I had never played a Dragon Quest game before, but I had played many JRPGs. After hearing much about this one, I finally decided to cave and give it a try. What I found was one of the most lovingly crafted JRPG experiences I think I've ever played.
Spoiler-free review below:
=== The Good ===
Player options and quality of life features abounded throughout the game, allowing me to play almost exactly how I wanted to. Hell, I could even change the visual style of nearly the entire game on a whim! Not that I used this feature, as I wasn't too fond of the aesthetic or gameplay changes introduced when switching to 2D, but it's certainly a feature worth praising in my opinion if only for the sheer work put into making a game playable in two entirely different art styles.
Going back to the quality of life choices, I think the only game I've played that's come close is Bravely Default, with its option to modify random encounter rates (0%, 50%, 100%, 200%, etc.) which I recall being blown away by, especially coming from a franchise like Pokemon where you need to purchase hundreds of one time use items to avoid random encounters. Even just looking at the core gameplay of this game you can see the time and love put into it. The skill tree for each character is unique and the options you have within meaningful in a way I rarely see in games these days. It doesn't feel bloated with tons of worthless abilities and stat upgrades the way skill trees often do. I don't want to get too deep into it all because it'll take forever to but suffice to say I was thoroughly impressed by what this game offered to any JRPG fan.
And last, I really enjoyed the cast of characters overall. They were pretty unique and colorful amongst themselves and most offered compelling backstories and character motivations deeper than I expected from a game like this. My favorite was probably Erik. From the very beginning of the game I remember wishing that I was playing as him instead of some weird mute He-Man haircut kid. Erik was just so much cooler than Hero, and eventually had a fantastic backstory revealed that really lent a lot of color to a character that otherwise could have been a little flat. Least favorite has to be Sylvando. I honestly really liked this dude up until the end of the first segment of the game, but after he shattered all the atmosphere and plot pacing the game had with his dumb little side story (which continued to be relevant fairly late into the game for some godforsaken reason) I just couldn't deal with him. Nearly every time he appeared on screen he managed to break the immersion I had with his obsessive cheerfulness and incredibly stereotypical gay man persona. It just became too much eventually. I can respect his motivations, but wow he started to grate on me very quickly.
=== The Not So Good ===
Unfortunately the game was not without some significant issues and annoyances. While I think it's nice looking overall, I personally struggled to get too into the overall art and style of the game. I understand it's iconic for the series at this point, but scattered throughout the game are relics of past games in the form of ancient looking menus, dated sound effects, and some other strange choices that feel as if they only exist to scratch the nostalgic itch of the core fans of the series. Which isn't a major major issue I suppose except compared to the rest of the game some things just look... bad. Kind of disappointing.
Far more disappointing, however, had to be the music and sound design of the game as a whole. I know it's been said over and over by just about everyone, but it was incredibly hard to get past the fact that nearly EVERY area had music pulled from what felt like a playlist of maybe 3-5 tracks total. And even worse, none of those repetitive tracks were all that great to begin with. On top of being repetitive, it outright ruins the mood in a few sections of the game, and I found myself turning the music volume wayyy down just to avoid being blasted by the same shitty tracks over and over.
A smaller nitpick related to the previous: Why are the parts of cutscenes where characters sing entirely void of voice acting? It's so jarring to be listening to people talk and then they go to open their mouth to sing and I'm just stuck reading lyrics on the bottom of the screen. Just a very confusing design choice. I don't get it at all, as it really took me out of the few scenes where it happened.
=== Conclusion ===
Despite its shortcomings, I feel that altogether this is easily one of the best JRPGs I've played. I think if it had a larger (and better sounding) pool of music to pull from and better plot pacing around the middle of the game it just might be the best. It's truly impressive what the team managed to create here. Would 100% recommend to anyone wanting an old school turn based RPG to sink dozens of hours into.
