by Strato » March 1st, 2015, 11:52 pm
DQ 1-4 were some of my favorite games as a kid. I really enjoyed the class system in 3 and really liked almost everything about 4. I've played most of the non-mobile remakes of these games that came to the US and enjoyed replaying them.
DQ 5 and 6 I never got around to playing. I own the remakes on the DS and probably will get around to them someday. I did play about the first 5 hours of DQ 5 with a translation patch on an emulator many years ago and enjoyed it.
DQ 7 came at a bad time for me when I wasn't playing many console games because I was too into online PC games. I own it, but never got around to playing it.
DQ 8 actually was a game that started to get me back into console gaming and console RPGs. I remember at the time it had been a long time since I had played a console game since I was so into MMOs like Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, and World of Warcraft at the time. I played ~150 hours of it and loved it. I especially liked the skill system.
DQ 9 was amazing. It expanded on DQ 8's skill system and added a ton of stuff to do in post game with random dungeons. I enjoy grinding/progressing my characters and the game rewards that with lots of classes to grind up. My save has 250+ hours on it.
Unfortunately, even in the extremely unlikely event that DQ 10 comes to the US, I probably won't play it since I have enough online games available to me that I can't add another one. I'm just hoping that DQ 11 won't be a mobile game whenever they do decide to release it.
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As far as bests, it's really hard to say since the games were important to me at different times and have to be judged against games of their time. I spent tons of time on 3 and 4 as a kid because there were only a few really long, good RPGs on consoles in those days. 8 and 9 were games I played even though I wasn't doing much console gaming at the time and both really showed me that JRPGs still can be great games if done right.