Quick Look: Dragon Quest Heroes II

Yeah, had a go on PC. Not my thing sadly, though I did enjoy it more than the first game from what I played. Not a big fan of the Warriors games, or most of the spin offs. Also had some bugs on the PC version but nothing horrible.

I thought Brad had played a Dragon Quest or two? Getting freaked out by a healslime is odd.

Ruff is my dude! Oh and I see Maribel's in it too, she's okay I guess.

I'm reminded that I left the first game halfway through and have been meaning to go back to it. I'm kind of between games right now so I think I'll go knock that one out of my backlog before I pick this one up. I hope it has less tower defense shenanigans than the first one, this quick look unfortunately didn't go into that.

Brad sounds like my 7 year old niece whose only really played Dragon Quest Builders.

"That's from Builders!!!" no, that's from every Dragon Quest game for the last 30 years.

"Why does that slime have Tentacles?" It's a healer or a heal slime. They've also been around for 30 years.

I actually almost want to play this game. It has enough masking the Dynasty Warriors thing to make it seem kinda fun.

A game of WAR and PRIs.

@lordloc: Did they streamline the interface at all from the first one? I wanted to like that game but it took so long and so many button presses to do ANYTHING.

Not spoilers, just a long rant about what frustrated me so, so much with DQH1.

Whew, I feel a little bit better now that that's off my chest...

*edit: based on the QL, it seems like some stuff has been streamlined a decent amount, which is nice to see*

*edit 2: it looks like turning in quests takes juuuuuust at long as before though, which sucks when you have like 9 quests completed*

This game is charming and fun and good.

I'm glad they didn't stick with the Tower defense element from the first game.

There is something about Dragon Quest that makes it utterly charming. Just everything about it is utterly adorable, even all the monsters.

I guess it's the Toriyama effect.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Ohhhhh I forgot about this game, it looks cool. I'll probably pick it up.

happy to see jason bearing the DQ flag. doubt it can top builders, but that's fine by me... DQH1 was indeed pretty friggin' fun. looking forward to it filling that summer backlog lull. koichi sugiyama's music is timeless and infectious as hell... great palate cleanser, as was said on the bombcast.

Can't believe Brad didn't know about healslimes, or more likely maybe he forgot about them.

Anyway, the Toriyama artstyle really shines in 3D. DQ8 was so good looking as well (still is!). It is so distinct.

Every time I see a dragon quest game it just makes me want to go play Dragon Quest 8. But that game is hard.

Jason "Omega defence Force" Oestreicher.

I'm glad the deck was attributed to Jason, otherwise I might have thought Jeff wrote it, what with his longstanding adoration of the Musou games

The framerate in town is giving me a claymation vibe

@spwn: I recently replayed tbe first 4 Dragon Warriors/Quests for the NES and I don't remember a heal slime.

EDIT - Oh, the jelly fish looking guys. Nevermind. I remember them. You start Dragon Quest IV with one in your party, sorta.

@viking_funeral: They start in DQ2 but look I don't think it's crazy that someone wouldn't recognize one. The slime is the Iconic Dragon Quest thing but not I'm not on somebodies case for identifying every variant.

Akira Toriyama's style translates really well to this style of 3D visuals, I wish modern Dragon Ball games looked like this instead of that weird glossy fake cell-shading they use.

Man, I really need to finish the first one some day.

I'm also still waiting for Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 3.

Slime with tentacles doesn't even begin to scratch the surface

I'm really not a fan of the art style in Dragon Warrior games. It's all so generic anime mixed with generic Saturday morning cartoons. It technically looks nice but the art style has never done anything for me.

So what I'm gathering from Jason and Brad's discussion:

I should really play "Dragon Quest Builders."

Taloon! Hmm. I may have to pick this one up. I enjoyed the last one, even if I did get a bit sick of it towards the end...

That's just plain false. Akira Toriyama has a very very distinctive style that looks practically nothing like anyone else. You don't have to like it, I can't say I love his style nearly as much as some people either, but saying it looks like generic anime is just a lie.

Even in the era when shows like Dragon Ball Z was in its prime his style was still quite distinctive. But it's especially true these days. Anime looks nothing like this now.

