IT'S DRAGON QUEST SUMMER!!!! I shouldn't be giving it a name, I shouldn't be promising more Dragon Quest. I don't even know if I'm going to finish THIS one yet, lol. So, a bit of backstory on this one. My dear friend Thomas (check him out, follow his Twitch, he's the best) is a huge DQ boy. He's played these games for a long time, it's his favorite JRPG franchise, he is actually the originator of "Dragon Quest Summer" as he typically plays a Dragon Quest (usually this one) during summer. When I first met him, actually, he was in the midst of his second or third playthrough of DQXI and I watched him play part of it on Twitch. And his love of Dragon Quest is kind of defining on how he engages with RPGs and what he likes out of games in general, i.e. he likes the simple, number go up nature of these games and is less keen on the story aspect.
Meanwhile, I got into JRPGs in like the PS2 era, long after the genre had become known for its narrative driven adventures rather than what Dragon Quest typically is known for. Shout outs to Final Fantasy X, my beloved. This key difference in what we view a JRPG as has led to something of a friendly back and forth between us, I give him guff for being a numbers boy, he plays story driven JRPGs and hates his life, it's fun times. And as such DQXI has kind of become the game we've joked about the most. In one of those recent back and forths I said "if you send me DQXI, I'll play it and make content out of it". He said "bet". So now, I'm doing the DQ summer in his stead. Don't worry though, I know I just admitted to making fun of this game for several years now but this isn't going to be me just mocking it, I'm going to give it a fair shake. I'm not promising I'll finish it, this is a long RPG and I do have balking points with those, historically, but for Thomas, I'm going to try my hardest. Do expect me to hate on the music though, that's never going to change. Oh, and no review for this one, because I want my opinions to be a surprise.
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| This very good art was made for me by my dear friend Thomas and so that's the thumbnail and you BETTER LIKE IT. |
Diary:
6/2/26
As is tradition with Dragon Quest summer, my main character can only have one name: Tud. Tud is the correct name for the Luminary of DQXI as far as I'm concerned, that's what he's always been called when my buddy Thomas has played him and as such he will be called it here. Welcome to the canonical adventures of Tud, Dragon Quest protagonist extraordinaire. Why is he called Tud? Heck if I remember, but now he is forever and hopefully y'all will adopt the name too because it is, in fact, correct.
Full disclosure, this is not actually my first time playing DQXI. I had played the demo many years ago, probably about the time that Hero got added into Smash. I will not be picking up from that, we're starting fresh. But I have some experience playing DQXI in the past and so this isn't a fully blind playthrough. We'll see how it plays out actually, back when I played DQXI's demo I was way more like "the story needs to grab me" and now, if you know anything about my JRPG diaries, like. I definitely DO like a good story, but the gameplay loop really needs to sell me as well. I think, as much as I've joked about DQ in the past, I'm at a point in my life where I will really appreciate it.
I also just want to get this out of the way so I don't have to keep mentioning it, I will keep mentioning it regardless because it's going to be a consistent problem but I like to fool myself into thinking I will only bring this up this one time. I hate Dragon Quest music so much. Like SO much. This is going to be the take that gets me cancelled, and probably banned from Japan. Shame, I was looking forward to seeing the Ghibli theme park someday. Dragon Quest music sounds so much like what a child thinks boring classical music sounds like. This is what Salieri was cooking when he got blindsided by Mozart. It's so annoying and obtrusive and I can't stand it. It's like the soundtrack exists to supersede the game rather than be a part of it, distracting the player from the other parts of the work rather than becoming a part of a work. In my long career as a gamer, I have never once thought to myself "I want to mute the game's soundtrack", even in soundtracks I hate. Like Sonic Adventure 2, I hate that soundtrack, never once occurred to me to mute it, even as I heard Pumpkin Hill loop for like 40 minutes. This one is breaking me, I hate it more than any music I have ever heard in my life I think.
It is amusing how aggressively British everyone is. Like I know DQ game localizations are very British, I've seen one or two of them be played, but like. This game feels like its almost trying to be the most British to ever do it. It's very amusing but also it really sells what they're going for. I actually can't imagine what this game's original dub sounded like because to me, it being British to such a ludicrous degree sells the atmosphere. Dragon Quest feels like a wholesome fairytale world of very standard heroes and villains and it being like this really enhances that ideal, in my opinion. And if it it wasn't so aggressively British, we wouldn't get to hear everyone say "cor" and "blimey" every couple lines, which would be a tragedy of untold proportions. Also everyone having such an exaggerated personality and accent just makes the whole game funnier as Tud, the boy, never speaks and usually just sits there stone faced while everyone else is talking to him.
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| Our Hero, Tud. |
Speaking of Tud, I have found the actual objective of the story. So like, the story starts out with a very classic narrative setup, Tud and his childhood best friend/possible future love interest Gemma, have come of age and must undertake their provincial village of Cobblestone's ceremony to be seen as "grown-ups". Gemma is poorly equipped for this task, having only brought a bag of cilantro up the mountain, so it's lucky for her that Tud is an actual swordsman. After fighting their way up the mountain, noting a subtle wrongness in the world, they discover Tud's latent powers as the Luminary at a moment of extreme peril and complete their ritual. Afterwards, Tud discovers from his mum that he must fulfill a great destiny, and that he must go to the capital city of Heliodor and meet with the king, leaving his home and family behind as he embarks on the hero's journey. It's a classical story, the kind Dragon Quest has become beloved for telling.
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| Top 10 JRPG starting town. |
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| Gotta rep my boy Slime. He is perfect, after all. |
Rest in peace Toriyama, btw. I have poked fun at Toriyama's artwork basically my entire life, mainly the fact that he definitely did reuse a lot of character design ideals. Every heroic character looks like one of the Saiyans, every old man looks like Dr. Gero, every woman tends to look like Bulma, etc. But man, existing in this world with all his weird little guys, his work is so good. Toriyama created such a perfect cast of weird little guys, it's no wonder why they made an entire Monster Taming franchise about them. I also love how the designs are so decidedly meant to be viewed from a singular angle and they just commit to it even in 3D, having them spawn into battle at that angle and then kind of keep that angle going during battle. I still think the human designs are pretty silly, ngl, I will probably be pointing out the connections to Dragon Ball throughout but man, I love the art actually. I'm surprised at how much I love it.
The actual gameplay though is just. A JRPG. Which is fine, you know, that's what Dragon Quest is. It's THE holotype of the JRPG, Like I doubt I'm going to actually be mentioning the gameplay that much if I'm being honest because like, it's fine, it's functional, it is a very satisfying turn-based combat loop that I imagine is going to be more interesting later on. It's kind of exactly what I want out of turn-based combat in a longer JRPG, a series of menus you don't really have to think about that executing becomes second nature. But right now it's not really grabbing me that much? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if, despite this game's gargantuan length, this post ends up being kind of short just because I lack things to say about the gameplay. There's a reason why my JRPG diaries kind of just end up as synopses.
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| Gemma, our love interest? |
Oh also Gemma is really annoying and I'm glad she isn't a permanent party member. Like I know we are supposed to like her, she's the Luminary's best friend and represents the life he's leaving and the life he hopes to come back to but like. In the brief time she was on this journey with us, she just screamed "Fight, Fight, and Fight some more" non-stop and it did nothing to actually endear her to me. I know at some point there is a quest to come back and marry her in the post game, I don't do post games so I'm probably not going to do it but even if I did, I would probably instead marry Tud off to one of the other options present in the S version. Like probably the hot thief chick with the angular eyes I keep seeing in the intro.
6/6/26
I was like 30 minutes away from the end of the prologue. I'm so mad. Literally I was getting through the remainder of the Heliodor section, finally getting my first party member and then suddenly we get to a big moment where Tud and his new friend, Erik, are backed into a corner and jump off a big cliff. And then, bam, opening credits roll. Two play sessions in the cold open, I'm so mad. I'm trying to find the time for DQ y'all but it hasn't been coming. I keep getting caught up in things and next thing I know it's late enough to where I can maybe squeeze in an hour and a half or two hours. I'm sorry y'all, I don't want this to take forever but it's not looking good on that front at the moment.
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| Da Bear-ik |
Speaking of Erik, I have a bone to pick with this guy. So I remember very little of watching my friend play DQXI the times I've seen him play it. In no small part because it is a very long RPG and also I tended to put his stream on the background while I did chores or gamed. But Erik is someone who I do remember, one of the party members I remember the most distinctly, actually. And the reason is that I do not understand his voice. Every character in Dragon Quest XI has such a distinctive British accent, no matter what type of British it is (not that I could tell them apart just by hearing them), they all have very distinctive accents from that region of the world. All except for Erik, who I understand is off because he's trying to hide his accent, but like. He's the only person in this game who speaks with like a Bostonian accent? Chicagoan? I don't know, he sounds like a really smug John Mulaney. It's such a weird choice for a game that is otherwise consistent with its voicework and I'm surprised it made it through.
I'm so glad DQXI has an autobattle system. Like, I love turn-based combat, don't get me wrong. I've talked about my love of traditional turn based combat in this blog more times than I can count. I grew up on Final Fantasy X and Pokemon, turn-based combat is basically what my brain is wired to do now. But especially with the low level mooks I'm fighting right now, I don't find combat especially interesting at the moment? Like Tud only has a couple options for spells and abilities and Erik has no options for spells and abilities so it's a lot of just hitting basic attack and eating damage right now. It's making for a better paced experience right now, even if the autobattle is a bit more trigger happy on my MP usage than I'd like. It's clearly programmed to find the fastest kill and execute that, which is fine, but it does mean that Tud is tending to use Flame Slash every turn when he juuuuuuuuuust doesn't deal enough damage to beat an opponent in one hit. But still, I'd rather this than having to actually fight every Slime and Platypunk I come across.
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| From this angle, Heliodor looks like Diamond City from Fallout 4. |
I'm sad to say that I made absolutely zero progress on the actual main quest. I didn't find a single pumpkin to smash in this play session. I'm sad about it too. Guess I have to talk about the stupid main plot now. Alright so Tud makes it to the castle of Heliodor and has a surprisingly easy time gaining an audience with the king. He literally just shows up, says he's the Luminary, and they let him in. If this weren't a Dragon Quest game, I would be suspicious of how easy it was, to be honest. Thankfully it is a Dragon Quest game so clearly nothing can go wrong. After all, this is basically a fairy story, a wholesome, breezy JRPG, everything is clearly going to come up Tud.
So anyways the king immediately calls Tud the harbinger of doom, sends an army to destroy his town and murder all his friends, and throws him in the castle dungeons to slowly starve to death. So, apparently the King of Heliodor, along with the high ranking members of the military, sees the Luminary as a sign of the end times. They believe that the light warrior appearing is not some grand triumph, a hero to save their doomed world, but rather that Tud signals that the Dark Lord's return is imminent. As shadows cannot exist without light, so too can the evils of the world not exist without the warrior of light. And so to prevent the destruction of their world, the Luminary must be stopped before his journey can even begin. So they throw Tud in the dungeon and decide to kill anyone who knew him, erasing the Luminary from history before his opponent reveals themself.
It's here that we meet our new, bizarrely accented friend Erik and launch an escape of the prison. Erik was apparently told that his destiny was to aid the Luminary at some point in the past, so imagine his luck when the hero he is apparently destined to help just falls into his lap. After evading the guards in the castle sewers and escaping the first dragon we encounter in our Dragon Quest, we regroup in the foothills below the city and decide where to move from here. Tud of course wants to rush to aid his home, but Erik has a more wise course of action. Before he was arrested, he and his thieving partner hid some treasure in the slums below the city for Erik to collect when he got out. If we could sneak into the city and retrieve it, then we would be setup financially to mount a defense of Cobblestone. Tud is of course worried about Cobblestone but concurs that Erik's plan is the better of the two and so they slip back into Heliodor.
Unfortunately the treasure is gone. Yeah, so it turns out that Erik's partner Derk, at some point in the months Erik was imprisoned, snatched the treasure and sold it to set himself up as a wealthy merchant in the upper class part of town. Feeling betrayed by his former friend, Erik decides to make the risky play to sneak into the upper class parts of the city to confront Derk and retrieve his treasure or, barring that, vengeance. After distracting the guard stationed at the path between uptown and downtown and, unwittingly, destroying the single class barrier in the city because the only preventing the "riff-raff" from entering uptown was a single guard checkpoint manned by a guy who can't keep it in his pants, we sneak back into the castle to find Derk's shop. It is here that it's revealed that Derk was not a traitor, but rather that Erik's entire escape only worked because Derk had been bribing the guards to look the other way for months. Derk has otherwise gone straight, he likes the life he leads as a merchant and even is married to a very odd woman who is either named "One" or refers to herself as "One". However, he has kept his ear to the ground on where the treasure he sold is located, knowing Erik would want it when he got out. And wouldn't you know it, Cobblestone is on the way to the treasure's final resting place? We bid Derk a farewell, with Heliodor being too dangerous to return to another time, and set a course for Cobblestone.
Random aside, I've just been thinking about this a whole lot: the story and world of DQXI kind of remind me of Twilight Princess so far? Like we have a hero who tries to do the right thing and instead ends up imprisoned in the castle dungeons, only to be rescued by a snarky, morally grey character who already knows the deal. The two of them escape into the sewers where they must make their way through without being set upon by the guardians of the castle. And the world is like "open" but it's separated into a bunch of smaller segments, like how Hyrule Field in TP is. Idk, I doubt it'll keep this up but I've been getting Twilight Princess vibes from this game so far. Heck, both games even have mediocre soundtracks!!!! I promise I'll stop talking about it, I'm honestly already learning to tune the music out.
6/8/26
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| Why do we need to craft things in every game!? (Source: Dragon Quest Wiki) |
There's a crafting minigame. I'm mad about it. I'm probably about to contradict something else I've said on this blog because I can't remember every single thing I've written in every single gaming diary and also I've been at this for like 2 years now, there's a lot that has changed in that time, but I hate crafting. I think one of the true plagues of the 2010s in gaming was that Minecraft hit and everyone ever born was playing that and loving that and so everyone thought "oh I have to incorporate elements from this" and now everything has a dumb crafting system and I'm in pain. I don't even hate crafting games, I just don't like when a game that doesn't need a crafting system adds one anyways! Do you know how many Kickstarters I've lived through where the gimmick was essentially "here's a classic retro game, but now you can craft". I'm going to do way too much of it too. I'm going to craft a billion things and hate every second of it and it'll be my fault.
