I hope it’s not nostalgia talking when I say:
How magnificent,
How charming,
How all-encompassingly perfect
Dragon Quest XI is. Dragon Quest in general. It is absolute fucking perfection.
If that’s the kind of thing you dig, that is. And I do.
I have to say (and this may take some time to say), that playing the Dragon Quest games throughout my life has been a gratifying, eye-opening, and sanity-binding adventure that has spanned more than half of its course.
It all started with Nintendo Power magazine. Doesn’t it always? I’d been happy in my Zelda and Mario worlds, the Capcoms the Konamis and everyone else fortunate enough to get a license to print games for Nintendo. Contra. Mega Man. Castlevania II – the first game that I purchased (after the Mario and Duck Hunt cross-cartridge). But also let’s just shout out to Rygar, Strider (or Stri-dar), Zelda II, River City Ransom – hell just listen to the song: youtube.com/8bit/Zelda.mp3
My game world was highly informed by that monthly piece of postal gold: Nintendo Power. I’d walk home from school, focusing on the moment I’ll pull down the flap of the mailbox and retrieve that blessed volume with my name printed on the cover (later they’d use address stickers). I had a subscription to NP from Issue no. 2 (cover art featuring a human Simon Belmont holding Dracula’s severed head by his Romanian ponytail or whatever) and it continued well past Issue no. 100. But there were changes.
There were a lot of changes and discoveries during that time. Nintendo Power was teaching me tons – how to read, for one, at least read better, or read with passion. Also, those were the formative years of my late elementary to junior high school years, so school probably taught me a couple of things as well.
Oh yes, well, anyway – as a loyal subscriber, it felt rather shocking and hurtful later on to learn that if you got a subscription to Nintendo Power, they would give you a free fucking video game. Yes, ladies and genitalmen, A free fucking $50 at least video game called Dragon Warrior. It would be free to all. Free to most. Free to subscribers. If you subscribed. Right now. See, it wasn’t my time to re-up my subscription to NP, so I never got that free game. Everyone else did, me, I just got to read about it in stark detail.
But I got to play it, eventually, all right. My next-door neighbor, B had a copy – possibly free with his subscription – and eventually I think I got my own copy at some weird NES game swap meet in a hotel next to the Bob Evans – but oh yeah – I played it, and it was epic.
Dragon Warrior I was known as “Dragon Quest” in Japan, and boy was it ever.
Good game. I mean, really great game – they changed all the original Japanese dialogue to match the Olde Timey Englishe tone that the game was going for – “Thou art dead.” was the Game Over message, and “A Drakee Approacheth! What dost thou do?” (I continue raving about Dragon Quest to the Drakee but mildly diss it). All in all, it was kind of a half-assed approach to localizing by today’s standards, but that’s only because we have practiced it again and again and gotten it down to a science by now. It was extremely clever and creative of them to do it HOWEVER they did it, though, and a free game promotion in crazy old USA? That shit sold a LOT of magazines. Lots of people got that game for free, but I’m guessing maybe only 20 to 25% of them finished it. Max.
I mean, hell, in a way it was like the Dark Souls of its time. You have to level up, or be really gud to proceed in that game. I mean, you just don’t even have the stats to fight the Dragon at the end of the marsh cave until at least… level 5 and LOTS of luck, pal!
That game – Dragon Warrior – taught me to grind. Level grinding was a guaranteed way to put victory within your grasp. I took that principle and applied it to my Zelda II game, and wow, with a little stat boosting and downthrust practice, I could really whoop some Hylian ass. Increased stats are basically a given in games today, but back then, the “growth” of characters was kind of a novel concept because you’d be WRITING over their whole avatar of the game, whereas before, most “power-ups” (such as growth-promoting mushrooms) were temporary, and you’d be dead before long and have to fuck it up again and again. Dragon Quest had a feel of continuity to it – a game could last months. For some, it may last years.
I feel like level grinding now is a kind of “exercise” akin to walking or jogging, if we were to consider electronic games like these “sports,” but fuck sports. Fuck the Olympics, too, while I have the platform. But in the RPG Olympics, I say that Dragon Quest takes the gold for all-time best RPG series by any video game creator, ever, and Final Fantasy is probably guaranteed the bronze – assuming they Finally kill the Chaos and test for illegal substances in their shittier entries to the series. Silver goes to whatever RPG franchise YOU think is the best. I’m absolutely sure it is. If you played it and enjoyed it like nothing else, then it deserves your love, respect, and not necessarily someone like me to sing its praises. But I’m in a singing mood, so let fucking rap about Dragon Quest!
