The GWJ JRPG Club 2018 - Dragon Quest VII

Is the availability of the final dungeon clearly marked? Regardless, that's good to know! Thanks for the tip!

Based on your last update, you're still a pretty good distance away. You won't need to worry about it until after Maribel leaves your party for a bit, and then comes back.

bobbywatson wrote:

Is the availability of the final dungeon clearly marked? Regardless, that's good to know! Thanks for the tip!

Yep. You'll know it when you get there. There's a long quest line leading up to unlocking it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Hey, just a heads up that there's a game-breaking bug in the end game. I didn't encounter it, but I'm glad I read about it.

After the final dungeon becomes available, if you want to backtrack through past islands to clean up collectibles, don't have Maribel in your party. Doing so could result in her being removed from your party and the fourth character slot being permanently empty.

Spoiler:

The gist of it is that if you trigger an extra cutscene on an island where you aren't expected to have had Maribel in your party (i.e., anywhere you went while her father was sick), the game will kick her out of your party for the cutscene but not empty that character slot again afterward. You'll get stuck with a three member party, and you won't be able to swap in Maribel at all.

The recommendation is that once the final dungeon is available that you play on a new save slot from that point onward.

The PS glitch I ran into was different from this. Basically, you need to use the 4 teleporters at the end and, except for the fire one, the other 3 just glitched when I tried to use them. So I couldn't do the final spirit quests.

Regarding the 3DS glitch, I think I wasn't too thorough at the end because I just wanted to finish it off so I didn't do any extra content and luckily didn't run into this glitch. I had rotating saves but usually 5-6 hours between them so it would have been super annoying.

Ugh. That would be so frustrating. You were almost done! I'm impressed again that you replayed the whole game after that.

Save bugs always get me, because I am a devoted single saver. But I've now gotten all the pieces of Captain Planet (I assume I'm Heart) so it's time to make a backup save and decide if I want to finish grinding my vocations up or not.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Ugh. That would be so frustrating. You were almost done! I'm impressed again that you replayed the whole game after that.

At a superhuman speed, no less!

Mrgrgr. Died to the last phase of the last boss when he probably only had a couple hundred HP left.

Got him on my second try. I'm done! Just under 55 hours on the in-game clock.

Well, I should say: I beat the final boss, but the farewell tour between that and the end credits is taking foreeever.

Is seeing credits roll the definition of "beat" for the club?

Gotta love the farewell tour! Don't forget to talk to everyone!!

Wembley wrote:

Is seeing credits roll the definition of "beat" for the club?

I have no idea! It's anyways been my personal yardstick for finishing a game, is all.

Which actually bites me whenever games get clever and put important content after the credits. Even if I know that content is there, my brain is so trained to the idea that "credits means finished" that I have trouble sticking around.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

Gotta love the farewell tour! Don't forget to talk to everyone!!

IMAGE(https://tse2.mm.bing.net/th?id=OGC.0ae2d4d4fe88d5fe412543b47221b6a3&pid=Api&rurl=https%3a%2f%2fmedia.giphy.com%2fmedia%2f12g4sNwRaxXiLu%2fgiphy.gif&ehk=%2fBozbK0qdNKSyU4TZqf%2baQ)

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Wembley wrote:

Is seeing credits roll the definition of "beat" for the club?

I have no idea! It's anyways been my personal yardstick for finishing a game, is all.

...

I’m not sure if we have a club definition or not! But for Persona 5: yes, definitely, you’re done when the credits roll.

Now that I'm done with this, I've been thinking about things I thought the game was missing or that would have made for an easier experience. After all, while this started life as Playstation One game, the 3DS version was rebuilt from scratch.

So what would I wave a magic wand and wish for?

Quest markers, for starters. Hell, if I could change one and only one thing in this game, it would be to add optional quest markers. I know that Dragon Quest typically doesn't do quest markers (does XI have them?) and prefers instead to lean on in-game hints from your companions or other advisors.

More often than not, that got me where I needed to go; I'd talk to my companions until I got a solid idea of what to do next, and I was good from there. But when that didn't work—when they didn't say anything or their hints weren't clear—then I was just sh*t outta luck and had to look at a FAQ.

There's little I find more disappointing in a game than having to look at a FAQ because the support structures in the game have failed. At least maybe after I mash the party chat button enough times, someone just shows pity and marks my map. I'd have been fine with that.

Speaking of maps, a world map with labeled locations would have been nice. Even better if it had included things without teleport points like the Dig Site.

I'd have loved to have been able to autobattle with the main character like you can in some of the other games. Hitting confirm to attack wasn't that big of a deal, but it was a lot of wasted button presses. I ended up not really missing sped up combat animations, though, which I used throughout my playthrough of 8.

And last but not least, I wish that farewell tour had just been a cutscene. It took way longer than was necessary, and most of that time was spent doing my least favorite activity in DQ7: blindly talking to everyone until I happened to talk to the right person to be allowed to continue.

Overall, though, I'm really glad I played through this and had a great time. I'm looking forward to diving into Persona 5 with you all next month!

DQ11 would give you pretty much everything from your wish list.

Quest markers? DQ has never done these before, that I know of (can't recall if 9 did, and I haven't played 10, an MMO), but 11 has two kinds. For the main quest, there's generally one pinkish marker in each town highlighting a person who will tell you where to go or what to do next; purple markers indicate people who can give you side quests, which are logged in a convenient quest catalog.

