Dragon Quest IV

I was hesitant to start Dragon Quest IV but since I'm playing through the whole series I knew I would have to get to it at some point. When a game asks me to reset progress or start over often it's a turnoff. Dragon Quest IV is broken down into 5 chapters and each one is their own story with it's own set of lovable characters, but they start at level 1 each time. Each character gets time to shine and it became exciting to get to the next chapter to meet the next member of my eventual adventuring party. A focus on characters and world is something that makes Dragon Quest IV one of my favorite in the series.

It's been said before, and I won't pretend to have this thought be my own, that each chapter from 1-4 is a part of a tutorial. Once you get to Chapter 5 and regain control of your main character to gather the others you'd been playing as, you know the basics of how each individual works with their strengths and weaknesses. Ragnar is your tank/fighter, Kiryl or Meena are you healers, Borya and Maya your mages, Alena is a thief/rogue type, and Torneko Mothafuckin' Taloon is the party badass. Towards the end of the game it becomes a real struggle to figure out which party members you should use in the next dungeon or when fighting a boss. There are places where you can swap them out at will, but, you're usually locked into 4 people. At the final boss I ended with Hero, Ragnar, Kiryl, and Borya. Equipment will most likely get shared among the group as money is harder to come by and with 8 members you'll never really have everyone as well equipped as they could be.

Throughout the story you hear of a mysterious figure known as Psaro the Manslayer. I had seen pictures of him in the past but someone going in blind is in for a real treat. There's an overhead feeling of dread throughout the game. Each character has their motives that I won't go into since I either can't remember them, my memory is about as good as a goldfish, or I don't want to spoil. At the end of the story it feels personal as to why you want to go after Psaro for being such a bastard. I haven't felt uneasy in a story since the end of EarthBound. The last few hours of this game are ominous, especially in the location you go to at the very end.

The world is a perfect size as well. Nowadays games brag about how large the map is and all the things you can do in it. What I love about Dragon Quest games are that they use the exact amount of space they need. Everything is perfectly spaced and there aren't exclamation points littering the map with side quests. Having the world broken up in each chapter introduces you to it at a perfect pace and you never feel overwhelmed. There's even a town "building" side quest...yes, I know I just bitched about them but this is the only one in the game. The quest tasks you with returning to old towns in search of people looking for a place to make a new life for themselves and it's cool to see the fruits of your labor. I also never went out of my way to collect all the mini medals in the other games but I constantly had enough to get the next reward from Minikin, the collector in this game.

While I played the DS remake of the game I can only imagine what it was like back in the day when it was first released on the NES. With a broken up chapter structure and things like Torneko's chapter that I didn't even go into(!) it must have been amazing. Alright, I'll gush about Taloon's chapter for a second. Dude...you're trying to get your own store and have to work for someone else until you break out on your own and start killing slimes and adventuring. This goofy fat dude works at a job he has to put up with and has to make the choice to say "see ya later I'm gonna go chase my dreams". Wow, I felt like I was just describing myself for a moment but we all know I'll never actually chase my dreams...I'd have to have some in the first place.

Dragon Quest IV is awesome!

Dragon Quest III

Dragon Quest 3 is a masterpiece and the best Dragon Quest game. It's also my second favorite game...of course, I make this realization after my latest post being about my favorite games and I hadn't played it yet. I'm always a sucker for stuff that starts the legend of characters or series, such as A New Hope for Star Wars. It's just so awesome to see the start of something that you know unfolds into an epic story or seeing the roots of your favorite character before they were spoken of in legends.

It was called Dragon Warrior before due to trademarks

Dragon Quest 3 was actually one of the first games I had as a kid. Seeing the cover art of Erdrick and his companions is awesome and I can see why my Mom would think it would be a good game to get for her 10 year old son who loved Pokemon and his teal Gameboy. Back in the day I didn't understand the concept of grinding or JRPGs in general so I never got past the first dungeon. I had no sense of party structure so I can only imagine what I had as a team...probably a jester, thief, and merchant. My initial time with the game ended when I asked my Mom what "d-a-m-n" spelled and the game somehow went missing.

