Originally released in 1994, Dragon Quest VI was the final game in the Dragon Quest series on the Super Famicom (the Japanese Super Nintendo). North Americans, however, hadn’t had a Dragon Warrior game (the name of the series everywhere but Japan up until 2005 – yes, this gets a little complicated) since Dragon Warrior IV on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and wouldn’t see one again until Dragon Warrior VII on the Playstation in 2000. For fans of the series, this meant an agonizing wait for those two Super Famicom games to make their way here – Dragon Quest V was eventually remade for the DS, and Dragon Quest VI is the final, formerly unofficially translated main series Dragon Quest game to make its way over to North America.
What anyone who is getting into this game should know, especially if they have some experience with the considerably more flashy and modern Dragon Quests VIII or IX, is that despite the beautifully remade graphics and the same cheery atmosphere and witty writing that the Dragon Quest games are known for, Dragon Quest VI is a frighteningly difficult game. Battles are handled in the traditional Japanese Role-Playing Game turn-based, menu-based paradigm that has been the norm since, well, the original Dragon Warrior, and players expecting a gentle difficulty incline are going to be in for a real shock. I died three times in the first ten minutes, killed by the cutest little slime monsters.
This predicates the need for that staple of the JRPG: relentless and endless “grinding,” which entails fighting as many randomly-encountered monsters and raising your experience points enough to be able to survive the many enemies and bosses that you encounter on your journey. While this is perhaps a bit of a modern game design taboo, it is a hallmark of the Super Famicom era of game development, and I was glad that Square Enix and ArtePiazza didn’t water this down. It’s perhaps a bit of a chore, but an infinitely rewarding one.
So far what I’ve described could be a description of any JRPG released before 2004, though, so what sets any JRPG apart from another one is the story, and in that area, Dragon Quest VI is good, if not particularly amazing. The game implements a similar “light world/dark world” setup as the classic Zelda game, A Link to the Past, and another JRPG staple, the amnesiac hero, is in full swing here. After the imaginative narrative structure of Dragon Quest V, though, Dragon Quest VI’s return to a more traditional progression is comfortable and done about as well as it could be, but can’t be seen as a little bit of a disappointment.
What saves it, though, is the writing and the scenario planning, and at that, legendary series director Yuji Horii succeeds beautifully. This is, as has become custom with the Dragon Quest series, a pun-filled, witty and sometimes surprising adventure. The occasional extremely beautiful sequence, such as the festival at Weaver’s Peak, are subtle and amazing, and the updated DS graphics do an amazing job of maintaining the charm of the sprite graphics of the Super Famicom version while bringing a new fidelity to the proceedings.
The new features of the DS game aren’t anything to get too excited about, though. Outside of a “slime curling” minigame that is relatively challenging and, as a big curling fan, I was happy to see in such a major release, there’s not much here – in fact, some things such as the monster-catching job are excised completely. These are things that might stew a Japanese player who put in some time with the original, but for North Americans who are getting this game for the first time, it’s hardly a dealbreaker – simply getting this game at all is reward enough.
All in all, Dragon Quest VI is nothing if not traditional. That’s not a criticism – 1994 is, by all rights, a very “traditional” time in lineage of video game development, and having Square Enix change anything up in this regard for a remake would have been infuriating at best. This is by no means the best JRPG ever made (though it is perhaps one of the most representative I’ve ever seen, considering how many staples of the genre are included in this game0, nor is it even the best Dragon Quest game, but it is certainly invaluable for the connoisseur of the Dragon Quest series or for those who are interested in the progression of the RPG in general.
This review was originally published, in abbreviated form, in The Carillon, the University of Regina students' newspaper.