Hey gang,

After seeing spectacular things about this on Metacritic, I figured I'd download it. Has anyone ever played this originlly, and can comment on it, or ideally played the 3DS version for a more up to date idea of how it is?

I can't decide on playing this or Bravely Second while I wait for Persona 5

Any comments, tips or recommendations would be appreciated!

I really, really liked this game on the PS2. It's a damn fine, charming game if you're up for a traditional-ass JRPG. I'd pick this up on 3DS myself if I had the time (and money tbh) right now with so many notable games coming out.

It's one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. I'd buy it in a heartbeat if they released it on PS4.

It's been awhile, but I remember it being pretty hard at the beginning compared to other JRPGs, so you might want to grind a little while before the first boss fight.

I made a thread a few weeks ago about whether or not this was a good jumping in point for the Dragons Quest series. Ended up picking it up. I haven't played a lot of it but I did get past the first boss. It does seem decently challenging. I was level 5 when I encountered him and he wasn't exactly a pushover like most other JRPG first-bosses are, although it was still fairly manageable.

The one thing I wasn't expecting was skill trees. Each character seems to have a list of attributes you can put points into. Hero has Sword, Spear, Boomerang, Fisticuffs, and Humanity. Depending on how many points you put into any of them they'll unlock a linear progression in their field. With things like this I tend to research builds to understand the consequences of what I'm doing but a lot of them have the end-game in mind, which I don't know how much I'll play through. So I'm mostly just experimenting myself.

I did briefly play the original, but at 2 hours in I'm way past where I got to when I had it on PS2. The story is surprisingly interesting so far, but WAY more goofy than I thought it was going to be. Like the first boss is this lizard man thing that slurs his words and jumbles them up to his own frustration. Wasn't really expecting that level of weirdness but it's definitely amusing.

The one thing that has really rubbed me a bit is how the save system works. It goes back to the save points of old JRPGs where you have specific spots you can save. The part that gets me is that you cannot save on the overworld as far as I can tell and you must go to a church in a town to save. I was partially aware of the "go to church" mechanic from DQ Heroes, but I didn't immediately connect the dots between the two and wound up having to look up how to save. I don't remember the game ever telling me how to do this. Granted there is a "quick save" that does allow you to checkpoint progress which is nice. Not sure if that is new to this 3DS version.

I never really looked at Bravely Second as I really didn't care much for the first. I thought the combat mechanics were interesting but the story might as well have not even been in Default. It was incredibly bland to me. If you liked the first one it might be a tough toss up. DQ seems VERY traditional in it's presentation. But it's got a lot of charm from what I've played so far.

@matatat: Yeah, the save system wasn't the best, although I seem to remember being able to learn a skill pretty early on that let you warp back to any town you had visited, so at least you didn't need to hoof it there to save.

@lawgamer: Yeah I think there is one too from what I heard. The one bummer of that which I dislike in this and other JRPGs is how they'll sometimes dead-end you in dungeons. Like in the first dungeon of DQ8 you have to backtrack all the way back through 3 levels and at some point I was like fuck this and tried to use the Chimera Wing to teleport back to town only to have the Hero smash into the roof of the dungeon and fall down. While that was kinda funny, it was also just sort of annoying. It's not really an issue that is specific to DQ8 but I sort of wish they had fixed some quality-of-life things like that which I don't think hold up as well in the current day of RPGs.

I too would recommend looking up where you want to put your skill points ahead of time. Doing it completely blind can be unsatisfying if you decide to change focus at some point. And because I forget myself almost every time I start a new DQ game: churches = savepoints.

I enjoyed it at the time, but it`s been awhile. It is pretty traditional though and it can get kinda grindy. Not my favorite JRPG, but a decent one.

Also as others have mentioned, if you play it don`t go jack of all trades on the skills. You should focus or it`s going to bite you in the ass later on (that`s what happened to me on my playthrough)

I would argue DQ8 is the best in the series, but I'm not sure how it translates to 3DS. I haven't seen it in action myself. Given the technology that exists, you can take a PS2 copy of DQ8 and put it in your PC's disc drive and boot it with an emulator, though. :)

The 3DS remake lets you save in the menu at anytime with your choice of two different save slots. The game calls these "Quick Saves", but they literally work exactly the same as regular saves. You can also save in churches, which gives you two more save slots.

I played about 15-20 hours of the 3DS version and, unless something goes drastically wrong later in the game, it's a very good version of the game. They took out random encounters and replaced them with representations of enemies on the map and apparently they revamped the save system. The game also performs very well - I don't remember any framerate hitches, anyway - and you can fast forward battles. If I have any complaints, it's that they didn't give the UI a desperately-needed complete overhaul. In battle, it's fine, but organizing items and finding information and general menu navigation is horrible. Fortunately, it's not sluggish, just not organized at all.

I played the PS2 version. I loved it. I spent probably 150 hours 100%ing it. One of the last great JRPGs before they all went to shit.

It's a good version of the game with some QoL updates, a few of which can be seen as making the game unnecessarily easier. You aren't forced to use the new party members and you can pretty safely ignore them for just the classic 4. The encounters not being random and being represented by monsters on the field is a bit broken. The spawning works with the camera, not just vicinity, so you can spin the camera around and any monsters that weren't aggro'd will be replaced by something else (you can do the same trick to easily avoid encounters). The part where this gets really busted is Castle Trodain (at the earliest), as the Metal family of monsters do appear on the field this way. It is VERY easy to grind here and become absurdly overlevelled for the next few hours of gameplay.

As for DQ8 itself, it's probably one of my, if not the, favourite turn-based JRPGs on the PS2 (the trifecta for me is DQ8, SMT 3: Nocturne and FFX). However, it was also a big game of my childhood, so it has a very strong nostalgic aspect for me as well. It has a real sense of adventure and wonder, and some of the traversal options you get really open the world right up. It also has a great bait and switch that I won't ruin here. Replaying it on the 3DS does make me realise that the motivation for what you're doing during the opening hours is a bit weak (seriously, the game just assumes that you'll want to investigate the tower of Alexandria, despite there being no indication that Dhoulmagus was hanging out there), but I think it makes up for it with what happens late-game.

Look up recommended skill point distributions, or at least skill descriptions. If you try to go too general the end-game side content could range from being very difficult to almost impossible without good RNG. Jessica is probably the most important in this regard, as she possesses skills you really should make sure you get.