The Shrine

<div style='font: 14pt Agatha; text-align: left; '>Okay, I'm about 26 hours in at this point. I'm at Krage for those of you who actually care. I'm still enjoying the game a whole lot. It's nice, when in a dungeon, to actually wonder if I'm strong enough to make it all the way through in one shot or to have to build up a little to beat a boss. I've finally hit the job system and am liking it a whole lot. Kind of annoying that I had to play for 20 hours to get to it, but then again I already mentioned that pacing was kind of messed up. The storyline so far has been rather pedestrian. Nothing new or for that matter all that interesting. Let's just say that I'm not playing for the storyline so far, okay? The one thing I am enjoying about it though is that it's very episodic. With the way I play games nowadays that's a god send since I can sit down for a couple hours, complete an "episode", turn the game off, and still feel like I'm going somewhere and accomplishing stuff.

The bad stuff now. The graphics were bad before, but I ran into one glitch in present Dune Village which almost forced me to reset the game at least twice. There's a lot of clipping and similar problems with the 3d environment too. Gameplay problem now. They're waaaaay too fucking stingy with money in this game. Weapons and armor, at this point in the game, are running about 2800-3500 on average, but most fights only dish out 50-75gp each. It's ridiculous. At least I'm finally now starting to get some kick ass spells.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>It's like that with every Dragon Warrior game, mainly because you're not really expected to max out all your equipment at every town. If you do (there's a cheap way to do it in one or two of the games through gambleing) then the enemies in the game are a cakewalk.

There is a job system in every Dragon Warrior game so far, but none nearly as diverse at part 7, usually there is 7 or 8 jobs, I think... In every game, it takes about 15-20 hours until you are able to take advantage of it, and it has great benefits. You are already way past me in DW7, and I've had the game for a few weeks now, so I take it you are really enjoying it. From what I hear, it's going to take quite a while to finish, it's supposedly the longest quality RPG ever made =)</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Agatha; text-align: left; '>...the only DQ game that's had this big a disparity between what you're making and what equipment costs was the first and maybe second DQ games. There's a huge difference between what they're charging and what you can reasonably afford It's a matter of being able to afford more than 1-2 total pieces of equipment at all, let alone maxing people out. I've finally managed to build up about 18,000 gp and I still probably couldn't even max out one characters equipment, let alone the entire party.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Now that I have completed, at least I hope, most of the game I find that the most useful items to buy are proper armor for your characters. You will either find in treasure chests or by thieving the rest of what you need. There is also the Casino, and the old methods for winning there are the same as ever. And of course, you will find soon that your magic is by far the most effective weapon you have, no matter what sword or staff you wield.</div>

<div style='font: 14pt Agatha; text-align: left; '>...That rarely do I find better armor or weapons in treasure chests than I can buy in shops. I can count the number of times I have gotten something superior in a chest on one hand through the 60+ hours I've put into the game. As for Casinos, I've only run into one. I know there's more but I haven't got to them quite yet. Armor is far more important than weapons I agree, because a dead character performs no actions after all, but magic isn't the beat-all end-all either IMO.</div>

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Once you have a few of the intermediate classes or even a few of the monster ones, the magic or skills you can use have a distinct advantage. Quadhits and Vacuum are favourites of mine for my fighters, while Explodet, Whirlpool and Blazemost are effective for my mages. I'm at the end of the game now and I find magic to be incredibly effective, especially for my Summoner. I know not everyone will fight the neccesary battles to acquire this class but I highly recommend they do. It is true that the items in chests generally suck, but you can always sell them and buy what you really want. I find later in the game, stealing stuph is more fun. Also, the only really good place to buy stuph comes once you get to the end of disk 1, I won't spoil where it is for you though.</div>