onsdag 4 januari 2017

Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past

Finally, a "new" Dragon Quest

Finally, after just below 90 hours I finished it... and they said it would take 100 hours, a master of Dragon Quest I am! And after rushing through Asdivine Hearts it felt really nice playing this game for the first time, it even felt nostalgic, but that is probably more due to the Dragon Quest conservative development which have the same look, gameplay and similar themes in the story. Feels really nice. Story begins with you, a son of the local hero fisherman trying to explore the world with the town mayor daughter and the local prince. The world just consisting of 1 island in an whole ocean, that is until your father drags home some part of a stone tablet they caught in their net. After some running around the ruins of the island and talking to the right people you are able to enter a mysterious shrine (which is what it's called in the zoom list). Inside a... "fairy" explains the deal. Collect stone tablets, bring them to the shrine and put them in the pillars of the shrine. What he doesn't tell you is that once you complete a pillar you are transported to a completely new place shrouded in darkness. The twist... if you can call it twist since it is basically the only explanation that makes sense, is that you have been transported back in time to the moment that the island you are on would disappear from the world. You save the townspeople of the past and the island appears in the present which you then visit to collect more tablets and so on. 

Did we take a left a albuquerque?

So after saving a number of island you begin to unravel the plot. Centuries earlier the Almighty (aka God) fought a battle against the demon king. No one knows the outcome, but the more logical ones was either a draw or a loss for the Almighty. You also collect more people that joins you, Ruff, the wolf turned human and Sir Melvyn, a knight that fought beside the Almighty in the battle the demon king, but was put into a crystal so that he could be awakened when he was needed to fight once more against evil. And Aishe, the descendet of prince Keifer who leaved the party and stayed in the past to be guardian and later husband of a dancer for a tribe who's purpose was to awaken the Almighty. So after saving all islands you unlock a portal to the very moment the battle of the Almighty and Demon King occurred. As the Almighty sends Sir Mervyn into the crystal and sends of the four great spirits HE blows himself up, critically damaging the demon. And you enter and fight the weakended demon lord. Afterwards you enter the present and awakens the Almighty. But plot twist, it's really the Demon King in disguise and he throws you all into the shadows. You are able to transport to the four islands connected with the four spirits and awakens one by one. They shatter the darkness and bring the islands back once again and then exposes the demon lord. And you have to finish him of. Do that and the world is saved and you go on a so called victory tour to meet most of the people you have saved or helped. After returning home you wake up in your normal clothes and for the third time in the game goes out with lunch to your father, but this time you are allowed to stay on the ship... as does Maribel, the mayor's daughter. You get out and credits roll. It all ends with you picking up yet another stone tablet,  but this is from Keifer telling us that he married the dancer and so on. The End.

Interesting how they push this trio when both Maribel and Keifer are missing big parts of the game.

It's easy to describe the overarching plot, but as per usual with Dragon Quest, each island has it's own story that might have taken 30 minutes to complete in the beginning and then a couple of hours to finish at the end. We have the island were all women are kidnapped, the island overrun by machines, a disastrous love story that almost ends in poisonous murder and on and on. This game is huge in stories and it's really good for short sessions, one island at a time. But I can't help that feel that the main characters are a bit slow. For example the murder plot I got directly, but we didn't try to stop it until another person stepped in. The same when two bullies try to play a prank on a little girl and we could stop them, we heard there plan, but no. I would have thrown those brats of the cliffs for their insolence in bullying a little girl. Or the town that erased the proof of their ancestors guilt of almost killing the priest who was turned into a monster to protect them and even though he didn't hurt a fly they were about to burn him. And he had to leave (sadder still is that I met the priest "earlier" when he sacrificed himself yet again to save another town... at least those people tried to save him as well, but I believe he died that time). Anyway, the kids in the town dig up another stone tablet that explain their guilt and you take it and show it to the mayor who proceeds to grab a hammer and smash it... with the heroes right there, why didn't they stop it? That's what a real DnD game have over these games, you actually can stop these kind of stupid things... if not the players themselves causes those things that is.

This is how you deal with bullies and liars (picture doesn't portrait real bullies or liars)

Beside this we have some really heavy stuff. One of the earlier islands is an island were the inhabitants have been turned to stone and the only survivor was a warrior who was outside of town to get provisions and now was an old man. In the village you get three visions from statues right before the rains that caused it. One is between the warrior and his wife that urges him to stay, but he feel he must for the survival of the town, another with a little girl and boy talking about their secret hideout and the last is a father getting drunk in the pub, trying to get home when the rains start and he feels the petrification taking effects as he panic and cries out his sons name as he try to reach his house... and then the statue crumbles to dust. That hit right through the heart. You are only able to save one person, the boy who's father cried out for him since he was at the secret hideout underground and saved from weather and wind. I tell you, Dragon Quest knows how to push the feels. This is a remake from a PSOne game which I first read in the Super Play magazine, but couldn't play since I first didn't have a playstation and secondly since it didn't come out in Europe at the time. I get they gave it a 3d world like Dragon Quest VIII and IX and got rid of the random encounters like IX except in two places, on water and a dungeon where it probably was to problematic to program as you run around on glass cubes and can walk on each side. After finish the game you have enough tablets to get yet another pillar where you dungeon crawl to fight... the Almighty. Being Dragon Quest, of course he is an entertainer and comedian. I haven't beaten HIM as of writing since I probably need to grind a bit, but I probably have enough time before they release VIII.

So when is the release date? Update: January 20th 2017

A bit of a update (which since it isn't out until now anyway make's it a bit redundant, but still), now I finally grinded the cast for 15 hours up to level 50, got all the regular vocations for the Hero and everyone else is up to 3d Tier vocations. I challenged the Almighty and I finally beat him... but no, that's not enough since I did it in 39 turns and apparently its 20 that is the magic number and the Almighty is a f***ing cheater. Putting my characters to sleep, making them laugh uncontrollably and dishing out high amount of damage that almost makes a TPK. And yet, its still much more fun than grinding for the end of any Final Fantasy game I played. But I'm done. I got such a big backlog of games and several of them is RPG's with another 60 hours per game.

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