Otherwise this was actually a pretty productive and fun play session outside of finding out that there's a crafting system. I feel like the plot is finally getting good? I'm starting to get a feel for what DQ is trying to do, starting to adapt to this vibe I guess. As I mentioned previously, we were heading back to Tud's hometown of Cobblestone to try and stop the military force King Heliodor sent out after discovering that is where the Luminary was raised. When we arrive, however, things are kind of odd. The townsfolk don't recognize Tud at all, welcoming him as a traveler that is new to the area despite his protestations that he grew up here. Moreover, the town keeps mentioning a different character named "Tud", a Tud that has seemingly taken his place in their little town. It's unnerving, it makes you wonder what the King actually did to the people of Cobblestone. Did he use some sort of magic to make the entire town forget about Tud, effectively erasing him from their history?
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| Tud's beloved grandfather. |
No, but what is happening is far stranger. When Tud arrives at his mother's house and tries to tell her that he's her son, she freaks out, saying her son is "only 6". After being thrown out of her home for being weird, Tud looks at the tree in the center of town and sees his childhood best friend Gemma. Except it's not Gemma as we left her. It's instead Gemma when she was six. Tud has been thrown a decade back in time, sent to a version of Cobblestone from he was just a boy. As he assists Gemma and tells her who he is, she gets confused and goes "no, I know Tud... wait, you must be looking for him!" She then leads us to Tud, which is where we find out why Tud is here. Standing at the end of the dock, teaching the young Tud how to fish, is Tud's grandfather. Unlike the rest of the townsfolk, his grandfather immediately recognizes that the Luminary is their Tud, just grown; and after talking about how proud he is of the lad and how frustrated he is at the King of Heliodor's reaction to his revelation, departs a message to the lad. There exists a letter from his biological mother, as well as an important item to aid on his quest, buried under a stone in a grotto to the east of the village. As Tud says his goodbye to his grandfather for the last time, he fades away.
Returning to the village's entrance, Tud sees Gemma and his younger self playing under their favorite tree. His child self runs up to him and thanks him for helping Gemma earlier. He enthusiastically says they can play any time, before running back to the young Gemma. The two of them too fade away, and Erik, who had been absent this entire time, suddenly reappears. He says that Tud zoned out for a while. Not that he blames him though, it's a lot to take in. And as Tud readjusts to the present, broken from his bizarre vision of the past, he looks over Cobblestone to see the entire town has been burned to the ground, the townsfolk missing or dead. The whole thing was simply an illusion, a vision given to Tud by Yggdrasil, the world tree whose roots spread across the world and are said to have magical powers. A gift from the divine to aid Tud on his quest. Except, it wasn't just an illusion. When Tud arrives to the place his grandfather said to look, he finds a box with the letter and the item, but also a second letter. A letter from his grandfather, which starts "I don't know how, but I met a version of you from the future today".
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| This village is hot. Burning forge within mountain. It's snowing on Mt. Fuji. |
I'm going to jump to the end of the play session now, because I want to talk about the town of Hotto, the last area I went to. Hotto is a town clearly inspired by Japan and specifically the hot spring/onsen culture in Japan. It is a major tourist destination for its hot springs and also serves as an important stop for any warriors traveling the countryside as it is home to many skilled blacksmiths. The thing that I like about Hotto though is that all the citizens of the village speak in haiku. It's so fun, it gives this village so much personality and feels so distinctly like a fairytale or a light fantasy novel. An entire town that speaks only in poetry. I'm very impressed that the localization team was able to do this whole town like this and still make all the lines make sense and feel like things people would say? Hotto is cool, it's like the first place in this game that I've gone to and went "oh I like this". Dragon Quest XI is starting to win me over a little bit, what can I say?
Fights are actually starting to get a little interesting!!! Like before now, the fights were just a lot of "spam attack and kill enemies, heal every like 20 battles when my HP is finally whittled down enough". It was functional JRPG gameplay but so far wasn't very interesting? But now I have a lot of options of what to do in battle, enemies are hitting hard enough to be a problem, and I'm leveled enough to where I'm not getting a free heal every few fights and so need to be thoughtful about my magic usage and item distribution. I almost lost to the third boss because I didn't realize you didn't have access to your bag during fights and so you had to carry any healing items you wished to use on you to use them in battle. Thank goodness for the Pep Powers system, where you get a little boost after you've dealt or have been dealt a certain amount of damage and can do a super attack. It came in clutch for that fight. Like DQ is pretty simple overall, that's part of the charm of it. But I am having to use a bit of strategy and be thoughtful of my movements, and as such I'm having more fun playing it!
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| This is the best character in the game, the one, the only, Veronica. |
I met the third party member in this play session! I mean she hasn't officially joined our party yet but you can tell she's going to be a party member, her model is way more detailed than the NPCs surrounding her and she has a distinctive color palette. I was excited about this one, this is a character I remember from watching my buddy play this game, the one, the only Veronica, the sassy child. I adore Veronica, she takes no guff from anyone. Within minutes of her introduction she is roasting the people of Hotto, the Luminary, Erik which I really like because I'm starting to realize I hate Erik. She's great, I love her sass. And I also love that she's like "yes, I'm destined to help you, we'll talk about it later, right now I've got my own problems to solve so we'll deal with that later". There are not enough fictional characters who get a call of destiny and go "okay, but I've got stuff to do, actually, so can you wait like ten minutes?"
So yeah, I don't like Erik. The vibes are just all around super weird with him. Like, Erik's role in the party is that he is secretive, while he is fully on board to aid the Luminary, he's holding a lot about himself close to the chest. It's exactly what you would expect out of a thief archetype. The thing is that Erik always talks in this really circuitous way where he'll be like. "Oh little sisters are nothing but trouble, trust me, I would know, but that's my secret to bare, let's go buddy." It's very clumsy writing and it makes Erik seem so uncanny. Like he's keeping everything about himself hidden but then he's very directly hinting that he wants to talk about it in the worst way he could be. And I get why, Tud is silent, Erik has to kind of carry on both parts of the conversation in the early game. But it's so weird, it's so easy to write a character who keeps things close to their chest and yet here we are.
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| I love Toriyama's weird little dudes!!! |
I want to once again highlight how good Toriyama's weird little guys are. There were so many good ones this time around. I saw the Healslime, love the Healslime, love that tentacled weirdo. It reminds me of playing Fortune Street back in the day, actually. There were these weird egg robots, they ruled, I loved that you could ride them and it's just Tud's face coming out of the hole where the eyes used to be. The Bongo Drongos are dope, just these giant green djinn looking guys with a big old drum with a face. Toriyama did not miss when it came to monster designs, I swear. The best of all though is the Sham Hatwitch. The Sham Hatwitch is just an adorable little baby boar with a giant witch's hat. They are perfect and I am obsessed with them. My favorite weird little guy.
Oh, and of course we need to do an update on the actual main quest. I did, indeed, find some pumpkins to smash. And not only were they pumpkins, they were pumpkins IN THE PAST. Tud getting a leg up on his goal of exterminating all the pumpkins in the world by erasing pumpkins from the timeline of Cobblestone. But also I think I found a new main quest objective as well. See, when I went to the onsen in Hotto, I briefly went outside around the balcony and found a mysterious woman who offered a "Puff-Puff" for 20 gold. Now either Tud got high, or he got something that would increase this game's rating if it were shown, but regardless I'm adding this to the quest objectives. Tud's goals are now to smash pumpkins and get high and if the world gets saved in the process, so be it.
6/9/26
Hehe, nice. Bit of a short play session this time, I was really just kind of not in the right headspace for DQ I think, but I felt like I did get enough done to where I wanted to update the diary anyways. So, unfortunately, I didn't really get to take advantage of Veronica's talents immediately as the villain of this section had swiped her magic. Thankfully, as a "person along with the party" rather than a full party member, it doesn't really matter that Veronica is useless in combat. Until her HP appears in the HUD, she's invincible. She stays winning! That's an in-joke, some people smiled at that, and those are the people I'm writing this for pretty literally.
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| Veronica's wonderful sister, Serena. |
So we set off to rescue Veronica's sister in this part of the game, which is what Veronica had to do before she could join up with the Luminary. I don't think I ever mentioned that last time but that's what Veronica's goal was. Her sister and her were traveling the countryside looking for the Luminary when they stopped in Hotto to rest and explore their hot springs, which led to Veronica getting kidnapped and her magic stolen from her and her little sister Serena heading off to rescue her. It's a whole thing. After finding Serena, who had fallen asleep while in the dungeon due to her exhaustion, we discover that Serena is not a child like Veronica is but rather an adult woman. It turns out that Veronica and Serena are twins and that Veronica was simply deaged by the villain of this section as they attempted to steal her magic from her. It's a very fun character beat, though I will admit that it's very obvious as much as they try to hide it. A young woman with Veronica's exact color scheme is the very first character we actually see in the game, in the intro movie she walks out and meets an identical girl (Serena) playing her harp in the woods. But you know, it's Dragon Quest, everything is kind of like this.
Once again, love Veronica. This girl sees a father who got kidnapped and imprisoned by demons and her first thought after freeing him is to go "how dare you be rotting in this cell when your poor little girl is back in town crying about being abandoned, shame on you". She does not even remotely care about the circumstances surrounding it, she will sass you, you are taking that sass. Not like he didn't deserve it though, the actual literal reason that he got kidnapped in the first place was that he was trying to creep on Veronica when she was in the onsen. Of course he frames it like he was a hero "oh I just so happened to be on the balcony by the women's bath when I heard a scream and I just HAD to go into the women's bath to save the poor damsel". We got to shake him down for information at the end of the day, though, so it's all good. Feel bad for his daughter though, poor Connie didn't deserve any of this. Like literally the first thing he does when he gets back to Hotto to "reunite with his daughter" is start spending all their money in the tavern.
The gloves are officially off! The game up until now had been pretty conservative with how many enemies it was throwing at you, fights had been capped at three enemies and usually you could deal with each individual enemy in one or two turns. They were balancing around the fact that you only had two party members, both party members were mainly physical attackers (at least in the early game), and were reliant on healing items to restore health in the overworld/in dungeons. But now they're like "you have a wizard, you have a cleric, we're not playing with you anymore". Enemies went from dealing <5 damage to dealing 20, there are now regularly 5 enemies per battle, magic is a more common element of combat. And you know what? I'm here for it. Combat is like actually exciting. I'm having fun. Y'all, am I becoming a DQ boy? Thomas is sitting here reading this going "hehehe", I promise you.
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| The worst about Tockles is that they all speak in time/clock puns. |
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| The horse racing minigame alone makes this place my least favorite. |
And so I made it to the next town, a desert metropolis named Gallopolis famed for their horse racing. The tip we received said a way to get to the World Tree, Yggdrasil, may be hidden here. I called it before I did any of the story stuff in Gallopolis so I don't have much to report on for this part of the game, but I did want to update y'all on some of our personal quest progressions. Unfortunately, no new Pumpkins were smashed since the last entry. I doubt I'll be seeing any pumpkins for a while actually, which would be sad, I would hate for the main quest to be over before we started. I DID receive another instance of Puff-Puff, which I am now believing is some sort of massage but also our party is definitely of the opinion that Tud is just getting laid. Like a woman leads Tud into her chamber, the others aren't allowed to follow, and when he returns to them they look annoyed in a "you swine" sort of way. But also I wouldn't be surprised if there is just a running gag about the hero absconding off to have sex, this is a game from Japan. But, newly added to our quests, is the "Veronica Wins Again" counter. As with most JRPGs, there are victory dialogs for when you finish a battle, chosen randomly from among the characters present in the game. The best of these is easily "Veronica Wins Again", it was even an alert on my friend's stream. So I'm keeping count of how often it's said in my playthrough. The current count is 2, hopefully that number increases exponentially.
6/16/26
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| Gay? Spanish? You decide. |
I spent basically this entire play session doing the Gallopolis stuff so this was the desert episode of our little journey, I guess. As previously mentioned, Gallopolis is home to a potential way to the World Tree. One of the only fallen branches of Yggdrasil present on the world of man has actually been the sacred treasure of Gallopolis for decades, called "the Rainbough". The problem being, of course, that they're not going to just hand over their sacred treasure. Luckily, our party has come at a fortitutous time. A festival is being held in honor of the Prince's birthday, a celebration of his ascension into adulthood and his becoming a proper knight of the kingdom. And while this at first seems an inconvenience, the Sultan is wrapped up in preparations for the festival, it does present an interesting opportunity when we meet the prince. See, Prince Faris has been living a lie. And we're going to help him maintain it.
To the people of Gallopolis, Faris is a noble, kind, educated lad who represents everything good about their kingdom. He's a magnificent horse rider, a proud and noble warrior, a kind man who will meet with his people, etc. Faris is setting himself up to be an even greater ruler than his already beloved father is. It's literally all a lie. Faris is an incompetent, spoiled slacker who has leveraged his reputation to get out of doing any actual work. He loves his kingdom and his people, don't get me wrong, he's not some smug nepo baby. But he has been maintaining lies about himself due to the expectations placed on him. And he comes at Tud with a simple proposal: Tud will disguise himself as Faris, takes his place during the festival, and ensure the lie is maintained in exchange for the Rainbough. With very little choice in the matter, we play along. And this is also where Sylvando gets involved because Sylvando HATES this guy and wants to be petty about Faris being a laze-about.
I'm so happy we have Sylvando, y'all. Like I'm surprisingly not hating the DQXI cast, I was very worried because of the relatively simplistic plot that this party would end up being one note. But while I do like them overall, they are also pretty monotone all told. With the sole exception of my girl Veronica, who remains the sassiest possible, the party so far is made up of pretty serious people who are either very soft spoken (Serena) or bemoaning having to go on an adventure (I still hate Erik). Sylvando though? Sylvando is a petty, sassy, Spaniard with wisdom beyond his years. He lives for the drama, like I said he tagged along as we assisted Faris just to be petty towards the princeling. He's the only character in this universe so far who can realistically keep up with Veronica's sass. But unlike Veronica who is kind of short-tempered and always trying to prove she's the smartest in the room, Sylvando's sass is the sass of someone who has seen it all already. He might not be the smartest in the room, but he is easily the wisest. And before anyone says anything, no, Sylvando doesn't actually hate Faris, he hates that Faris blames everyone for why he's weak instead of choosing to be strong. What it means to be a knight is a whole thing for him and so he takes great issue with someone who he sees as having stolen valor.
