My last post went into some detail of the first hour of the game, so I won't bore you too much repeating myself. For the benefit of those too lazy to look at another post, the plot is simple. You play as a celestrian who share a lot in common with angels to the point where they are the exact same thing. So that's what I'll call them. So you're and angel who's just been allowed to watch over his own town. You go about the town sorting out peoples problems and collecting the crystallised form of their gratitude called "benevolessence" Which you then offer up as a form of prayer to a great tree in the hope that it'll grow some magical fruit and summon down a train to take you to God. Or "the almighty". You achieve your goal pretty quickly, but things go wrong as they are likely to do and you are cast from "heaven" to the realm of the mortals. And now you have to get back. Simple fare as far as RPG's go. Big disaster happens, go on big quest to put everything right and probably kill the God that you worship. I haven't actually finished the game, but I'm taking a guess here.
The style is brilliantly done. Graphics have charm and the music adds to that. As the first DQ game to be made specifically for the DS, the graphics are better than the ports that were released a while back. You can personally design every member of your party, naming them and choosing their hair style. I personally went for totally ridiculous looks and wondered why everyone took me seriously. The items equipped are also shown on your character. For a while, most of my party were walking around in blue knickers. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't for perverted reasons, it was purely because they provided more protection than leather trousers. Other things have also changed. In the past games, equipment took up spaces in each characters personal inventory. This meant that they could only carry a limited number of healing items to use in battle. This time around, all equipment is dealt with in an entirely different menu, leaving your characters inventory free to fill up with useful antidotes and herbs.
The battle system follows the same turn based combat style used in previous DQ games. You see the enemy in a first person view while you select your actions, and then the game zooms out to show the battlefield while you team plunge into battle. Battle options are the usual RPG fare. A simple blow with whatever weapon you have, use an item, or use a spell or ability. Spells and abilities are dependant on the new vocation system. Many people would wonder why Dragon Quest haven't updated their battle system to Real Time, but I see that both methods have their advantages, with the turn based system relying more on careful strategy than real times quick thinking method.
At the start, you don't get a choice at what vocation your main hero has. You can recruit party members later on, but they'll be stuck with whatever vocation they have for a while. At the beginning, 6 vocations are available. Warriors excel in physical attacks and have high defence to boost, Mages are your magical offensive, taking out multiple enemies at a time, priests are your healers, martial artists are faster physical attackers with lower defence, thieves are nimble attackers, with a high chance of critical hits and the ability to steal items and minstrels are able to learn offensive and healing magic along with a few craft tricks. After playing through the game for a while, you'll get the option to change your vocation, allowing for some abilities to be used by other vocations. Whenever a character levels up in a vocation, they may earn some skill points which you spend into certain attributes. Whether you want to be better with a sword, or learn a vocation specific ability is entirely up to you and your battle style.
I've been playing Dragon Quest for about 20 hours now, and I'm nowhere near seeing all the game has to offer. With well over 100 quest to complete, a strong main story line, alchemy recipes to collect and treasure maps to follow, this game should provide you with months of entertainment. And that's without the multiplayer mode. A must have for anyone who enjoys RPGs, and a good introduction for those looking to get into them.
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