I've been working through this series on mobile for about a year now, playing 1-2 last fall, 3 during the winter, 4 earlier this year, and 5 now.
When it comes to mobile adaptations of the games, the skill of the teams doing the Dragon Quest games is apparent when compared to FF ports. First and foremost, the UI is much stronger. It's customizeable, and rather than being on the sides of a landscape version of the game, it's on the bottom of a portrait view of the game; this makes it all far less distracting. Another great note is that the controls are all relatively in the same location, whereas Final Fantasy games tend to be all over the place during battles; which may sound interesting on paper, but gets tiresome in practice.
Dragon Quest 1-8 are all available, but in my opinion 5 is easily the strongest. 8 is the most graphically impressive, but the 3D transition hurt the pacing significantly; game doesn't move very quickly, and there are certain features like crafting which are so slow that the time put into them isn't worth the outcome for a lot of items - it's like curing up a level 60 party with cure 1 potions in the original version of FF4; crafting was made far more efficient in DQ9, but that version is not available yet.
DQ5 has hands down the best story in the entire franchise, and one of the best in an RPG in general.
The first scene of the game is the birth of your character, followed by early introductions of the game world when your character is 6 years of age, traveling around with his father. Your character grows up, will eventually choose a wife from among certain characters, and then have children who will later join in the campaign.
In addition, party chat is available. If you've played later DQ games, you'll be familiar with this feature, in any room or after any event (no matter how simple) you can chat with party members for their commentary; it brings a depth to the game that's lacking in other RPGs, it ultimately makes dungeons far more interesting. If you've played the later DQ games, you may not have used this feature a lot due to poor implementation. The game would transition to a different screen for a more graphically impressive version; in contrast, DQ5's is more primitive, simpler, but also far snappier and more usable. DQ5 just plays the dialogue a the tap of a button, and instead of drawn out sequences there's lots of shorter dialogues, and when you have seen them all it will play an ellipses indicating that there's nothing more to be said.
More on dungeons: they're not as empty and cavernous feeling as FF games, or even some of the later DQ games. Rather they're much more interactive, and there's something interesting about almost every area; the feeling is much more akin to Chrono Trigger in that respect (co-developed between DQ and FF teams).
Battle system is a snappy turn based system, like every DQ game. It contains autobattle options, and also allows you to bring in captured (or pet) monsters. Battles are generally much faster paced than most RPGs.
Like other Dragon Quest games, there are A LOT of towns, and they are largely based on fantastical takes on real world cultures; with the most common being similar to renaissance era Europe.
This version uses updated graphics from the original SNES version: the art style is similar to Xenogears, a polygonal based world with sprite based characters. You can use corner buttons to rotate the screen.
In my opinion, the best game in the franchise; an enhanced version of one of the best games on SNES, and edges out Terranigma as the most underappreciated game in Square Enix's catalogue.
When it comes to mobile adaptations of the games, the skill of the teams doing the Dragon Quest games is apparent when compared to FF ports. First and foremost, the UI is much stronger. It's customizeable, and rather than being on the sides of a landscape version of the game, it's on the bottom of a portrait view of the game; this makes it all far less distracting. Another great note is that the controls are all relatively in the same location, whereas Final Fantasy games tend to be all over the place during battles; which may sound interesting on paper, but gets tiresome in practice.
Dragon Quest 1-8 are all available, but in my opinion 5 is easily the strongest. 8 is the most graphically impressive, but the 3D transition hurt the pacing significantly; game doesn't move very quickly, and there are certain features like crafting which are so slow that the time put into them isn't worth the outcome for a lot of items - it's like curing up a level 60 party with cure 1 potions in the original version of FF4; crafting was made far more efficient in DQ9, but that version is not available yet.
DQ5 has hands down the best story in the entire franchise, and one of the best in an RPG in general.
The first scene of the game is the birth of your character, followed by early introductions of the game world when your character is 6 years of age, traveling around with his father. Your character grows up, will eventually choose a wife from among certain characters, and then have children who will later join in the campaign.
In addition, party chat is available. If you've played later DQ games, you'll be familiar with this feature, in any room or after any event (no matter how simple) you can chat with party members for their commentary; it brings a depth to the game that's lacking in other RPGs, it ultimately makes dungeons far more interesting. If you've played the later DQ games, you may not have used this feature a lot due to poor implementation. The game would transition to a different screen for a more graphically impressive version; in contrast, DQ5's is more primitive, simpler, but also far snappier and more usable. DQ5 just plays the dialogue a the tap of a button, and instead of drawn out sequences there's lots of shorter dialogues, and when you have seen them all it will play an ellipses indicating that there's nothing more to be said.
More on dungeons: they're not as empty and cavernous feeling as FF games, or even some of the later DQ games. Rather they're much more interactive, and there's something interesting about almost every area; the feeling is much more akin to Chrono Trigger in that respect (co-developed between DQ and FF teams).
Battle system is a snappy turn based system, like every DQ game. It contains autobattle options, and also allows you to bring in captured (or pet) monsters. Battles are generally much faster paced than most RPGs.
Like other Dragon Quest games, there are A LOT of towns, and they are largely based on fantastical takes on real world cultures; with the most common being similar to renaissance era Europe.
This version uses updated graphics from the original SNES version: the art style is similar to Xenogears, a polygonal based world with sprite based characters. You can use corner buttons to rotate the screen.
In my opinion, the best game in the franchise; an enhanced version of one of the best games on SNES, and edges out Terranigma as the most underappreciated game in Square Enix's catalogue.
-Insert Inspiring Quote-
