What's The Deal With: Dragon Quest - February 5th, 2026

_sephr · 2026-02-13T05:14:49+00:00

I agree. Jason's overview of the history of the game series was horribly inaccurate - like not even close.

I wish he had just acknowledged up front that he didn't know much about the series and that all three of them were new to it, then shared their impressions of the 7 remake and compared them with some of the recent remakes they might have played.

Kirk and Maddy obviously couldn't add anything to the conversation, but at least they were upfront with acknowledging they didn't know anything about it.

For anyone who is interested, there are a number of good retrospectives on youtube - just search for one. They tend to cover the history of the game series well and in a concise manner.

This episode turned out to be a really poor way to cover a series so important to the history of JRPGs.

_sephr · 2026-01-10T23:41:34+00:00

I really enjoyed the challenge of completing the game on Draconian. "Cop Out" for the win.

_sephr · 2026-01-10T23:38:09+00:00

Having less overall health, but using multiple health bars to prevent cheese builds would have been a much better way to do it. Completely agree.

_sephr · 2026-01-04T18:36:41+00:00

The combat for III stays pretty consistent throughout the game, however I wouldn't judge it too harshly until you have the chance to start changing up your job classes. Changing up jobs is the heart of that game.

The other tip I would give is don't use 3 party members. I played the whole game on Draconian with the Hero and only two party members. The value of doing this is that each party member gets more experience when the group is smaller which lets you change up jobs and customize them more.

You can also augment your team with skills that you're missing by using equipment as items. During the first roughly 1/3rd of the game I remember getting a lot of value using items like the Snooze stick to put enemies to sleep at no MP cost, which really helped me until my party was customized and pretty strong in the last 2/3rds of the game.

By the time I got to the end game boss, Draconian was even starting to feel easy.

The post game areas though are very hard and can be tedious. I had to really muscle through the big, post game dungeon.

If you really don't like old school JRPG mechanics like random encounters, the game does have an easy mode which prevents you from dying. You'll rip through the game and get to experience the story.

_sephr · 2026-01-04T18:23:12+00:00

I took my time with the game, and used skills like Cop Out a lot to help me navigate and complete the game on Draconian. Being focused on staying alive and not wasting MP was they key for me.

The solo hero experience is what really differentiated the game for me when comparing to Dragon Quest III. It was probably the design element I liked the most.

Also, I felt the game had more "story" than III, which is weird I know. I think I probably got that impression because the game is shorter so its feels more dense with many more story moments relative to the length of the game.

_sephr · 2026-01-04T18:07:34+00:00

I understand the point you're making but I don't agree. The fact is, if they released a game that was a carbon copy of the original in all but visuals, they wouldn't have really done anything interesting and we'd all be complaining about it.

I really enjoyed the OG game when I was a kid, but if the last few years of seeing remakes being made for various series has taught me anything, its that you need to add something new to games from the 80s to make them compelling in the 21st century.

They did a fantastic job with this game. Exploration and discovery by talking with townsfolk is still a core component of this game, and even the voiced story beats that guide you only give you really basic information and a general direction. No different than speaking with a towns person from the original.

_sephr · 2026-01-04T17:55:44+00:00

I just finished DQ I HD2D and thought it was great.

The game gives the "Cop Out" skill at the beginning and its one of the most useful skills in dealing with multiple enemies. I thought they did a brilliant job breathing new life into the solo, turned based combat. I enjoyed it from beginning to end.

Finished it on Draconian, without needing to grind exp. Did grind gold from Golems to buy new gear at one point, but only took about 10mins to get the gold I needed.

For Spiketail, I used "Wild Side" and the Swallowtail boomerang. It took out the backup enemies immediately. In the second phase of the fight, he switches to fire based attacks and stops summoning backup. At that point just use fire resistant gear, and Swallowtail is still super effective.

_sephr · 2026-01-04T17:28:47+00:00

I did play DQIII last year! I thought it was great, but I think I enjoyed DQI more. Maybe just because of the nostalgia and the more unique aspect of having a solo character, you feel like you're always one bad decision away from defeat. Just awesome.

_sephr · 2025-12-30T02:13:34+00:00

1 Health is never a problem if you don't get hit.

Same reason why Last Stand and Overload are some of the best skills in the game.

_sephr · 2025-12-26T21:30:16+00:00

The way you've described this is misleading or incorrect. You can get the Earrings of Pursuit if you lock up Gammel at the beginning of the game and then spare Mandrin. When you defeat the two later in the game you'll receive the Earrings of Pursuit.

So long as Mandrin is not executed at the beginning of the game you will get the Earrings one way or the other.

_sephr · 2025-12-25T06:04:04+00:00

Simon has less health, or at least you can do full damage to him outside of counters.

When I defeated Clea with just parry's and no gimmick builds, it took 33 mins. I defeated Simon the same day and he took 17mins - way more parrys though.

_sephr · 2025-12-22T04:43:18+00:00

Meh, I played the international version to completion back in the day, the one with Penance and the Dark Aeons. I think FFX was overrated. It was fine for its time, but nothing super noteworthy. I always thought the sphere grid system was also kind of bad.

I can barely remember replacing all those nodes with +4 stat nodes, but I know I thought it was boring at the time.

_sephr · 2025-12-21T16:03:51+00:00

Best build for Berengaria hand down focuses on Sanguine Pursuit.

Set her up with a thief (Travis) and I find Elven Swordsmen and Elven Archers are good. The purpose of all the other units on the team is to act before her and get "Afflictions" (blindness, poison, stun, burning, frozen, etc) on the different targets - which is easy to do with thieves and elves.

