Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Ever since the very inception of Back-Blogged, my white whale has been Dragon Quest VIII, a notoriously long RPG on PS2 into which I've already dumped something like thirty hours and only managed to scratch the surface. About a year ago, I resolved to beat the game once and for all in 2013. I never touched it. I did, however, purchase and play through most of Dragon Quest IX in an attempt to whet my appetite for the slow-paced series. The results? Mostly a mixed bag, with one absolute certainty - I am not more motivated now to play Dragon Quest VIII than I was two months ago.

We'll start with the good. Dragon Quest IX follows the story of a Celestial (basically a guardian angel) who goes down to the world below and must collect golden fruits that fell from a tree in the heavens. It sounds lamer than it is. Think of it as being heavily influenced by the story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge. From there, it's an incredibly standard Japanese RPG with turn-based combat. Grab a band of warriors and mages and go around from town to town and dungeon to dungeon killing monsters and solving problems to collect golden fruit and advance the story. And honestly, for the first forty hours or so, this was a great game. It felt dated in a way that no 2009 DS title should, but also in a way I could tell was intentional and charming. The in-game message speed was way slower than it needed to be - a personal pet peeve of mine - but the game itself, while slow, churned along at a very deliberate pace. I didn't mind spending half an hour here or there just grinding for experience or collecting rare loot. The game wasn't perfect, by any stretch, but it had a memorable story and nailed the distinct "old school RPG" flavor I sometimes crave. As a benchmark, I enjoyed it more than any of the first three Final Fantasy games, and probably as much as the fifth.

And then, of course, the game got hard. More specifically, one boss was hard. Hard enough that any and all flow the story had settled into ground right to a halt as I spent five hours across three nights just running around leveling up my party in the most mundane manner. I checked online for some leveling up strategies, and there weren't even any specific enemies that would make the process go faster. I must have attempted the boss of the penultimate dungeon six or seven times - and the entire dungeon beforehand each time - before he finally fell. And then it was twice as much of the same just to finally get to a point where I could beat the final boss. Look, I appreciate a little bit of level grinding now and again. There's something to be said about the progress you feel in any game where your character is too weak to win a certain battle, so then you go out and collect power-ups or otherwise make him stronger, only to come back and destroy what was once challenging with ease. But its damn near tortuous to spend five hours fighting the same old bad guys with the same old strategies just to get from "Level 38" to "Level 42." I know there are some gamers out there that crave this kind of shit. All due respect, but I have a life! Or at least I try to, and padding a great forty hour game with bullshit difficulty until it takes sixty hours to beat doesn't make the game better!

I had a few other issues with the gameplay. Changing jobs (ie, "soldier" to "wizard" reset your levels entirely, for instance, making it a pointless exercise after the third hour or so of playtime. And money felt just as hard to come by as experience, which meant whenever I found a shop with new weapons and armor, I was rarely able to buy ore than two items of the nine or ten I'd have wanted. But these quirks are forgivable. Absurd levels of boss difficulty padding are not.

I know Sween had a similar experience with Final Fantasy IX a few years ago - thirty hours to get to the end, fifteen more to finish it - but I also know that was at least a little bit self-imposed since he'd spent the majority of the game avoiding combat; when I played Final Fantasy IX, I was able to finish the final dungeon and boss in my first go-round (barely - Steiner was the lone survivor, with 4 HP) without ever really specifically grinding at all. Anyway, I know now how he must have felt then, souring on an otherwise solid story because the game didn't really ramp up in difficulty as much as it shot immediately upward very late. Oh well. Dragon Quest IX should have been a solid gem of a game. Instead, I'm left with a flawed aftertaste and less than wonderful memories. Too bad!