Dragon Quest 3 personifies what I love about the series. The world, monsters, and music are all great and there's not much more I can say about that. The charm of the series is something I feel will never be better in any game series. The whole time you think you're going to save the world after you take care of this guy called Baramos. He's terrifying in his own right but the true main villain, Zoma is a final boss for the ages. The final boss music blares as he hurls countless Blizzard spells at you and you scramble to keep your party healed up with the Sage Stone. This all adds up and the tension that the fate of the world is in your hands can get to you. I died like 4 times to him.

Zoma's theme

The class system earlier and it's not something I ever get too deep into with games that have it. I feel like the extra time you need to commit to get the extra skills you're bringing in with an additional or new class could be better used by just leveling up the character I already have. I did end up switching my Mage into a Sage to get a healer/caster and boy oh boy did I love that character. The other reason I loved all my characters is because I named them after my two cats and wife. The epic journey of Mike was helped by the fighter Charlie, the (S)mage Lucy, and the priest Wife. Having created characters was something I thought I would like less than premade characters with character arcs and personalities made for me was something I was hesitant about but I ended up caring more about my DQ3 characters than ones is say, Dragon Quest 5.

My thoughts may seem a little scatterbrain but that's just how I write as I can't remember what I wanted to type 2 seconds ago. As one of the Dragon Quest games people will recommend you check out to get a feel for the series I can absolutely echo those recommendations to those getting into the series and JRPGs with a little more depth. I finished the game on Gameboy after all these years when I bought a complete copy for myself but I'd some day like to play the other versions. I recently bought Famicom and Super Famicom versions that I'll never play but I also have the game on my phone that kind of takes all the best parts of each version into a portable experience. Dragon Quest 3 is a masterpiece in a series full of them. Oh yeah, and the Famicom box art is the greatest box art ever.

Mike's favorite games

I hope you like reading about these games as much as I like playing them.

EarthBound

It wasn't long after I had heard about EarthBound that I ended up falling in love with it. I had seen glimpses of things from it in the Super Smash Bros series but I had no further knowledge of what Fourside was in Melee or why it mattered that a blonde kid named Jeff was shooting rockets at me in Brawl. I'm not really sure when I decided to play EarthBound but I know I bought a WiiU for it specifically. I sat there one night at a friends house drinking and hatching chicken eggs in Twoson and I think that's when it really clicked for me. It's been said to death but the entire vibe and setting of the game is something special. I often get tired of sword & sorcery games and EarthBound is always a breath of fresh air. I love the characters even though I don't find them that special. But that's kind of the nice part, I feel like I'm using them as a vessel to experience a world that feels like it could be lived it...minus that stop signs coming to life and the threat of an alien on the verge of destroying the world. I experienced so many emotions in my playthrouh. From the jaunty tunes of Onett that I hum to myself at least 3 times a day to the legit feeling of uneasiness and dread in the final battle with Gygas. And yet...after it was all done, I felt like I had joined a club of the only  people that can truly know what EarthBound is. It has a "cult classic" attached to every conversation about it and to understand why it's so great is a reward in it's own.

Dragon Quest XI

I'm writing this post on a Dragon Quest keyboard I just got off Ebay. Dragon Quest has been a weird series for me. One of the fist games I got for my teal Gameboy Color was Dragon Warrior III. I somehow lost it after a character said "damn" and I asked my mom what that meant. It wasn't until later in life when one day I decided to buy Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, IX, and Rocket Slime for the DS but I never played any of them. I now own all the main line games (besides X which, quite frankly, I don't ever see getting localized). I've finished I, VIII, IX, XI, and I'm playing through III currently. Dragon Quest XI is what really solidified my love for the series. Everything about the game is fun and comforting. With all the complex games nowadays it's so nice to have a game as cozy as Dragon Quest XI. The role playing genre and some of my favorite games owes themselves to Dragon Quest. XI is my favorite out of the few games in the series I've finished simply because of how fun it is. I got the platinum trophy on PS4 for it and enjoyed every second of it. The world, characters, and story are all fantastic. The monsters are my favorite part of any Dragon Quest game and they're at their best in this game. I loved every single character in my party and as I connected with them, they ended up kind of feeling like family to me. A lot of games end up so great to me because of their endings and Dragon Quest XI is the most satisfying ending I've ever experienced. Without spoilers, it connects to the first few games in ways and having played them recently, it's that much more special and awesome to me.

