Dragon Quest 9: Hardest DQ ever?

[Warlock]

"We make the game [Dragon Quest IX] to be quite hard. It's harder than any of the previous titles, and the enemies are also powerful... We strengthened the bosses, stuff like that." - Yuji Horii

I heard about that quote a while back, and I have to say, I'm not sure I buy it- or, if nothing else, I can't help but think that the producers didn't entirely succeed if this was their goal. Maybe it was just my inexperience the first time I played both, but the NES DQ3 and 4 seemed much harder than DQ9. Come to think of it, wasn't DQ2 balanced such that if all your characters were maxed out and had the best equipment in the game, you had, like, a 60% chance of besting the last boss?

Perhaps it's that DQ9 offers you a number of different ways to make yourself stronger, whereas in the earlier games- particularly the NES-era ones- your options were pretty much "Buy the best equipment available" and "grind, grind, grind!" Between the number of subquests available, Alchemy, and the ever-present option of delving into grottos, you've got a lot of choices if you want to stay ahead of the curve in DQ9.

(Of course, this ties into the more philosophical question of "what exactly does 'difficulty' mean in the context of an RPG, anyway?"- Amount of time you'll need to spend grinding to finish the game? Complexity/difficulty of in-battle tactics? Complexity of setting up an 'optimal' party? Amonut of effort required to craft an 'optimal' path through the game? Some combination of the four?)

What do you folks think: DQ9, hardest DQ ever?

- HC

[Kalisiin Kumaki]

Hardest?? That's pretty subjective.

I guess it is as hard or as easy as you make it...if you make the wrong choices, the game is harder than if you make the right choices. but what are the right/wrong choices?

I'm a firm believer that there is no one right or wrong way to play any RPG. I DO believe, however, there are a few BASIC strategies one can follow.

One can choose the ass-kicker path and not worry as much about defense. This can make hard-hitting monsters harder if they manage to kill one of your players mid-battle, thus making you lose some of your attack power.

One could choose the iron curtain path and not worry so much about attack. This can make defeating high-HP monsters very difficult, but decreases your likelihood of being killed, particularly by hard-hitting monsters.

One could choose a more magical path which can diverge into attack or defensive magic, with the results outlined above.

One could, as I do, choose a more balanced approach, in my case, I go for good defense, strong physical attack and an emphasis on healing/revival magic. I do not tend to focus much on attack magic, never really have.

But each path you choose has it's own rewards and potential perils...so "hardest" is very subjective.

Unless "hardest" is a euphemism for "most complex" or "most complicated" or "takes the longest to truly complete."

If that is the case, then DQ9 wins, hands down. I've logged 1600+ hours on DQ9 and still do not have the level of completion I want, although I am getting close. I think maybe 2500 hours should about get me there.

But if HARDEST....means the most likelihood of being killed in hard battles...having to grind grind grind in order to advance, my candidate for "hardest" is DW2.

See, you do "grind" in DQ9 too, but it does not FEEL like grinding, because you have so many different side-quests, grottoes, etc...things you do to build yourself up...that do not FEEL like "grinding" because you're doing different, interesting things.

Of course, having the Masayuki Map certainly helps me!! what is not commonly known though is that there are actually TWENTY grottoes, counting Masayuki...that do the same thing Masayuki does. Masayuki is just the best-known one. All of these grottoes have a floor of solid Metal King Slimes.

Who here has heard of the following??

The Haruyuki Map
The Yosiyuki Map
The Rikuretu Map
The Gureison Map
The Tosiyuki Map
the Akiyama Map

Those are like the Masayuki Map, and there's 13 more like them...those are just the ones I know the names of.

There's also sixteen known Gem Slime Only grottoes.

so, if "hardest" means...you need to keep track of the most thngs, then, yeah, DQ9 is hardest.

[Warlock]

Well, one could argue that making the 'right' and 'wrong' choices in character selection/development is the 'hard part' of the game. Of course, there are other games in the DQ series where choosing 'wrong' is harder to correct; a bad party load out in DQ3 generally means ditching a character entirely and losing any effort you've put into leveling them up, for example. What constitutes the 'right' choice is also subjective- a party that minimizes grinding or the odds of wiping seems a fair definition, though.

I'd argue that DQ9 is also easier than other games in the series in that the penalty for wiping is lighter- you still lose half your gold, but unlike the NES-era games, you get all your party members back at full health instead of as ghosts.

