Joe Majewski » Reviews

What are Accolades used for in Dragon Quest IX? | DQIX List of Collectibles

Joe Majewski — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:52:20 +0000

What are Accolades? Is it possible to collect every Accolade in Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies? What are the benefits of getting new Accolades? Do Accolades do anything to affect gameplay? What other collectibles can be found in Dragon Quest IX? Does Dragon Quest IX have a bestiary? How many quests are there? How many hours does it take to complete Dragon Quest 9?

You’ve got lots of questions, and I’ve got lots of answers.

The only Dragon Quest game that I had ever played (before DQIX) was the very original, and this was back in the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES. It was called Dragon Warrior here in the United States, if memory serves me correctly. I remember it being one of my favorite games for the NES, and this memory made me very excited for the North American release of Dragon Quest IX.

That being said, I cannot stress enough how amazingly perfect this game is. If you haven’t picked it up yet and are still debating, go and get it right now. I will be so bold as to say that Dragon Quest IX will hands-down be your very favorite DS game for a long time.

What are Accolades? Accolades are basically achievements that are earned for reaching certain milestones within the game. Anything from defeating 100 monsters to mastering the art of using swords in battle can help to earn you Accolades.

Is it possible to collect every Accolade? Unfortunately, no. From my understanding, there are Accolades that can be earned for completing the game with a certain playtime, and only one of these Accolades will be awarded, and the others will forever remain unobtainable. This is unfortunate for many gamers, as collecting everything in an RPG is always a nice accomplishment.

What do you get for earning Accolades? Nothing, other than the satisfaction of knowing that you are one step closer to achieving everything that there is to get in the game. Oh, and a flashy screen gets displayed, which always gives a nice sense of accomplishment.

So Accolades don’t affect gameplay in anyway? Correct. They are no-doubt fun to collect, and many come as a surprise to you as you’re playing. I suppose it is possible that the developers made some aspect of the game change upon gaining more accolades, such as higher drop rates for rare items, or changes in monster encounters, but I wouldn’t bet on it. The game has been out in Japan for quite some time now, and if Accolades did anything at all, we’d surely know about it.

What other collectibles can be found in Dragon Quest IX? There is an entire menu system dedicated to showing you a list of just about everything that there is to be found in the game. This becomes available after meeting an NPC known as Stella after playing the game for a few hours or so.

This includes a full bestiary with 3D models, animations, descriptions, drops, and kill counts for all 250+ monsters in the game. The same type of menu accompanies all equipment pieces and weapons that you’ve gathered, and an additional menu for the items collected. You can also view a list of Accolades that you’ve collected.

Does Dragon Quest IX have a bestiary? As previously stated, yes it does. And it’s extremely in-depth, featuring items dropped by the enemy, locations that the enemy can be encountered, times that you’ve defeated the enemy, a helpful description for the enemy, and 3D animation models for every action the monster encounters (animations for the monster being hit by an attack, dodging an attack, entering battle, dieing, and special attacks). It’s the most hardcore bestiary I’ve ever seen in a game. Lots of sales on strategy guides will be lost due to the high-tech bestiary that can simply be viewed from the game itself.

How many quests are there in Dragon Quest IX? The quest log in DQIX is tremendous. In total, there are over 180 quests that you can complete in Dragon Quest IX. Between 100 and 120 can optionally be done during the main story of the game, and the rest are unlocked post-game, with the exception of the bonus quests that can be downloaded via the Nintendo WiFi service. These quests will be released by Square-Enix, and I do not have information on the dates that quests will be available.

How many hours does it takes to complete Dragon Quest IX? Depending on your definition of “completing a game”, this can be answered in a few distinct ways. The storyline of the game will take around 40 to 60 hours for the average gamer to complete.

If you are a hardcore RPG gamer, however, that likes to play your games to death, then I would estimate at least 100 to 120 hours to fill the bestiary, get most or all of the items, equipment, accolades, and finish most or all of the quests. Beyond that, co-op play, treasure maps, and leveling up nearly a dozen classes can keep you playing for 200 hours easily, depending on how far you want to take it. There truly is an almost limitless experience for you to pursue with this game.

Trust me, it will take a long, long time to get bored of this epic, memorable RPG. Cherish it while you can, because this gem will go down in history as one of the greatest games of all time.

Dragon Age: Origins Review

Joe Majewski — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 07:49:48 +0000

Created by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts, Dragon Age: Origins is already one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Although I have not yet completed the game, I have clocked over twenty hours of playtime with just eleven percent completion.

While I tend to play through videogames rather slowly, enjoying the scenery, reading all the dialogue, and doing all the side-quests, I would estimate that the average gamer could take 50 or more hours to beat this game, and much, much more if they take the time to do all of the game’s side-quests. This is my simple estimation, going off of my experience thus far with the game.

