Review: Dragon Quest IV (& III)

Preface: My RPG review series kinda fell by the wayside (like a lot of other things). This was largely a result of me quitting Dragon Quest III halfway through my first playthrough, and then helped along by the commencement of a separate project in which I've been introducing my significant other to the Final Fantasy series (I'm sparing her the tedium of the Dragon Quest series, because I want her to like the genre, not loathe it), to give her some context when she finally gets to play my own RPG (when it's ready for playtesting). So although I'm no longer playing through the Final Fantasies again myself (although I did play Final Fantasy IIIj for the first time recently), and thus not really writing reviews of them anymore, I consider it a worthwhile tradeoff to share my love of the genre with someone close to me (whom I get to watch playing these games for her first time). In a way, it's a bit like reliving my childhood. In any case, I did eventually go back and restart Dragon Quest III, which I finished, and then continued on to Dragon Quest IV, which I've now also completed. Here are some of my thoughts on those games - you may be relieved to hear that this will be [considerably] briefer than my previous, meandering "reviews".

Dragon Quest IV
(fyi, I'm doing these in reverse order)

This is the most fun I've had playing a Dragon Quest game so far (which bodes well for the next couple of releases). It's still frustrating at times (mainly being pummelled by enemies via a much too frequent random encounter rate) (oh, and using an expensive life spell five or seven times and not having it work...), but not nearly as consistently as in past games. I appreciate giving the Clinics access to the Imperial Scrolls of Honor, as the long trudge to the kings in their isolated halls of stone was becoming entirely gratuitous in DQIII.

I really enjoyed the way the game started with separate chapters, each introducing different characters (character development is still minimal, but leaps and bounds above previous games) that you get to grow a little bit before they all join your party in the last chapter. It was a great way to try out different jobs (merchant was the most fun, and a class that I never would have considered wasting time on before), without feeling like you're committing to something huge. Plus, I like how the extended team works in the latter part of the game much better than the character registration feature (which I never used) in DQIII.

I have mixed feelings about only being able to control the Hero and having the rest of the party on auto-pilot. I like being able to control my party on principle, but in practice, I haven't minded letting the computer take over so much. The AI is pretty decent (with a few exceptions - occasionally overusing useless spells and neglecting useful ones), and it makes the tedious quantity of battles just a little bit less labor-intensive. I've also learned that I can totally use more magic than I would normally ration out without it becoming a problem (in most cases, the OFFENSIVE tactic suited me for wiping out enemy groups more quickly).

It's worth mentioning, before I finish, that I used a couple of cheats - the Sword of Malice exploit in Taloon's chapter, and I used save states to shamelessly game the Casino (gambling sucks) - in order to get some better equipment/more gold (tip: four Meteorite Armbands means I can usually strike first and mitigate a lot of damage I would otherwise receive in battles). But given my experiences with Dragon Quest in the past, this is a game that I (rather uncharacteristically) have NO qualms about cheating at to even up the odds a little. And if it means I have more fun with less headaches, then where's the harm?

Dragon Quest III

Looking back at my notes, the highlights from Dragon Quest III were the introduction of the day/night cycle (which is pretty cool, even if it means you effectively have to explore each town twice), and my increasing confidence in using the Outside and Return spells (now with your choice of destination!), which are like Exit/Warp and fast travel (a Wing of Wyvern in spell form), which go a long way toward making dungeon crawling more manageable.

The combat was still frustrating as hell, though, and the option to switch jobs turned out to be more of a bane than a boon, as I got class change paralysis (not wanting to waste the time growing my experience through tedious battle after tedious battle for making the wrong strategic decision). It was so bad that I quit the game and started over many months later (as counterintuitive as that sounds).

