Dragon Quest IX — When Angels Lose Their Wings

One of the more intriguing questions posed by fans upon the announcement of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for DS was how Yuji Horii and company — with Level 5 handling the production — would evolve the gameplay styles of its predecessors. It’s a concern voiced by fans who were quite taken by Dragon Quest VIII‘s epic sense of exploration and vivacity, a feeling the PS2’s graphical prowess assisted with. Not to say games with lower tech can’t convey a similar effect — something people who lamented the franchise going portable claimed, which is ridiculous — but it would have to provide that from an alternate angle.

While DQIX may be different from the installments that have come before, it actually does manage to provide a wonderful sense of realism. It’s living proof that graphics aren’t necessary to make a game capable of being perfectly immersive on a lower-end system, and that portability isn’t a hindrance. All it needed was a change in the way it delivered the sense of a living, breathing world, something it does amicably. In ways that surpass DQVIII’s, even. It’s tough to do, especially when you have an entire party full of mutes, but they pulled it off.

The story revolves around themes of death, and the job of your main character is to collect a benevolessence and offer it up to the world tree known as Yggdrasil. Benevolessence is made from the souls of the dead, and forms after you’ve given dead spirits wandering the earth respite. These lost souls still wander around because they left the world with regret, and you have to be the one to give them ease. Everything is going OK until the Observatory, the place from which the Celestrians observe human activity, is ruptured by a mysterious force. You suddenly find yourself in the town of Angel Falls, where you were a guardian, without your wings and halo. It’s now up to you to find out precisely what happened.

Though your plans, and the plans of the Celestrians, have undergone a hindrance, your itinerary remains unchanged. While finding answers to the mysterious crisis, you’ll find a plethora of lost souls that need your guidance. Considering about 70% of them left with regrets, you’re going to be in for some pretty sad stories. Someone once made the argument that DQ games have a lot of heart, and it’s through the smaller stories that you can see that’s a completely accurate assessment. They’re never a distraction either; all of said small stories have something to do with the larger plot at hand that will eventually unravel.

What really helps bring the story to life is the brilliant localization it’s received. Despite being published by Nintendo, all NoA’s Treehouse did was oversee how the translation was going. Square Enix, in association with Plus Alpha Translations (who were responsible for all the DQ localizations thus far, save for Joker), was responsible for the localization. It keeps a lot of the accents that made NPCs a joy to talk to a la Dragon Quest IV, but it’s toned down heavily enough that it won’t be overbearing for anyone. If there’s anything here that might annoy some folks, it’s the unending stream of puns.

DQIX is a little different from most DQ games in that it allows you to make your own party of characters to venture around with. Having a party of four members of your choosing (including your main character) hasn’t been seen since Dragon Quest III, but the difference here is that you can actually see your weapons and equipment visually as you customize their looks. The unfortunate effect of this is the desire to choose the best looking equipment for some characters rather than the most practical. You might be able to get away with that in the main quest, because it’s mostly pretty easygoing, but don’t expect to cruise through the sidequests and post-game content with your female characters equipped with a Playboy-esque bunny outfit. Of course, that depends on the quest.

The only main downside to having a silent party is that the game won’t be heavily character driven. The story is fortunately told in a way that this doesn’t feel like too much of a problem, but anyone accustomed to the style of some recent DQ games might miss using party talk to see what your accomplices think about specific events. Also, your fairy accomplice, Stella, does most of the talking for you if need be.

You’ll also be giving all four of your characters classes, known as vocations in this game. You don’t have too many to start with, but it’s enough to get things done. Your main character begins as a Minstrel (this game’s equivalent of a Red Mage), but you’ll also have the Warrior, Mage, Priest, Fighter, and Thief vocations for the other three characters as you make them. You’ll be able to unlock more as the game goes along. When you change vocations, your character goes right back to Level 1, but they’ll keep their Skill Points. Besides, it doesn’t take long to get your characters back to a reasonable level afterward.

Something else that helps give the game’s world liveliness is how much NPC dialogue changes throughout the game. When you’ve managed to progress the story, NPCs from towns you’ve previously visited will catch word of it. Many events will also transpire within said towns, with all the NPCs giving their opinions on what’s happened; and quite a few of them are comical.

Some of them will also give you quests that you can complete for something special in return. They start off easy enough to ease you into how the quest system works, but they’ll ramp up in difficulty by the time you reach the middle of the game. Some of them can get a little frustrating, especially when they entail something that’s a pain and the reward is something of minimal importance. You can take on up to eight of them at once, and they’re mostly pretty worthwhile.

The graphics also help with its vivacity. Plenty of people dislike 3D on DS solely because it reminds them of the bygone days of the PSOne’s pixellated polygons, but DQIX looks exquisite. It’s easily the best looking 3D game on the system, and the only upcoming game that will give it some competition is Okamiden. Its in-engine cutscenes look great, even if they don’t compare to the anime introduction in terms of animation. The only problem that hampers the presentation is some slowdown when too many things are happening on-screen at once.

DQIX’s battle system won’t have too many real surprises if you’ve played quite a few DQ games (or RPGs, even) before, but that doesn’t stop it from being enjoyable. Despite being 3D, battles are pretty fast-paced with actions happening quickly. They’re certainly quicker than DQVIII’s, whose battles were hampered by some awful loading times, but they’re slower than the 2D games and remakes.

The alchemy system makes its return from DQVIII, and it’s every bit as useful as it was there. You’ll want to become accustomed to finding materials and using alchemic recipes to make items, because buying equipment gets a incredibly expensive, especially later in the game. You can often make better equip
ment via alchemy as well, and finding materials is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than constantly fighting enemies for gold, since many of them don’t drop that much — and if they do, they don’t drop much EXP. The downside to using the alchemy pot in this game is having to Zoom to the same location to use it, but you no longer have to wait for it to produce your item.

Koichi Sugiyama’s music here is unfortunately not his best work. One of the problems comes from hearing the best track in the game (the Observatory theme) very early in, and very little comes close to matching the quality of that theme. It’s not a bad soundtrack, but it’s thoroughly underwhelming and below the level of quality we’ve come to expect from Sugiyama in comparison to previous games.

If you have a DS and like RPGs, Dragon Quest IX is an essential purchase. It’s easily one of, if not the, best game in the genre on the system. It’s also fairly lengthy; after the 40-60 hour quest, treasure maps can be acquired and quests available for download — actually “download,” since they’re just unlocked. What you’ll find here is an adventure filled to the brim with heart and soul. The most memorable aspect of the game isn’t the story itself, but the way it tells its story.