This game has been installed on my hard drive for about half a year and do you want to know what actually took me finishing it? Binging Dragon Quest XI demo for six hours. 2020 continues to be a crazy year. I can't shake the feeling that by not getting into Dragon Quest so far I've missed out on a tremendous franchise well-deserving of its acclaim. Such as it is, I have an action spin-off to bring to your attention. On entirely unrelated note I've also finished a novel that had spent just as much time in the freezer... only for me to read the remaining half in a single day.
It's my plan to put out one more update before the year is out so fingers crossed.
P.S.
I had a lightning fast Secret Santa so I would like to thank him here. ;)
Dragon Quest Heroes
( PC (Steam) – Action, RPG – 2015 ) + TRAILER
There are two sides to this review seeing as on one hand I'm an avid Musou aka Warriors fan, or was one back when the franchise was more relevant and less spin-off reliant, and on the other Dragon Quest is one of those JRPG titans I've largely remained ignorant of primarily due to erratic original releases in the West. Most of the cast included constitutes guests from core entry titles, but that doesn't end up being as much of an obstacle the way you would imagine for Dragon Quest Heroes. Does this marriage of convenience work out?
Taking place in a world apart from the rest of Dragon Quest games we have a unique situation where monsters and people are coexisting and even cooperating. Chief among these is the Kingdom of Arba where our two protagonists, Luceus and Aurora serve as captains of the guard under the watchful eye of their king. They also have a heal slime called Healix who indulges in goo puns all the time. Well, things go south when we see a mysterious mage who's up to no good and through a ritual causes monsters to turn on citizens. Realizing the same thing is happening across the entire world our intrepid heroes recruit the king's master inventor Isla, board the flying fortress dubbed Stonecloud and embark on fixing whatever went wrong. From little I've heard about the adapted franchise in question this evolving into “chosen ones of Light must save the world from the Darkness” seems like natural course of things.
Amusingly enough story is only ever truly strong in Warriors games when they're licensed spin-offs such as this. That's not the say this is going to win over many JRPG fans or some such. Good half of the game is spent visiting desert, forest and underground locales so you can solve their problems and recruit characters for your roster. I'll get more into the latter down the road, but story is your classical POWER OF FRIENDSHIP so no surprises there. If there's a structural issue it would be how predictably set up it is. Do couple of missions, story introduces new characters, rinse and repeat. More often than not we're also dealing with padding as story has you going through three or four missions where one would suffice.
When you put into context that only four out of thirteen characters (whoops, I meant twelve because one is totally a secret) are Dragon Quest Heroes' originals you're left with the remainder who happen to be fan service done right. Now, I wouldn't call them deep or anything, but this is probably due to being distilled forms of their original incarnations aka there isn't really any room for character development that would alter them tangibly. Good thing is characters like boisterous monk princess Alena or would-be-brides pair Bianca and Nera still succeed at delivering much needed variety in terms of personality and gameplay style. One element I wish I could change would be to make some characters more viable. Your mysterious swordsman Terry absolutely slays house with fast lightning-based attacks and self-healing when needed, for example.
Easiest way to point out how different Dragon Quest Heroes is from your usual Warriors fare would be to explain what the latter is.
You pick a character from what is, at this point, a roster made up of odd hundred characters, choose a level from the list and then proceed to rack up hundreds and hundreds of KOs as you clear out enemy bases, fell enemy lieutenants with your blade, etc with relatively simple combat relying on button mashing more than any in-depth planning or peak manual dexterity. Keep at it with new characters and storylines for many, many hours. Thing with this game is you have a significantly smaller playable roster and you take a while to fully unlock it. Fortunately, this is offset by the fact each of them IS unique so we're not just dealing with re-skinned attack animations + there's the RPG power progression attached with points eagerly awaiting to be spent as you level up.
World map gradually gets more and more populated with only combat zones, alas.
When you consider who their boisterous guardian was it's amazing how different Luceus and Aurora turned out.
It's customary to see full zone maps split into smaller chunks for story purposes. Unlocking them as combat zones reveals their proper size.
The unfortunate bit is inclusion of a brand new element – tower defense with monster minions acting as eponymous towers. As you fight monsters they may drop a medal. You promptly pocket the medal and can then summon the monster in that level until they either do their thing or their health bar gets depleted as they protect the surrounding area. Problem with this is general lack of control as enemy waves start pouring in including more high-tier monsters. You can only handle so much with the character you control, other three in your four-man party tow are doing their best as potential targets, but they're always rubber banding to you. This means monster protectors get left in charge of holding choke-points or, Goddess help you, actual objectives. I lost count how many times in end game I was at my wit's end dealing with an AI system I had no direct control over and silly prioritization it engaged in. Seeing “protect X” in story missions made me dread the worst, but those were generally fine. Side quests were the ones that drove me mad because they weren't as finely tuned and you were expected to reach a certain level before tackling them. Basically, monster minions are meant to detract and slow down incoming enemies as you go around to deal with Mawkeepers that spawn new forces. In practice this leads to frustration.
There was clearly tangible effort put into including more RPG elements in this one as well. Whereas level up usually just meant flat increments here it's a gateway to skill points for you to distribute. Is it perfect? I'd say no early on because it locks basic functionality behind a progression wall, and having freedom means you can prioritize wrongly, but once you clear that hurdle it's smooth sailing power curve. Only Luceus and Aurora are mirrors of each other seeing as you choose who the game protagonist is when you start playing. For the record I think I made a mistake because Aurora's ice based magic seems way more useful her counterpart's fire magic. This inversion is humorous with their personalities taken into account as Aurora is the feisty, spontaneous one. Not to mention everyone has four special skills on top of regular light/heavy attacks, former costing mana points to cast. Old staple of building up your attack meter, called Tension in this game, and unleashing a special, screen clearing attack is still in and will be your go-to solution.