And if I thought the Dragon Quest II endgame was annoying, having to basically replay Dragon Quest I after fighting the pseudo-final boss in DQIII (at which point I'd pretty much checked out) didn't have the novelty for me that I think the developers were going for. The irony is that just before this I had defended long RPG endgames in an online forum (thinking mostly of my fond memories of final dungeons in Final Fantasy - and having just recently played Final Fantasy III on the NES, which has a particularly long one*). But playing Dragon Quest totally flipped my opinion around - I guess it really depends on how much you like the game you're playing, whether you want it to drag on or not.

*Having later watched my SO trudge through the final dungeon in FFIII, only to get whupped by the final boss, and lose at least two hours of progress (it's hard enough finding that kind of time to sit down and play games together quietly at home, in the midst of our busy lives - especially post-COVID), I've gained a little more perspective. Ironically, I'd have to commend the endgame in Dragon Quest IV for being more forgiving - still long and drawn out (although not so bad as in the previous two titles), but more segmented and with ample opportunity for escape/saving your progress. I will certainly be taking this into account as I go into developing the endgame in my own RPG in the near future.

Anyway, it's a wonder I didn't quit the Dragon Quest series full stop after my experience with DQIII, but I can be persistent when I put my mind to something - and I'm glad I didn't quit, because with DQIV, the series finally appears to be turning itself around and beginning to embrace player-friendliness. I look forward to seeing what they came up with for the SNES, which was the golden age for the Final Fantasy series, at least.

Return to Dragonfaith (with Progress!)

Although this blog has been silent for the past year (since my beta release of Ascension), that does not mean that I haven't been busy. I've just been following the philosophy of working more and talking about working less. Moving on from Ascension was a perfect opportunity to return with full focus to Dragonfaith, aided by the longterm stability of my schedule during COVID lockdown (without the ever-present distraction of the outside world intruding into my life). That is now changing (for better and worse), since I have received the vaccine and am re-entering society. Which means this would be a good point to document the progress I've made in the past year.

For many years now, since I upgraded from RPG Maker VX Ace to the new version RPG Maker MV (which by now has already been replaced with RPG Maker MZ - but I'm not upgrading again), I've been locked into the process of transferring everything I'd already completed in VX Ace over to MV. Well, I'm happy to report that I am finally finished with that phase and am developing new areas of my game again. I've completed five new dungeons in the past year (I take pride in my level design, and a lot of time and effort goes into creating a dungeon from a blank page), and I spent over a month last holiday season compiling combat-related graphics, which also means that I have my full enemy roster (including bosses) pretty much picked out.

What's next? Lifting quarantine restrictions (and more trips and social visits) means I will unfortunately be more distracted and less focused, but I'm going to continue on the path I'm walking - finishing up the mapping (I'm getting towards the endgame now). I've also been drafting scenario as I go (which means writing dialogue and also choreographing cutscenes). When I'm finished with the adventure and dramatic aspects of my game, then I can turn my full focus to the action - engineering the combat and tweaking numbers until I have a functional RPG on my hands. That's the part when you'll be able to start testing it.

For the first time since I started developing this game (a sobering seven years ago), before I knew how much work went into making an RPG (especially all by one's self), I can envision a day when it's complete in a playable format, from start to finish (with the same disclaimers I gave for Ascension - it will never be perfect, but at some point you have to put the brush down). I've taken to updating a checklist to give me a [very] rough idea of how far through the development process I am, to inspire me to keep working toward that goal. And also to show that I haven't just been sitting on my hands these past seven years, since I've taken on this mammoth project (to be completed in my free time). Without spoling too many details of the game, here's a chart of my progress:

Mapping:

World Map............................................ incomplete*
Towns/Outposts....................................... 11/13 complete
Dungeons............................................. 13/17 complete

*I know where all the important stuff goes, but filling out a 256x256 tile grid is proving to be a monumental challenge.

Writing:

Scenario/Choreography................................ ~25/32 scenes drafted*
NPC Dialogue......................................... on the light side**
Menu Captions........................................ on the light side**

*This category is approximate since I may feel it necessary to add/remove (more likely add) dramatic moments to the game as I go along.