The first few hours of gameplay are different depending on the type of character you created, so this game definitely offers players a reason to go back and play through the story multiple times.

Decision-making also impacts the way things unfold, and the options given to the player through dialogue are not always obvious, and players will oftentimes encounter times where they are unsure of what decision to make. Decisions can often lead to the death of an NPC; additionally, your party members may gain or lose respect depending on whether or not the options you chose reflected the way your party members would have reacted to that same situation.

About ten hours into the game a location will open up known as your camp site. This is the point in the game where the world map also becomes available, and you may find yourself unsure of which place to go next. The camp site is a safe place for you to engage in conversation with all of the party members that you have recruited, as well as purchase items and manage your inventory.

The world map consists of a screen with all of your unlocked locations. You will find that the game is extremely non-linear, and once you reach the camp site there will be a half dozen locations that you need to complete, but they can be done in any order you desire.

Upon choosing a location to travel to, an animation of a dotted line following a path across the map to your selected destination will proceed. As the path leads to your destination, there is always a chance of a random encounter mid-travel. These random encounters usually take about ten minutes to complete, and generally involve fighting a lot of enemies. These do not get tedious, however, as once you complete the encounter, the enemies will no longer be there the next time you pass through the zone.

On occasion, you may encounter merchants or other NPCs. The world map is not something that is intended for the player to spend a lot of time traversing. Once you reach your destination, there is a good chance that you might spend five to ten hours of playtime before even seeing the world map again.

The combat system is my favorite part of the game, which comes as no surprise, as without a good combat system, the quality of a game really diminishes. It can almost be compared to World of Warcraft, where your characters will level up, and upon doing so, will be able to learn new abilities as well as increase stat points. Enemies do not respawn in this game, so “grinding” experience in the traditional way is not how it’s done.

At first, that might be a turn-off for many gamers, as most people enjoy RPGs because of the fact that it is possible to overpower your character. But just because the enemies don’t respawn does not mean that you cannot overpower your characters. If you think about it, grinding for experience is a boring and tedious task sometimes. Dragon Age is filled with enough content and optional quests (over 100, I believe) that you could easily overpower your character by getting involved with everything in the game. This makes Dragon Age far superior than traditional RPGs, in my opinion.

Back to the combat system; in Dragon Age, your character will constantly attack the opponent if you tell it do so. Much like in World of Warcraft, you press hot keys like the numbers on the top of your keyboard to perform your abilities, which cost mana. Unlike World of Warcraft, however, you are managing multiple characters at the same time, and this can make many of the battles very engaging and frantic. To compensate for this, you are given the ability to pause the game during battle and queue up certain actions, and many battles would be impossible without this feature, as it is oftentimes fast-paced and extremely tough.

One minor flaw is the dialogue. While there is a TON of dialogue in the game, it seems as if the real-time sequences aren’t emotionally convincing. The dialogue is there, and the story is easy to follow, but there will be times when characters say awkward things. This is most likely due to the extremely massive quantity of dialogue that the game has to offer.

I’m not exaggerating either; you can easily spend 15 minutes chatting with a character if you really want to know a lot more about them, and then after progressing more with the story you will find that the character can share another 15 minutes of blabbering. Don’t get me wrong, the story in Dragon Age is amazing, and it’s always interesting, but sometimes you will run into dialogue options that have already been answered or are no longer relevant.

So far, dialogue is my only complain. I haven’t completed the game yet, so I don’t feel comfortable giving it a review score at the moment. When I complete the game, I will update this with my final diagnosis.

Overall, Dragon Age is probably my favorite dungeon-crawler RPG that I’ve ever played. The combat system is superb, which is something very important in a game of this genre. Fast-paced action, a great leveling system, tough and strategic battles, and dozens and dozens of hours worth of optional gameplay make Dragon Age the perfect RPG for anyone looking for a challenge and has enjoyed games such as Diablo or World of Warcraft.

Dragonica Online Review ( THQ*ICE )

Joe Majewski — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:36:15 +0000

This isn’t a typical blog post like the informative ones that I usually write, but as a programmer and web designer, I have a niche for videogames. In particular, I always like to have an RPG to play, whether it be an offline console game or an online MMO. I would say that I appreciate RPGs because I like numbers, and RPGs tend to rely on them heavily. Playing games also helps me develop ideas of my own for the games that I write myself.

Dragonica Online was launched a few months back in North America by the Publisher THQ*ICE, and it reminds me of a blend between World of Warcraft and Maple Story. Unlike most MMOs, Dragonica has a storyline that doesn’t put players to sleep. During my experience thus far, I have seen over a dozen real-time cut-scenes. Although there is no voice-acting, the text isn’t very cumbersome and is also rather humorous at times.

