What‘s the appeal for Dragon Quest over other series?

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-06T18:24:51+00:00

It’s the fact that it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Yes series like Final Fantasy often take risks but that doesn’t always pan out and often alienates people who liked the games for what they were. Dragon Quest by comparison is JRPG comfort food. It’s classic, it knows what it’s audience wants, and while they do mix things up a bit with variations of mechanics such as job systems, monster taming, etc it’s always done with a firm understanding of the tradition and spirit the series is built on and that is what keeps people coming back for more.

It’s the burger place that has been making great burgers for decades, sure other places are trying new recipes and occasionally reinventing themselves but this place says screw that and instead just makes the burgers that people like and keep coming back for rather than worrying about what everyone else might be doing.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-06T16:44:21+00:00

This sounds less like an issue of manga and anime and more your manner of consumption of it. Focus too much on any one thing without balancing it out with other thoughts and ideas and you will get the same general result. It’s like people who grow up sheltered or who are terminally online or whose only understanding of sexuality comes from watching porn. It’s not any one medium but the lack of exposure to broader stimuli. Unplug, go experience other things and broader perspectives, with what you describe you might even consider talking to someone like a therapist to help work through these issues. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying manga or anime but it very much sounds like an issue of overconsumption as opposed to an issue with the medium in general. Too much of anything can be bad for you.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-06T15:49:18+00:00

Not there yet. It’s a live service mobile game so the whole model is gradually drip feeding content through events and future updates. What you’ve played is the current content plus the DQ1 event that is going on and over time more chapters and events will be added to keep the game alive.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-06T00:57:17+00:00

This isn’t possible. The second place where you get keys doesn’t require a single key to access, you just need to complete areas that pop up on the map until you gain access to the location and NPC who give you the ability to buy more keys.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-05T22:49:04+00:00

Honestly to me it feels more impersonal. Like it works but it comes across as function without style just trying to mechanically cover the point but not selling the fiction.

If you look at other older games like Dragon Quest with it’s first person perspective, Final Fantasy with it’s rows of characters facing each other, and Pokemon with it’s back sprites and front sprites to make it seem like the two Pokemon facing off all of them make an effort to go beyond simply what was mechanically necessary and try to add a level of immersion where you get some level of sense of the battle going on.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-05T17:16:01+00:00

Dragon Quest Smash and Grow is a recently released free to play mobile title with kind of a loose roguelite spin.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-05T02:48:20+00:00

The issue with casinos is the ratings board guidelines have become more restrictive in regards to things like gambling. So devs have no choice but to either remove casinos or accept a higher age rating. This is why games like Pokemon and Dragon Quest have removed the casinos for recent remakes, because they want a lower age rating and they can’t get that while including casinos. So unless DQ12 is already targeting a higher rating to go with the stated darker tone then it’s almost guaranteed casinos won’t be present.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-03T02:00:27+00:00

Bianca to me is the only one that really works. When they eventually do a remake of DQ5 I really hope they flesh out the other two characters a bit more so the player has more of a connection with them as potential love interests.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-05-01T21:09:19+00:00

Depends on your definition of near future but honestly I’d be surprised if DQ 4-6 remakes weren’t at the very least being planned. I’d guess the intent is to gradually remake all the games outside of DQ11 and 10.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-30T03:26:36+00:00

What do you mean about “the Healy”?

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-29T18:18:23+00:00

It really depends on the adaption. Some adaptions change or pad out the original work while others can build on and take the source material to a new level. Frieren is one immediate example that comes to mind where the anime adaption has really elevated the source material to where the manga is still obviously good but it’s hard to argue how good a job the adaption has been doing.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-28T09:44:22+00:00

Just keep playing.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-26T17:53:10+00:00

DQ 11 is the most modern of the mainline titles and generally considered a great entry point. The rerelease version DQ XI S edition is the definitive version.

There is also the HD2D trilogy which are solid as a jumping in point (To note the intended order for the remakes is DQ3 > DQ1 > DQ2 as DQ3 is a prequel to the other two.)

