This is the best game I’ve played in a while. Definitely the best I’ve played on DS.
The music is awesome. My favourite songs are the boat theme, the song that plays in the grottoes, the song that plays in the observatory, and the Alltrades theme, which anyone should be embarrassed not to recognizing as the DW1 title theme.
The game is short enough that you can probably beat it in 20 hours if you wanted to. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to though. I’ve logged over 160 (that’s one-hundred and sixty, not a typo) just from exploring the game’s various systems and abilities and I still haven’t bothered to finish it, even though my characters are probably strong enough to beat two of the final boss at once. And I’m not even a little bored. The alchemy system is very fun to explore, and the fact that the game tracks a bunch of your stats and gives you accolades for doing certain things makes me naturally want to play it to death.
The graphics are typical DS 3D like you’d find in a game like Rune Factory. My only problem with them is that most of the NPCs are sprites whereas your own characters are all rendered in 3d. Overall, the graphics contribute to the atmosphere about as well as you could expect DS graphics to.
The fights are pathetically easy compared to previous games, but there’s more than enough other content to make up for it, and even though the monsters are easy to beat, I still have fun fighting them, much in the same way you never get bored of popping goombas. The game does a lot to reduce the need for grinding. Characters level up VERY quickly, and a lot of the rarest item drops can be stolen or found on the world map instead of gambling on a lucky kill. A lot of the alchemy ingredients can be bought in shops. Like other DQ games, you’ll mostly be fighting for money, but only if you care to. You can complete the story portion of the game without a whole lot of grindstone, if any.
The story itself is great. It’s the kind of story you find in a game that isn’t trying to be the best game you’ll ever play. It’s a humble story. But it’s that humble atmosphere that makes it so charming. There are a few pretty dark story arcs that a kid would never realize are dark, but would totally creep out a more mature player who “gets” them. I found the arc about the living doll and the Coffinwell arc pretty damn creepy, but a kid playing this game would only think “walking doll! MAGIC!” and the way the story kind of plays double duty like that is impressive to me. So, while I consider the story humble, in no way do I want to imply it’s not written with finesse. It IS.
There are downloadable story (and non-story) quests and an online item shop you can connect to via wi-fi. I don’t play a lot of online RPGs, haven’t really touched one since Diablo2, so I can’t compare it with other games, but I’ve enjoyed this content enough to say it adds a lot to the game. You can also invite other characters to your world from someone else’s game and fight battles with them, or they can run around on their own, stealing loot from your world. You can assign them rooms in your hotel, and there are even bonus items you can get from having enough friends in your hotel at once. The only downside is that you need to remove your fourth party member to make room for the new guy.
Uh, that’s all for now.
I think you’ll enjoy it though. I would only recommend not to try to “fit it in.” If you don’t have a lot of time, you should probably wait until you do. Like I said, it doesn’t TAKE a lot of time and the pacing is great imo, but I just kinda feel like you’ll do it (and by extension, it’ll do you) more justice to not feel like you’re on a deadline with this one. JMO.