I beat the Dragonlord. I saved Alefgard. Several times. Several times THROUGH. Game is definitely beatable in a single day once thou knowest that what thou must doeth. However, I didn’t play another DQ game until about 25 years later – It was Dragon Quest VIII and it was bought used for ¥1000 on a beautiful summer day.
I was a young man in Japan, living with my now-wife in a two-bedroom apartment next to Den-Den Town in the Great City of Osaka. I even remember the video game store I bought it at – a little place just down the street south of Tennoji Station, a little past where the foundation of the Abeno Harukas building stands today. A Super Potato store, perhaps, or an indi-er one, and I saw Dragon Quest VIII in the bargain bin for just $10. I was like, “Baby, I’m buying this game,” and she was like “Good.” (It must be noted that earlier, the future Mrs. Epicuzi bought my ass a brand new Playstation 2 a Christmas or so earlier, though she has very little interest in games herself.)
It was a glorious time, playing that game in those days. Idyllic. It was just so beautiful and fucking fun. The music, the open landscapes, the fact that all the characters go “bubllululbubublu blblubbbuubu blub,” when they’re talking to mimic their speech. The same level up chime, the same sound effects, the same brilliant Toriyama character design, the smell of tatami mats in the baked summer air – sure, one of these things is not like the other and I won’t deny that my sentimental feeling for those days plays a big part in mine ardour for thee, o! Dragon Quest, ye.
But really – it is like the very best RPG series of all time. Each volume of the flagship series is its own unique adventure in its own corner of the DQ Multiverse. There is a lot of consistency across them, and the traditions live strong today. I love them.
Three weeks ago, I was browsing the shelves of my local Book Off (a chain of used book, comic, CD and game stores), and came across Dragon Quest XI for the Nintendo 3DS. This game has been out for at least two years now – I’m guessing that most people who’d ever play it had already played it. And now they were selling their used copies, and the stores finally had so many in their warehouses that they didn’t know what to do with them all.
That’s how I got Dragon Quest VIII so cheap when I did, after all.
I called my son. “Guy?”
“Yeah, Daddy,”
“I’m at the Book Off right now.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah – and they have Dragon Quest XI for ¥1000.”
“Cool.”
“What do you think, should I pick it up?”
“They don’t have it for the Switch?”
“They might, but it’s like 4000 at least.”
“Well, yeah, I guess you should probably buy it.”
And I did. And it was the best ¥1000 I’ve spent all year.
For one thing, my son (the one just on the phone with me now) had recently cleared (or “beaten” to you Westerners) Dragon Quest IX. It is needless to say that I am a very proud father of both of my kids. But Guy found DQXI (not a typo) to be so good that he ended up buying his own copy for the Switch (¥4000 used). We had a good race going for awhile. I was about 20 hours in, and he was RE-playing the parts he had on my copy for the 3DS. I was ahead for a long time. Then he caught up, and our levels were neck and neck for a few days, and then I had to go to werk and he had summer vacation, oh hell he CLEARED the whole damn game weeks before I would – or will – you see, I still haven’t beaten it yet.
God damn, I gotta get on that.
Let me just say I’m taking my time. I’m grinding. I’m crafting. I’m technically still working here at home, okay? I’m trying to read the Japanese script and learn new words from it, okay? Yes, I’m playing this game in Japanese, and it’s not a big deal, but it does slow me down here and there. Life is damn busy and demanding, but for some things it is more rewarding to take it slow than speedrun the game in two weeks like my son.
And oh may damn, it is a rewarding game with a wonderful story. It’s in the words of a great man and Questor of Dragons himself, “Unfuckwithably solid on all platforms.” You said it, mang. Even on a dirty-ass 3DS screen the game just kicks ass and stomps slimes.
Those magical feelings I had in my Summer of Dragon Quest VIII? Those days I look back on with a unique flavor of fondness and memory? I am living them again a decade later in the Summer of Dragon Quest XI. These are the good old days as I know they will be looked back upon. We art blessed.
Right. Back to the grind.
EpicuziplayiT 
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