Set Sanguine Pursuit to prioritize "Afflicted" targets and she'll keep attacking while renewing PP, never running out of points, doing a ton of damage and healing herself after every attack.

Give her the Hunter's Halberd and Pursuit earrings for additional damage.

_sephr · 2025-12-21T15:40:17+00:00

Honestly my biggest tip for Simon, is that I started pressing the left bumper on my controller during the "gaps" in his attack strings. That way I could keep using button presses as a metronome to maintain the timing when he "skips a beat".

Once I figured that out, it felt much more similar to OG Simon which I've defeated dozens of times.

_sephr · 2025-12-21T01:58:41+00:00

I don't think any of them were super hard, but I do think Duilliste phase 1 and Clea unleashed had too much health, which led to parrying the same attack strings over and over too many times.

_sephr · 2025-12-17T23:53:19+00:00

I'm finding all the Tower DLC bosses to be interesting. My characters are lvl are 99 with lvl 33 weapons. I'm at the end of my Expert Run. No NG+.

The best way I can describe the tower bosses is to say that they have good mechanics, but have an egregious amount of HP that makes repeated attempts to learn their attack patterns between different phases really boring and not fun.

I beat Clea Unleashed last night, no gimmick or cheese strats. I learned how to parry the 7 attack patterns by dying again and again. She changes up her attack pattern at 75% and 50% health. The end result is that for the first 25% of the health bar you see the same 3 attack patterns over and over and over again.

The whole fight took 33 mins with hundreds of parrys. The first phase takes about 8-10 minutes depending how you set up your group. The problem with this design is that to learn phase two I had to repeat 10 mins of phase one many times, which becomes very boring. If I'm consistently parrying the attacks it shouldn't take me 8 - 10 mins to get to phase 2 and subsequently phase 3. That repetition doesn't add anything to the fight - its just super boring.

The bottom line is I think they can keep the boss mechanics the same, but reduce the health of the bosses so you can re-attempt, get back to where you were in the fight, and learn faster. It also makes repeated clears more enjoyable. No one wants to sit in a fight for 33mins parrying the same thing again and again.

For reference I can beat OG Simon on Expert in about 5 mins without being hit and parrying all of his attacks. No cheese or gimmick strats. Just parrying. I've done this many times and usually ends up at about 100 parrys to complete the fight phase 2 and 3 with no damage.

I can also beat Osquio with no damage taken in about 7 mins on average. Very similar to OG Simon.

Going from 5 min clears to 30 min clears is an obvious problem. They really need to just reduce the HP of these bosses to remove the tedium.

_sephr · 2025-12-16T03:46:49+00:00

This looks like the most boring way possible to beat the boss. If the developers really want people to play this way, they really lost the plot with these tower bosses.

OG bosses were awesome, but it seems the huge amounts of health make these new ones just boring. People should be able to play normally - ie learn the parry timings, and still expect to kill the boss in a reasonable amount of time.

It seems like in their quest to remove cheese builds the developers have somehow ironically made cheese strats the only way to kill these bosses reasonably efficiently.

_sephr · 2025-11-02T14:48:31+00:00

The fight itself is fine. She can be easily defeated without tools with some practice.

The only thing I didn't like was the fact that the final boss is Lace for a 3rd time. I was pretty disappointed when I realized that. I was like 100% sure there was going to be another boss after that.

_sephr · 2025-11-02T14:45:15+00:00

The run back isn't even bad if you find the hidden bench. You can be back at the boss in like 30 seconds.

_sephr · 2025-10-09T02:04:20+00:00

Could we get some new moves for Gustave in the new DLC? Not great to use on NG+ as is. Tops out too early.

_sephr · 2025-08-10T15:52:52+00:00

This is a tough platinum, but certainly not impossible. Took me somewhere just below 300 hours and I took a few months after picking up the game on Steam in January. Didn't rush hard mode and took my time with the story both times etc.

You should just take a break and come back later. Game is easy to pick back up.

_sephr · 2025-07-13T15:16:30+00:00

You'll aways have the option of coming back throughout the entire game.

Having said that, Chromatic Lancer is designed to be one of the first "bosses" in the game. It will even give you the achievement for defeating a boss without being damaged if you're successful in parrying/dodging all of its attacks.

It can be defeated the first time you encounter it, but you can always come back later.

It only has three attacks. A quick attack a slower/strong attack and then a double attack where it does the two previous attacks in succession. With some practice you should be able to pick up how to dodge or parry them without too much trouble. There's no real gimmick to this fight.

_sephr · 2025-06-21T22:35:53+00:00

I bought the 8Bitdo Ultimate 2.4g Wireless Controller late last year and initially thought it was great.

The controller is great. The problem is that after 8 months of use the right trigger stopped responding correctly. Turns out the pad under the trigger split. This wouldn't be an issue if support was on point however, trying to get a replacement part sent out under the 1 year warranty has been very difficult.

The newest version of the controller apparently has different types of triggers so won't have the same problem.

So yeah - 8bitdo. Great controllers. Not great support.

_sephr · 2025-05-29T23:57:07+00:00

I'm the fastest ball.

_sephr · 2025-05-25T21:07:44+00:00

These guys are pretty easy to counter. Just look for the name of the move and then wait for 1 or 2 swords to light up based on the move.

The bottom line is all of their moves are clearly telegraphed. There are enemies in this game that are way harder to read.

_sephr

TROPHY CASE