Runescape (specifically 2006-2012)

As I start this paragraph I'm also listening to the classic Runescape main theme. Every time I hear this song or any song from the early years of Runescape I begin to tear up. I spent over 4000 hours and 9 years of my life with this game. No game means more to me than this. The amount of time I spent playing this I will never get back but I wish I could go back and experience it all again. Some of my best friends I've never met because I met them on Runescape. This games devoured my life. I would get home from school and play it until bed on week days and play all day on weekends. This game got me through my teenage years. This game was more then a game for me, it was a lifestyle. People wouldn't start conversations with me with a hello, they would ask if I had done anything cool in Runescape lately. All of the people I played with throughout the years felt like family to me. I could do whatever I wanted either by myself or with friends. I felt like I was actually living in the world because I spent so much time in it. I never did max out my character but that's okay because I played the way I wanted to and did things my way. I was never the most efficient or richest I just wanted to have fun. I log into the game every now and then for a few minutes now but it's just not the same. That sense of wonder is lost on my older, more worn down mind. None of my real life friends play anymore so I can't have conversations with them about it. I'll always cherish the times I had with Runescape in my youth and I feel a little sad every time I think about the good old days. 

Ni no Kuni

I'm just going to put my original review in here since it was the first thing I wrote for this blog and my feelings for the game remain the same. It is the greatest game ever made.

Original review

Ni No Kuni is now my favorite game. I think what really makes this game so special for me was just how magical the world was. I was always looking forward to what the next area would look like, what it would sound like, and what part of the story was ahead. The character animations and design were great and the overall art of the game being done by Studio Ghibli had me knowing this was going to be a special game for me.

Ni No Kuni is a JRPG but the one trope of the genre that wasn’t present, at least for me, was grinding. I only died maybe four times in my playthrough while playing on Normal difficulty, the highest difficulty available, but that’s fine with me. Games that are needlessly hard tend to not click with me so it was nice to have such a colorful and friendly world not be hindered by insane difficulty spikes.

Let’s talk about that colorful world for a little bit. The game gets it’s art from the famous Studio Ghibli which has always held a special place in my heart and whose art always cheers me up. Whether it be from the first town you enter in Ding Dong Dell, a town ruled but King Tom the cat, to the eerie Nevermore Castle the game oozes atmosphere and stunning visuals. The colors pop on the overworld and even in an ice dungeon later in the game everything just looks so perfect.

I feel the best aspect of the game is the characters, though. Mr Drippy is one of your companions throughout the game and everything about him is just perfect. He has some kind of British accent and a sassy attitude which is always a winning combination for me. Esther and Swaine are your other companions and to me only Esther felt kind of flat to me with no real reason for me to really care for her or her motivations, if there were any that I missed. Swaine on the other hand had a great story and without spoiling much gets reunited with someone close to him and you can actually feel the emotion between the two in the scenes that unfold. The game has a theme of emotion throughout the whole story and it always feels genuine.

So when you’re not following the main story what else is there to do? Each area has an errand board to pick up side quests and bounty hunts to be completed to fill out stamp cards for passive bonuses. There’s something so satisfying about filling your log up with side quests and seeing them get crossed off after completing one after another. The quests might seem boring to some though as they can be very straightforward but a few make you think for a minute as to where exactly to go or what to do.