**This is largely flavor text that I can fill in once the world (and combat mechanics) are more fully realized.

Graphics:

Enemies.............................................. pretty much complete
Battle Backgrounds................................... pretty much complete
Tilesets/Characters.................................. pretty much complete
Skill Animations..................................... indeterminate*

*Animations can be a lot of work, but it depends on how much customization I opt for (which I won't know until I dive more deeply into the combat).

Combat:

Equipment (Items/Weapons/Armor)...................... partially implemented
Skills/States........................................ partially implemented
Enemies/Troops....................................... partially implemented
Math (Growth Curves/Damage Formulas)................. ???

This last category is going to take a lot of work (and may require some coding for unique effects). I've been putting it aside while working on the mapping (although I have a rough outline for much of it, and have worked on bits and pieces of it here and there), but it represents the final hurdle between me and completion. Add to that the world map, and the endgame maps/scenario (which is next on my plate), and that's mainly what I have left to do. So now I'm going to get back to work!

Ascension (Beta Release)

So, technically, I did quietly release the first beta version of Ascension back on the 8th of May. I didn't make an official announcement because I wanted to give my first tester a chance to play through the game, since she's the only one I'll get to actually watch (and witness her reactions) while playing, and I wanted at least one other person to play my game, to reassure me that there weren't any glaring problems that I've overlooked, before I put the word out to friends, family, and complete strangers. I've already made a few changes based on her feedback (nothing world-shattering, but some worthwhile tweaks), so that's why it might look to you like I'm starting with version 1.1. Aside from that, I'm pretty happy with what I've got. (So far, I haven't encountered that one game-crashing bug since I eliminated the one plugin, which is promising). So it's time to release it to the world! Here's a little statement I've prepared:

Ascension is now a complete game that can be played from start to finish. It's not perfect, and I may choose to continue making changes and releasing updates into the future, especially if and when anyone gets a chance to play it and gives me some feedback. But even if I never make another change to it, I can rest assured that it is a game that is, at the very least, out there for people to play. There may be some things you don't like about it. Hopefully, there will be some things that you do. And on the bottom line, I've put in a lot of work to make it fun, and ensure that it is indeed playable. But I'm not a professional game designer - I'm just an amateur, working alone. But how many amateurs can say that they've completed one of their projects in RPG Maker? And as far as completed RPG Maker projects go (which, admittedly, isn't a super high bar in the world of game development), I hope that the quality of this project speaks for itself, however flawed and imperfect it may turn out to be. Because I've poured a lot of my heart and soul into this game; it's not merely something I did for the hell of it, or just to pass the time.

And now, without further ado, go, download the game, play it, and have fun. And let me know what you think of it after you're done. In the meantime, I've got an even bigger project to get back to working on...

Progress Report

I keep telling myself, "you don't need to post another progress report, you'll have the next release ready in a few more days." But then, every few days, it ends up taking another few days, until almost a month has passed since my last update. Every time I run the game, I find something new to change or tweak or fix...

I've finished the cleaning process, and am now doing final testing, to make sure everything is in place, and there are no glaring errors before I release the game to the semi-public. It's pretty much the first time I've played the game start to finish, as I've been testing stages one at a time so far. I was curious to see how long it would take to complete the game. I've beaten it on a speedrun in twenty minutes, but obviously you'll want to take longer than that to savor the story and the atmosphere. On a normal run, taking my time to explore and test everything, I beat it in two hours and forty minutes. Then again, as the developer, I know this game inside and out, so I'd be curious to find out how long it takes others to beat it. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to rate the amount of content in this game in terms of gameplay hours, if it takes different people different amounts of time to complete...

