing as one class. I have another file I briefly started that only uses the Hero. Most of the time I spend fighting enemies, but experience points are earned 4 times as fast because I have 3 less party members to split the experience with after each fight.
Post Game Content
A lot of post game content. Level your characters to level 99, collect all monster medals, collect the best gear for each class, experiment with class combinations at the Dharma Temple, and complete the Pachisi Tracks once you obtain the Gold Pass. Fight the post game boss. There is so much to do after you defeat the final boss, so there isn't a need to start a new file to keep enjoying this game. There is a dungeon that can be unlocked by defeating the post game boss, and it has a a new puzzle mechanic and parallax scene. The mechanic and scene are really cool, and it would have been nice if they included both in other parts of the game, but unfortunately it is locked behind the very last dungeon which requires so much playing.
I've been enjoying this game for the past two weeks and I'm currently trying different class and weapon combinations to defeat the post game boss in 15 turns or less. I think it would be cool to have more bosses be replayable, and unlock new content based on the number of turns taken, similar to the post game boss.
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