The other thing to do is capture and evolve monsters. Since the art is done by Studio Ghibli the monsters are absolutely the best enemies I’ve ever seen in a video game. Each monster is unique and with a creature compendium there’s that “gotta catch them all” feeling. You can also feed familiars special treats to boost their stats and when they reach a certain level you can feed them an item to evolve them to their next stage where they can go from looking like one thing to a totally different thing which is awesome, again I couldn’t wait to see what was next.

So why is Ni No Kuni, in my opinion, such an amazing game? It just makes you so happy while playing it. The characters, the world, the gameplay, just work so well and create a sense of joy. Sure the AI isn’t perfect and things can seem a little simple and easy at times but that didn’t take away from my experience.  If you enjoy RPGs you owe it to yourself to give this game a try even if it’s just to experience the world, put the game on easy and experience a gripping and heartfelt story. For the first time in an RPG I’m looking forward to doing the post-clear content because it all goes back to that question for me...what’s next?

Banner Saga 2

Game key provided for free by developer

Although Banner Saga 2 may not bring much new in the gameplay front, a deeper and darker narrative for the series second entry is still a great game. Small additions flesh out parts of the experience and prepare players for an explosive finale. 

We join our heroes right after the first game with the ability to load in a previous save or completely change the final decision from the first game. I highly recommend importing a previous save file as I feel that will give your journey the most authentic feel. Having just come off the first game the constant tutorials of things I had plenty of experience with, got a bit tiresome in the beginning, though I do understand it's to help players jumping into the series at this entry. The reintroduction to characters with small blurbs about who they are and what their story is helped jog my terrible memory and were nice, though.

It was a bit odd starting off this game with an uplifting feeling. Caravan morale started high and my clansman, a new type of follower, were foraging lots of supplies...but as expected things got tough in the late game. Let's start talking about the new entries with the clansman. In addition to your fighters and Varl from the previous game, clansman are units that can't fight, but instead forage for supplies. This leads to a balance of fighters for battles ahead and clansmen for keeping up supplies to keep the caravan going. A small addition but a nice wrinkle to the formula.

A feature with said clansmen is the ability to turn them into fighters in the training tent. I didn't feel the need to do this more than the time they introduce the mechanic as I prefer a play style where I stock up on supplies and let my heroes fight in wars. The training tent is a much more fulfilling area this time around. Not only can you convert clansmen to fighter but you can also partake in challenges for your heroes which yield rewards. Having the tent be just a place to try out new fighters before, this small addition is a welcome sign for players wanting to test their skill that much more. 

Speaking of fighting, arenas are no longer plain squares or rectangles. The areas are more varied with gaps in terrain and obstacles to protect weaker units. There is also the occasional hazard such as fire that you have to avoid. Along with new terrain comes new objectives for winning. Previously, the goal was to kill all the enemy units and victory would be yours. Things are shaken up this time by having objectives such as clearing snow from a path to escape or killing a certain unit, making the rest flee. This was a welcome addition as it gives you the option to either rush a certain unit with your big guns or focus on fighting as less as possible. 

I felt a stronger connection to the story this time. Where the first game introduced you to the world, this game hits you with a dark and dire story. You learn more about the characters and their motives, as well as learning more about the foes that chase you. At one point in the game your map shows a large blackness showing the destruction that has become of the lands behind you. The darkness always feels closer then it looks. The bombastic soundtrack and eerie noises as you see the world being engulfed on the horizon is a horrifying sight. The terrifying dreams the secondary character, Bolverk experiences during the story hint at a larger role for him and his connections to...well, I'm not going to spoil it.

Banner Saga 2 is an absolute gem of a sequel and second act. The final scenes get you pumped for the finale where all the choices you've made so far will come to a conclusion. I have no doubt Banner Saga 3 will close the story on a strong note...I'm just a bit worried this story won't have a happy ending.

The Banner Saga

Game key provided for free by developer

Never before has a game filled me with so much dread and stress and still become one of the games I've had the funnest time with. The Banner Saga always makes you second guess yourself and ask if you're making the right choice. Something you feel may be best in the short term can come back to bite you and greatly impact your chance of survival. In a beautifully crafted world filled with sweeping vistas, large mountains, and interesting scenarios, you never know what is coming next or how you'll make it through.