I'm really starting to vibe with the gameplay loop. Like fights are taking enough strategy to where I'm feeling engaged now and my characters have more and more options of what they can do at any given time. Mapping out optimal routes through battles is incredibly fun, what can I say. I think it really does help that I'm very liberal with my resources in RPGs. I have been poking fun at friends for what seems like forever now for item hoarding and trying to conserve MP/PP and while I definitely have some ingrained habits I can't shake (don't ask me how many healing items I buy only to then use the heal spells and/or fast travel back to an inn), I'm very much a "use everything you got" kind of player. If Veronica is a black mage who is meant to cast spells, I'm going to cast spells, not only is it more efficient, it's more fun. And I'm at a point where not only is casting spells good, but I have to like make decisions because some spells deal with individuals, some spells deal with a party, some spells deal with a board of enemies, there's elemental weaknesses and resistances I have to consider. Fighting is fun. I could legitimately be carried all the way to the end of a game I would otherwise hate with a battle system that's this fun. Not that I'm hating this but you get me.
Want to once again shoutout my girl Veronica, she's literally the best. She was cooking Faris this entire chapter, calling him out for being a pathetic overgrown child lying to his family and his community. She's actually high key kind of mean in this section, to where her sister is like "Veronica, imagine how he must feel, having the weight of an entire kingdom put upon him from a very young age". But also, she deserves to be mean, Faris deserved it. But also her interactions with Sylvando are just amazing. She does not trust this flamboyant man at all. She is like the only person who is willing to ask questions about this mysterious individual who has forced himself on their quest. But also the moment she gets answers she's like "oh my god, bestie, love that". Specifically when Sylvando joins up and Veronica is like "how are YOU going to help us" and then Sylvando reveals he has a boat and she goes "oh you have a boat? Besties~"
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| ¿Cómo se llama? (¡Sí!), ¿bonita? (¡Sí!) |
Oh speaking of Serena actually, I have unlocked costume changes? I knew costume changes were coming, there's an option to change your cosmetics in the equipment screen, but I hadn't like. Found any costumes to change into. But in Gallopolis I found our first full costume change, the dancer costume. Which is weird because, as far as I know, Serena doesn't have an option to be a dancer per se? But I digress. It's a wild swing, I knew we were probably going to get into "fanservice" outfits eventually because this is a JRPG and JRPGs love fanservice. But I think it's really crazy to have our first one be, a, for the quiet, soft-spoken white mage, and b, have it be such a wild departure from what her character is about. Just the loudest outfit possible for the quietest character. It reminds me of when I was younger and was playing Octopath and as a bit made Ophelia a dancer as a subclass and so Ophelia, the priestess from the cold north, was running around in like slave Leia attire. Serena does kind of rock it though, not going to lie. Like I may be all "what are we doing here" but the fit is fire.
Finally, let's update our main quest objectives!!! During the Gallopolis section we entered a horse race, and one of the obstacles put on the racetrack were, in fact, pumpkins. So we got a little bit closer to our goal of smashing literally all the pumpkins! I have not been keeping track of how many pumpkins we've smashed, actually, but know that it's more now. We already did the Puff-Puff for Gallopolis earlier so obviously we didn't get any further on that front. And, finally, our Veronica Wins Again count is now at 3, I've been getting horrible luck with the post-battle phrases so far.
6/20/26
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| Should've been called Lighthousie, tbh. |
It somehow doesn't feel like I got a lot done in this section, which is odd as I did clear an entire town. So today's play session took me through the port town of Gondolia, our Italy inspired town for the game. We had a kind of Scottish inspired town in Cobblestone, an English inspired town in Heliodor, a Japanese inspired town in Hotto, an Arabic inspired town in Gallopolis, now we're at Italy. Gondolia, as the name would suggest, is basically just Venice, a town of canals that you can ride gondolas through, but it's also the biggest merchant port in the lands. Everything comes in and goes out of Gondolia, and as such this is where we will find information of where the Rainbough ended up, as well as link up with Sylvando's ship. For context, the sultan of Gallopolis sold the Rainbough to a wealthy traveling merchant in exchange for the funds to hold the festival we saw last time. I realize I didn't really talk about that part.
When we arrive though, we find that Gondolia is too holding a festival. The "Signore Universo" festival, a competition that brings people in from all around the lands to compete in tests of brain and brawn. It also, unfortunately, causes the port to be closed to any non-merchant vessels, meaning the gang is stuck in Gondolia until the festival is over. Sylvando, Veronica, and Serena, the GOAT squad, are actually ecstatic about this development as it means they can enjoy the festival, sample the food, see the competition. Erik, being a massive buzzkill as always, decides to go "we need to focus on business" and so drags Tud to the mayor, Doge Rotondo house to ask him to open the port so we can get a move on. So add "being generally disrespectful to others' cultures" to the list of reasons why Erik sucks. However, the Doge takes one look at Tud and slams the door before we can even ask. Why? Simple: Heliodor has already sent word to the people of Gondolia that the Luminary, who they believe to be a harbinger of doom, is heading their way.
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| Gee, wonder who the villain could be. |
However, we quickly run into a possible solution. One of the local children has stolen Veronica's wand to attempt to use the magic to cure his friend. His friend had been cursed by some unknown force outside the city's walls and has lost his ability to speak. Serena is quick to think up a cure, and after a brief trip to a pure spring near the city, we return with said cure. Only to find out that Jasper, Heliodor's main strategic mind and the most transparently evil man we've encountered thus far, has been awaiting for Tud's return. While Tud and the gang do manage to escape his ambush, Jasper manages to capture Erik and intends to execute him post-haste for his involvement in Tud's quest. Unfortunately the game won't let me abandon him (I would've come back for him... eventually...) and so we mount a rescue mission. This leads us into a direct confrontation with Jasper where we find out that it was Jasper who cursed the child the whole time and that he had told the Doge that Tud had done it. Before Jasper can capture the gang, though, Sylvando's ship arrives, manned by his "good friend" Dave. And that's where I left off: about to explore the open ocean.
But all that is basically filler to the really important part of this section: Sylvando and Veronica further cementing themselves as besties. These two are so on the same wavelength in every cutscene it's crazy. They're both super sassy, they both have devil may care attitudes despite their commitment to Tud's quest, they both want to mess around with Erik since they know he's going to be a killjoy at every opportunity. They are such a great duo, I'm so glad that we got Sylvando this early on (I am 16 hours in and this is still early game technically, someone please help me, I'm like halfway done with Act 1 of 3.) Like I was kind of feeling iffy about this party, even post Veronica joining, because it felt like they were lacking on personality but Sylvando really made this whole thing come together. I'm getting to be a pretty big fan of this cast.
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| She looks SO SILLY, I love. |
Speaking of Veronica, we got our second costume in this play session!!! You had to complete something of a smaller side quest, though it's not labeled as a sidequest, to get it. There are a pair of brothers in Gondolia who are both clothing merchants and they originally want to sell the costume for exorbitant amounts of money. One is selling it for 10k and the other is selling it for 12k. But as you talk to both of them, you find out about the others' prices and their rivalry takes over, driving the price down until eventually they're selling the costume at a massive loss of only 1k gold. And doing so lets you get the cat costume!!! Veronica is now running around in a mascot costume of an orange tabby and she looks ABSURD. She's adorable, don't get me wrong, but I also can't help but laugh at her running around in this kitty cat costume trying to be stern Veronica. The two sides of JRPG costume changes, fanservice and absurd mascot costumes.
I did some experimenting with the skill tree in this session and I think I'm starting to really "get it". I had been, up to this point, trying to fill out as much of the skill tree as possible to try and, a, get my characters a wide variety of skills, and 2, unlock skills that need you to unlock a certain number of the skills around them. And I do think that is a good strategy, especially with that second part, it benefits me to invest a small number of skill points into a weapon class my character isn't using so that I can then unlock something for the skills they are. But I'm starting to get a feel for "use skill points to get the things you need and then take off those skill points and reinvest them" and it's been working wonders. I almost have to wonder if they intend you to do this ASAP, as Sylvando comes with a very... iffy build to be honest? He's pre-invested into every branch of his skill tree and I have to wonder if the intention is to have the player purge and reinvest to where his build focuses on his actual goal: being the party's primary support unit. As an aside, it's kind of crazy that "dancer" is such a common archetype for RPGs and we all know what that means on sight. Like it's such a weird thing to have decided on as one of the "key RPG job types" but it is now and we all just go "oh this is the party member that buffs". I digress, doing this reinvesting actually ended up benefitting Tud the most because I put more into his Luminary skills and now he has like. Spells. That benefit him in battle. Tud's been doing fine, mind, but he's very much been the "not very good at anything" party member. But now that I have Zap? Oh we're balling.
Oh, also, I haven't really commented on this so far, but I love the names of spells in this series. There are many things about DQ that are just inherently charming but I think the spells are like easily the most charming thing here. I love that they all are just onomatopoeia, it's a very creative way to communicate what they are without just having them be "Fire, Ice, Thunder, etc". It feels very much like something that would be in a children's fantasy novel, which is essentially what Dragon Quest's entire vibe is. And it does genuinely explain what the spells do very well, Frizz is a set of small sparks which deal a bit of fire damage to a single enemy, Sizz is a more grand fire which deals damage to a part, crack is an ice bolt, zap is a thunder bolt, etc. It's direct but also very whimsical. This only tangentially has something to do with the spells, by the way, I'm just like genuinely amazed how much I'm actually enjoying this game. After all this time of watching DQ and always clowning on it, I am actually really adoring playing it.
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| She's SO CUTE, omg. |
And now, the moment we've all been waiting for: the updates on the actual questlines in the game. So, unfortunately I did not receive a Veronica wins again in this section. I know, it sucks, I'm mad about it too. This game hates me with the end battle quotes, do you know how many times the party just says NOTHING, which I have to assume is Tud's end-battle quote? I did find some pumpkins though! Like four of them, but still, more pumpkins were destroyed in this section! I'm very sad I didn't keep track of every single one I've destroyed thus far, I could probably estimate but. Who wants to do math? An interesting nuance was added to the Puff-Puff quest though, as I encountered enemies (the Succubats) who can give Puff-Puff. Which does reestablish that it's probably a sexual thing and not a massage, as previously implied. So the Puff-Puff counter is probably going to explode going forward since I know DQ likes its attractive female enemies. But right now, it's at four, we encountered a young lady in Gondolia who gave us Puff-Puff and one Succubat successfully gave us Puff-Puff. Another Succubat tried to do it on Veronica, but it was unsuccessful, confirming Veronica is straight. Or not a furry. Or both. Maybe it's both.
6/26/26
I had a LONG play session this time around! Like a full 5 hour play session of DQXI. That may sound like I got a lot done and, in a way, I did but in another way I didn't at all. So after you have a ship, the world opens up just a little bit. Not a whole lot, but there are new areas to explore, you can go back to old areas and get some fast travel points, and so about half my play session was devoted to just seeing what I could now do with my minor freedom. I'm very curious if the original version didn't give you a direction to go on when you got the ship and instead let you figure it out for yourself. I'm playing the enhanced S version, for context, and in DQXIS you're just told "hey, the merchant who is transporting the Rainbough went in this direction" But then when you explore and find the other new town you currently have access to, you'll be told "yeah, the merchant was here and he was looking to buy property but he couldn't find anyone to buy the Rainbough to afford the property so he set off". I really have to wonder if originally the Gondolians said he was heading to Costa Valor, so you went there and then were told he headed out somewhere else and then in the enhanced port they just took out that plot redundancy.
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| As of this writing, this town owns Hatsune Miku. |
Regardless of how it worked out in the original, I found my way to Puerto Valor anyways, the game's "Spanish" city. If you've been keeping track there have been cities based around several major cultural identities worldwide, we've had Britain (Heliodor), Japan (Hotto), the Middle East (Gallopolis), Italy (Gondolia), and now we have Spain. I can already tell I'm going to come back here later and have something to do with Sylvando specifically. Like Sylvando gives this whole schpeel about what it means to be a knight and then Puerto Valor is a city that trains knights. And Sylvando is also probably Spanish, I will admit I cannot actually tell if the voice actor is going for Spanish or if Sylvando is just gay. Or both. It's both isn't it? Anyways, Puerto Valor is a beautiful town, it's on the beachfront, it has beautiful white walls like you'd associate with Greece. It has a casino, it has a school for metalurgy that only women can join. There was actually a sad throughline we've been following since leaving Hotto, we've been finding diaries of a Hotto blacksmith who left his family to study at the Puerto Valor school for medal forging only to find out now that he's gotten here that it's an all-female school. I was kind of bummed about this being the end of his journey!
Before you ask, no, I have not gambled. Unlike basically every gamer I've ever met I do not have an underlying gambling problem. I know I probably should go do it because I can like. Get stuff. But also like. I am enjoying this game way more than I thought I was going to, but I am also like "I want to finish this at some point in time" so doing casino stuff just doesn't seem lucrative. I don't remember a lot from my buddy Thomas' playthroughs but I do know how many streams were just spent grinding the casino and I'm not about that life. I am 20 hours in and looking and seeing I'm still in the first act and am filled with concern about it. We're not doing the casino. I'm sorry.
Contrary to my goal of not spending an eternity in DQXI, I have been picking up every sidequest and trying to do most, if not all, of them in a reasonable timeframe. I'm mad about one right now, there's a sidequest that requires you to do a super attack which very specifically requires Serena, Erik, and Tud to accomplish and those three are literally never in their super mode at the same time. The Pep and Pep Powers system not having a visible meter and just kind of happening is nice for like 90% of the game but as soon as a sidequest demands it of me, it's the worst thing I swear. Outside of that though, I've been mostly doing every sidequest just because a lot of them are a very simple cause and effect so far. Like they're quick to hash out usually and they're just fun little asides. Also, while I do not have a gambling problem, I do have this problem where I don't like quest markers to be on my map, so unfortunately I have a compulsion to pick them up. Which makes it all the more frustrating that the quest marker stays hanging above the quest givers' head until you complete it rather than moving toward the objective.
