Pokemon Double Battle disappointment

I've just made my way through Eterna Forest in Pokemon Diamond. So, for the first time, I've experienced the Pokemon games' Double Battles. To be honest, I'm not that impressed. 

A Pokemon battle that's two versus two is more interesting than the usual one-on-one. But it still feels very much like a single battle since you only control your own Pokemon. The result is a battle that's reminiscent of the fights in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, even  while you have two party members: restrictive.

Being able to control only one member of a two member team just seems like a wasted opportunity to me.

What if two Pokemon of related types could combine techniques?

Or what if doing two techniques in a certain order unleashed some sort of hidden skill?

No doubt the later generations of Pokemon games get into this sort of thing. Though if they don't, then things like Double Battles aren't nearly as innovative as they could be.

Nonetheless, Double Battles do hold some potential for new ways to develop the game's plot since they mean that you temporarily team up with another trainer. 

Disappointingly, though, my partner in the Eterna Forest, Cheryl, looks like she'll be just a one-off character. But, there are another seven gyms to get through, and likely a whole lot of plot to develop. At this point I know almost nothing about Pokemon Diamond's Team Galactic after all. 

Pulled back into Pokemon Diamond

Pokemon Diamond holds a special place among RPGs. It's just got this power to draw me in after only a few minutes of play. I think a lot of it has to do with the game's variety. 

Most RPGs allow players to customize their party members, but the Pokemon games actively encourage you to get as many party members as possible. But, unlike RPGs with huge playable casts like Chrono Cross, party members in Pokemon Diamond have no backstory and are invested with only as much personality as players give them. 

Whether you give your Shinx a nickname or not, it'll always be your Shinx and it's quite easy to build an impression about its personality from how it fares in battle. Not to mention the traits and skills mechanics that the third generation games introduced make each Pokemon just a little bit more unique, leaving players even more to work with when it comes to building their party members' personalities. Though, aside from players projecting personality onto their Pokemon, these mechanics have just a minor impact on the core game.

Anyway, there's enough to do in Pokemon Diamond to make it interesting. And it's refreshingly different from the Red and Blue versions that I'm so much more familiar with. I haven't even gotten to the underground part of the game yet. 

Though I have more or less built up the party that I'll keep until the end of the game: A Machop, a Buizel, a Magikarp (eventually a Gyrados), a Shinx, a Monferno, and a Staravia. The Buizel might get switched out for a ghost, dragon, dark, or psychic type Pokemon, but whether or not that happens will depend on what the game throws at me. En route to badge number two, it just seems that my party is merely under-levelled and not at all unbalanced.

Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy finished (spoilers below)

The last section of Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is strange. It's sort of like a boss rush but with a few screens of enemies and a puzzle scattered throughout it. Also, what I mentioned as a worry in my last entry on the game wasn't too far off the mark. The game's final boss was easier than those who came immediately before. Sort of.

After reaching the very last stretch of the game Ed faces off against Dante. However, this fight is easier than you might expect since it hearkens back to the game's very first fight. Yes, just as in the battle against Cornello, you just need to guide Ed through the obstacles and enemies that Dante conjures up. The difference being that two of the things she conjures (a series of falling rocks and a wave of fire) are very difficult to avoid unless you keep to the middle of the arena. These obstacles provide some frustrating moments, but otherwise Ed just has to outlast Dante. There's no context-sensitive alchemy, no impregnable defense, nothing. Just outlasting her.

Thematically, this is great. Cornello and Dante both wield a form of the Philosopher's Stone so it makes sense that these fights share a process. However, the game's final fight (if you can even call it that) is an experiment that fails.

Instead of running the game's story while the game's gameplay is on hold, the final fight against Envy involves a steady stream of dialogue that takes the place of Ed's alchemy on the Touch Screen. Envy's only attack is a simple jab, but because the dialogue is on the lower Touch Screen and the fight is on the upper screen it's difficult to follow both simultaneously.

