My save file got fried...
I usually switch in between playing Game Boy games on my Game Boy Advance and my GB Operator, since my GBA isn't backlit, I like to play on PC. Though, sometimes, I found, playing the same cart on different hardware can make the GB Operator a little finicky. Almost lost a Pokémon save file, too, but the Operator hadn't overwritten the cart before I took it out to test if it was really wiped. So, I think I might just take a break from this, even though I was really picking up steam and played a clean two hours just today. I was really, really enjoying this game so much, and wanted to talk about it as a way to mourn.
I played a lot of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on the Nintendo DS. Though, eventually, I got bored of the story and just bred slimes together to get new ones (I love Dragon Quest slimes). When I started this game, I did plan to spend a decent amount of time getting the coolest fucking slime I could get my grubby hands on, I also did want to actually spend some time and really finish one of these games.
Dragon Warrior Monsters had been on my wishlist for a bit, especially after getting back into this series a lot earlier this year. I finally got my hands on a cheapish (sub $20 before shipping) copy from a Virginia state Goodwill's eBay account. When I started it up, I didn't really know what I was getting into, having completely forgotten the premise to 'DQM: Joker', I just got into it. This game is quirky, but, it's maybe one of the most succinct and well-fleshed-out creature collectors you could get pre-GBA.
I mean, let's not pull punches, this is Enix's answer to Pokémon's insane success, and they answered well. Enix was probably a better-funded game studio than Game Freak, even with the latter heading into its mega hit's sequels, and also probably a better experienced studio, as well. The result is a Game Boy Color launch title that absolutely blows even Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions out of the water.
Before 'Pokemon GSC' could even hit shelves, Dragon Warrior Monsters had released in Japan with a mechanic that is the reason I think this beats 'GSC' anyday: link cable breeding. The breeding mechanic in this game cannot be overpraised; it is well explained and is core to crafting a strong team of elite monsters. You breed monsters and they basically take on one parent's monster "pedigree," and then inherits both parents spell and ability trees. The result is you getting new monsters you can't find in the wild through breeding, with a toolkit that you can craft by breeding monsters with a good pool of spells. The game even keeps track of a monster's parents and their masters, so if you breed through multiplayer, you'll have a record of which friend you got your monster's mom or dad from!
This level of experimentation and mystery when it comes to monster breeding is just something that isn't even found in modern Pokémon games. When you breed Pokémon, you know exactly what you're getting and exactly what moves it will learn (even if you're aiming for an egg move). They never even made it so you might get either the mother species OR the father species. Breeding in Pokémon is basically just there for shiny hunting, these days, because there's not really any incentive to breed Pokémon during a playthrough! They even stopped making baby evolutions, and made existing baby evos available in the wild to even more invalidate this mechanic's existence within that franchise.
The satisfaction of breeding a Healslime with a weird flower bird that I'd never seen in a Dragon Quest game beforehand and getting a Wing Slime as a baby that had a buttload of support and healing spells that it could learn and also was a cute and cool ass slime species that I'd not seen before beats anything I could get from discovering new species of Pokémon.
It's a real shame this series got kind of kneecapped in the west by releasing a month and a half after Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions over here, but, gosh darn it, does it just make me so excited for the multiplayer potential of a new installment in this series getting released outside Japan for the first time in, like, ten years.
Wini the Wing Slime... I will come back for you... I will come back to this game and reclaim my save.
I usually switch in between playing Game Boy games on my Game Boy Advance and my GB Operator, since my GBA isn't backlit, I like to play on PC. Though, sometimes, I found, playing the same cart on different hardware can make the GB Operator a little finicky. Almost lost a Pokémon save file, too, but the Operator hadn't overwritten the cart before I took it out to test if it was really wiped. So, I think I might just take a break from this, even though I was really picking up steam and played a clean two hours just today. I was really, really enjoying this game so much, and wanted to talk about it as a way to mourn.
I played a lot of Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker on the Nintendo DS. Though, eventually, I got bored of the story and just bred slimes together to get new ones (I love Dragon Quest slimes). When I started this game, I did plan to spend a decent amount of time getting the coolest fucking slime I could get my grubby hands on, I also did want to actually spend some time and really finish one of these games.
Dragon Warrior Monsters had been on my wishlist for a bit, especially after getting back into this series a lot earlier this year. I finally got my hands on a cheapish (sub $20 before shipping) copy from a Virginia state Goodwill's eBay account. When I started it up, I didn't really know what I was getting into, having completely forgotten the premise to 'DQM: Joker', I just got into it. This game is quirky, but, it's maybe one of the most succinct and well-fleshed-out creature collectors you could get pre-GBA.
I mean, let's not pull punches, this is Enix's answer to Pokémon's insane success, and they answered well. Enix was probably a better-funded game studio than Game Freak, even with the latter heading into its mega hit's sequels, and also probably a better experienced studio, as well. The result is a Game Boy Color launch title that absolutely blows even Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions out of the water.
Before 'Pokemon GSC' could even hit shelves, Dragon Warrior Monsters had released in Japan with a mechanic that is the reason I think this beats 'GSC' anyday: link cable breeding. The breeding mechanic in this game cannot be overpraised; it is well explained and is core to crafting a strong team of elite monsters. You breed monsters and they basically take on one parent's monster "pedigree," and then inherits both parents spell and ability trees. The result is you getting new monsters you can't find in the wild through breeding, with a toolkit that you can craft by breeding monsters with a good pool of spells. The game even keeps track of a monster's parents and their masters, so if you breed through multiplayer, you'll have a record of which friend you got your monster's mom or dad from!
This level of experimentation and mystery when it comes to monster breeding is just something that isn't even found in modern Pokémon games. When you breed Pokémon, you know exactly what you're getting and exactly what moves it will learn (even if you're aiming for an egg move). They never even made it so you might get either the mother species OR the father species. Breeding in Pokémon is basically just there for shiny hunting, these days, because there's not really any incentive to breed Pokémon during a playthrough! They even stopped making baby evolutions, and made existing baby evos available in the wild to even more invalidate this mechanic's existence within that franchise.
The satisfaction of breeding a Healslime with a weird flower bird that I'd never seen in a Dragon Quest game beforehand and getting a Wing Slime as a baby that had a buttload of support and healing spells that it could learn and also was a cute and cool ass slime species that I'd not seen before beats anything I could get from discovering new species of Pokémon.
It's a real shame this series got kind of kneecapped in the west by releasing a month and a half after Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions over here, but, gosh darn it, does it just make me so excited for the multiplayer potential of a new installment in this series getting released outside Japan for the first time in, like, ten years.
Wini the Wing Slime... I will come back for you... I will come back to this game and reclaim my save.