Since I spent most of this play session just exploring especially exploring old areas, I used the horse way more than I had previously. Two key things about the horse I want to say, 1, it's very nice that you can just ram into enemies and instakill them and actually get a fraction of experience. Like it's not enough to justify grinding like this, you're getting like 1% of the EXP you would by fighting the enemy instead, but it's also not nothing. It makes traversing the world quickly a viable strategy. The other thing I wanted to say is that I don't think I like how this game controls when you're just running about/riding on a horse. It's weirdly hard to maneuver about, Tud can effectively go straight but the moment you have to turn you're taking this wide breadth. And to turn faster you have to move the camera into the direction you're turning. It's not an actual problem, like, I have and will continue to deal with it, but it is an annoyance at this point. Especially as the overworld areas keep getting bigger and Tud needs to get around faster in them.
Not finding anything particularly of note at the Costa Valor, Tud and gang make their way towards the place that has been hanging over this narrative since the beginning: Dundrasil. Dundrasil was once one of the major kingdoms scattered across the continent, and it was the birthplace of Tud, who was the prince of this lost land. However, shortly after Tud's birth, the entire kingdom was razed by monsters and now all that remains are ruins and the odd scattering of towns who were fortified enough to survive the sacking of Dundrasil. One such town, the fortress city of Octagonia, is where our mysterious merchant has gone to sell the Rainbough. So Tud and crew must head deep within the continent, to lands truly overtaken by monsters, in order to find their treasure.
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| Watch out Scooby~ |
Unfortunately we don't really get to see a lot of Dundrasil in this section? Like we're brought into the area through what was once the port town of Zwaardrust, a city once famed for its rolling fields of flowers and the place of origin of one of the current antagonists of the game; the Helidorian general Sir Hendrik. It was once the most beautiful place in the lands but it was destroyed in a single night by monsters, the first major victory by the dark forces in the sacking of Dundrasil. But all we get to see of Zwaardrust is a small patch of ruins to the side of the area, as the vast majority of the area has been reclaimed by the people already to be used as farmland. The only real part that makes it feel like a relatively recently ruined city and not some sort of ancient ruin is just that people do still remember it and mourn those who were lost. There is actually a sidequest about putting the souls of those who died in the siege but haven't been able to move on to rest which was neat. But otherwise, it doesn't feel like we're yet seeing the aftermath of a grand destruction in recent history. I'm sure that'll change when we get to the ruins of the actual city of Dundrasil but so far I'm not really feeling the weight of this destruction like I was in Cobblestone, y'know?
I also am, for the first time, feeling a touch underleveled? Which is weird because I think I am actually on pace for where the game wants me to be overall. Like I'm around level 23 right now, which seems to be about where the game expects you to be, but also I feel like I'm just getting in danger from so many enemies. I don't know if it's just like the game introducing enemies that are just a bit above my level because it'll eventually even out as I get stronger or if it's just that the game expects me to be above where it technically says I should be at all times but right now it's a bit rough. I'm zooming back to the Inn/Campfires a lot more than I'd like to say. Granted, part of it might be that I'm using the horse more too because I'm trying to get around the world faster. So like I'm missing out on a lot of experience. I am the root of all of my problems, to no one's surprise. But like still, I don't want to grind unless I have to (and hopefully I won't because grinding is the worst part of JRPGs) so I guess I just need to play better. Just play better forehead.
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| What Midgar would look like on SNES. |
Speaking of playing better, I reached the court mandated tournament arc!!! Octagonia is a city that is built around a giant arena and as we arrive to the city, we find they are preparing for their most noteworthy tournament of the year, the MMA competition. MMA in this instance is "Masked Martial Arts", a tournament where competitors pair up and compete anonymously as larger than life personas to win the grand prize. Something that completely falls apart when you realize that competitors are only instructed to wear masquerade masks and no other costume pieces. and also that a majority of the competitors are just from Octagonia anyways, meaning that their identities are literally public knowledge. I digress, the important bit is that the grand prize of this competition is the Rainbough. Our mysterious merchant who we've been tracking apparently sold it to the mayor for a pretty penny and now Tud has a free opportunity to just grab it. As such, Tud, Sylvando, and Erik enter the tournament to optimize their chances at winning. However, the tournament is not all it seems. Various fighters have been going missing throughout the tournament, often disappearing mere hours after their matches. A mysterious duo of much higher detailed models has also entered the tournament, and they are powering through the rankings as if it's nothing, like they're inhuman. And something is going on with our own partner, the Rocky Balboa-esque hero of Octagonia, Vince Vanquish, who runs the local orphanage. Why does he need to consume a mysterious potion before every fight? And why do people keep breaking into his office?
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| I can't wait for Vince Vanquish IV where he fights Ivan Dragon Quest. |
While I do like the mystery and intrigue in the tournament arc, however, it's kind of boring? Like, the problem throughout is that Tud is by himself throughout with a uncontrollable party member at his side, which means that there's not a lot of room for interesting combat strategy. Tud is kind of designed to hit people with his sword, y'know. He hits people with his sword, calls down lightning, eats hot chip and lies. And he's never truly in any danger throughout the tournament because his partner, Vince Vanquish, who is totally not secretly the villain of this section, has an infinite supply of healing items. So it feels like really I'm just mashing A until I win. Also, I'm not the biggest fan of tournament arcs in general? Like I love a coliseum in games, don't get me wrong, but an actual required tournament? Not for me. I watched Naruto growing up and I think that was enough tournament arc for anyone, the Chuunin exams are like 2/3 of that entire show.
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| The Queen in Green, Jade. |
I'm definitely about to assemble the rest of the party, which is exciting. The mysterious duo that I mentioned before is a duo of Jade and Rab, an attractive and ruthless female warrior and her partner, a magically inclined and patient merchant. They're running a bit of a cheeky con on Octagonia, actually, Rab is clearly the merchant who bought the Rainbough back in Gallopolis and has now sold it to the city and now they've entered the tournament to win it back, allowing them to pocket the cash and also retain the Rainbough. Why do they care about doing so? Well, we don't know a lot about their motivations however, at the end of the tournament they see the Luminary mark on Tud's hand and pause for a second, costing them the tournament. So it's incredibly likely that they are also on a quest to aid the Luminary and they know that he can only benefit from their continued possession of the Rainbough. It's also very funny how the game tries to act like there's any tension among the future party members when Jade and Rab are on the box art. And in the intro movie. And on the loading screens.
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| Whambelina, Bambelina, thank you Ma'ambelina. |
And now, of course, it's the end of a section so it's time to update our quest objectives. I'm not sure what to say about our ongoing quest to receive Puff-Puff, actually. I didn't find an NPC or enemy that EXPLICITLY gives Puff-Puff, which I think is just indicative of me not looking hard enough in Puerto Valor or Octagonia. Like every city since Hotto has had a working woman who gives out Puff-Puff, clearly me missing one in TWO cities means I probably just didn't talk to every NPC like I thought I did. But during the tournament arc there was a duo called "The Beatys", made of a mage named Sinderella and a warrior named Whambelina and they had the ability to seduce Tud and Vince. So even though it was called a different thing than Puff-Puff, I'm counting it, bringing the Puff-Puff total up to 6. We did, finally, get another "Veronica Wins Again", very important, we're now at 4 on that counter. And I found a ton of pumpkins to smash, there were so many pumpkins in Puerto Valor and Octagonia, it felt good after being relatively pumpkin-less for so long. Making progress on these dumb quests I've set up for myself!!! Love to see it.
6/28/26
I have officially spent a full day of my life playing DQXI. We have passed the 24 hour mark on this file, y'all. I am still in Act One. God help me. I kid, I'm enjoying myself, I like this game a lot more than I was expecting to. It's just. Game is long, I always get this way about 20-something hours into an RPG and knowing that best case I'm like 1/3 of the way through has me going "what have I chosen to do". And then this will end up on my top ten list for the year because I am actually feeling that right now. Like even as much as I hate the music, that opinion has not changed, I can't stand this game's soundtrack, kind of glad the composer was a terrible dude so that it's okay to openly hate him, this is otherwise like a 5/5 so far. Third best game I've played so far this year.
I do want to complain about the music again though. I know, I know, I promised I would stop talking about it, but this was an egregious instance of the music being terrible. So, to no one's surprise, I got the final two party members in this section: Jade and Rab. There's a lot that happened there that I'll get into later on but for now all you need to know is that for a good portion of this section, Tud and Jade are adventuring on their own and forming a bond with each other. Jade sees Tud as a long lost little brother due to her upbringing at the Dundrasilian court and closeness to Tud's mother, the late queen of Dundrasil, and blames herself for Tud being lost for so long. If she had been stronger as a child, she could've held onto the basket holding the young Tud, and things may have gone differently.
And there's a genuinely rather poignant moment between these two, Jade lamenting the life she didn't get to lead and the life that Tud was robbed of. It's sad and solemn and you feel for these two, people who could've been close as siblings now reuniting many years later under duty rather than connection. And then the moment the cutscene is over, the moment the game no longer needs to maintain this tone, the awful loud overworld music plays completely shocking you out of forming a genuine connection with these characters. I think the music sounds awful, that's my main criticism against it, but genuinely I think what's worse about it is how it impacts the actual story. How this game's soundtrack is actively sabotaging the pathos. It's the worst, genuinely one of the worst soundtracks I've ever heard in any game ever.
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| The Old Sage, Rab |
Anyways, this was primarily a story section, so get ready for the recap. So, to finish off what was happening in Octagonia, shortly after Vince was carted out of the arena, Rab arrives in our room asking Tud if he will assist in finding Jade. Jade apparently disappeared, along with Vince, shortly after the failed award ceremony. Rab and her had sniffed something suspicious going on around the orphanage and, indeed, something shady was going on. The orphanage's garden, has opened up revealing a massive network of caves underneath, home to all manner of nasty beast. And also home to a lot of Metal Slimes, which means you know your boy was firing off for the free EXP. I swear every fight I had with Deadnuts and Shadow Ministers had minimum two Metal Slimes in it. It was crazy. I just wish I had Metal Slash to actually take advantage of it, because at least one would always run away before I could kill them. Still, my "I think I'm underleveled" woes were solved in this part of the story.
Anyways, once you make it to the deepest part of the cave system, you encounter Vince carrying Jade. Moreover, a network of webs hangs from the ceiling, each web containing a fighter that had disappeared earlier on in the competition. This is the den of a giant monstrous spider, the last remaining creature of the original Dundrasil raid all those years ago. The Dundrasilian general of Heliodor, Sir Hendrik, had rode through many years ago and exterminated all the monsters from the original raid except for this one, who cowered deep underground licking its wounds. That is until he met Vince. Vince, early on in his career, was a terrible fighter. He had the strength but none of the finesse, he used to be knocked out of MMA season almost immediately. Being the only person present who was fighting for the orphanage, he got desperate, and that's when he found this monster. The monster cut Vince a deal, if Vince would expedite his recovery process by bringing him the Octagonian fighters, the monster would share with Vince his strength. Vince would be able to support the orphanage. To Vince, the choice was clear. To the monster, Vince was a sucker, as the potions the monster was giving him were draining his life force faster.
After dealing with the massive spider and reprimanding Vince for siding with monsters, the award ceremony finally starts. Tud and crew will finally receive the Rainbough they've coveted for so long. Except things can never be that simple, can they? As Tud is being awarded their prize, an Octagonian officiator runs into the stadium to alert everyone that Rab and Jade have stolen the Rainbough and have left a letter for Tud, asking the party to meet with them in the ruins of Dundrasil proper so they can finally talk. With little choice in the matter, Tud and crew make their way west towards the ruined city, Tud's home, the civilization that in another life he would've ruled. My feelings from the previous section about Dundrasil feeling kind of underwhelming are totally gone when you reach the city, for what it's worth. You really feel the weight of what was lost in this part, seeing a land overrun by monsters and having the game force you to take it all in, as you are forced to follow Rab who slowly wanders about the ruins. Oh and also I fought my first dragons. Dragons have taken over the former Dundrasil castle in the absence of people. They were tough sons of guns until I remembered Tud literally has a skill which decimates Dragon HP.
Eventually, we arrive at a humble gravestone, the only grave around to mourn the people of Dundrasil. A grave Rab built himself, a grave to mourn his dearly departed daughter and his son-in-law. A grave to mourn the royal family of Dundrasil. Rab, you see, is Tud's biological grandfather, father of the queen of Dundrasil. He gives us some more info on what happened that night, how the monsters descended all at once and razed the kingdom, how he lost his daughter and thought he had lost everything, how he devoted his life to finding out more of what happened that night. And what he had found is quite unsettling. The King of Heliodor, once a close friend of Dundrasil, seems to have been involved in the attack. For some unknown reason, he had gone mad at the Luminary's birth, claiming that the harbinger of destruction has arisen and sending forces to ensure the eradication of Dundrasil was true, that the "Darkspawn" had been dealt with. But that's not important now. What is important is that, with Tud returning to Dundrasil, Rab can finally complete one of his life's works. See, Dundrasil has a tradition. It's said that all souls return to the World Tree eventually, but souls who met their demise due to monsters cannot find their way normally. So a ritual was developed to guide those souls back to Yggdrasil's embrace. But said ritual can only be completed by a member of the Dundrasilian royal family, in this case Tud. And so Tud guides the souls of the people of Dundrasil back home.
It is after this that we get the opportunity to talk to Jade and learn her whole deal. Jade reveals that she is the lost Helidorian princess, a young girl who was believed to have been murdered in the raid of Dundrasil. She had been in hiding for all this time, feeling as if she could not safely return home in the midst of her father's madness. She is overjoyed to see Tud is alive and safe, as previously stated she saw the Dundrasilian royal family as her own and in particular saw Tud as her baby brother. However, this reunion is cut short by the arrival of the Helidor military, led by Sir Hendrik. The duo, separated from the rest of the party, attempt to make their escape, but are cornered by Hendrik himself. Although Hendrik is put off by the sudden reappearance of the dead princess, his duty is to capture the Luminary and bring him back to Heliodor for execution. Fortunately, Tud and Jade make their escape into the river below, washing up down river at an abandoned cabin, which is where their tender moment discussed earlier happens. Unfortunately, it is not long before Hendrik finds them again. But he finds himself unable to harm the princess, not truly, even as she has sided with the "Darkspawn". And so Jade manages to knock him off his horse and leave him, once again allowing Tud to evade the Heliodorian army.