If the game had done more that required you to pay active attention to both screens simultaneously (since the dialogue scrolls by quickly), I don't think this final fight/character building would be a problem. But as it is, it's too clunky to be effective (especially when Ed's down to a sliver of health and you're in no mood to test to see if you're invulnerable for the sake of the scene). Watching for context-sensitive alchemy works, however, because it's something that you can flick your gaze from screen to screen to do. The areas in which such alchemy is activated are fairly obvious after all.

All of that said, the game's final cutscenes reminded me of watching the series. In fact, even though these cutscenes involve nothing but a series of images, they were quite engaging. As the credits rolled, I definitely felt satisfied.

So then I peeked into the game's "Character Mode." Apparently you can play through the story mode's levels as a number of characters from the show. Though there are no cutscenes (aside from the opening) in this game mode. No doubt finishing it with all the available characters unlocks another.

But the game's content doesn't end there. Keeping true to this game's implicit m.o. of frequently using the Touch Pad, there're a bunch of mini games that are entirely Touch Pad based. They're fun little distractions, too.

So, having seen a fair chunk of Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy think that it's more than a beat 'em up usually is because of the Touch Screen. Though it is, by no means, a classic of the genre. Fights can be reduced to speed button pressing if you corner most enemies, and more often than not enemy attacks are easily avoided unless they're alchemical in nature. My playthrough was in "Normal Mode," though.

Overall, Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy is definitely a game to check out for fans of the series and for fans of the DS' Touch Screen. Beat 'em up lovers should look elsewhere.

When stories and difficulty curves alike are linear

I'd played Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy before, but I'd never gotten quite this far.

Since the game's keeping pace with the show, the best way to put my current position is thusly: I'm right in the middle of episode 36. (Spoilers: so at this point in the game, Ed and Al's dad has returned only to leave again, Al's armour is currently the Philosopher's Stone, and Ed has vowed to destroy the homunculi).

Needless to say, there've been a lot of cutscenes in the last 40 minutes of the game. That's definitely one drawback to making a game with so much story into a beat 'em up. Text becomes the only way to really convey it. Also, because beat 'em ups are a very linear genre, the storytelling becomes the same. And viewers of the show will know that Fullmetal Alchemist is a series that follows more than the adventures of Ed and Al Elric.

Nonetheless, the parts of the story driven by their father will likely get put into the next part of the game. I'm also guessing that that will be the final section.

Both because the game's story is only a few episodes away from finishing off the anime series and because the difficulty has increased substantially. Not so much in the sections where you're beating up troops of enemies, but more so when it comes to bosses.

For the most part, up until the fight with Greed, you'd do fine if you watched for a context-sensitive technique to come up or discovered which of your basic techniques is most effective. But from the fight with the diamond-shielded Greed onward, bosses get tougher. At first because you need to wait for the context-sensitive alchemy to show up rather than simply move to where it is, and then later (in the fight with Wrath, for example) you need to survive long enough to get through the boss's defenses often enough to lower their health to 0.

I can't help but feel worried, though. With the final boss just around the corner will that be the roughest battle yet, or will it feel all the easier after the tough fights that precede it?

Fullmetal touch screens and recovery times

After another half hour of gameplay, another 15 or so episodes of Full Metal Alchemist have played out (so I'm up to about episode 33 of 51). Full Metal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy does a pretty good job of keeping pace though. Instead of highlighting every battle from the series, the major ones from the main plotline are emphasized and the game is otherwise filled out with little minigames.

In the section of the game I played through tonight (Warehouse 5, and Ed and Al meeting with their teacher Izumi) there were three such games. One is a memory minigame, another a rhythm-ish minigame, and the third a stealth minigame. All of these used the touch screen. As someone who doesn't play that many beat 'em ups, these breaks from mashing the attack buttons are very welcome.

Especially since Ed can beat up chimeras ranging from lizard-lions to dragon-gryphons in ten blows or less without so much as a scratch if you mash those buttons quickly enough.