I would argue Dragon Quest Heroes is a game stretched out far more than it should've been. There's maybe fifteen or so hours here, but as story milestones are reached you will need to spend some time doing sidequests [re-using existing maps for kill or collect missions generally] to keep up. Those weapons won't buy themselves nor will Orbs acting as armor for your full-fledged stat system. You can even craft accessories, but I found those of limited use for regular play. Maybe they matter more in end game or New Game+. I wouldn't know lacking the willpower to commit more that 30-ish hours I already put in.
All of that seems like a highly negative review yet it is more about my own annoyances with game's diversion from the Warriors formula I'm familiar with. Tower defense sections in late game almost brought it to naught for me, but denying evident production values would be akin to lying. Enix's supervision most likely had something to do with it, and stellar VA accompanying fitting soundtrack certainly adds to the package. It's all so... charming and straightforward. Larger than life drama has appeal of its own as it hits those traditional JRPG story notes in all their simplicity.
Final Thoughts and Rating?
Odd pairing of Musou aka Warriors and light tower defense formulae, Dragon Quest Heroes is certainly something worth checking out yet it is a kind of amalgam that always plays “in the middle” rather than committing to ether strain of its DNA. Clearing out fields of endless enemies has been deepened with inclusion of characters development more akin to RPGs and approachable story about Light defeating Darkness is an evergreen. Limited character roster and frustrating late game tower defense sections can chafe if you were lead to expect more [or less] of either, but this is Dragon Quest fan service done right for aficionados of the franchise. Not being one in the first place shouldn't stop you from trying this one out given it is entirely self-contained, though.
Alien Earth ( Science Fiction – 1992 – 368 pages ) + GOOD READS
At some point in near future aliens visit Earth bearing ill tidings – both the planet itself and humanity is screwed, and only hope for survival is to take their offer of one-way trip to twin worlds of Castor and Pollux where new life awaits if they take up the dogma of Harmonious Unity where things and beings don't compete, but cooperate in existence. Earth's problem is ecological in nature and fingers get pointed at humans for essentially ruining the world as carefully selected pools of people embark on this arduous journey to unknown worlds aboard arks grafted to living Beastships with mysterious Arthroplana acting as pilots. Amusing bit is all of the above is just the opening of the novel which then jumps two thousand years forward after humanity has settled on twin worlds with generations upon generations accustomed to the new way of life under the watchful eye of Human Conservancy as their lives become longer. Until the main cast gets involved with Earth Affirmed's generation spanning question and agenda regularly ignored or snuffed out by the Conservancy – what happened to Earth?
There's multiple POV characters, even couple of surprise ones novel springs on you, but initial ones include; John, Connie and Tug – human captain, crew and Arthroplana pilot of Beastship Evangeline, respectively. Much of the appeal of Alien Earth lies in observing this now-alien society through the lens of people who happen to be outsiders as taking the job of Mariner manning Beastships is precisely that. Arthroplana, with their long spanning lives and access to living ships in a setting that abhors “dirty tech”, have a monopoly on space travel and seeing as trips are done in real time human crew undergoes extensive periods of Waitsleep similar to suspended animation. This means John and Connie are akin to Methuselahs to the rest of human population as they don't belong and see the cycles repeat, on and off. Being one of the enigmatic alien race Tug is an interesting counterbalance to two humans as he cannot leave the Beastship he pilots and it's implied humans are on-board said ships as sort of intellectual amusement for decidedly alien pilots.
I've already done too much summarizing and not enough opinions so I'll stop with the former, but THEMES are on full display in Alien Earth.
You'd think this is ecological SF, but I'd argue against it. Biological “technology” has largely replaced conventional tech as it is degradable and adheres to the most important tenant of Unity – humans must leave no trace. This should already be triggering some red alerts, but on Castor and Pollux everything is in such perfect cooperative harmony that humans end up living as mere observers. One character even brings up an anecdote of what she did earlier in life where her job amounted to carefully weighing how many petals fell of trees and adding precisely the same amount of nutrients to keep everything balanced. Day in, day out. This ideology is then pushed to the extreme with some minute events like a child stepping on grass leading to, back in the day, exile to life on stations or, more recently, euthanasia. Not to mention the infamous Readjustment process if you're not perfectly in line with Harmonious Unity. Humanity has seemingly accepted this as way of life or even punishment for their perceived “human guilt” of destroying Earth as that is the accepted message. All of this is further muddled by the fact Conservancy continually excises, edits and obfuscates old information as select people delve into illegality to preserve bits of history, but most are content to live out in comfort as their history fades making them lesser in the process.
Alien Earth does that thing I like with an unfamiliar setting in that it consistently drip feeds you bits of information on every page. As captain John verbally spars with deceptive Tug you also get tidbits on why so few people live on the twin worlds, for example. I have to admit this was huge part of the draw until about halfway into the novel when plot proper starts and oh boy, does it kick into overdrive in the last third or so. Character breaking-the-sound-barrier fits more than “development” in this case, but there was some awkwardness to how sudden and aggressive it is... until I realized it's a perfect response to their in-universe situation. After all, how would absolute freedom change you? Certain line about “taking our language and giving us a slave one” was a bit too on the nose, though.
As if we would need aliens for that :D
Dragon Quest is one of those franchises that seem too huge to even try to get into them…especially since I don’t think I’ve ever played an JRPG before. An interesting read nonetheless.
From what I’ve read they’re definitely contenders. DQ7, for example, is one of those cases where 70+ was just the bare minimum to finish it.
Damn, that’s long! Do you plan to play another DQ game?
I think I’ll definitely get around to some of them. DQ11 demo got me interested in a franchise I had barely any knowledge on. Only question is when and which versions.