What are you playing?

Well, just to make a combo-breaker here....


I've decided to reinstall WarZone 2100, and been playing that the past couple nights. It's okay, nothing too special, but a good standby game. Really different approach for a tech tree though, and if you like strategy games, I would say at least give it a shot. Oh, also, it's open source, and they encourage mods and map changes..

TRIPLE post. Just beat the original dragon quest...

I have a copy of it for the NES. I never beat it.
The last thing I remember was being told that I needed a key, but not being able to find it. Then my save erased, then my NES died... the end.

Bravely Default is awesome.  10hrs so far.  Bosses on Normal are a bit cake though.

TRIPLE post. Just beat the original dragon quest...

I have a copy of it for the NES. I never beat it.
The last thing I remember was being told that I needed a key, but not being able to find it. Then my save erased, then my NES died... the end.

If you ever go to try again (because despite the grinding, the actual CONTENT part of the game is very short) you can get keys in the fourth town. Head north, then east at around the point you'd see erdrick's cave. You'll follow the riverside to the south until you reach a cave in a small patch of poisonous swamp. Head south through there, and keep heading south until you find a town with a big moat around it. You'll need to enter, then walk around the outside edge of the town (there's a girl at the top of the screen outside the town wallls) to the top left corner. Enter this building, and you can buy keys any time. You can carry up to six! Once you have at least one, you can find a shop in the starting castle as well.

My friend's been constantly badgering me to get Bravely Default. I oughta at some point.

Anyways, been playin' MadWorld; up to the Shogun. This game is hilarious, oh my god.

TRIPLE post. Just beat the original dragon quest, playing the second now. I can safely state that without emulators and the ability to fast forward through the level grinding by holding down my 360 controller's right trigger, I'd never have played these. Grinding at lightspeed to get an advantage, then finding out that was JUST ENOUGH to get you on par for the next dungeon is...jarring.

Woah. I remember playing that game when it was NEW. Gah.

Games like that, even the original Final Fantasy, were less about content and more about passing time with battle mechanics. I think that's why most of those games had extremely spacious maps and quests that were the equivalent of finding needles in haystacks. If that hook wasn't there to keep you playing, you'd be done in half an hour. Hell, I could get through FF in two days as it was...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03nUMw7japI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03nUMw7japI</a>

Never have I been more excited.

TRIPLE post. Just beat the original dragon quest, playing the second now. I can safely state that without emulators and the ability to fast forward through the level grinding by holding down my 360 controller's right trigger, I'd never have played these. Grinding at lightspeed to get an advantage, then finding out that was JUST ENOUGH to get you on par for the next dungeon is...jarring.

Woah. I remember playing that game when it was NEW. Gah.

Games like that, even the original Final Fantasy, were less about content and more about passing time with battle mechanics. I think that's why most of those games had extremely spacious maps and quests that were the equivalent of finding needles in haystacks. If that hook wasn't there to keep you playing, you'd be done in half an hour. Hell, I could get through FF in two days as it was...

Sounds about right to me.

IN DQII, outside of the town where you can buy power shields and falcon swords, I spent two. hours. grinding at turbo speed to earn the necessary 100,000 gold. I was a zombie by the end of that.

Dragon Quest two completed at level 32. SUCCESS!

Bravely Default is awesome.  10hrs so far.  Bosses on Normal are a bit cake though.

Yeah I'm playing on Normal and I only had trouble at one point so far. I haven't played in several days. I thin I've got about 40 hours but I'm only on chapter 4 or something lol. I'm not sure how the time got so high because I haven't been grinding or anything at all. I must have left the 3DS open overnight one day or something.

I still want to punch Agnes in the face most times though.

Bravely Default is awesome.  10hrs so far.  Bosses on Normal are a bit cake though.

Yeah I'm playing on Normal and I only had trouble at one point so far. I haven't played in several days. I thin I've got about 40 hours but I'm only on chapter 4 or something lol. I'm not sure how the time got so high because I haven't been grinding or anything at all. I must have left the 3DS open overnight one day or something.

I still want to punch Agnes in the face most times though.

That's funny, I can tolerate Tiz and Agnés, but I LOATHE Ringabel.  I hate flat jerkoff womanizing characters.  I'm in the middle of the Florem arc and tbh I'm a bit disgusted by the writing.