That's not to say that the beat 'em up portions of this game are broken because Ed's overpowered. It's just that enemies have a very slow recovery time. If you manage to catch them in a combo (get within brawling range and mash those buttons!), then there's little chance they'll break free. Though the same thing goes for Ed.

Not in that enemies launch combos and those can catch Ed in a rain of pain. No.

But in that environmental hazards like retracting spikes are perfectly timed to match Ed's post-hit recovery time. So if you're hit by a such spike once, you'll likely be hit by it again just as Ed's getting up. And again before you manage to jump (or have the damage dealt throw you) out of harm's way.

Tonight's session also saw the first appearance of necessary alchemy in a battle. While fighting the living armour named Number 48, you need to transmute giant stones into statues. Number 48 then attacks these statues and while it's mid-blow you need to knock its head off so that you can fire off some of your offensive alchemy. Otherwise, when it's got a cool head about itself, Number 48 just blocks everything.

What I like most about this sort of necessary alchemy is that you aren't really told about it going into the battle. You either need to remember the fight from the series and watch for your cue to copy what Ed did in it, or just watch for when your currently available alchemical skills change. Forcing the player to keep an eye on both screens like that is something I enjoy because it brings an element of discovery into an otherwise dull and straightforward genre.

Starting into Fullmetal Alchemist: Dual Sympathy

Until reading through some early in-game text I'd completely forgotten that Al and Ed are 10 and 11 respectively. So kids that aren't even pre-teens are running around laying the smack down on guys who're wielding curtain rods, knives, and guns. Just like in the hit anime series, y'know?

Because if there's one thing I remember while Fullmetal Alchemist completely mesmerized me when I first started watching it, it's how the brothers Elric battled hordes of enemies. 

To be fair, though, as little sense as the "beat 'em up" genre might make for the game adaptation of a series that complicates its share of fantasy/adventure anime tropes, the text between levels helps. Actually, its being in Al's voice explains the simplifications that help to keep the game's action-driven pace going, too. 

The dialogue on the other hand is merely all right. It's definitely a stark reminder that Ed's much older than his age, and that there's some truth to what a friend of mine (whose music blog you can find here) said on the matter of "subs v. dubs:" (to paraphrase) 'Dialogue always sounds cooler when you can't understand it aurally, since when it's in English it just sounds like the same trite stuff that's in every other show.'

Thus far, the game's relegated the series' alchemy to special attacks and touch screen events. Short of turning the game into an RTS a la Lost Magic, I think that Natsume took the middle road in terms of bringing alchemy into the game itself. For better and for worse, since it seems underused thus far.

Though there's still quite a bit of game left. The game covers the entire original series and I'm hardly through the first 10 episodes (after about 40 minutes of play time). So there's still another 41 or so episodes' worth of game content to go.

Dragon Quest IX finished

Bringing everyone's level up to 45 did the trick. I finally beat Corvus. Dragon Quest IX is over.

Looking back, the shape of the successful final battle was weirdly by the numbers. 

It had its first act, in which things were going well for my party of Minstrel, Thief, Mage, and Priest. Then, the second act rolled around when Corvus recovered his HP and his MP and it reached a climax after Corvus knocked out Nizk the Minstrel and left everyone else with just a few HP. Finally, the third act kicked off with Peridot the Priest successfully healing everyone over the course of a few turns and then climaxed with the final blow to the big bad. 

I know that much of the battle wound up as it was largely because of chance, but still. Its shape is perfectly that of a grand cinematic battle. 

Unfortunately, the game's ending doesn't share that quality. 

After a pseudo-anime sequence in which Corvus is appeased and reminded of his true Celestrian nature, the standard RPG "what are they doing now?" scenes play over the credits as each major area and character is revisited. Scenes that are rendered in the in-game graphics. 