I'm willing to buy Jason's effusive praise for these games only because I have a similar love for the fan service in One Piece Pirate Warriors (specifically PW2). I personally just don't have an attachment to the Dragon Quest games outside of playing but not finishing DQ8 on PS2 and enjoying that Rocket Slime game on DS. They sound like cool games and I have a lot of nostalgia for Toriyama's art style but it was never a series I kept up with. I feel like all the off shoots of the Musuo games are iterating on that design better than the Dynasty Warrios games ever did. I just wish the actual game engine could get better at running smoothly on consoles though it may be one of those impossible problems of game development. Thanks for the video.

wow, Brad couldn't be more unengaged.

@mezmero: This game has been running very smoothly at least, for what its worth.

Too many menus, mindless hack n slashing, and bad animation transitions. Yup, it's a JRPG.

So the best DQ game is still Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime. Sucks the sequel never got localized.

A slime with tentacles? What is this nonsense?

You never heard or Erdrick? Get away from me you filthy plebian!

Wow, this game copied all its sound effects, music, items, character designs and art from Dragon Quest builders, an original game not based on any pre-existing IP.

Some games aren't meant to get a fair shake on Giant Bomb.

I wouldn't personally describe that game as hard, but for what it's worth, the 3DS version is even easier. Having enemies appear on the map means you can easily avoid them (or pursue them, in the case of Metal Slimes), and you now get a full HP/MP restore upon levelup, making inns effectively obsolete, and dungeon runs a breeze. You also get 2 additional characters in your party (Morrie and Red), and there's a bunch of quality of life changes (from the the top of my head -- being able to bank skill points, being able to see what skills a skillset has to offer, dungeon maps no longer need to be collected, alchemy pot works instantaneously and allows batch cooking up to x99)

So if you have a 3DS to play it on, I expect you'll be able to just breeze through it.

It's really good. I didn't think there was ever gonna be a Minecraft-style game that would click with me, but Dragon Quest Builders did it. Part of that was DQ nostalgia and just being happy walking around in a DQ world, but I'd recommend that game to pretty much anyone who's tried a Minecraft-like and couldn't get get into it. If you *do* already like Minecraft though, you might be turned off by how linear and restrictive it is.

Having never played a Dragon Quest game, is it a good series to get into?

Should someone that's never played any of them seek out some older games first or just start with the 2 PS4 games?

It's always a good time to get into DQ, but most of them are turn-based RPGs, not the hack 'n' slash fest you see in this video. Honestly, the best way to get into mainline DQ is to pick up the 3DS version of DQ8 (not 7! definitely not 7!).

Of course, if you have no interest in turn-based RPGs, sure, go ahead and pick up Heroes II or Builders (Heroes I is alright, but it's a lot more repetitive, and a lot less of an RPG. Heroes II expands upon it in so many ways).

Whichever you pick up first, be sure to give DQ11 a chance whenever that releases in the west (probably next year). It's the DQ a lot of us having been waiting for since DQ8, and it's looking to be incredible.

@ronniebarzel: Well, if you haven't played DQ Builders yet, you should! It was definitely one of the best surprises of last year IMO. Pretty much my only complaint is that the camera when you're indoors gets a bit wonky. Aside from that it's fantastic.

I dunno if Jason was doing something wrong but the combat looked really sluggish and slow compared to how i remember these games being. Maybe the whole open world thing is the problem.

Jason not knowing who Erdrick was hurt me on a personal level that shouldn't have been possible.

I would just like to point out that Jason was using Meena, who is a fortune teller.

It is her twin sister Maya who is the dancer.

Also Healslimes have been around since Dragon Quest II, and friendly ones that help you have been around since at least IV.

End nerd out.

Is this version only running at 30FPS? I figured the PC version was based off of this version, but the PC version runs at 60 if you've got the hardware for it.

Unless the GB player isn't displaying 60FPS for some reason.

@xbob42:Thats happened with another game recently I think?

What I've played on PS4 has been 60.

GB messed up the video and it actually runs at a silky smooth 60fps on PS4. Pretty irritating, actually. It's one thing to misrepresent Japanese RPGs due to a lack of knowledge (which always happens on GB), but it's another to misrepresent them by messing up the encoding or whatever.

