I'm not quite sure yet, but it looks like once you learn an ability, you can use it no matter which vocation you have at the moment.

Anyway... is it just me or does this game feel more old school than IV and V, in that you are kind of left on your own? I am not really digging the lack of guidance. I don't want to be on rails, but no one is telling me where I should be going. It's kind of a pain, I don't want to explore and talk to every villager in every town to find the one that may give me a clue.

I really have to wonder if I actually want to sink more time into this game. I like Dragon Quest and all, but charm only goes so far.

I thought that one woman who uses the dream dew (or whatever it's called) lets you know what your next objective is. At least I've spoken to her once when I wasn't sure where to go next and she pointed me in the right direction.

I'm about 4 hours into the game, and I'm enjoying it! So far, there aren't any major changes from the previous games (DQ IV and DQ V), but that's ok.

I like the story and the characters so far. Carver and Milly have joined up with me now. I'm looking forward to learning more about this different world, and why the people here are not able to see me, as if I were a ghost. How is this world connected to my own?

I know there are some changes to look forward to, such as the vocations which are explained in the instruction manual (being able to change from Warrior to Mage to Merchant, for example). I just haven't made it there yet!

I'm making my way through the long dungeon heading toward the evil one they've been mentioning throughout the game: Murdaw.

I have my fourth party member, Ashlynn. She's still very weak; it's taking a while to level her up to where the rest of the party is.

I just wanted to post an update to say: I hate Arrghgoyles! They're the reason I'm stuck in this dungeon for so long; they keep wiping out my party with their powerful magic attacking all party members!



The worst part is when two of them show up together. One at a time is enough, thank you very much.

And it seems there's really no better equipment I can get for Ashlynn right now; money's not the issue. Guess I just have to keep grinding my way through here!

Other than that, the game has been pretty solid!

And I have found out the truth about the worlds I've been traveling to and fro. Very cool stuff, interesting to see where it goes from here.

EDIT: OK, made it past the dungeon and the boss. Adventure will now continue...

Yikes, I think I've died more times in this game so far than I have in both the DS IV and V combined! 12 hours in, and I have my new party member: Nevan. I'm making my way through Murdaw's Keep, and it's awesome how this ties back to the scene we saw at the beginning of the game. The enemies here are much tougher! I absolutely hate the enemies that cast Whack and kill of my party members in one hit.

I wanted to explore the area for treasures, but the problem is I can't exit this area with the Evac spell, and Zoom doesn't work either. So I'm forced to survive until I can defeat... Murdaw! He's pretty tough, especially his second form (darn his powerful magic attack that hurts all party members!). But I will make it. Carver is a powerful ally, I just need to make sure he stays alive.

Also, I bashed a pot and ran into the dreaded Urnexpected! What a nuisance; I should have realized he was absorbing MP and thus was able to cast his Whack spell many times.

Current party member levels: Hero lv 21, Carver lv 22, Milly lv 19, and Nevan lv 15.

Hhmm, you know, I may go check out that one water well in that one village where the lady is standing and see if I'm strong enough to face the powerful monsters down there. It seems like it's a bonus dungeon or something.

EDIT: Almost 2 hours later and I finally defeated that bastard! Ugh, why did they give him the ability to attack with two powerful magic spells in a row??? I could barely keep everyone healed while still managing to slowly damage him in the process. My hero died during the battle, and I kept using Nevan's Zing spell to resurrect him, but it simply has a low success rate (and I'm wasting her turn when she should be healing)! I'm glad that battle is finally over, but considering the game is far from over, I'm afraid of what difficulties lie ahead...

I'm at the part of the game where I can choose vocations for my party members and the world opens up for me to explore. Since most of the world map is unexplored at this moment, I can either wander around to my heart's content or seek some guidance on where I should go. I choose the latter, so I headed to Madame Luca's place and she was quite helpful. I'm guessing she will be the one I turn to if I ever have questions on where to go. (First place to check out: village of Scrimsley!)

The vocation system is a pretty nice change from the previous DQ games on the DS! I have no clue whether there is a 'recommended' vocation path for any of my characters, though it makes sense to choose certain vocations based on the role some of my party members have taken on in the game so far (like, choosing 'Warrior' for the hero and 'Martial Artist' for Carver). I also like the fact that I can change to a different vocation any time to learn different abilities; it really gives my adventure a sense of customization.

I'm going to try and get back into this game. My old save files say I played for 10 hours... I'm starting over. I remember nothing about this game.

@Guillaume I was able to get to 50 hours over summer. The game is great but it really starts to get confusing and misdirected after a while. Most dq games have you exploring the world and trying to figure out where to go next, this one is more confusing because you have to interact between the two places... Ugh...

I never beat the game, but I got far enough to finish the dq6 experience and not feel bad about shelving it.

Scrawnton said:

@Guillaume I was able to get to 50 hours over summer. The game is great but it really starts to get confusing and misdirected after a while. Most dq games have you exploring the world and trying to figure out where to go next, this one is more confusing because you have to interact between the two places... Ugh...

I know what you mean. For example, I thought I would be able to get some general direction on where to go next by talking to Madame Luca, but unlike last time, she now offers no help on where I should head next. With the large world mostly unexplored (in both places, though I assume I should stay in one for now because I have the ship there), I suppose the game is intentionally designed such that I'm supposed to get a little lost as I explore and determine, on my own, what I should be doing next.

I'm still playing my game; I just took a short break playing some Wii U in between sessions.

I just hit another powerful 'boss' encounter that I will have to figure out how to get through...