The graphical style is more cartoonish than it is realistic, but the developers really pulled it off. It is unique in that the environments are 3D, but it is also a sidescroller at the same time. You don’t explore the 3D worlds in the way you would traditionally expect to, but instead you move sideways through the areas, while are limited in your capacity to move “up” and “down”; this reminds of the movement styles of hack and slash games like the classic Streets of Rage series from the Sega Genesis.

Your character begins as either an archer, thief, warrior, or mage. Each class has it’s own unique set of skills which can be attained from earning skill points after leveling up. Each class has an associated skill tree which you use to gain your core abilities. This is very similar to World of Warcraft in that respect.

Upon reaching level 20, your character advances to the next job. You also get to choose a new job depending on your class; for example, a thief can choose to become either an assassin or a trickster after the job advancement. With your new job advancement comes a whole new skill tree, and a skill reset item that can be used to empty your skill trees and gain all of your skill points back (which can be very helpful in the event that you misplaced some of your skill points).

Equipment is a huge part of the game; so much so that a character that is level 25 may be able to out-damage a character that’s level 35 by having the right gear. Gear can be enhanced in two critical ways; enchanting and soulcrafting.

Each piece of gear has it’s own unique soul force value. Thus, two pieces of the same equipment may not have the same stats due to their soul force being different. In general, higher soul force means higher stat bonuses. Soulcrafting consumes “souls” in return for a chance to upgrade your gear’s soul force. You attain “soul” by disenchanting your gear, which consumes your gear in return for a variable amount of soul, which is determined by it’s soul force.

When soulcrafting, you place your gear of choice into a slot. Depending upon it’s current soul force, it will cost a certain amount of soul to upgrade the item. If successful, your item becomes stronger; if it fails, you have a small chance that your gear gets destroyed.

Enchanting your gear is similar to soulcrafting, except that instead of using soul to upgrade it’s stats, you use weapon or armor enchantment powder (which can be found in a variety of ways). The amount of powder that you need increases after each successful enchantment.

Moving on to the battle system, which is my favorite aspect of the game. The battle system is very rewarding, where the experience you earn can be boosted by your combo count, which keeps track of how many hits that you have made on enemies in a row (after a few seconds, this combo count gets erased back to zero). The battle system takes a lot more skill than most RPGs that I’ve played, and feels very rewarding to attain large combos.

Questing is also a large part of the game, where there are hero quests and adventure quests. Hero quests are quests that pertain to the storyline of the game. In order to execute your job advancement, you must first complete all hero quests to that point. Adventure quests are entirely option, but reward players with useful items and experience. Hero quests grant much higher rewards but are also generally more difficult or lengthier to accomplish. There are hundreds and hundreds of quests in the game, keeping players from being forced to grind through levels.

Mission maps are instanced environments where players can group up and go through a series of rooms that ultimately lead to a boss fight. Each mission map has five levels of difficulty. The first four (F1, F2, F3, F4) can be repeatable, but F5 can only be completed once per person, unless you are repeating it with someone else who has not done so yet. The boss fights are fantastic, and from my experience thus far, I have been in battles that have taken upwards of 10, or possibly 15 minutes of fighting.

After winning the mission map, you are a given a grade depending on how well your group performed. The higher your grade, the more items that you will be rewarded. Up to four bonus items can be rewarded at the end of a mission map, and this is generally where most of your gear will be found. Besides gear, rewards consist of enchantment powders, bags filled with money, and experience potions, which instantly grant your character experience points depending upon it’s grade (1 to 4 stars).

The experience curve for leveling up is one of my major complaints. Most games are rather linear, where each level will take a bit longer than the previous level. In Dragonica, the amount needed is linear at times, but then out-of-nowhere jumps to astounding levels, which can be very discouraging when you see yourself gaining .08% from a kill to .04% from a kill after gaining a single level. This is largely due to the level cap currently being at 65 for the North American version of the game, so I could only imagine that after more content is released and the cap is increased that this experience curve will be fixed to make leveling up more “fun” for players, rather than a hassle.

The economy is nice, and whenever you find yourself inside of a town, you can instantly access the “Market”, which is basically like an auction house where players can purchase and sell items from and to other players.

The world map is also very linear, which is something I never see in games like this. When viewing the map, there is a series of areas that move from left to right, which means that you almost never encounter players that are many levels higher than you are, due to the higher leveled areas being completely out of reach. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing, but rather the preference of the player. I can’t really complain about it, as it keeps things simple, where players know exactly where to go and never get lost.

Overall, Dragonica is a fun game that I recommend giving a shot if you are looking for a new and free MMO. It doesn’t take very long to learn how to play, and it’s fun and rewarding. Once again, my only major complaint is the leveling curve, which can be a hassle at times. There is only one server open in the North American version of the game at this time of writing, so if you decide to play, I may very well meet you in-game.

If I had to be a critic, I would give this game an 8.5 out of 10, but I’m not a critic. I just play games, and make them, too.