Dragging out an oldie

Dragon Quest IX's second story-related quest has now emerged. And, as expected in retrospect, but as was welcome in the moment, it's another quest pulled straight out of the 16-bit RPG playbook.

A town (aptly named Coffinwell) is imperilled by a terrible disease - but, this disease turns out to be a curse! The twist is that the curse is simply to be resealed rather than the usual vanquished or destroyed (as was the case in Phantasy Star IV's Reshel and Breath of Fire's Romero). However, flattening things out after this welcome shift from the conventional is the fact that once more a female character close to those involved in this plot point is in danger! We didn't have to save any princesses in the matter with the Wight Knight, hopefully it turns out that we don't need to save the wife of the archaeologist visiting Coffinwell, either.

Both the matter of the Wight Knight and the curse of Coffinwell seem to have been triggered by the earthquake that somehow lead to the game's lead falling from heaven. So, my guess right now is that after five more quake-related quests, the big bad will reveal itself and the game will shortly thereafter end. Just how accurate a guess that is remains to be seen however.

Ending a quest's lengthy hiatus

I never really played too many Dragon Quest games before taking up Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies nearly three years ago. Somehow, despite my appetite for 16-bit JRPGs I just never hunted down roms of the lauded series in my childhood, when time was mine and most of it was spent on the genre.

Maybe it's the come down from finishing Phantasy Star IV, but today's return session to Dragon Quest IX brought me right back into it. I'm sure having stopped right in the middle of the first big quest (the hunt for the black knight in Brigadoom) also made it easy for me to feel like I never left the game in the first place.

The game plays like so many JRPGs from the SNES era. Battles are turn-based, menus are deep, and the dungeons aren't so much expansive as they are tight. Brigadoom isn't a huge place, but it's got enough stairs and hidden rooms to keep you backtracking and wandering to find the right path. Plus, being able to see treasure chests and pots in adjacent, but seemingly inaccessible rooms is an invitation to deviate from the straight path to dungeon's end.

So far Dragon Quest IX's offered a fine mix of nostalgia and innovations on the formulae I remember from the 16-bit era's Final Fantasy series, Tales of Phantasia, the Lufia games, and even outliers like Secret of the Stars.

Away game special: A phantasy ended

It is done. With the power of three, Phantasy Star IV was finished in the space of a weekend. At a guess, the whole game took us about 20 hours to complete.

At that time, the game comes  up a bit short for a 16-bit JRPG. A lot of comparisons we're made to Chrono Trigger (another short game if you know it well) and I think the two games share more than relative shottness.

Both games have a sleek, slim main plot line. Both also use intuitive, pace-quickening combat mechanics. However, the games differ wildly in the range of their extra content.

Chrono Trigger has a quest or event for each character's best weapon (at least); Phantasy Star IV really only has quests to outfit two of your four core characters. We probably would've cared more about Gryz (the butt of nearly all of our jokes and riffs) if we could've walked through a chapter of his life for something to make him a worthwhile addition to our battle party.

Stepping away from matters of combat efficiency, we never really learn much of anything in-game about Phantasy Star IV's four non-core characters. The priest Raja is something of an exception here, but jovial, life-loving priest characters always have a tremendous presence.

Nonetheless, the game is, overall, something to experience (though, nostalgia aside, once is enough). Plus, Phantasy Star IV does something no Final Fantasy game has ever done: it effectively (and, a little affectively) ends its series' saga.

Away game special: A phantasy of stars

Phantasy Star IV is a great game from my past. I originally played it with an emulator when those and roms were to be found in the shadiest corners of the internet. That was a solo playthrough, though.

This time around the game's being triple-teamed: two friends I've had since high school and I are playing it on the Wii's Virtual Console. Currently we're on our way to fight Zio and rescue the android named Demi.

Aside from now being aware of the ridiculousness of the games' abbreviations, it's quite a bit more drawn out than I remember. Also, there are a lot of towns for the early part of a JRPG.

I point out the panoply of towns because it gives the game's world a very realistic feel. Like the future before Lavos in Chrono Trigger, the array of towns makes it feel like the world is actually populated in a natural sort of way rather than for story or gameplay convenience.

Having so many towns around so early might not make sense in other games, but it's one aspect of Phantasy Star IV that remains fresh.