Dragon Quest Retrospective: Dragon Quest X’s History of Disappointment (Summer Flame Day 2021)

 

If there’s one topic I’ve mentioned on the blog and our Discord server a lot, it’s the lack of Dragon Quest X in the west.  For a series that had its ups and downs regarding localization, it seemed for a while that we were no longer going to miss out on any of the main series’ games once we started getting localizations again with Dragon Quest VII.

Perhaps my feelings are strong about Dragon Quest X because Square-Enix seemed dedicated to making sure their North American fans didn’t miss out on both the Final Fantasy games we originally missed with the collections on the PlayStation, and then later the Final Fantasy III remake on the DS, and the Dragon Quest games we originally missed by releasing remakes on the DS.  This was a commitment that fans like myself took to mean that we would not lose out on future games from the company.  Unfortunately, the Dragon Quest Monsters games continue to be hit and miss in the west: Caravan Heart was skipped, as were Joker 3, the third and final game in the Joker trilogy of which we got the first two, and Terry’s Wonderland, a remake of the first game in the series.  In 2012, this hit and miss attitude extended once more to the main Dragon Quest series.

The recent 35th Anniversary Livestream showcased several new Dragon Quest games and promised worldwide releases for nearly all of them… except Dragon Quest X.  This is the latest in a long history of refusing to localize the game.

Dragon Quest X was first announced in December 2008, supposedly by accident.  If you were wondering why you kept hearing a stern whistle during the 35th Anniversary Livestream, this was likely why.  Yuji Horii is apparently very good at talking about stuff he’s not supposed to yet.  It was thrown in randomly during a press conference meant to discuss Dragon Quest IX‘s then imminent release and then wasn’t brought up again.

With the announcement that the game was in development for the Wii, I’m not going to lie, that was what sold the Wii for me.  I was and still am pretty big into the Dragon Quest series and this was during a time when I was buying consoles based solely on the idea that the next game in a series I like was being developed for that system.  Final Fantasy XIII sold me a PS3 and it turned out to only be an okay game.  Believe it or not, the game that sold me a Nintendo DS was Lunar: Dragon Song.  And I bought the Wii in anticipation of Dragon Quest X.  It helped that other games were available that I wanted to play on it, but Dragon Quest X was the game I was anticipating the most.

I admit to feeling a little let down when I heard that the game was going to be an MMORPG in September 2011.  The game was also in development for such a long time that a version was also announced for the Wii U.  This was also before I tried out Final Fantasy XIV and popped my subscription-based MMO cherry.  I still kind of wish they didn’t make numbered games into MMOs, but that’s a rant for another day.

On August 2, 2012, the game launched in Japan on the Wii.  It was practically a given that it would release only in the Japanese market since at the time, it was normal for Dragon Quest games to release first in Japan and then eventually come to the west, usually after about a year.  This was often due to the sheer amount of text the localization teams would have to work with.  I’ve heard rumours, although nothing official, that this is the reason party chat was removed from the DS version of Dragon Quest IV when localizing it.

Instead of a localization of the Wii version, Square-Enix focused instead on finishing and releasing the Wii U version in Japan, and it launched on March 30, 2013.  Since the Wii was considered aging hardware at that point, there was little chance of the original release leaving Japan.  It definitely didn’t seem worth it to try to spend a year localizing that version of the game when the Wii U would already be out by the time the Wii version would’ve been ready to release overseas.

There was also the question of who would localize and publish it.  On the Nintendo DS, Square-Enix had published Dragon Quest IV, Dragon Quest V and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker worldwide, but it was left up to Nintendo to bring Dragon Quest VI and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2 to the rest of the world.  It’s no wonder the third Joker game didn’t make it across the Pacific.

Since Square-Enix seemed disinterested in publishing it themselves and Nintendo also likely didn’t want to keep doing Square-Enix’s job, Dragon Quest X remained locked in Japan, even when a version on PC was released later in 2013.

Also in 2013, the game’s first expansion was released, followed by a second in 2015.  With three full games worth of material to localize, the chance that Nintendo would do the job for Square-Enix was looking to be even more slim.

If we’re being honest, it wasn’t just Dragon Quest fans that had been left wanting on Nintendo’s consoles, especially the Wii.  Just look at how long it took for Nintendo of America to release Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story, even after fans made it clear that there would be a big enough market for those games to justify publishing them.

The Dragon Quest series has always fared much better on Sony’s PlayStation consoles.  Not only did the (at the time) PlayStation exclusive Dragon Quest VII end the main series’ North American drought in 2000 (Dragon Quest Monsters was released in 1998), Dragon Quest VIII was released as well and we were even promised a 2002 release date for the PlayStation version of Dragon Quest IV, but the age of the system was cited as the reason the localization was cancelled.  When the series returned to the PlayStation brand of consoles in the mid 2010s with games like Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree’s Woe and the Blight Below, Square-Enix was once again publishing the series and claimed to be testing the waters to see how popular it was in the west.

2016 ended up being a big year for Dragon Quest X.  A version for the PlayStation 4 was announced that year as well as one for the Nintendo Switch.  With the game appearing on a Sony console, it looked like this might finally be the push it needed to officially release outside of Japan.  Sadly, this was not to be, as not even these versions of the game have had English localizations announced, despite that a Chinese version of the game was launched in 2016.

2016 was also when the infamous interview occurred where it was stated that if there was enough fan support for Dragon Quest X, it might release outside Japan.  Five years later, and it feels more like the kind of “if” that Lady Tremaine said to Cinderella, especially since interviews as far back as 2014 also expressed interest in bringing the game over.

The PlayStation 4 and Switch versions both launched in 2017, just in time for the third expansion, followed by a fourth in 2019.  It was also in 2019 that the game ceased to be region locked, and unlike an accidental and temporary unlocking of the game in 2014, this was permanent.  Players outside of Japan were finally allowed to play the game, although an English release still evaded us, even though this would’ve been yet another perfect time to announce a localization.

This is basically where we are today.  In 2021, the fifth expansion was announced, along with the disclaimer that “there are no plans for a worldwide release.”  They did not act coy or assure fans of their desire to bring the game to our shores, they just flat out stated that there aren’t plans to release it in English.

That said, when they also announced the off-line version during the same event, the disclaimer was nowhere to be seen.  Theoretically, this could be because they wouldn’t have to set up new data centres and could localize this version like any other game in the series.  It’s also unknown when this version is coming, if it will indeed leave Japan, how faithful it’ll be to the story of the original game and whether it’ll include the story from the expansions.

The offline version is the latest crumb of hope us North American fans have that we’ll get to someday add Dragon Quest X to our game collections.  At this point, it kind of feels like we shouldn’t bother to hope, since Square-Enix seems determined to continually deny us the game.  However, I know that if we did receive this version of Dragon Quest X, I would for sure buy it.

And yet I’m bracing once more to be disappointed.

 

 

To accommodate this week’s Summer Flame Day posts, the Final Fantasy V Retrospective has been postponed until June 30