My Thoughts About New Dragon Quest X Information

It has finally happened. More information about Dragon Quest X has finally been revealed! Since the announcement of the game in 2008, Square-Enix had released little to no information about the game. That hadn’t changed for two whole years, until this week. To everyone’s surprise however; Dragon Quest X wasn’t announced as a traditional JRPG like everyone thought it would, but instead as an MMO.

This revelation has sparked quite a bit of an argument amongst gamers. As a longtime fan of the series, I myself am a bit worried about this decision. So bear with me as I name a few concerns that I have with this decision.

First of all, why an MMO? Of all the JRPG’s on this planet, the last game that I thought would become an MMO was the Dragon Quest series. DQ games have been known to keep their traditional gameplay mechanics. There have been very little improvements from DQ to DQIX. The main reason for keeping these games extremely traditional is because Japanese gamers love to keep their favorite JRPG of all time simple and easy. If Japan isn’t happy with what Square-Enix is doing with the DQ franchise, they tell the world and Square-Enix listens, mainly because DQ games are the highest selling JRPG games of all time in Japan. Most of the franchises sales come from Japan alone so it’s no wonder that Square-Enix takes just about anything Japanese gamers have to say, to heart.

When Dragon Quest IX was first shown, Japanese gamers were outraged because certain traditional gameplay mechanics from the previous DQ games had been altered. After SE heard about what these gamers had to say, they changed some of the mechanics to make em happy. With this idea in mind, why the hell did SE think it was a good idea to make DQ into an MMO? Do they really believe that these gamers, who have fought and complained about keeping DQ traditional, would really be into playing a DQ MMO? I mean, why not make it a spin-off instead of a numbered title. I never quite understood why SE did this with the Final Fantasy Franchise as well (ex. FFXI, FFXIV).

Another thing you have to take into consideration is SE’s track record with developing MMO’s. Final Fantasy XIV launched with some of the biggest issues an MMO had ever launched with. FFXIV launched with server problems, glitchy combat/gameplay, and ridiculous PC hardware requirements. SE had promised longtime FFXI fans for an amazing MMO experience if they purchased FFXIV, but damn did they deliver anything but that. If I’m not mistaken, what was once supposed to a subscription based MMO has turned into a completely free game because of the shit that they pulled. So anyways, this alone make me not want to purchase DQX already.

If anyone has been wondering if DQX will still be developed for the Nintendo Wii, yes it will, along with a somewhat improved Wii U version. So far, from what SE has released about the game, the Wii version will be a strictly subscription based MMO. The Wii U version will supposedly have a single player mode, but the catch is, you will still have to pay to play the game (yes, even in single player mode...). SE has said that you can play about 6-7 hours of the game offline, but will eventually be forced to connect and pay a monthly subscription fee to finish the whole game. Assuming the Wii U version costs around $60 like a standard Next Gen game on the X360 and PS3, then that would mean that you would pay $60 + monthly fee to finish a single player game. Even as a huge fan of this series, I find it extremely hard to believe that I would be ok with paying extra in order to finish a game that should’ve been free to play, once purchased, to begin with.

There are also rumors stating that the game will have some sort of 3DS connectivity, what you will actually be able to do with that, has yet to be revealed. One other thing I’d like to mention is who is actually developing this game. To my surprise it’s actually an in-house project. SE is actually going to develop this game completely. The reason I mention this is because DQVIII and DQIX were both developed by Level 5. Both games were great DQ games and a lot better than DQVII was (which was SE last in-house developed DQ game). Level 5 were the first to truly show what DQ was always meant to look like by showing off Akira Toriyama’s art in full. Toriyama is the artist of the most popular based action manga of all time, Dragon Ball Z. They also went as far as to change the way the fighting scenes worked. Instead of just looking at the demons that you are fighting and reading texts at the bottom of the screen, you could actually see the character attack the demon in full, rather than just hearing the attacks. This is something that hadn’t been changed in a DQ game since its first installation of the series. Although I have always been a fan of SE games, they haven’t always been the best at developing their own games. There in-house developed games have actually been complete ass if you ask me, so this seems like a really stupid decision on their part.

Above all, I still don’t know whether to be really excited or extremely scared about how the latest entry in the DQ series will turn out. I hope SE thinks twice before selling a half assed, subscription based game. If people want to play an MMO they can pay, but there’s no way in hell I’m paying to play a single player game. 

Here is some gameplay footage, if anyone is interested.