From the moment the game begins you see a large caravan treading through a snowy landscape. Some of the first words you hear are "the gods are dead". The sense of uneasiness begins. As you enter your first town you find a coup of sorts taking place. You step in and learn of a larger threat coming from the north, the Dredge, a race of hulking monstrosities with no other mission in life then to destroy everything that stands in their path. As you leave the town you are tasked with escorting the human price to the Varl capital to form an alliance between human and Varl (a giant like race) kind. 

 

The story switches to a couple of heroes to the east. (In the first few chapters you follow two groups but eventually become one large caravan). A father, Rook and his daughter, Alette who are seen hiding from a pack of Dredge. Here you learn more about the turn based combat system. Every single attack in this game feels impactful. Each unit has an armor and stamina meter leading to more strategic battles. Should you break away armor on an enemy you'll be able to do more stamina damage to them. Stamina acts as both your health and how much damage you do. I found it fun in the later game to send my tankier units to the front line and smash away large chucks of stamina while my ranger characters sat in the back lines almost able to wipe out entire armor bars by themselves. 

After battles, you are rewarded with renown. This is used as to both promote your units and improve their stats and used as currency to purchase supplies. Supplies are essential on your trek across the world to escape from the Dredge as your caravan grows. During my time with the game and especially in the later parts I was constantly balancing whether I wanted a chance to keep my caravan well or keep my warriors up to snuff with their opponents. 

My absolute favorite part about this game is the constant need to make choices, even though I never feel like I made the right one. As I type this I still feel like I made the wrong final choice, though both options were impossible to feel 100% great about. Along your journey from town to town there could be four or five small choices that will affect you. These could be a decision of what to do with a troublemaker in the caravan or which path to take at a fork in the road. One example that really sticks out to me was when a cart full of supplies was hanging over a cliff that was being held back by one of my characters and a dredge. Without specifics of what I did, the cart ended up falling to the bottom of the cliff. I decided to leave the cart be as I felt hanging around the situation could be dangerous. After a few minutes had gone by I got word that someone in my caravan had been sending people back to recover the supplies lost from the cart. Had I made that choice at the time who knows what would have happened both then, and later down the road. 

When you make a choice or something outside of your control happens to the caravan your morale stat either declines or improves. After every in game day it decreases, along with some supplies. I found myself just barely scraping by with normal morale and supplies towards the last few towns. Morale effects your will in battle, used to give your characters either more movement or extra attack power. It was more than a meter for me though. After every time I saw "morale declined" when making a choice it made me worry more about the next choice I would have to make and how it was going to affect those that have put their trust in me to lead them away from impending doom. 

One of the best parts about The Banner Saga is that it's just the first part of a trilogy. A game has never stressed me out more but I cannot wait to experience the rest of what this world has to show me. A beautiful world, with characters you care about, and a fantastic combat system lead to a game I could not put down. Those not fans of tactical turn based games should look past that just to experience a gripping narrative filled with impactful choices. I look forward to diving into The Banner Saga 2 right away so that when the finale of the trilogy releases next month I'll be all caught up and see how my choices impact the final story. The Banner Saga is an absolute masterpiece. 

SteamWorld Dig 2

And now for an extremely biased write up about a game I’ve been looking forward to for awhile. When I went to PAX East earlier this year I met Julius Goldberg who is the Community Manager  at Image & Form. Him and I had a 5-10 minute long conversation about games, life, and everything else. He was the nicest person I’ve ever met and left a last impact on me. When I got up to the booth to actually play the game I met Marco Podda, Publishing & Project Manager, who saw me waiting in line for awhile and asked me if I was ready to play. I had told him about watching others before me and demo footage of the level I was about to play and of my past history with the SteamWorld series of games and how excited I was to finally get to play the game with my own two hands. While standing in line and talking to Julius I was able to get my Indiebox copy of the first SteamWorld dig signed by the two gentlemen. If you two guys ever read this I’d like to thank you for your kindness and care, the world needs more people like you. Now that we having my gushing out of the way let’s talk about the game and if it lived up to my lofty expectations.