What makes this so disappointing is that it feels like the developers forgot to replace the in-game graphic scenes with their animated counterparts. Unless, simply because it directly involves a dragon (and this is a Dragon Quest game after all), Greygnarl's fight with Barbarus was meant to be the only animated cutscene.  

Overall, as an RPG, Dragon Quest IX is, for the most part, a bog standard J-RPG.

Its story is interesting, if spread a little thin from the start of the fygg quest to the discovery of Corvus. Actually, the game's characters are much more interesting than most of its story events. 

The game's job system holds potential for those who don't mind grinding as a matter of fact, but is quite frustrating for those who would rather grind with broader goals in mind. 

The game's music is quite grand, but lacks variety. 

And the game's combat system is simply that of a classic turn-based RPG.

Anyway, despite the shortcomings listed above outnumbering the game's strengths, I find myself interested in the promise of the post-game's being its "mortal" phase. It feels like a shorter, perhaps deeper, adventure is about to start.

Yet, I can't say I'll be dedicating myself to finishing what's left on the Dragon Quest IX cartridge before moving on to something else. I have other Dragon Quest games to check out after all, not to mention other games that are much much shorter than this grand adventure proved to be.

Like Full Metal Alchemist: Duel Sympathy.

Grinding for two

Though easier metal slime battles would be welcome, Dragon Quest IX's levelling system is far from broken.

Yet, based on a suggestion from the GameFAQs forums my level grinding just got faster.

Reducing my party to two members gives both far more experience than they'd get as members of a four person party.

Nonetheless, the  game's experience divvying is weird. It doesn't give more experience to the lower level character. Instead, the lion's share of experience goes to the party member who does more. So Nizk, my main character, is going to be a few levels above 45 when my grinding's done.

At least the Bowhole's Liquid Metal Slimes give about 20,000 experience per party member. It's just a matter of defeating them with only two. A feat that'll be all the trickier while bringing up my Mage's level.

Facing Dragon Quest IX's final boss once more

Well, in this case, the third time was not the charm. My latest battle against Corvus was going well until he kept using breath attacks turn after turn.

If only you could lob breath mints at monsters in Dragon Quest IX.

On the upside, I can't fault the game's AI for its random factor.

Just as Corvus went heavy on the breath attacks for the first time in our latest match two monsters in his realm nearly slaughtered my party on its way up. Who knew that they could use the spells Kaboom and Kacrack?

Corvus will be tried again after another round of level ups. And maybe a wardrobe change. But not a shift in trades; my party of a minstrel, thief, mage, and priest seems quite effective. Its three loss streak notwithstanding, of course.

Grinding in grottoes with bruising bosses

Dragon Quest IX's grottoes have a strange difficulty curve. In one found through following a map called "Rock Mine of Doubt Lv.29," the monsters you encounter change thrice.

At first they're throwbacks to the early part of the game, then they're the sort that give about 300 experience points each (whereas monsters in the Realm of the Mighty give about 1750 per group per battle), then the boss is a machine with two attacks per turn.

Attacks that do damage ranging from 50 to 120 HP.

When party members have about 200 HP a piece a one-two punch from this boss just leaves them reeling. If my healer has a miss timed turn, one character - or the whole party - could wind up dead. Balancing on a pin like that makes for a tricky fight.

At least there are some Metal Medleys lurking in this grotto. So level grinding isn't impossible, just drawn out.

Writing of balancing on pins, though, I think that my party could get through the fight with Corvus at this point. And, not that it isn't fun, wrapping this game up sooner rather than later is definitely something I'm keen on doing.

Seeking hidden grinding spots

After my second attempt on Corvus went even worse than the first (since he was much more aggressive), I've decided to sit back and grind for a bit. But, rather than just going on a prolonged metal liquid slime hunt, I'll be exploring another of Dragon Quest IX's features: the secret grottoes.

