Dear Readers,
It's finally here! I've been waiting years for this game. I mean, Dragon Quest VI came out here in 2011. Before this game was released, the only games in the main series released physically in Europe were IV, V, VI, VIII and IX. With this release, that gap has finally been filled! All we have left now are I, II and III. I know they're on Android, but I'd rather play them on a Nintendo system. The GBC versions on Virtual Console would be lovely, or perhaps a physical compilation!
The 3DS menu splash logo for this game has a slime hopping through the VII like a rotating door and it plays a snippet of the traditional file select screen theme.
On booting, the Square Enix logo appears in the top screen and copyright on the bottom screen. Then the top screen changes to the Artepiazza logo. Total transition is about 5 seconds and they're unskippable unfortunately.
Artepiazza! The last game I played developed by them was Dragon Quest VI and I loved their other games like Opoona too!
The opening plays the overture with seagulls flying over the sea and the camera pans over the island. Nice blue seas and skies! Unlike the logos, this is skippable.
Oh man, the loading icon is an egg timer in the shape of two slimes with the tops of their heads attached! Cute! It loads too fast to enjoy them though, which is a good thing ultimately :)
The game opens with a camera pan over the island. It cuts to me, a kid wearing green clothes with a green hood. Kinda like Link but not quite! I'm here in an ancient looking place with Prince Kiefer, a taller dude with blond hair and red clothes. He asked me to keep my mouth shut about this place and I said Yes. This place is forbidden for us to mess around in but Kiefer is determined to find out the truth about the world. He refuses to believe that our home island is the only island in the world like we're lead to believe. Together, we pushed the stone slab into the wall.
That night I was at the harbour in front of my house with Maribel, a girl wearing a green and red dress and orange hood. She wanted to know what Kiefer and I were up to and asked if I still wasn't going to tell her. I said No and she came back with the double negative taunt! Oops! She taunted further and seemed determined to find out what we were plotting and was gonna tell everyone! Yikes... seems like a busybody...
The pilchard harvest was the next day, so she had to run off home to bed, but not without calling me "Mr. Mysterious". She seems like a handful...
I could now move around. The first thing I did was go around breaking barrels. The character does this by smacking them with his hands so it's nice and quick enough. Not as quick as in the DS remakes where it's an immediate break, but not as long as the PS2's VIII, where the hero has to pick a barrel up before breaking it.
I talked to the cat who replied "Meow!" and I found some gold coins on the top of the church.
Then I tried the camera controls with the L and R buttons and my heart broke. The camera wasn't inverted and there was no way to set it! It was like this in the other DS remakes too but... I hope I don't fall off any cliffs by accident. Thankfully, the game isn't arcade action skill heavy.
I went to the church to talk to the Priest. He asked if I wanted to hear more about what lied beyond the sea and I said Yes. He talked about how he went out in a boat when he was young to find anywhere else in the world that could've existed but he couldn't find anything. He and the nun both just told me to go home to bed at this point as my poor mother would be worried about me.
There was no one else to talk to in the village besides the cats and everywhere else was locked up for the night, so I just headed home. My parents were sleeping. Pollock, my dad, was snoozing in that Dragon Quest way, the "Ah-phew... Ah-phew...". Pearl, my mother stirred slightly and told me to go up to bed.
I went upstairs after rummaging around and found some gold. Found a leather hat next to my bed as well so I equipped it. The menu's nice and speedy and comes up straight away. The equipment screen has a transition but it doesn't have to load. I turned in for the night.
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