Edea is also grating too.

I think it was shortly after that point before Agnes started annoying me. The characters are generally so bland and stereotypical that none of them bothered me, until Agnes starts being completely irrational.

So Dragon Quest one felt somewhat rewarding because I was essentially playing a gaming artifact. Two was alright, but felt like a chore.

Three is fucking awesome. The animations are gorgeous. The music is great. The enemies are even more varied than before. The world is tremendous and everything is NEAT.

Playing the first three games I can see how people got into this. There's all kinds of cool shit, and it gets to the point where it's almost completely non-linear for a long, long stretch of time. This is something I wish I could see in modern games a lot more often.

And then I look at the modern DQs. They're so reliant on references to the old material. There aren't many new enemies anymore. Songs are largely rearrangements of the classics. It's the same thing that Kirby does, but without the major innovations in gameplay. The games aren't BAD...but they definitely lack the sort of oomph that holds my attention all the way to the end. Hell, I played Sentinels of the Starry Skies, and I walked into the final dungeon...and just stopped. By that point, I had completely lost my desire to play. I still haven't finished it. And I was having FUN with that game.

I wonder if continuing to play the older entries will change my opinion.

DQ8 is generally considered the best in the series and one of the best JRPGs of all time, so I wouldn't say the modern DQs are all like that. Never played 7, but 6 is a bit like that. You could make the argument that 5 is too but it's also commonly cited as the second best of the series. I wouldn't say that any of them are modern though except 8, 9, and 10 (which is an MMO and not even released outside Japan).

The series does tend to fall on its own laurels a bit too much, but in my opinion that wasn't too much of a problem until 9. It's funny because it's kind of the opposite of Final Fantasy, yet the both started out so very similar. Final Fantasy is constantly trying to reinvent itself whereas Dragon Quest seems too afraid to change. Many would argue that neither one executes those very well these days.

I would certainly be one of those individuals. I am VERY disappointed with the changes Final Fantasy games have made in the past decade. Gone are the iconic characterisations of the White and Black mages, the magic types, job classes and so forth. THe last Final Fantasy game I played that did anything like that was Tactics.

I'm not saying that FF 7-14 were bad games- I actually enjoyed several in that range. They just weren't what I knew as FInal Fantasy.

Both 11 and 14 deeply utilize job classes, magic types, and more, even if they are online games. :I

Honestly, 14 feels more like the older games than anything past 9, excluding 7 and 8 as well.

Hm. I tried the online games, and sure, they had the job classes but... I dunno, man, they just didn't feel like Final Fantasy to me. It felt like they took FF and stuck it on a generic MMO interface.

That's my story and I'm skickin' to it.

True in some ways, I think, but your opinion is always your opinion. I don't think we'll see a return to the 'classic' Final Fantasy games, much like we don't see a return to a classic anything anymore. In ten years kids'll look back and nostalgically sigh at FF13 as the 'classic' Final Fantasy.

Ha, fair enough!

I'm currently playing Zylos' Nightmare. It's scaring the carp out of me, and I LOVE it.

And now Zoma is defeated as well. Dragon Quest IV is the next target, and I'm excited for it.

I only ever played the classic NES Dragon Quests . They were pretty fun, and definitely revolutionary for their time, but I'm not sure if I'd play them again.

Well, I played TESO the whole weekend and it was awesome. <3
The only problem was some quests that couldn't be solved because of bugs. :/
Anyway, I can recommend that to everyone, because fighting, smithing and all that stuff makes much fun and all has a right to be in the game. :3 (\s/)

the quests weren't even really bugged, the spawn timers on like dudes to kill or chests to raid just needs tweaking and is probably already fixed in a more recent client.

I really want to get ESO now. I was impressed.

the quests weren't even really bugged, the spawn timers on like dudes to kill or chests to raid just needs tweaking and is probably already fixed in a more recent client.
I really want to get ESO now. I was impressed.

I can agree with you. The fun was huger, then the frustration about 3 quests that didn't worked.
I finished about 100 quests, so it's a really low chance to get a quest that doesn't run.
I also loved the crafting and rewards you get. You allways get new stuff, not like in Skyrim, where you get quick the best and then nothing more any further.
Even I must say it feels more like Dark Souls then Skyrim. (\s/)