Back to Dragon Quest

After finally completing Final Fantasy XII, after several years, and after getting a little burned out on The Legend of Zelda, my thoughts recently turned back to Dragon Quest. Before getting into my Zelda games on the 3DS, I knew I was approaching the final areas of Dragon Quest IX. About a month or so ago, I decided to resume my progress, and within a week or two I completed the last two or three dungeons and finished the game.

Dragon Quest IX is different at game's end than any single-player RPG I've ever played. The game saves itself, but rather than letting you revert to your last position before beating the boss, you load the game into a save where the boss is cleared and the final dungeon is gone. It's a true "endgame" scenario, where you're actually playing after the end of the game.

I considered putting the game back down at this point to focus on doing more with earlier games in the series, but I decided to keep at it, revisiting areas, completing quests, searching for treasures, and leveling my characters up in different jobs. I've actually found myself re-addicted to this game, and it is currently my portable game of choice. There's a lot that fascinates me about the game. When you visit Alltrades Abbey after the game's end, they tell you that once you reach max level, you can "revocate" back to level 1 to ensure you can earn enough skill points to learn all of the skills, revealing an added layer of depth to the job system. After the end of the game, there are still numerous areas on the map that are inaccessible to me. I never encountered a means to fly in this game, but wonder if there is one. Every Dragon Quest game since III has had some means of aerial transportation, so part of me guesses that this game does too but that I just haven't found it yet.

Meanwhile, the game has still inspired me to revisit older games in the series. I booted up Dragon Quest VII for the first time in a long time to see if I could work towards unlocking the Hero. I don't know the precise requirements, but the job unlocked as soon as I mastered the Dragoon job, after having also mastered Paladin and Pirate. In VI, I was under the possibly false impression that mastering any advanced job would unlock Hero for your main character. For anyone else, you need to master three specific advanced jobs, which would correspond, I believe, to Dragoon, Sage, and TeenIdol in Dragon Warrior VII. It's possible that your main character has to master one of these three jobs, not just any job, to unlock it. I suspect that is the case in Dragon Warrior VII. I also ended up unlocking an unexpected job called Godhand. I don't remember if this was in Dragon Quest VI or not. I decided to level Hero first, and I'll probably do the other later. But after mastering Hero, I decided to take a break from Dragon Warrior VII.

Seeing more of what was available in Dragon Quest VII and IX made me boot up VIII for a bit. But I couldn't figure a good place to grind, and realized how much I didn't remember already about the game, and decided to put that on hold for a little while.

Significantly, I finished my maximum playthrough of Dragon Quest II, finally obtaining the golden card. I had obtained every item besides this on my Famicom version a few years back, and with the help of the save feature in the NES version I worked out the reels in the lottery (each reel has its own repeating pattern which never changes) and tried to figure out the precise timing to get the suns. I couldn't find much concrete about it online, but I was eventually forced to conclude that even with precise timing, there seems to be a random element to how long it takes the reel to stop.

I gave up back then after getting bored, but I recently dug out my old notes to try again. Within an hour I had won the Golden Card on my NES! I was thrilled, but not satisfied, as it didn't constitute a 100% playthrough since this file didn't have other items I had obtained on the Famicom. I decided to try to get those items on the NES, but I made the mistake of switching out the cartridge between game sessions. I had trouble getting the game to load again after putting it back, and I must have hit it just wrong, because when I finally got it up I got the cursed music indicating my game file was lost.

I decided to try for the reels on the Famicom, despite having to redo lengthy passwords to try. I gradually hedged my bets more and more by getting rid of equipment that I knew I could buy or get back. I ended up with 10 free spaces for lottery tickets, and tried over and over. It took me several days, but the reels finally turned up right. Full of joy, I bought back my missing equiment, fought enough battles to earn my gold back, and marched on to beat Hargon and Sidoh knowing I had obtained one of every item in the game at some point.

I had been trying to decide just what to focus on next. I want to replay Dragon Quest V, and I want to max out my levels and finish item completion on Dragon Quest III. But as of this week, I am resolved first to focus on challenge-quest and remake playthroughs of Dragon Quest II, which I have started in earnest as of yesterday. More on that later.