These hidden areas are found through the use of various treasure maps. Those grottoes that I've been in so far have been laughably easy, but there are some that promise much more challenge and much greater rewards. I imagine that eventually they'll get to the point where even the regular enemies give decent experience and something of a challenge.

However, I'm not going through all of the game's secret grottoes. That would add way too much to my time with this game. Instead, I'm just aiming to get all of my party members from level 41 to level 45. I've alchemized the Rusty Sword found in the Realm of the Mighty into Erdrick's Sword, but that wasn't boost enough. So I figure that once the whole party's reached level 45 they'll be much more prepared for the game's final story-related battle.

As long as Corvus doesn't end up as aggro as he was in my most recent attempt.

Dragon Quest IX's still got some fight in it

Well, Corvus doesn't quite follow in Zoma's footsteps, but his final form still overwhelmed. Two attacks per turn and quite powerful ones at that.

So it happened like this.

After a few more oddly easy mini-bosses and more climbing I reached the game's big bad: the fallen Celestrian Corvus. Dragon Quest IX's end was in sight.

My party first fought a semi-Celestrian, semi-demonic Corvus. In this fight I was forced to shift tactics since he regularly used a technique that nullified my stat boosts. So my troubadour, thief, and wizard attacked while my priest healed. This fight went well. A fine success.

Then my party was pitted against the dragon Barbarus. Another steady battle, one in which my old stat-boosting strategy worked perfectly. The only problem with this fight was that it took a toll on my party's MP.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but Dragon Quest IX's quick save feature seems to trigger a bug that breaks the Goddess Ring. This accessory is supposed to recover its wearer's MP with every step he or she takes. But after loading quick saves this power, more often than not, de-activates. Unfortunately, I was working off of a quick save.

Nonetheless, I had curatives to spare so I bolstered my party's MP and then faced Corvus' full demon form. Without bothering to manage my in-battle inventory beforehand. Who needs a Yggdrasil Leaf (this game's revive item) when two characters have the equivalent spell?

I'm convinced that is just what decided the fight.

My priest, my party's steadfast healer fell first. My main character and troubadour tried to sing her back from the brink of death, but with no luck. Not before he joined her there.

Then the battle became nothing more than a window onto Corvus' attacks. Interestingly, he flashed no stat-boost nullifier in all twenty or so turns of the battle. The most frustrating moves being a healing technique that recovered 500 HP and another that restored all of his MP.

So, having been the mop rather than the mopper in the answer to "who will mop the floor with whom?" I'm left with three choices. Extend this game's time on this blog with quests and more grinding, things that could well stand to make that final fight a breeze; re-configure my battle inventory and try again, this time fighting much more conservatively (healing every round); or just grind and give it another go.

Considering Dragon Quest IX's fairly full post-game game, I'm drawn to just trying again. Maybe after just one more helping of this game's grinding.

Dragon Quest IX's final dungeon: Underwhelming (despite its transformation)

You know a final dungeon means serious business when it's alive. Dragon Quest IX's is special though since you get to see it come into being.

Once you choose to go to the Realm of the Almighty to finish off Corvus you're treated to a scene in which the once simple architecture of the Realm breaks apart as tendrils and muscle tissue erupt at oblique angles, making it into a strange perversion of a world tree. As is the usual for the game's cutscenes, it's done in the game's usual graphics.

No fancy animation is shown for it (though the transformation would definitely work as a cinematic piece).

But, somehow, seeing the final dungeon take shape before your very eyes in the general graphical style of the game makes the transformation more shocking.

A clean, entirely separate, animation sequence would definitely give much more detail and personality, but showing this transformation in the game's quasi-16-bit, 2.5D style makes the transformation truly look like the work of a greatly powerful being. One that can rend the very ground over which you've watched your characters walk for the whole game and turn it into something twisted and deranged.

Although that powerful being's henchmen are worryingly easy.

The monsters in the Realm of the Mighty tend not to give chase. And those that do don't take more than two rounds to trounce. I took down the second iteration of Goreham-Hogg in so few turns I was left asking myself and the game: Really?

