So I downloaded Dragon Quest Dai based on the manga of the same name. I assume it came out because they revived some Anime for it. So I downloaded the game found out that you can't select who you play as. You're stuck with your random no name original dude, newbie Dai, and newbie Popp as your party. So I looked up what I got to spend to get the characters you might care about, and it turns out, you can't. Spending money gets you more powerful weapons but you are stuck with these guys plus a few more guys you unlock in the story as your avatar but otherwise you're stuck using a party that nobody would ever pick out of the world of Dragon Quest Dai. I mean literally the whole point of the story was that you have Dai growing from a newbie to Dragon Knight and eventually a Dragon Demon, or that Popp went from an apprentice to a Grand Wizard. It's not even about how powerful these characters may or may not be. You're making a game based on a series that has some seriously cool characters, like Dragon Knight Baran, True Vearn, Myst Vearn (without mask), or Supreme Demon Hadlar, and you're telling the players you literally have no intention to play as those iconic characters no matter how much money you spend. I mean sure, it's one thing to save your cool characters until the end, like 7 Deadly Sin didn't have all the character's final iteration playable initially but you still have some pretty iconic stuff and everyone knows it's a matter of saving up for more money for the future. But this game, I got the feeling they simply have no intention of ever letting you have a Grand Wizard Popp as playable (it's the same guy as Popp, but he definitely feels very different in the manga) let alone anyone that's not in the main party.
This game reminds me of a similar example that flopped hard, the Wild Arms mobile game which I think was called Million Memories. This is a game where Cecilia was not playable for several months, and Jane Maxwell was on the cover but the game shut down like 1.5 years into its existence before she ever become playable. I mean yeah a lot of later game main characters are playable, but basically the standard cast of the Wild Arms games past the first one are just inferior versions of Rudy, Jack, and Cecilia. I can't even tell you anything memorial about Ashley, Brad, and whoever the girl with the umbrella was named in WA2, let alone anything newer than that. Now the game itself was pretty trash so maybe it was doomed to failure, but I think if the fan favorites came out earlier there was at least a chance to make a buck.
Similarly I think DQ Dai gameplay itself is pretty weak and it's clearly meant to just trying to cash in on the revival of a storied franchise to make a buck, and I can respect that if you actually can play as the icons of the story, not the newbie bunch which is probably the most boring part of the manga. People like DQ Dai because all the main characters got upgrades and turn out to be super cool. If they're still scrubs like they're when fighting Vearn, nobody would care what happened to them. Popp had a classic line where he says "You can call me... the Grand Wizard" and that's when you know the scrawny kid from the intro has now grown up and can literally take on a Demon God by himself.
This game reminds me of a similar example that flopped hard, the Wild Arms mobile game which I think was called Million Memories. This is a game where Cecilia was not playable for several months, and Jane Maxwell was on the cover but the game shut down like 1.5 years into its existence before she ever become playable. I mean yeah a lot of later game main characters are playable, but basically the standard cast of the Wild Arms games past the first one are just inferior versions of Rudy, Jack, and Cecilia. I can't even tell you anything memorial about Ashley, Brad, and whoever the girl with the umbrella was named in WA2, let alone anything newer than that. Now the game itself was pretty trash so maybe it was doomed to failure, but I think if the fan favorites came out earlier there was at least a chance to make a buck.
Similarly I think DQ Dai gameplay itself is pretty weak and it's clearly meant to just trying to cash in on the revival of a storied franchise to make a buck, and I can respect that if you actually can play as the icons of the story, not the newbie bunch which is probably the most boring part of the manga. People like DQ Dai because all the main characters got upgrades and turn out to be super cool. If they're still scrubs like they're when fighting Vearn, nobody would care what happened to them. Popp had a classic line where he says "You can call me... the Grand Wizard" and that's when you know the scrawny kid from the intro has now grown up and can literally take on a Demon God by himself.
