Friday, October 11, 2013

A wee gripe

I enjoy the fact that the English translation of Dragon Quest IX uses eye dialect. That is, in the northernmost regions of the overworld, people tend to talk with a bit of a Scottish brogue. So you get words like "nae" for "not" and "wee" for small and so on. It's a nice touch that really brings the game's world alive.

At the same time, after I dispatched the demon Monag and freed the Right Knight from his lisped moniker of "Wight Knight," the game pulled me out of that appreciation for its world. It turns out a princess followed you to Brigadoom. She had guards so I guess that she made her way through the ruins just fine.

What bothered me more than the entourage was that the animation used for their side-to-side motion looked non-existent. It might have just been blocked by the wall overshadowing them as they walked off-screen, maybe. But after the dance number we see between Princess Simona and the Right Knight, such shoddy animation is inexcusable. The dance is quite coordinated, especially considering the game's sprites can look a bit clunky at times.

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