SteamWorld Dig 2 takes places after the first game where that game’s hero Rusty goes missing at the end. We pick up the story with Dorothy, a young steambot on a mission to find her friend Rusty. The gameplay loop is the same for the most part wherein you dig through mines collecting gems, going back up to town, selling your gems, then using your cash to purchase upgrades so you can stay in mines longer and stay safer down there. What really excited me was the new upgrade cog system for your tools. Along with many other secrets to be found in the game you can find cogs that can be added up and put into slots to give you bonuses such as a larger light radius, quicker pickaxe swings, and lots of other cool things. I’m not one to go out of my way to find secrets or 100% complete a game but I can absolutely see myself going back through and picking up things I had missed.

If I had to give one criticism it would be that the story beats felt the exact same as the last game. The last game was rather short and in the end it boils down to having to find 3 things in previous areas and destroying them. In this game the situation ends up being the same but the game is longer this time which is great. The game is also a metroidvania in a sense and not having played many of those types of games personally, I’m not sure if this is just a staple of the genre such as grinding in a JRPG or quick time events in a first person shooter. Having a sense of exploration and addictive loop made me look past the shortcomings of the story since a game like this I’m going to play for the gameplay anyways and not look for a long, tedious story.

SteamWorld Dig 2 was an absolute blast to play. I felt like every time I would tell myself “just one more time into the mines” I would end up playing for another 30 minutes and 10 more trips. Being on the Switch it was nice to be able to give myself more time to really explore every corner of the game world and see what I could find if I just went a little deeper. I’d like to thank Image & Form for making such a fun game to play and explore in.

Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle

On a slow day at work while I was watching the Ubisoft E3 conference and Mario+Rabbis Kingdom Battle was revealed so I sent out a hilarious tweet that “Nobody wants this #UbiE3”. Jesus Christ, Mike give stuff a chance. Moments after when Shigeru Miyamoto walked out on stage, the god damn creator of Mario, to give the rest of a kind of silent “this is going to be good” feeling I shut my Twitter app and watched the rest of the gameplay. Minutes after that I opened my Twitter app again and tweeted “I’m going to get this game aren’t I?”.

Kingdom Battle was the game none of us thought we wanted but ended up coming to grips with and from what I’ve seen have universally loved. While I’m not a huge fan of tactics games (I’m not one to think actions through before I do them) I loved the flow and gameplay of Kingdom Battle. I was able to slow myself down and tell myself, yes, you could do this one thing but if you do this first and then that, this you can clear the whole field of bad guys. I’m looking forward to delving into more strategy games soon and maybe I’ll learn to enjoy them more than I ever had. Sometimes you just need to slow down and take things one thought at a time.

The main thing that I think a lot of people were skeptical when the game was first leaked before official reveal was the addition of Ubisoft’s Rabbids characters. These guys were the minions before the minions and by golly do I loathe me some minions. Turns out, I was wrong again because every little noise these bastards made and stupids actions they did gave me a hearty chuckle more often than not. The world was fantastic as well blending the well known Mushroom Kingdom with the crazy antics of the Rabbids and made me want to explore beyond the linear walkways we were given..

In the end I was wrong (shocking). Don’t judge things before you see what they truly are. What I thought would be a stupid crossover that would maybe hit the low 70s on Metacritic because I didn't think two franchises could fit together ended up being one of my favorite games of the year. The difficulty did spike for me at the end but luckily there was an easy mode and for someone who doesn’t have time to waste on games that waste my time that thing was an amazing addition. I do hope the team behind this team gets another shot with the Mario IP because I’d love to see what they can do next. I’ve never played Super Mario RPG on the SNES so...maybe a remake would be cool?