I just cannot get enough of Dragon Quest. It’s a series I got into as a kid, especially on the DS. I still have the copy of Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime that I got as a kid, but I also had VI, Monsters: Joker, and this game, which I got around its initial release. Though, a couple of years ago when I beat Dragon Quest III on Switch, I hadn’t beaten a Dragon Quest game. So all of those games I had, save for Rocket Slime, were all left shelved until I got rid of the games one way or another. As I got into the series again this past year, this was the game I wanted most to revisit from those childhood years.
There wasn’t much I remembered about this game. Remnants of the battle system and the customization floated around in my head, but other than that, this was nearly an entirely new experience. The first thing I noticed is that this game is begging to be on the 3DS. This series ruled on the DS, and while I haven’t played the remakes of VII and VIII on the 3DS, it’s clear this series made a home for itself on these consoles, and IX feels like it’s fighting with its hardware a little bit. Important characters are 3D models, while every other NPC is a 2D sprite, not to mention navigating a 3D space with eight directional inputs when the world wasn’t made for only eight directions is a little tough (though the touch screen navigation is nice, menus, oddly enough, don’t feel good with touch controls). These are, admittedly, tiny things, but they make it obvious to a player a struggle within hardware that, for me, makes me dock a game’s score only because this is not this game’s full potential.
But, and I’ve said this before, it’s Dragon Quest. When the story takes off, these tiny things fade away, especially as you get used to them with playtime, they become an after thought, and the charm that this series oozes completely enraptures the game.
I want to say, I don’t want it to make it seem like I am knocking this game’s 3D sprites, because they’re amazing. Customizing party members and dressing them up in armor suited to their little jobs and seeing the armor on them in the overworld and in battle is such an amazing little twist that I really liked here.
Dragon Quest games have always been littered with ghosts. Here and there, the spirits of the dead roam these worlds to warn you, guide you, or sometimes they just grieve to you. Sentinels is the first one in this series I played that really felt like a Ghost Story, capitalized, and trademarked, too! Every single situation you encounter in this game revolves around a ghost who died with unfinished business. Maybe they left behind a loved one, or left before they could guide someone they left behind…
Or maybe they just need to say ‘sorry’.
There wasn’t much I remembered about this game. Remnants of the battle system and the customization floated around in my head, but other than that, this was nearly an entirely new experience. The first thing I noticed is that this game is begging to be on the 3DS. This series ruled on the DS, and while I haven’t played the remakes of VII and VIII on the 3DS, it’s clear this series made a home for itself on these consoles, and IX feels like it’s fighting with its hardware a little bit. Important characters are 3D models, while every other NPC is a 2D sprite, not to mention navigating a 3D space with eight directional inputs when the world wasn’t made for only eight directions is a little tough (though the touch screen navigation is nice, menus, oddly enough, don’t feel good with touch controls). These are, admittedly, tiny things, but they make it obvious to a player a struggle within hardware that, for me, makes me dock a game’s score only because this is not this game’s full potential.
But, and I’ve said this before, it’s Dragon Quest. When the story takes off, these tiny things fade away, especially as you get used to them with playtime, they become an after thought, and the charm that this series oozes completely enraptures the game.
I want to say, I don’t want it to make it seem like I am knocking this game’s 3D sprites, because they’re amazing. Customizing party members and dressing them up in armor suited to their little jobs and seeing the armor on them in the overworld and in battle is such an amazing little twist that I really liked here.
Dragon Quest games have always been littered with ghosts. Here and there, the spirits of the dead roam these worlds to warn you, guide you, or sometimes they just grieve to you. Sentinels is the first one in this series I played that really felt like a Ghost Story, capitalized, and trademarked, too! Every single situation you encounter in this game revolves around a ghost who died with unfinished business. Maybe they left behind a loved one, or left before they could guide someone they left behind…
Or maybe they just need to say ‘sorry’.