At the moment, I'm going through and taking screenshots of all the levels, to accompany the impending official release. There's just this one annoying bug (Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'width' of null) that I would love to fix, but I can't pin it down. It happens whenever the map is being reset after the player loses a "life". But it's occurred on several different maps, and it only happens once in a blue moon. As such, I can't pinpoint what's causing it, or how to fix it. And even if I did have some idea (and I've had a few), it's hard to test a solution because the bug only pops up every so often. Unfortunately, it's a game crashing bug, and although the automatic progress retainment system in my game (which eschews passwords or save files) would normally render it at most an inconvenience - just restart the game from the level you were at - there is one exception that causes me to be hesitant to release the game as is. I want to make accessing the secret level a challenge, so you have to collect the fragments all in a single playthrough. If the game crashes while you're in the middle of doing that, well...that's a considerable source of frustration that is both completely out of the player's control, and also something the player would justifiably be inclined to curse the developer for not taking care of. So, we'll see...

Update: I believe I know where and when the bug is occurring, but I still don't know why (my best guess is something to do with a timing discrepancy, calling on an object before it's defined), nor can I force it to happen, in order to test a solution. However, there is evidence that a plugin I'm using (a Bind Pictures To Map plugin) may be involved. So, in lieu of being able to fix the presumably problematic portion of code, I'm looking into a workaround that will allow me to ditch the plugin altogether. It's a pain in the ass, but luckily I only needed that plugin in a few places. I have no idea if this will even solve the problem, but if I do it, and I never encounter the bug again, then I'll consider it a victory.

Progress Report

I am still hard at work preparing Ascension for beta release. I've completed an inventory of the resources used, now I am trimming and organizing and cutting out the fat. Other than the reduction in file size (which, 230 MB isn't all that big to start with), most of this work is more for my benefit than the player's, and would be unwieldy for a larger project besides. But I really want to take the opportunity to clean up the project file, because I may not have the chance on my next project. It will take some more time, though.

Revision to Latest Release

So, I nixed the program update, and went back and restructured a portion of the secret level, as explained. I'm sad to lose the portion I lost - due to an inability to perform instantaneous map transfers - but I took the opportunity to add another little flourish, and honestly, I think it's even better this way. I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to spoil the surprise, but I'm super excited about the secret level. I know there's a high bar for access, and many players may never reach it, but I wanted to have something special for those who are willing to go the extra mile.

So I'm releasing a revision to the latest update, with the secret level now implemented and accessible. As far as its feasibility in terms of the difficulty of reaching it - I'm planning to test that myself, but I want to wait until the beta release, because that will give me a good chance to go back through every stage in the game, and make sure everything works the way I want it to. And that will be ready once I perform the "cleaning" functions I alluded to in my last post. But the reason I want to put out this revision first is because I've learned never to trust in the future. In case something happens - e.g., we all die from this global pandemic, or my progress stalls out again, or my files get corrupted in another computer crash - I want what I've accomplished up to this point to be out there, until such time that I have an improved version ready to replace it.

Ascension (MV) Alpha 10.2 (all stages, including ending and secret level)
Download (~230 MB): Windows | Mac [see sidebar for latest release]

Update on the Update

So, I updated RPG Maker MV (to version 1.6.1), and - I suppose this shouldn't be surprising, but - I'm not impressed. It doesn't fix any of the bugs I'd hoped it would fix (no idea what "freeze when changing screen" is supposed to refer to, but it is most decidedly not the map transfer lurch that I hate), and introduces some new bugs (like a weird text glitch on the title screen when I playtest), while threatening to break plugins (I've already had to fix one so far, in a game that uses very few of them). So, it looks like I'm going back to version 1.5.0. God, this is so frustrating. I envy authors who can scribble runes on paper and communicate across eons, while each version of the software I take time to learn works on only a handful of machines, and becomes obsolete before I have the time to finish a single project...

So I'll be going back, making a significant change to the layout of my secret level, and then still polishing up my project and slimming the download file. That might take some time, but when I'm finished, I'm going beta and finally putting this game into the hands of my testers. If I have any.