Anyway, here's the DigitalFoundry vid which compares the PS4 to the Switch and Vita versions (the latter two of which you can't actually get outside of Japan):

Yeah its a shame. Almost wish he wasn't on the quick look for this... I can see from the outside being down on this -- i don't really like Dynasty Warriors. I played Dragon Quest 1 like 30 years ago. I played 8 and LOVED it. Last year I got DQ Heroes 1 though (and DQ Builders) and played the heck out of it -- thought it was great (both were great!).
Still fun without knowing too much (many monsters were in 8, but the characters we all mostly unknowns to me). It was too grindy so i never got the 100% platinum, but I beat it. Probably 80 hours in. This might be too much like the first for me to get back into it? But if you haven't played 1 -- this is a ton of fun!

these games are about as mindless as they come, though i did enjoy hyrule warriors to an extent. i love me some diablo 3 too so maybe not one to talk. can't blame brad for not being terribly interested and don't think it's a reason to oust him from any and all quick looks. i do have the first dragon quest heroes as my curiosity was piqued but i haven't played much of it. i do admit liking the look and it runs well.

8m30s until gameplay, I still don't understand why you guys don't start recording in-game. It feels like every Quick Look has minutes upon minutes of menu'ing and explanation at the start of it when nearly every game in existence would benefit from just starting with footage of the actual game. I would have thought GB would have learned this simple production lesson by now.

I'm likely the only one but I wish they didn't skip the cutscene @erlog I like to know the story of the game I am playing and what it is about. Especially with RPGs like this that is what makes the game. Story > gameplay.

I don't get it how are they not recording in game? They are showing walking around a town and visiting NPCs and showing off little things here and there that separate this from the first game. I really wanted to like the first game but once it became clear it was just a tower defense game with cute anime girls I was totally disappointed. I hope the new DQ game is good but they just don't learn their lesson with this series. It could always be better than what they give us. I played through the first games as a youngn and last one I Tried to get into was sentinel of the starry skies and can't remember what it was but there are just better games out there.

Honestly tales of phantasia for the SNES is still the best JRPG i've ever played. I can't even find another game that comes anywhere close to the level of joy I had playing that game. I think a lot of it had to do with being able to see the armor and gear you accumulated rather than just being stats and a default look (one of my complaints about DQ Heroes 1, I like to see new items on the character).

Tales of Berseria is my RPG of the year though if people want a good JRPG. I haven't enjoyed a Tales game since Phantasia so Berseria is something special. I like it much more than Zelda (which isn't really a comparison but they are both Japanese developed RPGs).

The visuals and music are so jolly, that VO work does not sound fitting to me at all though :p

As someone who already 'begged' his mom for an akira toriyama artbook at age of 5 this game looks absolutely gorgeous though! I almost want to play this!

The biggest thing I've found miissing in all the musou games I've played is any feeling of weight to the gameplay. I dont have anything against mindlessly mashing buttons to fight hundreds of enemies, thats cool. Everything around you just goes flying while your characters flys across the screen, hits barely connecting. Your chracter usually moves way too zippy. Doesn't that bother anyone else? There must be some musou games that do it 'right'. Maybe this one?

I talked to the guy at my local videogame store about this when DQ heroes 1 was just released. He'd never noticed musou games feeling weightless, he wasnt a fan really but had played and enjoyed a couple in the past. I wanted to maybe buy DQH1 but he said he'd try it out first to see if he would notice the weightlesness. Came back couple days later and he said: "yep, it feels really bad in this one too, cannot believe I didnt notice that before. I couldnt even keep playing,. It really feels like nothing Too bad, its a beautiful game ."

Now, Im really curious if its either something most players who enjoy musou games usually notice but dont mind/preferr or something they just dont notice at all. Mr gamestore obviously doesn't speak for everyone.

@lestephan: I've barely played any of these type of games and I loved Dragon Quest Heroes 1. I did all the quests/optional stuff/everything in that game. You need to at least give 'em a shot. I imagine you can grab the first one fairly cheap by now.

Personally, I'm holding off on playing this one for now because I haven't finished Persona 5 yet. Don't really want to be playing two long ass RPG games at the same time.