- HC

[Kalisiin Kumaki]

Aug 16, 2012 17:51:21 GMT -5 Warlock said:

Well, one could argue that making the 'right' and 'wrong' choices in character selection/development is the 'hard part' of the game. Of course, there are other games in the DQ series where choosing 'wrong' is harder to correct; a bad party load out in DQ3 generally means ditching a character entirely and losing any effort you've put into leveling them up, for example. What constitutes the 'right' choice is also subjective- a party that minimizes grinding or the odds of wiping seems a fair definition, though.

I'd argue that DQ9 is also easier than other games in the series in that the penalty for wiping is lighter- you still lose half your gold, but unlike the NES-era games, you get all your party members back at full health instead of as ghosts.

- HC

True 'nuff. And it IS easier to correct a "wrong" move in DQ9 than in some other games, like, as you mentioned, DQ3.

[Vireo Gilvus]

There's one thing about the entire series that makes it needlessly difficult and frustrating, and that's the distribution of EXP amongst non-boss enemies. For all the trouble you go through in later battles (and especially against enemies in high-level grottoes), you should not have to put up with such insignificant rewards and be forced to rely on the luck-based mission of hunting Metal enemies.

This task is slightly easier in DQ9 than in the earlier games (because of the ability to see your enemies on the field), but I'd prefer if it were eliminated altogether in favor of the strongest regular enemies giving the most EXP. Remember how in Final Fantasy, the enemy that gave you the most EXP was the devastating WarMECH, and you could rack up impressive amounts of EXP in a hurry by challenging groups of dangerous Gas Dragons? DQ could benefit from a similar paradigm shift, if you ask me.

[Warlock]

Well, that's all well and good; the thing is, then you get someone like Dave Sirlin who comes along and says something like: "So, let me get this straight: to best higher-level enemies, all you need to do is grind for more levels, and if you fail in battle you just lose some gold and get kicked back to town? And the importance of player skill is far outstripped by the importance of simply spending enough time to grind up to the level you need to be? So you're basically just trading time played for increased chance at success- how's that a challenge at all?" In a nutshell, that's the philosophical argument I was getting at.

(It should be noted that I bring this up mainly as a devil's advocate. Dave Sirlin comes from a philosophical school that sees head-to-head competitive play as the One True Way to play video games, and while I'm sure he's good at designing games in that paradigm, I don't really ever expect him to produce something I have more than a passing interest in.)

That being said, yes, I think that DQ would do well to have some more interesting ways to gain experience, or adjusted the experience you get from fighting metal enemies (back?) down to more of a point where finding metal enemies is a nice bonus over the battles you're normally fighting as opposed to the primary way to build levels in finite time.

Having thought about this sort of thing recently, I'm becoming increasingly fond of the idea of distributing experience on a "per-quest" rather than "per-battle" basis (assuming the presence of repeatable quests), although that's a pretty big shift from the way standard RPGs do it and I don't expect to see that in a DQ in the future.

- HC

[Vireo Gilvus]

Dave Sirlin would have the very same problem with every offline RPG out there, and even some MMOs. It's not a genre he would like at all, so why should RPG designers try to accommodate him?

[Kalisiin Kumaki]

I agree some of the hard monsters n high-level grottoes do not pay enough EXP to make them worthwhile, and I sometimes intentionally avoid those battles best I can, simply because they don't pay enough to make it worth it.
Alphyns come to mind in this regard.

[Vireo Gilvus]

The first time I had to fight Octagoons and Darkonium Slimes, I was utterly dumbfounded. Then came the underwhelming EXP reward at the end. The enemies in the DQ3 remake's bonus dungeon were the same way, especially the Baramos palette swap. (Even King Hydra -- yes, THAT King Hydra -- sometimes showed up in the random battles!)

EDIT: Dragon Quest could stand to learn a thing or two from Star Ocean, particularly The Second Story (PlayStation; later ported to PSP as Second Evolution), about how to handle postgame battles. The enemies in the Cave/Citadel of Trials were challenging as hell, but gave phenomenal rewards. If you've never played Star Ocean: The Second Story, check out a Let's Play sometime, at least for the unforgettable bonus dungeon.

[Warlock]

Aug 19, 2012 16:13:02 GMT -5 Vireo Gilvus said:

Dave Sirlin would have the very same problem with every offline RPG out there, and even some MMOs. It's not a genre he would like at all, so why should RPG designers try to accommodate him?

It's interesting you mention MMOs, because Strawman Sirlin' commetns above were based on things that Real Dave Sirlin has said about World of Warcraft in the past.

I'm not saying that designers should necessarily try to accomodate that approach to design- I guess I'm just observing a couple things:
1. Wiping in DQ 'costs' significantly less progress than wiping in, say, Final Fantasy or any other game that kicks you back to the title screen.
2. There are definitions of 'hard' that are not covered by what I'd said above.

Again- I'm just sayin'.

- HC