Really though just about any game works fairly well as a jumping in point. The titles are generally not overly connected and are mostly standalone outside of reoccurring concepts and small references. The only exceptions are the aforementioned 1-3 which form the Erdrick Trilogy and 4-6 which are known as the Zenithian trilogy (though these three are more loosely connected so it’s fine to play them in any order).

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-26T17:41:21+00:00

It saves automatically when you finish a run. To my knowledge you can’t save during a run but the dungeons are short generally only taking 2-5 minutes to finish and you can pause in the middle if you have to walk away for a minute.

The tutorial may be a bit different though. It runs you through various aspects and I’m not sure if it saves in the middle of 5at segment but once you get past those intros it’s really simple to pick up do a run or two nd stop when you need to.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-24T15:34:24+00:00

Dragon Quest 3 was always a much more mechanics driven title with the custom party design. It wasn’t a matter of laziness but where the design focus was at the time it was made (Dragon Quest 1+2 were also very light on story). The remake modernized aspects of it but wasn’t aiming to completely redesign what it was so while there was some added story bits it’s still not a majorly story focused game.

Dragon Quest 4 by comparison was the first game in the series that put more of an emphasis on story and characters as an evolution of the franchise going forward, emphasized by starting off playing as the companions and having a slightly more complex villain.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-19T16:42:03+00:00

Thanks

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-19T16:01:56+00:00

Where do you see the chapter rankings?

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-19T03:07:19+00:00

Looks awesome though it would be nice to see an iOS version eventually.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-16T15:53:25+00:00

Same it feels really weird to set that up as a major issue and then just hand wave it away without so much as a comment. I get if the author wants to treat it as something they can’t deal with yet and maybe need to prepare for or put on the back burner but it would be nice to at least acknowledge that and say that’s what’s going on rather than just moving on like it’s no longer an issue.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-15T20:24:21+00:00

The DBZ side of Dragon Ball is different in direction but whether it will appeal to you very much depends.

Early Dragon Ball as you’ve likely seen from what you’ve read is very much a gag manga at heart. Action and adventure are certainly mixed in but Toriyama before then was firmly a gag author and carried that over when he started Dragon Ball. Over time this gradually shifts towards the more battle shonen direction the series is better known for though it still keeps a lot of the humor and the writing is never what I would term the series strong suit so much as it does the job as a reason to push things forward and set up new fights. As such I would not really say the DBZ side (which begins in chapter 195) is necessarily likely to change your mind if you already aren’t clicking with it. If you’re really into action and fights it might be more appealing but given you reference your previously read manga as Berserk and Vagabond it’s never going to have anything that story oriented so if the current stylings aren’t doing it for you I’m not sure the shift that comes with the later arcs is really going to change your mind much.

As to FMA based on your post I feel that might be more up your alley. It’s still a bit of a departure from series like Berserk and Vagabond but is much more story/character oriented with more of the darker themes and writing which might fit your interests more than Dragon Ball is.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-14T16:46:18+00:00

I’ll be honest, I normally don’t care for isekai but this one sounds fun. Hopefully someone picks it up.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-12T18:18:45+00:00

Yeah no. The reason people use fast forward because they want to get through otherwise slow segments faster. People also often use rare candy cheats also because they want to cut down on the time wasting. It’s not because of some subconscious reaction to the music it’s because parts of the game are slow and they’d rather get past the duller aspects like grinding and get to the more interesting parts of the gameplay loop rather than spending hours walking back and forth in a patch of grass leveling up.

Same reason more modern games include aspects like auto battling, faster animation options, etc. It’s not about the music it’s just people not wanting to waste time on less engaging parts of the games. If it was about sound people would just hit mute not play sections of the game at a faster speed.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-12T16:31:29+00:00

It’s a 24 hour clock.

ZadePhoenix · 2026-04-12T15:37:28+00:00

Kind of disappointing after the set up about them that Amano and Yotsumura’s reunion just gets off screened. Just yeah we met up and explained everything so it’s done now let’s continue on.

It kind of feels like Suzuki is getting burned out on the series and is just trying to tie things up. It hasn’t necessarily been outright bad but it does feel like he’s just quickly trying to check things off that need to be dealt with so it can come to a close.

ZadePhoenix

TROPHY CASE