Jac

>nypost

I don't agree myself either. I also think there's a distinction between the games that people are unwilling to look at. Live A Live is a night and day difference to Octapath Traveler, and I think the DQ games look even better than Live A Live. People saying they look the same are blind.

It's the hd2d backlash. Some would rather look at uneven and badly scaled sprite work than millions of post processing effects

The added characterization of the cousin crew in DQ2 HD2D is just lovely. It reminds me that these games are truly at their best when you have a party of bright personalities to bring along for the ride.

The newly added bosses to DQ1 HD2D actually made me fall in love with that version even more, cuz they put me on the backfoot and forced me to interact with the souped up skill system, which quickly became a combat mechanic I absolutely adored afterwards.

This is the year of me looking at people having trouble with games and going "Wasn't that bad for me".
Between Silksong and apparently the newly added bosses for Dragon Quest 1&2 HD2D, I'm noticing a trend where people who continuously die to a boss think it's is automatically badly designed.

Amazing final game of the world series. Boring outcome, but the game itself was fun to watch and both teams played out of their minds.

97. Adam's Apples (6.5/10)

A Neo-nazi who's been put in a church program tries to make a priest lose his faith. It kind of doesn't go anywhere with this despite having a nice core message about prejudice. It's heavy handed and kind of shallow, but it's got some funny moments

96. The Green Butchers (8/10)

Two butchers open a new butcher shop together and accidentally serve human meat as chicken to roaring success. It's a crazy concept that leads to tons of macabre humor and some sinister thriller undertones. Very funny and also performed in a sober realistic way.

95. Flickering Lights (8.5/10)

A hilarious danish dark comedy featuring 4 gangsters trying to escape the crime life by starting a restaurant. It's incredibly quotable, I have heard multiple lines from this movie from just talking to other people growing up. The cast is fantastic.

Excuse me if the next couple of posts are very danish. My brother invited me to watch some Anders Thomas Jensen movies. He's one of the most significant writers in danish film culture. He mostly writes, but he has a couple movies where he's both writer and director, and those are the ones we watched

regarding the Dragon Quest HD2D remakes, if you wanna keep at least a little bit of the essence of these games, then when starting a new game, make sure to switch off objective markers when prompted. These games are best experienced through the NPC interactions who give you hints on where to go

YouTube video by Northernlion this is pandering but it doesnt make it false

Just doing my daily watch of this to feel better about myself

It's a situation of:
Play this version of the game if you just wanna have fun right now.

Play the originals if you care about games.

In a perfect world where we all have unlimited amounts of time, I would just tell people to play both, but no one wants to do that.

What I'm trying to say is, this game is really good and I hope people play it, but it doesn't substitute the experience of playing the original game and figuring out how to get to Dragonlord's castle without cutscenes telling you exactly where to go. There's a purity to DQ1 that this doesn't capture

I'm highlighting this to say that as far as remakes go, this is a Resident Evil situation for me. I really loved my time with this remake, but it's such a different experience to playing original Dragon Quest 1 that it doesn't substitute the other versions of the game that are more faithful

For one, the game is longer now. I played at a pretty brisk pace and clocked in at 14 hours and 45 minutes. It's also not just longer story wise, but also game wise. They've added 5-6 dungeons to this game.

In this game it also starts like that, but then you get introduced to various other characters in an attempt to make Alefgard's continuity a coherent one with what they set up in DQ3, and the attempts at that are largely successful. DQ1 is an enjoyable full story now, which does have its own caveats

I will also say that this version of the game is vastly different to any other version. There's a heavy emphasis on story and narrative. The original Dragon Quest you're told from the start "go kill the dragonlord and maybe also rescue my daughter" and that's about all the story you got.

94. Dragon Quest I HD-2D Remake (9/10)

We now have yet another version of Dragon Quest 1, and it's a really good one. Probably the best version purely based on how they redesigned the game to have no progression bottlenecks even if you know what you're doing, and the amazing new combat gimmicks

For a series that gets stamped as overly traditional, even by fans, I do think some of the newer games should be lauded for what mechanics they bring to the table.
A new DQ isn't just "more of the same". There is a lot of thought put in whenever they want to play around and do new cool stuff.

So you essentially have what the game dubs "souped up skills" and you can only activate these skills by fulfilling one of two requirements. All skills can be activated when your health is below 50%, but you can bypass this by some skills requiring a HP or MP regen, and these skills destroy the game

The sigils in DQ1&2 HD2D are really cool. I think it's sick to have special moves that you can only do when in specific states. It's made some boss fights about figuring out which special attacks are the best to use and I can't wait for it to get more advanced in DQ2.

very red morning

Case and point in terms of the money situation. I'm barely an hour in and I already had enough money to buy a steel broadsword at Galenholm for 1700 G. That's something that would've taken 3-4 hours in any other version of the game.

It does change the dynamic sure, but I would argue for the better. I would still wish the devs would add a function to turn off shiny spots completely for these remakes, but I'm not opposed to them being here in the case of DQ1 and 2. It does make the pacing better and more in line with modern DQ

With DQ1 however, it does remove the early game burden of gold farming for equipment.
It does also help that the game starts you with leather equips and a copper sword as opposed to a stick and plain clothes, so during the beginning of DQ1 you are incentivized to explore without feeling weak

Shiny Spots in DQ3 HD2D felt like a balance attempt for a game that doesn't need balancing. DQ3 already had balancing done on the SNES/GBC remake that made it a pitch perfect playing experience, so shiny spots on top of that was overkill.

This new ending for Dragon Quest 2 better blow my fucking pants off with the amount of teasing they've been doing. Between all the advertising and now asking streamers and youtubers to refrain from immediately showing it, it better be world shaking.

Save 10% on Stray Children on Steam “The Olders, they come to eat the Children…” All of the adults have become monsters, the rumors say. Nowhere is safe outside these walls. Welcome to Stray Children — a bittersweet, fairy tale RPG.

Small release-day housekeeping note:

The Steam version... is alive! You can get it right now!

store.steampowered.com/app/3649490/...

The eShop page for the Nintendo Switch version will be up in 1 hour and 45 minutes!

Please hold the champagne uncorking until then!