The "go here next" clues are generally much easier to understand and don't require so many intermediate conversations, or talking with everybody in town. In 7, I've been in the same boat as you looking at a FAQ and using party chat heavily, but in 11, I've never needed party chat or a FAQ to figure out where I'm going

The world map? Best I've seen yet. The square button opens up an area map, and you can toggle from each area to any neighboring areas. The area map also shows you the rough location of crafting materials, and fills in with that data as you locate different harvesting points. You can also toggle to the world map, and zoom directly from the map interface rather than opening your spell list. The world map populates with teleportation points as you acquire them, and in addition to Zooming between towns, you can also Zoom to any camp site that you have visited. There's often one, and sometimes two, camp sites per map area, and there are sometimes camp sites in dungeons.

Autobattle? The main character can do it.

Farewell tour? That, I can't yet speak to; ask me again in 2019.

Hey! This isn't the filthy enabler thread!

All threads are filthy enabler threads.

Yes, I think I wouldn't mind giving DQXI a shot one day, no platform to play it on atm of course. Really would have loved auto battle for the MC. One of things I loved about autobattle was that, with so many skills available (too many frankly), the AI did a good job of bouncing around between them even if it didn't really make sense and allowed me to get a feel for which ones were good and which weren't when a boss came around.

The world map with no name markers on PS1? Now that sucked. Also, I knew about the medal compass on 3DS but I didn't realise until the end of the game that you could just open it up in your inventory and it would list text descriptions of locations of the fragments available. Would have been nice to know!

My motto: Always Be Enabling.

I've finished the first adventure! Go me! I'm back where I started now, but hope to make more progress this evening. Around Level 7 I think.

I'm enjoying things at the moment. I find it relaxing in some odd way. Not sure if it's the graphics or the music or the pace, but it's gentle and fun.

I've made a bit more progress, but I did lose a chunk of time wandering around the second island trying to figure out how to move forward. Finally caved in and used the Internets to get moving again.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Quest markers, for starters. Hell, if I could change one and only one thing in this game, it would be to add optional quest markers. I know that Dragon Quest typically doesn't do quest markers (does XI have them?) and prefers instead to lean on in-game hints from your companions or other advisors.

More often than not, that got me where I needed to go; I'd talk to my companions until I got a solid idea of what to do next, and I was good from there. But when that didn't work—when they didn't say anything or their hints weren't clear—then I was just sh*t outta luck and had to look at a FAQ.

That's probably been my only annoyance with the game so far. There have been a number of spots already where the "game" becomes finding the next person to talk to. Additionally, in this latest spot you had to answer an apparently innocent question in a particular way in order for the right thing to happen and the story to continue forward.

Get ready for a LOT more of that (finding the next person to talk with). If you can stand the accidental spoiler or two, you may just want to play the game with a FAQ open.

LastSurprise wrote:

Get ready for a LOT more of that (finding the next person to talk with). If you can stand the accidental spoiler or two, you may just want to play the game with a FAQ open.

I'll probably use a 15-minute rule. If I can't figure it out in 15 minutes of wandering about, I'll look it up.

I've been away from the internet for a few days, but I had my trusty 3DS with me, and I have made significant progress in this (finally).

I think I'm missing a fragment, because I should have had three available destinations, but I only had two (Hubble and Providence). I'm almost done with Providence (I will go finish it as soon as I'm done typing this message, in fact).

One thing that I found annoying at first, when I started playing, was the fact that each village always had virtually the same townspeople. Shirtless muscle guy with leather mask, scholar with spectacles and long nose, old lady with orange dress, important guy in green, etc. it bothered me, and then it didn't for some reason. Considering the number of towns and NPCs in the game, I can understand why they do this (also this probably saves some space on the cartridge). Some palette swapping could have improved things slightly though.

I have to say, I found Providence super annoying, with all the running around through a short cave over and over. I could have used with either a shorter cave, or just nothing at all.

With a five-day weekend coming up, I can see myself spending a significant number of hours playing this and maaaaaaaybe finish it in early January.

Started Greenthumbs. Since Faraday, I'm warming up to the game. The new enemies helped.

Spoiler:

The western edge of present day Faraday sure offered up a sad scene.

Bit of a PSA, for the two or three of us still playing: The 'Next fragment' tip is useful! I was missing one piece for Nottagen. The tip was saying 'Temple Palace', but I went there in both the past and the present, and the fragment detector lied to me by not blinking. So I did not go further. After a bit of googling, it turns out the piece I was missing WAS there. As soon as I spoke to the queen, the detector started blinking.

One of my big complaints!

Mr GT Chris wrote:

That definitely frustrated me. Sometimes the fragment detector would be triggered even though there was no possibility of getting that fragment at that point. Alternatively, there were times when a fragment was nearby (I knew from playing on PS1) but the detector wouldn't be triggered. Basically, some consistency would have been nice.

The part about not being able to get a fragment at a specific point doesn't bother me that much. But I agree: some consistency would be great! Can you think of another fragment for which you had this issue? (I think I'm getting close to having them all, at least the regular ones.)

Met with the Earth Spirit! Two down, two to go.

I got to a new island last night. I'm still Level 7 because there hasn't been much to fight the past couple of nights, but trying to advance things every day.

bobbywatson wrote:

The part about not being able to get a fragment at a specific point doesn't bother me that much. But I agree: some consistency would be great! Can you think of another fragment for which you had this issue? (I think I'm getting close to having them all, at least the regular ones.)

Sorry not really. One thing I remember is being annoyed that whenever I visited the Medal King, my medal detector would go through the roof despite there being no possible way that I could have collected enough medals at that point in the story. Dumb.