Is this really the game's final dungeon?

I know that there's more to do once the game's story is complete. There are more treasure maps to find and grottos to clear. Side quests are likely to still be accessible, too. But, my characters are sitting at levels 39-41 and it looks like the only challenge the rest of the dungeon will hold is its sheer size.

Unless, of course, it turns out that Corvus took some lessons from this game's version of Zoma (found in a grotto) and attacks at least twice per turn, doing well over 200 damage per attack. But somehow I doubt that.

An angelic archfiend revealed (spoilers below)

That Celestrians are constrained by strict rules makes perfect sense. Angels are considered beings without free will, after all. And so such rules would constrain the angels of the Dragon Quest IX world.

As such, it makes good sense that Corvus the famed and captive Celestrian (who was finally revealed to be the game's big bad) couldn't be attacked when faced in battle because of his senior rank. And after I'd spent a good twenty minutes walking around with the Goddess Ring equipped to refill everyone's MP.

Oh well.

The Oubliette beneath Gittingham Palace was enemy ridden enough to make up for the lack of a boss battle. It's narrow twisting halls also made it difficult (but not impossible) to avoid fights. But I can't see the newly renovated Realm of the Mighty being bigger than the Oubliette. Unless in his ascending to this game's high heaven, Corvus radically redesigned the Realm of the Almighty.

Finally standing at the precipice of Dragon Quest IX's end I am faced with a question. It's the same question that faces any gamer at the end of an RPG. Should I barrel onward or take a step back and do some quests and such to (eventually) get the game's best equipment?

This game's definitely reminded me of Radiant Historia with its limited (though well-composed) music. Maybe its final boss will be just as much of a pushover.

Grinding through Goresby-Purrvis and Godwyn

Once again, all it took was gaining a single level all around and Goresby-Purrvis went down. With a fight, but nonetheless. I chalk most of the victory up to my new strategy, however (mostly because everyone who reached level forty didn't get any skill points for their trouble and so nothing new and powerful was learned by anyone). 

First there's the assist duo. Thoth, my wizard, increases the party's speed and then attack power while my priest Peridot heals and boosts defense. 

Then there's the attack duo. My thief Kleftis (weirdly tank-like) attacks or heals my main character Nizk. Nizk, always uses the "Falcon Slash" ability since it attacks twice (and after all the magic buffs he hits for around three times the damage of a single strike). 

Keeping this setup running and using Coup de Grâces as they came up saw me through the fight with Purrvis.

And the bout with the the Gittingham big bad himself, King Godwyn. 

Not to mention the battle with bad King Godwyn's second form as well. 

Though being levels 40, 40, 39, and 38 (Nizk, Kleftis, Thoth, Peridot) no doubt helps, I think my strategy is doing more than grinding ever could. And this, using the game's stat-boosters to concentrate attack power in a few select characters, is definitely the way to play. Dragon Quest IX's combat is purely turn-based after all.

RPGs like Chrono Trigger, where there's less time to make decisions about stat-boosts cut back on the players' ability to do so. 

RPGs like Tales of Phantasia, where the battles play out like arcade fighting games, include such abilities usually only for the AI controlled characters. In doing so, these games release the player from having to actively use them in combat and thus release them from case by case strategizing for the most part. 

But purely turn-based games like Dragon Quest IX are much more contemplative. Having finally figured that out, I'm now ready for the last leg of the game. And surely that's what's coming next. 

From boss to boss, from grind to grind

After having gone through a grind session with metal slimes in the Bowhole, it's time to start another one up. That session was enough to help my party take down Hootingham-Gore, but Goresby-Purrvis has proven to be a different beast all together. Literally and figuratively.

