Sunday, December 1, 2013

Brawling in the tower

Dragon Quest IX's next part, the collecting of the fyggs seems like a good piece of classic JRPG gameplay. The tower where the abbot of Alltrades of Abbey allegedly went is like something out of Breath of Fire or, well, an earlier Dragon Quest game. As much as it's a dungeon, there aren't many puzzles to speak of aside from the navigational puzzle inherent in each floor's layout. Instead of such brain teasers, the dungeon's battle frequency also takes some hints from old school JRPGs since there are a ton of enemies spawning all over the screen.

So far this retread is fine with me. However, I do wish that there were more spells that hit all enemies rather than one or two. Those that strike a single group of enemies are oddly prevalent, particularly because most battles are with a couple of different enemies. Thus, spells that target a "group" of monsters may help with two monsters out of three, but they only wound them rather than doing enough damage to bring them down.

On the other hand, having characters at level 18 probably isn't indicative of the game's being more than 1/6 finished. Looking at the map just for Alltrades Abbey's island, with its cave and tower, and mysterious formations really makes me wonder at the sheer size of this game. So, maybe I just haven't come across a powerful, offensive, group-targeting spell yet.



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