Making our way back to Dundrasil, we find the rest of the party awaiting us, having successfully evaded Hendrik's forces by slipping down the mountain. Finally, after all this time, we are given the Rainbough that we have sought for so long. And it doesn't actually work. Yeah, despite how instantly contact with pieces of Yggdrasil has given us visions in the past, the Rainbough seems to be little more than a very shiny stick in Tud's hands. The party is initially dismayed, until Rab has an idea: maybe since the Rainbough was severed from the tree, it needs to get closer to the World Tree in order to activate. Out of ideas, the party decides to follow Rab's lead and try to reach the World Tree. Which means getting the gate to Puerto Valor, which is currently closed, open, meaning our next destination is set. Rab and Jade decide to join the party at this juncture, finally completing the group after all this time. However, it is not long before we find out what to do, as the Rainbough begins glowing as we exit Dundrasil and unleashes a vision: a large pedestal in the middle of the forest, surrounded by 6 glowing crystalline orbs. Our quest once again has a direction: finding the 6 orbs. And as luck would have it, we already have two of the orbs required. So we set off, once again, for Puerto Valor, looking for any leads and a way out into the open ocean.
But first, let us update our quest objectives! So, I smashed more pumpkins, because I went back through Octagonia to pick up a couple easy sidequests and the pumpkins I had smashed earlier had respawned. Which, I know what you're thinking "Ed, doesn't that make the goal of smashing every pumpkin impossible if they will simply respawn after you leave the area". And yes, but also, shut up. Let me have this. We did not receive any Puff-Puff this time around, though MMA fighter Sinderella did offer before erroneously assuming that we wouldn't be interested. Got robbed boys. But, most importantly, we received not one, but TWO Veronica Wins Agains, bringing our total up to 6. I was unnaturally excited by the fact that the counter went up by two this time.
7/4/26
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| Slime in hat. |
I got like nothing done in this play session, I'm sorry. At this point I'm just mad about not making substantial progress because I know people are probably mad about how long this thing is taking me and how if you're reading this it's like "he keeps complaining about the game being too long but then he keeps taking week long breaks". And you know what. Fair. Valid criticism. Game recognize game. But yeah, this is mostly a filler episode, I got access to the outer seas, did some exploring, did some grinding, found an island of Slimes and my party almost died fighting a King Slime. You know. The usual. This was, genuinely, the first time I think I've had a party member actually die at any point in the game. I might've had one happen early game that I'm just forgetting about, I think Veronica died not too long after getting her to an unlucky battle. But this was the first time I was actually like "haha, I'm in danger".
That isn't to say I did NO story this time around, though. As Rab recommended we do, I headed back to Puerto Valor and asked them to open the gate out of the inland sea and onto the vast ocean. It was a surprisingly quick and painless process, Rab simply holds enough favor with the Don Rodrigo, the man in charge of the Port city, that they will do what he wants no questions asked. Although, interestingly, Don Rodrigo's servant Servantes does recognize Sylvando. Can't imagine what that means, can you? (This is a joke, I'm pretty sure I know what it means). After exiting out onto the open ocean and starting our adventuring, however, a mysterious otherworldly fog begins to roll in consuming our ship. When it finally breaks, we find ourselves stranded on a mysterious sandbar serving as a ship graveyard. The Strand, as they call it, a place where sailors crash and are never heard from again. Fortunately, because this is Dragon Quest, being trapped on a mysterious magical sandbar is actually a boon as we meet our next ally, the one person who can actually give us a lead on where to go next. And what's better? She's a mermaid.
And what's worse is that she entirely speaks in rhyme! I find this far less endearing than the town of people who only speak in haiku. Michelle has been waiting at the Strand for some time, even she knows not how long, as she has been awaiting the return of the love of her life. Some time ago, a fisherman name Kai washed up on the Strand after a shipwreck and Michelle found him. The two became smitten with each other and when Kai finally was able to sail to freedom, he promised to return to be with Michelle. Michelle even asked the queen of the Mermaids if she would assist in their plight, as Michelle cannot go up on land without risking her life. It's Little Mermaid rules, if Michelle goes up on land and then tries to return to the ocean, she will become sea foam. However, Kai was never heard from again. Before you think to yourself "well how is that our problem" first of all, that's what ERIK would say. You don't want to be like Erik do you? Second of all, going under the sea is actually very beneficial for our cause. See, Veronica recalls that when she was a girl, the first time, not this time, she heard a story about the orbs falling from Yggdrasil into the waters below. If we were granted safe passage under the waters, then we would be able to hunt for the orbs needed to make our way to Yggdrasil and seize Tud's destiny. So we cut a deal with Michelle: we go find Kai and return him to her, and in exchange she'll grant us passage underwater. So off we go to one of the only remaining cities we have yet to visit, the fishing city of Lonalulu.
I was really worried I was going to have to completely rework my characters' weapons. See, I initially wanted every character to, a, play with their default weapon and/or, 2, have a completely unique weapon. This became a problem when Rab and Jade joined the party. See, Jade's weapon of choice is the spear, which is fine, that's an entirely unique weapon, the only other party member that could use that is Serena and she uses one handed wands for the most part. My problem was just that Jade starting with a spear cannot stand because Jade is the kung fu lady. They spend the entire introductory chapter of Jade and Rab establishing that Jade is the kung fu lady. Only to then give her a spear. Horrible. This cannot stand. So obviously I'm speccing Jade into claws, but the problem is that claws are really more Rab's weapon. Rab is even seen slashing with claws in the intro movie. But it's cool because Rab can also wield two handed staffs. Which are Veronica's weapon of choice. But Veronica can wield whips. Which is Sylvando's thing. And so on. And so on. Eventually I just swallowed my pride, choked on the lies, and let Rab wield two handed staffs because I wasn't about to rework Veronica into a melee build, you kidding me?
Now for the disappointing developments: due to where I went in this play session, I did not find any more pumpkins and have yet to receive more Puff-Puff. I can give it now. That's one of Jade's abilities, she can just inflict the infatuation status on enemies and eat their turns. But I did not receive it, and that doesn't count. Tud is a very selfish lover, he only receives. And because I spent much of this time trying to grind Rab and Jade, Veronica was mostly out of the party, although I did receive one Veronica wins again for my trouble, bringing the count up to 7. I think I'm going to try and lock in on Dragon Quest this month instead of alternating, just do a whole bunch of it and see if I can get it done in a timely fashion. I like the alternating style I've been doing for game clearing this year but I think it benefits harder games rather than longer ones. More Tomb Raider less Dragon Quest. Also, I'll just be honest with you, I'm itching to play Dragon Quest more.
7/8/26
Okay, so A LOT happened in this installment. I mean, a lot should happen, I left off on a plot direction and I did a four hour play session. Happy 30 hour mark, y'all!!! I'm still in Act One, which is shocking, but I feel the levels are leveling out so I'm probably going to be able to finish off the Act pretty quickly after this. Here's hoping Acts 2 and 3 aren't as long, I'm already approaching the mid-30s in level and I'm hoping that this game ends closer to ~level 60 and it isn't one of those JRPGs where you're basically at level cap when you get to the ending. It feels like I'm reaching the midgame though so I'm probably closer to half way than I think I am and the "Acts" are more narrative than gameplay? I don't know, I realize how much of this diary is me going "game too long" and I want it to be clear, the game being overly long is not a problem. Like I'm not actually upset about a long game, I knew what I was getting into and I'm more just like "I wish this game was shorter" because I know the DQ gaming diary is going to be like 80 pages and a 3 hour read and I want people to read this.
Levels evening out means that I'm more and more using the auto-battler to get through regular mob fights. I probably should just use the abilities/items to make weak enemies run away but, and this is a problem I have in most RPGs, I don't back down from enemy fights when I should and end up playing out every battle even if it wastes time and resources. EXP is EXP and if that EXP is free? All the better. Anyways, this has led me to realize that the AI will literally always go for the biggest attack if you let it use MP, draining your MP very quickly. This isn't a huge deal for like Veronica or Rab, who have a lot of MP, though Rab's AI does make some questionable decisions. Like there's no way he doesn't see a kill with Crackle, why does he keep debuffing almost dead enemies. But Tud keeps running low on MP very quickly and I wish there was like a specific setting that was like "conserve MP but also don't be afraid to use MP on larger groups". Like I don't want it to be like "Tud either goes for the big 20 MP board nuke spell or doesn't use spells and abilities at all", ya feel? And I especially don't want Veronica to keep burning MP on big spells when her Magical Might is so high at this point that her cheap spells are probably enough. The auto-battler is otherwise great but it feels like this is such an obvious miss for the mechanic?
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| Unfortunately she does also speak in rhyme. |
I won't be talking about how Michelle's story plays out just yet, I kind of want to end on that, so instead I'm going to just jump ahead to after it's done because I'm very glad actually how Dragon Quest XI's Act One continues to play out? Like it keeps expanding your freedom in very natural ways, starting you on a very linear path before you get Zoom and can fast travel around the country, then you receive the boat and get access to a small inland sea area, then you open the sea gates and get access to the ocean, and now you get access to underwater transports. You go under the sea to the Mermaid village of Nautica, which I wish I had more to say on because it is very beautiful but it's also a pretty tiny city. It only has an equipment shop you can't use yet because the shopkeeper, a shark, doesn't speak your language, a different shop where you can buy items which aren't currently useful because Serena, Rab, and Tud all do the job better, Michelle's house which she hasn't been in for some time because she's been waiting on Kai, and the Palace of the Queen of the sea, Queen Marina. Side note, Queen Marina is so cool. Like she's beautiful, and kind, and already knows the deal on Tud's quest and empathizes with his plight. As the queen of the merfolk, she knows all too well how superstition separates people, it's almost the true harbinger of the end times. And she just gives you her orb no questions asked! But the end result is that now we can go underwater and reach parts of the world we never could've normally, once again expanding our limits. It's such a nice flow.
One such place is the mountainous region of the Champs Sauvage. If you couldn't tell from the name, this is our French area of the game, adding to our collection of cultural inspirations. The Champs Sauvage is actually an area mentioned earlier in the game in Puerto Valor, there's a girl's school near the top of one of the mountains that teaches girls Medalurgy. Our friend the traveling blacksmith mentioned it in one of his journals, upset that he could not join the school as he was a middle aged man and not a little girl. I did visit the school, for the record, although I don't think I really had to? I think this area was entirely optional, unless you want to do the Mini Medal sidequest. I am not going out of my way to do the Mini Medal sidequest, but it's nice to have the progress bar to fill out since I'm just finding them normally as I go about my quest.
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| My boy Tetsu would've been disappointed anyways, this school is just about finding medals, not metalworking. |
But I'm also glad I did go up to the school because I found some really fun bits! The class of this school features a number of monsters, including a zombie who is wearing a schoolgirl outfit. There was a fun sidequest with a Lip Smacker enemy where she wrote into an advice column about what to do about her crush, only for Tud to retrieve the advice and the Lip Smacker reveal that she's one of the enemies Tud passed by earlier on. We may have murdered her parents. I don't want to think of the implications there. But the most notable sidequest comes from one of the instructors at the school. She found a mysterious note in one of the library books at the school that was seemingly addressed to her from her childhood best friend. Her friend and her had an argument many many years ago and had not spoken since, and it is only now that she has found that her friend had left her something buried on the school grounds all those years ago. However, unable to step away from her duties and unable to follow the clue, that it's at the shadow of the birch tree during twilight, when she's off duty due to her failing eyesight, she asks Tud to do it. When Tud retrieves the box, she reveals that they were more than friends, heavily implying that they were in love, but they had gotten separated after some argument long ago and the love of her life went off and married another. That friend was Jade's mother, who tragically passed away after giving birth to Jade due to some illness. The woman is overjoyed to find this and gifts her departed friend's ribbon to Jade, not knowing that she has given Jade an heirloom of the mother she never got to know. Banger sidequest, loved it.
Circling back around to the world being more open now, I'm very fond of the way that this game trusts its playerbase to find things on their own. I've tagged it as an open world RPG and that's kind of a half-truth, it is very open but again I liken it to Twilight Princess where it has a big world but it's in a bunch of smaller, digestible areas. But DQXI does adopt many open world RPG ideals, one of which being that it uses geography and enemy levels to naturally lead the player towards the destination it wishes them to go in. It trusts that the player wants to explore and so uses its game design to subtly push the player in the direction it wants them to go in without imposing upon their exploration. Again, it's not difficult for it to do because it's not a proper open world RPG, it's not like FFVIIR2 or Fallout: New Vegas. But it's also nice that it lets the leash be taken off and trusts the player will find where it wants them to go on their own. DQXI treats me more like an adult than some open world RPGs actually for adults, lol.
The fourth orb was unfortunately nothing too crazy, there wasn't like a grand story locked behind it which the player was led into. Basically at some point in history there was a wealthy family who lived high up in the mountains of the Champs Sauvage in a glorious mansion. They had come into possession of the fourth orb, the Silver orb, through their extravagant wealth and displayed it as a status symbol. But also up on the mountain is a Condor breeding ground, the Eerie Eyerie, and the condors in Dragon Quest are very much like ravens. They want to collect shiny things for their nest. The big difference being that the Condors are the size of giants. So one of the condors broke through the window of the house and stole the silver orb, and now guards it up on its home at the top of the mountain. It was a very simple task to climb up there, fight said condor, and retrieve our treasure. Like it was hardly even a boss fight, the Condor could attack twice a turn and had more powerful healing spells but it was largely the same as every other Condor fought so far. Jade was the GOAT for the fight, her ability to bicycle kick flying enemies to make them dead is proving more handy than I initially thought it was going to be.