@roykoopa64 I will put the game in my 3ds when I get home to see where I'm at. The game is really tough.

I think it really shows that a different developer handled DQ after V. And IMO they're not as good. They had high ambitions, but making the biggest world possible isn't always the best idea.

@Guillaume the narrative in 6 is not nearly as good as 5, but the world is better and there's way more to explore. I think 6 is the longer and better game, but that's because 5 was so story based.

@Scrawnton

You and I have completely different tastes in RPGs: I'd much rather have the more linear but IMO better-paced DQV than any of the other DQ games. Pacing over freedom, I say. At least in this type of RPG, anyway: freedom usually just means getting lost and not really knowing where to go while being assaulted constantly by invisible enemies. I dig freedom in Fallout games, though. The freedom to pimp my wife and to collect bottle caps.

Anyway, I'm getting close to the point where I stopped playing last time, I believe. In about half the time, I now have Ra's mirror. We'll see if I just quit again once the game stops holding my hand..

I've caught up with where I was when I stopped last time. I don't think I'll quit, this time.

This game has some severe pacing issues. Or at least, the way it pushes you forward and presents you with new things to do could have used an overhaul.

No wonder I quit the first time: there is nothing in the story to push you forward. At the 10 hour mark, you kinda beat the boss of the game (I'm sure he comes back, but for all intents and purposes, he's beaten because everyone thinks he is), the only plot threads that could make you curious enough about the rest of the game to go on is that you need to figure out why the monsters are still around. Not a super interesting motivation and no character in the game really seems to care.

You are clued to the fact that you can go to Alltrades Abbey and change your profession but again, it's kind of presented as something to do for its own sake. Not because there is a story imperative to do so, but because it's something you might want to mess around with. But having "completed" your mission already, why would you?

Madame Lucca does point you towards a certain village, where you can recruit (or in my case, mess up and fail to recruit, forever) a new character. But why? Again, you've completed your quest, so what's the point?

Once you've done this one thing she points you to, well, she stops saying anything useful. You're left to figure it out on your own, which is extremely tedious. I'm all for exploration and discovering things, but Dragon Quest VI does exploration and discovery poorly. It feels less like there is a vast world out there for you to explore, and more like you're lost and directionless, and to get unlost, you must tediously revisit every town and talk to everyone you've already talked to. Sometimes they'll say something slightly different than before, but absolutely useless. Sometimes they'll just repeat what they've always said. In every case, it's uninteresting and unfun.

Then one day you might stumble upon the one guy they want you to talk to again. It feels arbitrary, and the truth is that every moment spent doing something other than talking to this guy has been a colossal waste of time. Every place except the place you're supposed to be at is nothing but a dead end.

Some games, especially Western RPGs (gasp!) like Fallout, do exploration right: you can go off the beaten path, and there is more often than not something there for you to do. If you get to a town too early to advance the story, you can usually still do a couple of sidequests. You can break and enter into houses, steal crap, gain experience and knowledge. In DQVI though, all you'll find are characters who have nothing to say to you because you're not supposed to be there yet. You'll find gear too expensive to be affordable at that point. And you might get murdered by the powerful monsters in the area.

Being lost in DQVI is BS, and the worse thing is that the game is designed so you'll be lost and directionless a bunch of times. It boggles the mind.

I do think it's worth noting that the game originally came out in 1995, so it isn't exactly fair to compare it to more recent games like Fallout. Though I s'pose it could also be argued that they should have taken this remake opportunity to fix the issues...

The main problem in my opinion is that they stop giving you clear directions AND don't give you a compelling reason to go on (no real quest) at the same time. It ends up kind of "feeling right" to stop at the 10 hour mark. That should never happen, and I don't recall the classics doing that.

Isn't there more going on than "why haven't the monsters all vanished"? It's been a while since I played, so I kind of forget a lot of what happened. Did they figure out why the two worlds exist? Did the Hero figure out why he can't normally be seen in one of the worlds? Part of why I'm asking is because I'm actually about where you are in the game, just a couple points ahead of you. I wanted to get back into the game but I forget some key things about the story.

I do agree that the game could use more direction though, there are points like this in all DQ games but they're not as bad or as early as things are here. I actually didn't find out about the vocations for a while, and by the time I got some, the Hero and Carver are now too high of a level to gain vocation points from all enemies available at the areas I'm in.

Still, in the original DQ, I thought it was strange that I didn't beat the game when I rescued the princess. It was sort of weird to keep going after that. In DQ II, the whole world opens up when you get the boat, and there's, like, no real direction where you should go for the remainder of the game. I think that part is worse than DQVI's lack of direction, and easily the worst DQ game. DQIII had a few directionless points, I think when you get the bird is one, and when you go to the underworld is another. DQIV and V have more focus than the others, for sure, but still have such points in IV's chapter 5 and V's final generation. DQVIII is also pretty focused, but again has that point when you get the bird. I never played VII or IX yet.

@Mop it up

Yeah, the two unresolved threads are "Where is your physical self" and "Why are there still monsters after Murdaw's death", but I don't find either of them very compelling. It's very subjective, I guess. I just didn't care to see what happened next.

I can now travel under the sea.

I like the unconventional modes of transportation in the game. First, a flying bed, and now, an air bubble to scour the ocean floor, which reminds me very much of Final Fantasy Legend III. That said, I'm just about ready for the game to conclude, and yet I know I have tons of hours left to go. So the fact that the already huge overworld is now effectively twice as big as it was before is kind of annoying.