The fight is against only him, but he attacks twice per turn and has a one-hit KO move that he uses regularly. The difficulty here is that for all of its difficulty Dragon Quest IX is stingy with the full-party healing spells. Maybe I need to upgrade Peridot (my priest) to a sage to gain these skills, but gaining them would no doubt require some levelling up as well. Which brings me back around to my bafflement with the game's job system.

You get six points (after passing level 30 or so) every few level ups (it seems almost arbitrary, but happens regularly enough) and most of the skills or stat boosts cost 10 or more points.

So even if, for example, I put all of Peridot's skill points towards her "Faith" attribute, it would take three level ups to get a major boost to her magical mending (so long as each level yields six points to put towards it). On average Peridot requires about 17,000 experience points to go from level to level at this point in the game.

Now, in Gittingham Palace there is a place with a restorative tile, so it's possible to grind indefinitely there. Plus, you'll get around 900-1300 experience/fight doing so.

But at that rate of experience you'd need to fight (at most) 18 battles to level Peridot up.

The average battle takes about a minute to play out, so that's around 20 minutes per level.

Assuming that the experience Peridot gains from these fights doesn't drop too drastically from level to level, I could, in theory, grind in Gittingham Palace for an hour and gain three levels (and enough skill points to actually get something out of my character's "job").

An hour of grinding isn't necessarily terrible. Especially not in a JRPG. But having to do so to reap the benefits of your character's job - one of Dragon Quest IX's major mechanics - is ridiculous.

The job system in the Final Fantasy series, with its separate "Job Points," isn't necessarily any better. But at least in that system you're building up your characters' jobs with nearly every fight and not every 20.

At any rate, skill points aren't entirely relevant to facing Goresby-Purrvis. One level more should be enough to be well-matched with the sword-wielding cheetah. And that, if my calculations hold, will just take about another half an hour (after his last level up my main character needed some 32000 experience points to do so again).

Hopefully whatever is beyond the door that Goresby-Purrvis blocks doesn't involve an even stronger boss.

Grinding for metal slimes

Level grinding in RPGs is a curious thing.

Across the board, in just about every J-RPG, there's a location (or a handful of them) where tough or special monsters reside. Monsters that give you several times the experience points other monsters do.

Games that do this well, like Breath of Fire II and Chrono Trigger, have these monsters dominate or stand out in these areas.

Dragon Quest IX doesn't quite do the same, though.

The best way to level grind in this DS RPG is to seek out metal slimes. However, the tricky thing here is that metal slimes of all variations have a considerable tendency to flee. Not to knock your block off with some ultimate attack. Not to instant-kill one of your party members. But to run away. When this happens there is no way to save the fight as in the other two scenarios, you are simply forced to restart your hunt.

And sometimes it can be quite a hunt. Metal slimes will sometimes show up with other monsters, but most reliably you need to find them on their own. Even then, they're just as likely to run.

The slimes' tendency to run away can be very frustrating.

But, in The Bowhole at least, the non-slime monsters can offer around 1000 experience points per fight. Considering most of my party members need about 20,000 points to level up, that means I'll need to go through about 20 fights. That's not terrible, but it still makes for some pretty intense grinding.

I'm still hoping that I'll run into a heroic slime or two.

Heaven's no place for animation (spoilers below)

Things are slowly drawing to a close in Dragon Quest IX.

Having been to the Realm of the Almighty (this game's heaven) only to find it empty and in ruins it became obvious quite quickly that something was up. The trip wasn't a total wash, however, since it lead to the revelation that Yggdrasil, the world tree that the Celestrians tend to, had been the Almighty's only daughter, Celestria, all along. 

Oh, and that the source of the destruction of heaven is to be found in the revived Gittish Empire. Of course. 

But what I found most interesting amidst all of the plot development and cutscenes were those scenes' style. Like almost all of the other cutscenes in the game they're all rendered with in-game sprites. It seems that even a visit to heaven isn't enough to merit another hand drawn animated scene. Though there's a brief five second animation of Celestria's transformation into Yggdrasil. 

