Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Back to the old grind

So my last save in Dragon Quest IX was a little further back than I'd remembered. All of my equipment was upgraded with Porth Llaffan's finest, and all of the bookshelves had been raided, but none of the story events had been finished. So I ran through those again (this time, choosing "No" as my answer to Jona's question about whether or not the town was wrong to rely on Lleviathan), and then finally got to grinding.

During the cutscenes' second watch through I was once again mesmerized by the uncanny, glassy expression of Porth Llaffan's Mayor Bryce. When all of the other characters look somewhat lively and vivid, his is a pallid expression that looks like it's played the fool for far too long.

As per the grinding itself, it's a bit on the ambiguous side. What bothers me about it is the game's concentrating so much power in the churches.

Although my party's experience increases regardless of whether or not I've checked to see how much more remains until the next level, knowing about how many battles I'll need to fight makes grinding more quantifiable. Without convenient access to that ability, grinding loses its quantifiable property and becomes much more monotonous.

This extra monotonous climb to higher levels even evokes images of an actual meat grinder when I think about it. But be that as it may, I'll be turning the crank for another while yet.

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