Quick Look: Dragon Fantasy: Book II

Love this game

I beat Book 1 last night, pretty much because I saw this quicklook was coming.

Vinny doesn't like Goof Troop...how could this be? Or is he talking about the video game?

The battle music is driving me insane. I don't think I could put up with that for any more than this QL.

JRPGs need decent battle music, dammit.

I'm actually digging the music. It's pretty spot on.

Vampires do leave footprints... on my heart.

That soft music between the fights while walking the overworld reminds me of a game I just can't put my finger on it.

Damn-it this is going to bother me for days.

Have to admit, I'm kind of bored of the pixelated look. But it certainly seems decent.

yeah i will read a book

a fucking DRAGON BOOK

Maaaan Goof Troop was the best!

4:20 watch Goof Troop errrday!

This game just looks like someone bought himself a copy of RPGMaker and made this in a month.

Would this Oghden happen to be an inn keeper?
Taverns? Rising Suns?

Exploring music is pretty great

Sad part of most JRPGs is how hard you often want to avoid fighting.

@vuud: I played it two years ago at PAX, so no it wasn't made in RPG maker in a month. The team that made it is a small team and put a lot of work into it.

I'm a few hours in myself, really like the game. Love how much it feels like Chrono Trigger and love that music too.

"I don't trust him." Why the fuck did that make me laugh out loud?

The game where they run away from you is Earthbound. It has been all over your front page.

Hey all - Bryan from Muteki here

Yes, it was Dale North from Destructoid who did the music. And your monsters you've captured aren't lost. They're doing exactly what any self-respecting monster would be doing - they're sitting at the bar in town waiting to be swapped in / out of your party!

Ni No Kuni also did this, they were running away before battle even.

It's a petty thing, but something that bugs me about a lot of "these kinds" of games is that the sound quality is far better than the era they're trying to parody/tribute. If you're going to go to the trouble of referencing all of these tropes and "make it like the Chrono Trigger", the least you could do is make it sound like a SNES game. Is there some legal or technical reason why this can't happen?

Though what we really need is for these indie devs to start parodying PS1/Saturn era stuff: deliberately make everything look blocky and pixelated, throwing in 2 minute long summon animations, convoluted mechanics a-la Junction system and some sort of obnoxious minigame/sidequest that requires a guide to complete.

Every game has bad controls.

There was a bat in my basement the other day. We got that thing out as quickly as we could!

Those crabs have very... seductive lips.

To answer Vinny's question about enemies running away: only some RPGs do that. Some Dragon Quest games have enemies run away from you during battle if you have a high enough level. In Earthbound, enemies will run away, and if you touch them, they die instantly without actually entering combat.

@arbitrarywater: Evoland did that and it looked terrible and wasn't very fun to play. The joke wasn't enough to justify shitty controls and unfun gameplay.

The music sure is good.

The animation seems very similar to Chrono Trigger.

Missed opportunity when Vinny asked what the rock's name was. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT HIS NAME IS!

Music is pretty annoying. There is a chunk of "Dancing Queen" in there I can't stop hearing.

If only he had a chef's hat instead of a pirate hat...

his name is Sugar Coated Testes.

It sounds a lot like the OutRun music to me. It's really distracting.

Heh ... the second Brad said "Wait, I don't leave footprints", I knew Vinny would say "You are a vampire".

There have been a lot of these games that are designed to tickle people's nostalgia for snes era jrpgs lately. I think that's cool, but I kind of wish that some of them would take themselves a little more seriously. The primary reason to enjoy most of those games is for the story, and I'm much more interested in seeing these creators take a stab at telling their own narrative than I am in hearing their meta jokes about rpg cliches.

Also, when are we going to get developers who start parodying ps1 games? It's the next logical step right?

Edit: Didn't mean to sound so negative. This does look like goofy fun.

Game looks decent and all, but I'm getting real tired of this pixelated look. Not for me I guess.

This seems to be a little simple and relying a lot of nostalgia.

Not for me, I guess.

Ah, I see what you did there....and it was amazing.

The battles happen so frequently that they would've been far better off not having separate battle music at all. It's the constant starting and stopping that's so annoying. "Dungeon Music BATTLE MUSIC Dungeon Music BATTLE MUSIC Dungeon Mu-BATTLE MUSIC Du-BATTLE MUSIC"

Garbage reference!

Also, this game has one of my pet peeves with more recent RPG's, which is avoidable battles that aren't really avoidable. Why let me see the monsters on screen if I can't avoid them? Might as well go back to random battles at that point.

The battle music kinda reminds me of some old school Golden Sun.

"Still Alive? What a triumph."

Great. Spectacular even.

"What's the rock's name?"

"Dwayne."

Thank you, Drew.

Land Shark knocks! classic SNL callback, love it