That scene leads me to believe that there's more. Maybe they were cut from the final version of the game for legal reasons. Maybe they're only unlocked after some sort of "New Game+" is started. But a five second animation isn't something that just gets made and tossed into a cutscene. 

Setting Celestria's transformation in such a style definitely makes it stand out. But it also begs the same question that the animated scene of the dragon fight does: Why aren't all of the game's cutscenes animated?

Playing along a straight line

As it turns out, one can simply walk out of the Gortress.

After experiencing a day's labour (or so the title card told me), your guide and neighbour in the cells, Sterling, asks if you're interested in an escape plan. I chose "No" to see what would happen, but have a sneaking suspicion that it made little difference.

When the next day arrives, there's an attempted hanging and that is the rupture point among the prisoners. With all the guards distracted you're free to go - Sterling even tells you to leave the Gortress and "Zoom" out to where you can meet up with the rest of your party. And because this is a prison break you can just come back whenever, I guess.

Seriously. You just walk out of the Gortress, have complete control and then Zoom away to Stornway (or anywhere). I probably could've re-gathered my party and run some sidequests and rested at a few inns before heading back to find the prison break still in progress. Whatever happened to maintaining a sense of urgency?

Since being forced to go it alone to see Greygnarl, I've been wondering why this solo portion of the game just didn't work. I think it's because there are no stakes.

It's been years since I played through it, but Earthbound's Magicant section (where Ness is alone) is what I would call a successful solo section in an RPG. Your character develops, picks up a new technique, and no doubt gains a few levels in the process. Plus, there are actual stakes.

It's possible to die while in Earthbound's Magicant, just as you could anywhere else. But, unless you force your way forward without the rest of your party, there's no time during Dragon Quest IX's solo section where you're really at risk of being wiped out. Although you would probably pop your clogs if you tried to fight the monsters around the Gortress alone.

All in all, it seems like Dragon Quest IX can be represented by a straight line. There haven't been battles that are difficult outside of those that pit me against bosses just at the edge of my party's own power, there haven't been major changes in gameplay (outside of sidequests), and the job system is prohibitive of smoothly changing them mid-game.

But, I did just discover that pressing the shoulder buttons rotates the camera. That's sort of cool.

A disappointment with dragons

I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised when "Dragon Warrior" equipment gets mentioned in Dragon Quest IX. That was the original North American name for the franchise, after all. However, its use in the game (at least up to where I am now) is strange.

Greygnarl gives you this equipment when it comes time to ride him. At first this is just to get to the Gittish Empire, but then his age-old rival Barbarus the black dragon shows up and you and Greygnarl fight him instead.

This is where the use of the equipment, and more particularly, your riding a dragon - a dragon! - gets strange.

The game shifts from its general style to the hand drawn anime style seen in the game's intro sequence. There's still some dialogue, but the entire fight is a cutscene in this style. It's really quite impressive. But it's an odd choice.

If this cutscene is an animated sequence, then why aren't any of the other cutscenes that we've seen to this point in the same style?

Because being a dragon rider (or even a Dragon Warrior) is totally badass, why make a fight while on dragon-back a cutscene instead of a minigame or special combat of some sort?

What makes me wonder why this isn't a battle you play is the fact that the game requires you to drop off all of your party members before going to meet Greygnarl for the second time. Such a requirement gives the second visit to Greygnarl a feeling of great significance. It is something that your avatar - the game's main character - alone is fit to do. There's an incredible sense of being chosen.

But chosen for what?

To put on some admittedly cool looking armour that nonetheless makes your avatar look generic?

To initiate an animated cutscene?

The fact that such a sweeping change to the way that you play the game leads to a part of it that involves very little play is just disappointing. It's a design choice I can't quite figure out.

Much like how the game designers decided to leave all of your items, equipment, and gold with you when you subsequently wind up in the Gittish Empire's Alcatraz - the Gortress.

I can't decide if I should play along or just try to bust out.