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| You can't see it, but there are 626 Experiments hidden in this town. |
Okay let's talk about what happened with Michelle. So as you'll recall, in the last play session the mermaid Michelle sent us off to find her lost love, Kai, a fisherman from the fishing town of Lonalulu. When we get there however, we discover that the village is pretty barren, with all the men gone off somewhere. As we ask around for Kai, we discover an old woman who tells the story of Kai and the mermaid, but it's a bit different from what actually happened. To the people of Lonalulu, the story is as follows: the fisherman Kai was a young man who was set to marry the kahuna's daughter and become the new chief of the village before being stranded during a fishing trip. After being missing for some time, however, he returned from being shipwrecked out in the ocean, but he began telling stories of a mermaid who saved him and stole his heart. The villagers reacted in fear, their future chief was enchanted by a monster and so they exiled him from the village, only for terrible storms to roll in shortly after. They believe themselves to be cursed by the mermaids, that their long string of misfortune is caused by their decision to cast Kai out. You would think that logic would then dictate that if you returned Kai to the mermaids, the misfortune would stop, this part doesn't make a lot of sense I'm just going to be real with you. Superstitions be wild, y'all.
Anyways, we don't have time to correct the story as we have to find Kai. Luckily, the woman telling the story knows exactly where Kai is, because she is his mother, and she says that he had left off with the other men to fight a giant squid who has stopped the village from fishing or pearl diving, their two forms of income. Tud, obviously, agrees to help them end the squid's reign of terror, not that they have much choice as Kai is disposed until that point, and after a successful squid hunting mission, the city throws a luau in our honor. Side note, I love the luau. I feel like DQXI does kind of a poor job of making its NPCs feel like people with their own lives a lot of the time, they do often feel like they only exist for gameplay utility and they don't have lives outside of Tud and the gang's quest. But seeing this luau, seeing an entire village getting drunk, having fun, reuniting with families that thought they might never see them again? It was a very nice humanizing moment. It also lets us see the party when they're "off the clock", so to speak. Erik is off to the side making a note not to enjoy himself, Sylvando is performing for people, Jade is sat across from the kahuna sharing drinks and discussing politics, Serena is healing injured sailors and fisherman, Veronica is mad because they won't let her into the party because she's physically a child, Rab is flirting with a village elder. It's a very nice moment.
Unfortunately, we have work to do and can't party for too long. Tud sneaks away from the party to find Kai, accompanied by Jade and Veronica, only to find him working on the ships down by the dock. They confront him about abandoning the love of his life, only to be hit with an absolute bombshell: this Kai isn't the man they're looking for. They are looking for his grandfather, a man who passed away some time ago. Michelle has been waiting for him for fifty years. The younger Kai leads us to his grandfather's cabin overlooking the graveyard and explains that life for him and his mother has been difficult. The curse has never truly left them, they are still pariahs, and were only even allowed to be part of the community upon his grandfather's passing. He despises the mermaid for making their life hard, and wants nothing more than for her shadow to leave them. So he sends you off with the wedding veil his grandfather made for her and a message: the man she loves is dead, leave us alone.
Now, when you return to the Strand, you have a choice. You can lie to Michelle, tell her that Kai is being held up by his responsibilities in the village and that he'll come for her as soon as he can. She is not aware that any significant time has passed, after all, she thinks it is only a few months or years since the promise. To mermaids, the lifespan of a human is fleeting. But, that's not really fair to her, is it? No, of course we did the right thing and told her the truth about Kai. She is hesitant to believe it, of course, that the love she waited so long for has left this world, and asks that you bring the younger Kai to the beach to meet her. Owing us a favor, he follows us without question, and for the first time in decades human and mermaid meet. Kai, despite his hatred, is kind to her, telling her what she needs to know and directing her to the small pile of rocks that the villagers erected to mark the elder Kai's resting place.
Michelle, however, is unable to live on without her Kai. She has waited for this long and she will wait no longer. So she makes a choice. She gives up her mermaid life to walk upon land, donning her bridal veil and walking over to her beloved's grave. She speaks of love and bonds that transcend species, time, and even mortality. Then she bids the party farewell, saying that they were true friends to her, says to Kai he is strong and gentle like his grandfather. And then steps into the ocean. For once a mermaid steps onto land, if they ever return to the sea they will be turned to foam. Michelle chose to end her own life, to be with her beloved in whatever comes after. Kai then realizes that his grandfather was never enchanted. That he truly loved this mermaid, and she loved him in kind. That there was no curse. He finds a letter from his grandfather too Michelle, one that appeared too late, detailing what happened.
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| She's as beautiful as the day he lost her. |
After another storm, the kahuna's daughter Kai was bethrothed to lost her husband and with him, the will to live. She threw herself off the giant cliffs surrounding Lonalulu, baby in hand. Kai sprung to rescue her, but could not save the mother. With no other choice, he decided he could not return to Michelle. He had a responsibility to this child, a child who lost their family because of him. And so he had to stay. This does not make a lot of sense because I'm sure Michelle would be cool with it if you just went to her but I'm nitpicking. To the end, Kai loved Michelle, and never stopped thinking of her. And all that remains of both him and his love, sits in his shack, Kai's life's work: a painting of Michelle in her bridal veil. Beautifully rendered. Forever uniting the two in this world, as they hopefully will be in the next. Y'all, I think I might love this game.
As always, we're ending off on the quest objectives, it's nothing. We didn't get any Puff-Puff, which like, thank god because the only places we visited were a school for girls and an indigenous culture. That would've been a bit yikes. We found like two pumpkins to smash, nothing huge but like. Part of our goal, you know. We hate them pumpkins, gotta smash em all. And finally, we received THREE Veronica Wins Agains. I've kind of been just leaving the autobattle on and letting Veronica handle all the problems in front of us so I've had more opportunity and I'm excited the count is now up to 10!!! Double digits baby!!! Here's hoping I get just way more Veronica play coming up, I'd love this count to just explode.
7/9/26
I'm sad because I didn't make that much progress in this section. I was kind of hoping actually to do like, a play session where I got the final two orbs and then a play session where I made it to Yggdrasil and finished Act One. But getting the fifth orb kind of took up my night, so unfortunately I guess I'll have at least two more play sessions in Act One. I'm starting to realize that my playthrough will just take all summer and that's fine. It's Dragon Quest summer, something I am only going to do this once, and like. I know I've been very anxious about how long this game is but it's not like I do exceptionally long games very often, you know? I think the longest game I've played since I started the blog was Radiant Historia, which was only 40 hours long. And like, I don't have very many exceptionally long games planned outside of this. It's like, Persona 5 and Fallout: New Vegas, and neither one of them I have to commit to finishing like this one. So you know, we're doing this.
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| Ehn Ahl |
So last time I ended off getting the fourth orb and resting at the Medal Academy. So what better direction to head than down the mountain to the city of Phohn Nohm, a city built on top of the ancient ruins of the kingdom of Nhou Wat. Yes it's pronounced like "Now what", unless you're Erik, who can't pronounce the names of the locations in this game to save his life. This has been your contractually obligated Erik hate session for this entry, we can now resume. Unfortunately the Rainbough does not show us an orb is in the vicinity, meaning that our quest has seemingly hit a dead end for the moment. However, we do end up wrapped up in a bit of a heroic mission. As we take in the sites of the city and make our way to the mural of the ancient kingdom of Nhou Wat that was uncovered during an archaeological dig in the recent past, we encounter a lost little girl named Dora who says that her parents disappeared after looking at the mural. Indeed, it seems that many people have come to the mural as it's said to grant fortune and luck to those who pray before it. And every so often someone goes missing.
So we investigate the mural and end up finding no clues to Dora's missing parents. Veronica and Serena, however, note that the queen in the mural is wearing a key around her neck that they believe to be one of the missing artifacts of the Luminary, his magic key. The original Luminary had spread treasures across the world for his reincarnation to gain, but they require that key. But it's more than that, for it seems that the key is trying to jump out of the mural, trying to reunite with its destined owner. However, before it can connect with Tud, some other people burst through to pray at the mural, breaking the spell. Good timing too, as not only have we not found Dora's parents but Sylvando has reported that Dora has gone missing. The group retreats to the inn to have a good meal and regroup, returning to their investigation in the morning.
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| ...would. |
Upon awakening, we see Dora again heading off to the ruins and, upon chasing her, we find out what's really going on here. Dora is the queen in the mural, a monstrous entity named Dora-in-Gray who was brought to this world by the Dark Lord Mordegon, the being who the Luminary had slain in the original conflict. Dora is obsessed with making her mural beautiful, and has been kidnapping particularly colorful souls to imprison in her mural. And she believes she had found the perfect finishing touches: our rainbow colored party of heroes. Our heroes travel through the world in the mural to find Dora-in-Grey and slay her, breaking the spell she has over the town and uniting Tud with the magic key. Rab says he saw one of the doors it would open back in the land of Zwaardrust, believing that may contain our fifth orb. And so off we go on a treasure hunt to find the fifth orb.
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| Worth it, though, she's so hot. |
And that's basically what I did with the rest of my play session tonight. Went treasure hunting. I warped around the world trying to find all the magic doors and looting their contents, which did include getting the fifth orb. As well I finished some hanging sidequests, nothing too notable but stuff I had been putting off completing for a while until I was in a convenient place to do so. I think the "biggest" thing I did outside of the Dora-in-Grey stuff was that I actually did set foot in a casino. There's an NPC that wishes to see Jade dressed as one of the casino bunny girls and the only way to obtain the bunny suit is to purchase it from the casino prize shop. I did one round of gambling, lost every single token I had bought without getting any wins, and then decided "screw this" and just bought all the tokens. It cost me 10,000 gold but you know what, I can make that back. If there's another quest that wants me to gamble I am just telling you right now I am not doing it, you can't make me, I refuse to gamble anymore.
And, as always, let's finish off with our quest objectives! I found like five pumpkins today. I feel like I'm getting to the end of the pumpkin game, gang, I've been to like every city outside of the frozen northern city of Sniflheim, my next destination, and I've smashed every pumpkin in turn. I may have to stop updating y'all on the pumpkins soon. Sad days. I received another instance of Puff-Puff, which this NPC in Phohn Nom implied that Puff-Puff is applying makeup??? Don't believe that one for a second. And finally, we received two Veronica Wins Agains, bringing our total up to 12. When I first started tracking Veronica Wins Again I thought I was going to be getting way more but like 90% of the time it feels like Serena gets the end of battle quote and it's usually "Did I do alright" and like, yes girl, you did your best, love you, but I want Veronica to win again! Anyways, next stop: Sniflheim, and the final orb.
7/11/26
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| The citizens are called SNIFLHEIMERS!!! |
In this section I almost killed a baddie. I'm not proud of it either, but it's what the game makes us do!!! So as mentioned previously, the city of Sniflheim is frozen solid when we arrive. Full disclosure, I actually stumbled upon the city much earlier in the game while I was out doing my adventuring across the sea, so I already knew what Sniflheim's whole deal was. The northern city of Erdrea, I feel like I've just been calling it the continent so far, the world's name is Erdrea, I've just been being lazy, Sniflheim exists within the tundra and is our fill-in for like. Iceland. Or Norway. It's always cold in Sniflheim, but it being fully frozen is a new development, as normally the city's architecture prevents freeze buildup. Part of the issue with it being frozen like this is that we could not get into the front gates in the first place, forcing us to find a back entrance. Which we can now access now that we have Dora's key.
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| I can't believe the game made me almost kill her. |
Entering the city, we find the entire populace, man, woman, child, and even livestock have been turned into ice sculptures. As we venture around the city, we find a sole living resident, the city's queen Frysabel, who tells us what befell her kingdom. Long ago, during the "Age of Heroes", an evil ice witch named Krystalinda ruled over these lands. However, the heroes of the past managed to banish her away to parts unknown, forcing her to find refuge within the enchanted forest to the north of Sniflheim, the Hekswoods. No one had seen or heard from her in some time, however very recently she returned to Sniflheim and froze the entire city solid, with Frysabel alone being spared because she was knocked unconscious during the freezing. Frysabel had already sent soldiers forth to fight the ice witch, warriors from overseas who arrived after hearing the trouble Sniflheim was in, but there is an issue: the Hekswoods are stalked by a monstrous beast known as the Jormun. This beast protects Krystalinda with its life, making quick work of any who oppose her. To fight Krystalinda is to slay the beast. And so Tud and friends head off to the Hekswood to aid Sniflheim, as they can't really get their final orb until this whole thing is sorted.
As we arrive in the Hekswood we discover the soldiers that Frysabel spoke of are the knights of Heliodor. It seems our pursuer and rival Sir Hendrik has made his way up here to help the good people of Sniflheim. As we arrive to the lair of the Jormun, Tud gets separated from the party, and we find that Hendrik is in the midst of an epic battle with the beast, one that Tud begrudgingly gets involved with when the Jormundturns its sights on him. We save our antagonist, only for Hendrik to predictably turn his blade on Tud, seeing his chance to finally end the reign of the Darkspawn. Before he can move to attack, though, the witch herself finally makes an appearance. Krystalinda freezes both Hendrik and Tud in place. Shockingly, Krystalinda seems indifferent to the presence of the Luminary, which implies that she is not directly working with Mordegon, instead setting her sights on Hendrik. She snatches the pendant from his neck, saying her "partner" wishes to have it, and then moves to kill both Hendrik and Tud before VERONICA WINS AGAIN. Veronica shows up and blasts Krystalinda with a fireball, stopping the witch from killing Tud. Hendrik grabs his pendant and walks away, ensuring the Luminary that someday they will square up and he will capture the party, but his honor will not allow him to harm his saviors. Then Tud collapses on the ground unconscious.
We awaken in the cabin of the scholar Snorri, one of the members of Frysabel's court and the only other survivor of Sniflheim besides the queen herself. He had isolated himself near the Hekswood to study the monsters that make the place home when Krystalinda descended upon the city. Lucky for Tud, as Veronica managed to get him into Snorri's care. Something he teases her about, heavily implying Veronica has a crush on the hero. I know I talk about Veronica a lot, because she's obviously the best character, but I generally think it's very cute that the magic that turned her into a child wasn't just a physical thing it seems. Like despite being an adult woman mentally, she has also developed a lot of childish behaviors, like being loud and brash and saying perhaps too much of what's on her mind or having childish crushes. It's cute. Veronica is the absolute best, she is my daughter and we stan. Keep track of how many times I've said a character is my daughter on this blog, this isn't the first one. Anyways, it's lucky that we found Snorri at all because, as a scholar, he is one of the only people who knows where we are likely to find more information on the witch. East of Sniflheim, there is a ruin from long before the city of Sniflheim was even here, the Royal Library and Snorri believes there are likely tomes in there that will tell of how to defeat Krystalinda and save the city.
