The gaming drug
Dragon Quest is Square Enix's second most successful video game franchise, after the Final Fantasy series. In Japan it's bigger than rice, sushi, noodles and Japanese school girls combined **. By the time Sentinels of the Starry Skies reached us in Europe and the US, it had already sold well over 4 million copies in Japan, and counting.
Now for a strange fact. Although the franchise was created in 1986 as Dragon Warrior, the series didn't actually make its way across the oceans to Europe until 2006 when the excellent Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (the eighth in the series and the first to feature the Dragon Quest title) was released on PlayStation 2! Since then we've had a couple of DS remakes of earlier outings, and now this, the beautiful starry skies of Dragon Quest 9, the first brand new adventure on the DS.
Much like previous outings, the story is as epic as it gets, taking you through numerous towns and locales, meeting tons of unique and often witty characters, and fighting to put right a big wrong and become the hero of the area and, ultimately, the kingdom. This time you play as a fallen angel who's been sent down from the clouds to retrieve seven sacred fruits that have the power to grant wishes. As you can gather these wishes don't revolve around exotic islands, hot chicks and plenty of cash.
It has the epic story, the same charming and stupendous monsters (Cruel Cumber, Ragin' Contagion - monsters that are basically so cute and/or silly that you may feel guilty showing them your Super High Tension fury and the slash of a Claw), the simple turn-based battle system, but most importantly, the extremely addictive nature. This is Dragon Quest, but with a little difference. Sentinels of the Starry Skies offers some new features to what we've seen before, such as a complete character customization system, four-player co-op, side quests galore and enemies that you can see wondering the area. This means you can avoid them if you wish, rather than have random battles every three steps.
Square Enix has brought the franchise into the modern time of gaming on the DS by allowing us to customise just about everything on our character - hair style, skin tone, eye colour. Plus there's so much more armour and other clothing types to collect and select, each of which can be dragged and dropped onto the characters using the stylus. The clothing is not only a fashion statement, but also determines the defence and luck of your character, amongst other things.
This may be Nintendo's main focus in terms of television advertising to the casuals, but this isn't Style Boutique. This is all about the action and the adventure, and this time you can bring three of your friends along for the ride if you so wish. The game offers up to four-player local co-op. As good as this may sound, you need three other friends with a DS, a copy of the game, and in the same room to take advantage of this, there's no online play. Perhaps you don't have friends anyway. As is normal in JRPGs, you'll still need a team to help you along in the adventure. Rather than scripted-in team mates, you can now create, customise and equip your own team, and tutor them to super strength, which makes your team feel much more personal to you, rather than to the story.
There are numerous different classes (vocations) available, which each one having different attributes. Whereas the Warrior will have high strength and more HP, the Mage's main focus will be on magic and defence, rather than full-on in your face combat. It's best to mix up the team to have each area covered - strength, magic, healing and so on. Luckily you can change your character's class at any time you like if you're not happy with their skills, but this comes at a price. Your new vocation will begin at level 1 no matter which part of the game you change it at.
Annoyingly, your starting character class is probably the worst there is. But by the time you can change vocation, you're already up to level 20 or thereabouts, and don't particularly fancy starting from level 1 again. On the plus side, if you do change vocations, your old one will stay at the level you left it at, should you decide you made a mistake and wish to change back.
To unlock specific, stronger, classes such as Gladiator or Paladin, first you'll need to complete a mini quest (after finding it), which aren't always easy to say the least, like reaching Super High Tension and killing three slimes with a Dragon Slash. This is not so easy if said Slime decides to flee when the tension has risen to 50! After several failed attemps, you'll no doubt quit this and go back to main quest, as working too hard to begin a new vocation isn't exactly what you want to be spending your time on.
Naturally, RPG nuts will love the opportunity to put several more hours into levelling up each class, but this may annoy other players who simply don't have the patience of starting from scratch a quarter of the way through the adventure. Of course you don't have to change at all, but if there's a perfectionist running inside your veins, you may be tempted to switch at some point to have the 'ultimate' team. Considering the fact that changing classes will earn you extra skill points, which strengthen certain areas / weapons. These can be passed across each class you choose once you've maxed them out. It may seem tedious, but there is a pay-off to it, not to mention a heck of a lot more game play time too if you're willing to grind your way up (again) to a suitable strength.
On a downer, anyone who's played any of the previous outings may be annoyed to find out that the awesome Boomerang isn't as easily attainable as before. To get hold of this you need to acquire a specific class, which doesn't become available until much later in the game. The fun of causing damage to a line of foes at one time with the boomerang is no longer there unless you are super patient, and why wouldn't you be? It's Dragon Quest.
I can't say the new customisation and co-op option sells this game to me. These options are merely bonuses in the next Dragon Quest outing. The previous five words are enough to sell this game to anyone. The series may not have changed much over the years, but this is one of the few franchises that doesn't need to. Dragon Quest is Japanese for super addictive game. Not only that, but it's so compelling and so charming and so much fun, that it's going to take a lot to beat as far as DS games go. Bring on Dragon Quest X (on Wii).
** probably not even close to fact.
Positives:- Hugely addictive
- Very lengthy
- Great characters, story, monsters
- Customisation options
- Co-op play
- Vocation changing may not please some
- Co-op is local only