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| This was not the exact pig I encountered in this section, I just like this one better. |
I want to go on a brief aside right now to once again talk about how much I love Toriyama's design work. "Does this mean you encountered another pig in a witch's hat" shut up, don't read me like that. But yes, I encountered another very good pig in a giant witch's hat and I love them. I really haven't been mentioning Toriyama's design work for a while simply because I haven't had a lot of "new" character designs in a while. Dragon Quest is like THE RPG which introduces a standard rotation of enemies at the beginning of the game and then keeps recoloring them to denote stronger enemies until the end of the game. But in this section I encountered the Professaurus, a dragon in a graduation cap and robe. That owns. I actually encountered a couple dragons in this section, there's a mighty dragon frozen in ice underneath a lake in Sniflheim that I can't do anything about quite yet but it owns. Very Shenron coded, love the way Toriyama draws dragons. But the peak design, the design that really made this section pop, is Krystalinda herself. What a babe. Perfect "evil ice witch" character, she has some notes of like magical girl design in her too and her chaotic hair that goes everywhere. Love Krystalinda, she's my girl, I see an attractive witch in a game and I have literally no choice but to stan.
I am happy to say, by the way, that my current weapons line-up was in fact the correct choice. I was a bit worried for a while since like, I know that claws don't deal that much damage all told. Jade using claws instead of spears is trading raw power for the ability to hit twice a turn, which may or may not even out. More often than not, it doesn't, as Jade would be easily doing ~120 per hit with a spear while her range on each claw hit is between 40-50. But there are two distinctive advantages I'm getting with the claws that are making them very appealing to me. The first is that because they hit twice, they're very good for Metal Slime fighting. Metal Slimes are enemies that grant massive experience upon defeat but they have insane defense, insane evasion, and are immune to magic. Jade hitting twice a turn optimizes the chances of hitting Metal Slimes, who will just run away if they're not defeated fast enough. The second reason is that the Claw skill tree grants Jade INSANE crit rates. She's currently up to I think a 12% crit chance, which gets increased considerably if she's Pepped. And that is a crit chance per hit, which means that Jade will often crit twice in a row. Sure, Jade averages around 90 damage per turn, but who cares if sometimes she just hits two crits in a row and deals 300. Jade has very quickly become in my main rotation, between her and Veronica I'm doing insane numbers.
Anyways, back to the story. So we infiltrate the library and find out that Jormun was not Krystalinda's pet, but instead the thing keeping her full power sealed away. Veronica quickly deduces that the Queen Frysabel we met earlier on was actually Krystalinda in disguise, playing Tud for a fool to regain her full power. We hurry back to Sniflheim to confront the ice witch, finding the whole place in the midst of a aggressive blizzard. Krystalinda attempts to play innocent but Veronica is too smart for her, revealing her deception and beginning a battle with the ice witch. After a grueling fight, Krystalinda was defeated and sealed back into the book, releasing the real Queen Frysabel and the witch's hold on Sniflheim. Frysabel, excited to be free from the book at last, offers the party the final orb no questions asked. However, there is a last minute deception! Frysabel is still imprisoned within the book, with Krystalinda using the last of her magic to mount an escape attempt.
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| Yeah, I wonder why a woman who looks like this would be interested in Krystalinda. |
Discovering this deception, they free Frysabel from the book, and prepare to imprison Krystalinda once again. Frysabel rushes to the defense of the ice witch, however, stating that in their time together she realized Krystalinda is not an evil person, she just did not want to be trapped in a book anymore, and considers her a friend. She demands Krystalinda be allowed to stay and become her advisor. I have to imagine the fact that Krystalinda has a body that won't quit has something to do with it, get it Queen Frys. This does bring to question, if Krystalinda is not evil, why did she do all this? She's quick to respond that she owed a favor, a handsome young man had freed her from her prison in exchange for taking care of Sir Hendrik for him. Krystalinda was actually not meant to oppose Tud at all, she was meant to freeze Sir Hendrik and recover his pendant as proof that he was dead, starting a war to justify razing the land. And that man who freed her? Sir Jasper, the strategic genius behind Heliodor's military.
And now we must cover our quest objectives! So, as you might imagine from us adventuring in the snowy north this entire section, there were no pumpkins to smash. I know, I'm sad about it too. I did hit a couple snowmen though, that was fun. This game's collision detection continues to amuse me, you just like stand next to them and they collapse. We did receive another instance of Puff-Puff, and this one ALSO tries to gaslight us into thinking this is just applying makeup and we can use Puff-Puff in battle! You can't gaslight me, I know what's going on, stop being cheeky, game!!! Anyways, the most important metric is that we received two Veronica Wins Agains, bringing the total up to 14. Auto battling has weirdly made the VWA counter go up a lot, couldn't tell you why.
7/14/26
Well uh. I finished Act One. Maaaaaaaaaaan. So full disclosure, I was thinking this was going to be a shorter play session. Just finish out some existing sidequests, maybe make it to the next major city, don't really move the plot along past that. But I finished my hanging sidequests after like an hour of playing and then I made it to the final city in the game, Arboria, and I was like "well, I'm here, I'll do the story here, pick up the sidequests and then do those and we'll be squared away". But the sidequests took me up the World Tree anyways, so I was like "well, I'm already here, I should finish out Act One". And I got a second wind for playing the game as I was approaching the end of Act One anyways, that was another thing, I was like "I don't really feel like playing a lot of DQ tonight" initially, but I hit a second wind and just decided to keep going. And I'm glad I did because man, the plot got JUICY tonight.
But first I want to talk about some sidequest-y things I did. I don't often talk in depth about the sidequests in this game because, at least in Act One, they've been very call-and-response. Like you meet a character, they tell you a trouble they're having, they send you to find something in the immediate area of where they're found, you go get it, you come back, you quested with finesse. But this time there were two sidequests I really liked and a non-sidequest throughline that reached its resolution and had a plot twist I was super excited for because I'm invested in Dragon Quest I guess. Insane timeline. Thomas is probably reading this out on stream at this point, he got a W off on me after years of us teasing each other. Love ya buddy, thank you for calling my bluff.
So the two sidequests I wanted to talk about happen in Sniflheim and Arboria. The former features my favorite girl, Krystalinda, who in her short time as the queen's advisor has already successfully integrated herself into the city of Sniflheim. She's gained friends and spends a lot of time getting to know people at the bar and has even gotten herself a suitor who wishes to ask for her hand in marriage. Unfortunately for him, she gives him a task to prove he's serious: in the most secluded corner of the icy tundra East of Sniflheim lies a lake with the appearance of a full moon. On the banks of this lake grows a flower which only grows here. The problem is that this area is also high in monster activity. Unable to get the flower himself, he asks Tud to take up the task in his stead. Because I'm overleveled, retrieving the flower was an easy task, but when we return it to him he realizes that the flower was never the challenge. Krystalinda gave him this task knowing that he would not be able to complete it himself and would contract help, not because she's saying no, but because she needs him to realize that he's too young and "unseasoned" to be ready for marriage. Our young friend resolves to become a great adventurer so that he can be worthy of his beloved's hand. What I find compelling about this sidequest is how it paints a picture of the Dragon Quest world. Like Krystalinda committed an atrocity against the people of Sniflheim, nearly killed them all in one fell swoop, and yet she has already been forgiven. She's now treated as just one of the people of the Fjords. It's a kind and endearing world that is hard not to love. People are uncomplicated and forgive easily and lord knows we all need a world like this sometimes. Crazy to me that the original plan for DQXII was to go darker and more serious.
The second sidequest in Arboria features a young girl who is dying of a terrible illness. One of which there is no cure, as far as anyone knows. What a mood shift, amirite? But worry not, because there is hope for the young lass. See, high up on the World Tree are enemies called the Wight Bulbs, a rare variant of the bulb type enemies that are only seen as companions to other bulb enemies. These enemies, outside of being stronger and granting more EXP, are carrying with them the seeds to an enchanted flower known as the Wishteria. The Wishteria, as the name would imply, is said to grant the wishes of whoever grows it, and may be this young girl's last chance for a future. When we bring back the Wishteria seeds to her, she thanks us for finally giving her hope for the future. And that's always something that DQXI does well, it establishes hope in even the darkest moments, a light even in the darkness. I'm laying it on thick, I realize, a lot of people reading this know what's coming.
Finally the non-sidequest. So throughout the past several towns, if you have been looking around you will have seen bookshelves containing the diaries of a treasure hunter named Sudo Nim, claiming to be the greatest treasure hunter ever. Sudo Nim, at some point in the recent past, had set out from his home to prove he is the greatest treasure hunter by searching for the only piece of Yggdrasil that is available on Erdrea: the Rainbough. His adventures are full of various fun tangents and introspection on his own journey, but in the last couple installments he finds a man who is lost from his home and takes him into his care. Along the way joining up with a doctor from the city of Gallopolis, the trio decide to drop everything on their journey to bring the lad home. That home happens to be the city of Arboria, a city hidden deep in the mountains, and the man happens to be Benedictus, the son of the high priest/chief of Arboria and the modern day chief/high priest. The citizens are happy to see their heir returned and so offer the treasure hunter and his companion the treasure that they have sought: the Rainbough. But our treasure hunter, having been humbled on his journey, declines the Rainbough, allowing his companion to take it back to Gallopolis where it sat until Rab purchased it in the midst of our journey. The treasure hunter, instead, takes a small stone that activates portals around Erdrea, feeling at this point the adventure is more important to him than anything. He decides to return home to the city of Cobblestone to finally put down roots. For Sudo Nim has, this entire time, been Chalky, Tud's adoptive grandfather.
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| I don't have a joke here, this town is just pretty. |
Alright, let's get Act One finished. So we arrived in the secluded city of Arboria, the hometown of Veronica and Serena, just in time for a newborn's baptism. Unfortunately, being the Hero, we need to make it about us, so the Luminary's arrival into the town takes precedent. Fortunately they don't seem to mind, as this entire civilization is built around awaiting the Luminary's return and, if anything, the happy couple seems to feel it a blessing that their baby's baptism was overseen by Tud. Seeing that we have all six orbs, Benedictus takes us into the chapel, a place covered in paintings of the quest of the original Luminary, and we get some lore. It's mostly stuff we could glean by context clues, he tells the story of Erdwin in the Age of Heroes and the original defeat of Mordegon, and also tells us about the sacred tree Yggdrasil and how each of its leaves represents a human life and when they fall, it is because said human dies. After the exposition he sends us off on our quest up the World Tree.
The hike up to the World Tree was, largely uneventful. Like, I'm really overleveled I'm realizing, the only enemies that don't run from me are the big guys that I'm sure you're supposed to be avoiding and even they are starting to run from me. I guess level 40 was not where the game wanted you to be when you finished Act One, oops. Maybe this is the kind of game where the final boss is closer to level 50-60 than level cap after all. Not that I'm complaining, it means I'm probably going to get through the rest of the game much faster. I heard Act One is the longest part of the game and if things do even out more than, yeah, I'd definitely believe it. The only thing of note that happened on the climb up is when we made camp for Rab to rest, we have this nice scene of Serena playing her harp (for the first time the music in this game sounding nice and pleasant and not obnoxious) while the party thinks on how their journey is almost at its end. They talk about how, soon, they will obtain the means to defeat Mordegon and save the world, and how the future looks bright. Serena and Veronica have a brief moment where they talk about being twins and having their leaves grow on Yggdrasil at the same time and how they hope that they will fall at the same time too. It's a nice moment, a moment of raw honesty among this party we've grown to love (except Erik). As you would expect, it all comes crashing down.
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| How often do you think Mordegon shaves? |
We arrive to the heart of the World Tree and prepare to gain the Sword of Light, the tool we need to defeat Mordegon once and for all. Only the Luminary can unsheath the sword from the heart, the symbol on his hand being the key to unlock the magical barrier. He approaches the heart to receive the blade and immediately gets assaulted by a dark blast. Jasper has arrived, having been following us in secret since we left Gondolia, and he is here to claim the heart of the World Tree for his master. Jasper has, unsurprisingly, been a servant of the Dark Lord Mordegon the entire time. The party tries to defend the World Tree from his approach, but it is pointless, Jasper's dark magic is far too strong, his aura defending him from any attack. He dispatches the entire party swiftly and stands before the heart, claiming it in the name of Mordegon. However, he is put upon by the arrival of an unlikely ally to Tud's cause. Sir Hendrik has arrived, the King of Heliodor in tow, to reveal to him Jasper's machinations. It seems as if we have received a hail Mary, that we are to be saved at the last minute. And then the King blasts Hendrik with darkness.
At some point in the recent past, Mordegon had replaced the King. He has biding his time since at least the fall of Dundrasil, awaiting the Luminary to reveal himself so he could push him on his journey. Mordegon had wanted the power of the world tree the whole time, every time it seemed he was putting an obstacle in Tud's path, he was actually pushing him forward to the goal. For only the Luminary can control the heart of the World Tree. And now that he's delivered himself to the place Mordegon needs him to be, Mordegon's true plan can unfold. He steals the power of the Luminary, robbing Tud of his sacred birthright, and uses it to become the Luminary himself. He steals the Sword of Light corrupting it into the blade of Darkness, and stabbing it through the heart of the World, becoming its master. And just for good measure, he destroys the power of the Luminary, ensuring Tud can never regain his power to defeat him. Mordegon has won, and he has plunged the world into darkness in turn. And that is where Act One ends. The next thing we see is Tud falling into the ocean, alone, having visions of his past. Thinking of home. Jasper tells his master that they've looked all over the world and found no sign of the Luminary or his companions. Tud appears to be dead.
And now I gotta do the Intermissions and I'm dreading this part because these were added into Definitive Edition and it's that classic thing of a Definitive Edition adding more story content for people who have already played it but you don't get the option to skip them if it's your first time so you're finding out information you're not supposed to have yet. Like the party is scattered to the various corners of the Earth and Act 2 is built around reuniting your party, so you're kind of not supposed to know what happened to them at first and find out as you go along. But the intermissions are just filling in the specifics of what happened to the party after Mordegon won because it assumes that the core audience has already experienced the basic plot and wants those details. There's a reason I don't like Definitive Editions of JRPGs, more content does not always make for a better game. But I have to do them so we'll pick up next time with the first of them, Sylvando's!
And now for our main quest objectives. It's pretty empty. No Pumpkins, no Puff-Puff, although I did encounter enemies that could do Puff-Puff hypothetically, I've just gotten so strong that it doesn't matter. I'm like one turning everything that isn't a huge enemy at this point. Jade can just Harvest Moon and beat these weird little bat things. It's unfortunate. I'm kind of worried our quest goals are going to get sidelined after the end of the world. Especially since like the party is scattered now and Veronica won't be in it for a while. Our Veronica Wins Agains will have to be on hold, y'all. But for now, we got an impressive FIVE in this section, bringing our count up to 19!!! She left us with a lot of them, she's the best. She even got to call Erik a loser again in this part, we stan anyone who calls Erik a loser.
7/17/26
This is going to be my least favorite part of the game, I can already tell you. Look, I realize I am coming into this with the knowledge that the intermissions are entirely unnecessary tangents. They were not in the original release, they are not intended parts of the story, and I really wish I could skip them because I want to see the story as intended. And before anyone says anything, no, this is not how the story was intended to be experienced, that's why they weren't in the game originally! It's added content for people who already liked the story! It might make it the "more complete" version of the story, but I'm interested in what the original intent of the story was, especially in an instance like this where the additional content does not add anything to the core narrative but rather backfills character stories from a missing chunk of the narrative. So yeah, I'm coming into this already with the mindset of "I don't want to be doing this".
These intermissions are boring as sin. Okay I've only done two of them so far so maybe I'm being a touch hasty saying they're all boring as sin. But the first two definitely are. Like, they seek to answer questions of what party members were doing between Acts One and Two, but the issue is that not a lot of time actually passes between the two Acts. Like, technically as little or as much time as you want to theorize takes place between the two Acts does but in practice it's mere days between Mordegon causing the World Tree to crash down and our party members awakening in their places for their intermissions. So the answer to "what are our party members doing in the meantime" is "not a lot". Again, part of me is grumpy because I didn't even have time to ask a question like "what happened with our party between Acts", the game just put me into this against my will. But like, the only reason why I didn't knock out every intermission in one sitting is because I like to talk to everyone in towns I visit if I feel like they have new dialog so Sylvando's intermission was shockingly long. They're short, they don't really contribute much of anything, and honestly they kind of make me like characters I did like a lot less because they feel kind of diluted in these? Too much "archetypes of hope" instead of "the cast I've grown to love." And also Veronica's not here so there isn't a ball of sass the group gets to play off.
So, Sylvando's story sees Sylvando wash up on the Strand at some indeterminate amount of time after Mordegon wins and being rescued by his boyfriend Dave. Sylvando is a wreck. He is not handling the defeat they had well at all. He's such a hopeless romantic that he thought that as long as they kept their spirits up, their victory was a give in. The traveling performer, the man who lives to see others smile, has nothing to smile for. That is until Dave slaps him and tells him to get himself together because the world is in trouble and that's bigger than Sylv. Resolved to help people in whatever way he can, they chart a course for Gondolia, only to find that since Yggdrasil fell it has been overrun with thieves. The duo ask around for anyone in need of aid, before running into Tetsu, who is actually the blacksmith from Hotto I mentioned before. Disappointingly the game forgets that people from Hotto speak in haiku with him, I guess because he has more than five lines of dialog. Tetsu's pack was stolen from him by a local group of ruffians, the Beastly Boys, but lucky for him Sylvando knows how to make them drop. After recovering Tetsu's bag, Sylvando regains his composure, finding a new quest to go on: making the people of this world smile again. Helping them in their plights. To his surprise, the Beastly Boys join up with him, having been taken in by his style and profile. The group vows to wander the world, recruiting new people for their traveling troupe and helping out wherever they can. They make quick stops in Gallopolis to save the circus and in Hotto to open the path so the people of Hotto can once again receive food, before naming themselves the Soldiers of Smile and continuing their journey onward.
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| Booga, more like, I'm very uncomfortable. |
Jade's story is pretty similar, albeit with a dark twist. Jade finds herself in the former Kingdom of Dundrasil, wherein she decides to use her kung fu to help people. It's always weird that Jade only uses kung fu in cutscenes but like, she always fights with weapons in battle. Anyways, she descends upon the city of Octagonia after hearing it is in trouble, and finds a harrowing site. The entire city has been overrun by monsters, who all serve a lord monster appointed by Mordegon named Booga. Booga has enslaved the people of Octagonia and turned their Colosseum into a casino for monsters. Jade won't let this stand and so she goes to face Booga head-on. Booga, however, instantly becomes smitten with Jade and uses his control over the people of Octagonia as leverage, essentially saying "dress sexy for me and be my love bunny or I start killing people". A mix-up occurs, however, when he starts trying to kill people anyways, with Jade being sent to the land he banishes people to. There she finds most of the MMA fighters, their spirits broken and their trust low. They believe Jade to be a servant of Mordegon as well, having been an ally of "the Darkspawn". Jade refuses to give up hope, though, and pushes herself hard in the arena where Booga's prisoners get punished, always getting up no matter how many times she's knocked down. This inspires the MMA fighters, who defeat Booga's actual girlfriend Boodica and free themselves from their imprisonment. The fighters are all set to face Booga head on and free Octagonia, before a curse overtakes Jade, spawning forth from the outfit Booga made her wear. It infects her mind and body, replacing our heroine with a being who only has one purpose: love Booga.
And that's it. Like Sylvando's chapter has some kind of interesting gameplay because it introduces his theater troupe, who are basically an army of AI controlled units who all do different things in battle. So like, one is a spear wielding warrior and he's an aggressive attacker who stabs multiple times a turn, another is a dancer who buffs the party, another is a botanist who uses status effect inducing plants, etc. And you can only have 4 of his troupe active at a time, so you can get pretty experimental with builds for Sylv. And if this was a Sylvando-focused DLC, this would be a fun. This is just a 45 minute side tangent, so you don't really have a reason to play around with him that much, and I can only hope that this mechanic gets fleshed out more in Act Two. But like, they're just kind of boring segments to the game. Very standard gameplay, you can't even actually lose the Jade one because Booga's cursed clothes just keep reviving her if she dies, stories that I honestly don't feel needed to be told. It's like such a bummer because I was liking this game out of act one and now it just did a total 180 and now I'm like having a pretty dull time with it. It's a serious bummer.
Oh and also I have to complain about the music again because a brand new way it sucks popped up. So Dragon Quest XI does not have a ton of music to it. There aren't really unique battle themes, town themes, boss themes, etc. There's like one overworld theme, one or two town themes, one battle theme, maybe two boss battle themes, a sailing theme, an underwater theme, and then random pieces of incidental music here and there. But you'll mostly be hearing the same 6 songs over and over. So Dragon Quest XI has to attempt to do a lot with very little, it has to really get its mileage out of the main songs and use them to set the tone in a lot of random instances. And so, you have so many moments where our characters will have a big triumphant moment and the song they put is the bog standard battle theme you have been hearing for like 40 hours at this point and you're just tuning it out and you can't take this moment seriously anymore because it's being soundtracked by a song you barely even register. It's so bad, the soundtrack alone is probably going to bump this down on my list. If I don't take it into consideration this game is an easy top 10 game for the year, with it I might bump it down to a high 8/low 9. Also, in case you're wondering, I smashed like four pumpkins. This was the only quest objective I got to do in this section.
7/18/26
I spent an entire hour playing as Erik and I'm mad about it. It's like my two least favorite parts of the game conflating, these intermissions that I don't like and don't think add anything and my least favorite character in the game. I will say, I found out that Erik is very good for Metal Slime stuff because he has an ability called Divide on his skill tree, which causes his next attack to hit 3 times. Or, in my case since I'm dual-wielding knives, six times. Finally after 44 hours Erik has some purpose. Still not enough to make me run him because I hate his personality, but you know. Oh also his intermission is just the worst one. Like, forget that I dislike Erik in general so I don't really want more time with him, but his intermission sees him being a massive idiot in a way that feels so out of character. Like Erik is such a loner who is suspicious of everyone and focuses primarily on "the mission" in Act One, to the point where he will actively try and discourage the Luminary from doing heroics at basically every turn. But in his intermission he's just immediately trusting of the most suspicious character he's ever met and keeps failing to ask any questions. And then he willingly sells his memories to this clearly suspicious entity for the power to go Super Saiyan. Hate Erik, not looking forward to finding him again and dealing with his nonsense.
The Rab intermission was alright though. I mean, outside of having this recurring bit where Rab is obsessed with scantily clad women and "adult magazines". I realize this is just a Japanese thing, deriving comic relief from a perverted old man, but I hate it basically every time. I digress, Rab's intermission sees him waking up in a plane of existence with no memory of what happened at the end of Act One. Standing before him is a bunny girl he remembered seeing in an adult magazine many years ago, and when he follows her he finds himself in the Kingdom of Dundrasil, restored to life. More importantly, he is at the day that his daughter and her soon-to-be husband asked King Robert (Rab's actual name) for his blessing. Rab has been transported back in time, to his happiest memories, and re-experiences key events from his past. The day his daughter asked to be wed and the day the Luminary was born both play out before him, before a different day plays out. A day he never got to experience. A day where he is surrounded by his family, Tud growing up as a young prince rather than an orphan, celebrating his life. It's bittersweet, Rab mourning the life he never got to live, a life where his family lived happily ever after.
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| I mean this with the utmost sincerity: Pang is the most attractive woman in this game. |
But he knows it's not real. Knows that something is wrong. And indeed, when the young Tud trips and falls, Rab's memories return to him. He remembers the rise of Mordegon and their defeat at the World Tree. He remembers what he was actually doing, he had sought out someone who could grant him the power to defeat Mordegon should his allies have truly fallen at his hand. The bunny girl reappears, and asks him if he's truly willing to give up this world, to give up his happy ending. And after he agrees, he follows her again into the spirit realm, where the bunny girl sheds her form and reveals herself to be Grandmaster Pang, the master of an ancient spiritual art who Rab had turned to. This entire thing has been a test, a test to see if Rab is truly ready to undergo the training he needs to by seeing if he's willing to shed all worldly pleasures. Pang is, however, still unconvinced and challenges him to a duel to prove he's serious. It was kind of rough actually because while I am definitely overleveled, Rab is one of the characters I use the least and because he joined the party late he's trailed behind in EXP so I got in a dangerous place a few times. Especially since every like third turn she guaranteed crits and then the turn after that she just makes it so Rab skips a turn. But I did beat her, netting Rab some much needed EXP, and Pang agrees to train him. But their training must be expedited, the techniques he would learn normally take a lifetime to learn but given the state of the world and his old age, he must put years into days. Thus ends the intermissions. They were not a worthwhile usage of time.
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| Oh god do we have to rhyme now too? |
So anyways, Tud's a fish. So as mentioned previously after the World Tree fell, Tud fell into the ocean alone. Queen Marina, acting quickly, used her magic to turn Tud into a fish so that he could heal within the safety of the Kingdom of Nautica, which is currently one of the last safe havens from Mordegon's rule. After he awakens, he meets with Queen Marina who tells him the deal: the world has been plunged into endless shadow, the majority of people dying or dead. Millions of lives were ended in an instant with the world tree falling, and the very few that remain are soon to meet the same fate. Mordegon has appointed six generals who have taken over various fortresses, one of whom is actively at Nautica's door, expending the queen's power as she continuously restores the magic barrier protecting the kingdom. But even in this desperate state, a hero has arisen, a warrior who gives hope to the people. But this warrior is at his wits end, overworking himself to build a fortress which is in danger of falling to a single attack. The Luminary must return, despite losing his power, and turn the sparks of hope into a burning flame. The queen prepares to send him off, knowing doing so means using the last of her magic and allowing her kingdom to fall. Her people evacuate in a hurry, and Tud is sent off to return to the world above to unite with this new hero and restore hope to the world.
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| Sorry it took so long, there wasn't a good place to put Nautica before here, lol. |
And he meets the GOAT, Blue John. Shoutouts to Blue John, what a guy. Just this normal fisherman who finds a fish who turns into a man and rolls with it. Even goes "hey, you can stay with me for a couple days and then here's a place you can go for more permanent residence". Unfortunately we don't get to hang with Blue John for very long as monsters start descending upon his cabin and he's learned a very important lesson: if people start converging, the monster will find them. So after resting he sends us on our way, telling us to be careful as the monsters around are far more aggressive and powerful since Mordegon took over. They are all, already, running from me. Oops. I really did too much fighting in the first act, huh? At least it means my path to the final stronghold of humanity, the Last Bastion, is going to be pretty cleared. And so Tud sets off for the Last Bastion. A small fortress built in an easily defendable location deep within the mountains. A place built out of Tud's own hometown, the town of Cobblestone.
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| Tud's wonderful mother. |
As he arrives, he sees a familiar face: Sandy, the golden retriever belonging to his childhood best friend, Gemma. Sandy leads Tud into the encampment directly to a familiar face: Gemma herself. Joy. I kid, it's actually very nice to see her. Like she was annoying at the beginning of the journey but I found myself missing her and the remainder of the Cobblestone residents after the razing of Cobblestone. Apparently, Jasper did order them all to be killed before a "kind knight" said that there was no reason to do so and had them all imprisoned in the Heliodor dungeons instead. Gemma excitedly leads Tud to the one person who he's probably more excited to see than her: his mother, Amber. A heartfelt reunion occurs, where Tud's two favorite women not named "Veronica" fill him in on the past several days before stating there is someone in camp he must meet: King Carnelian, the King of Heliodor. The person who had, up until the fall of the World Tree, been a vessel for Mordegon himself. They understand that Tud is hesitant to meet with the man, that there is too much bad blood, but they think it a necessity.
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| Okay, this one is LITERALLY just Dr. Gero in a different outfit. |
Swallowing his pride, Tud meets with the king, only to find the man thoroughly apologetic. He explains that his memory of the past decades is a blur, that ever since the night of the fall of Dundrasil he has been under the sway of the Dark Lord. That he had been watching someone else live his life, as if moving through a fog watching glimpses of clarity. The king asks for grace, understanding if Tud is still wary. More importantly, though, he asks about his daughter. Is Jade still alive? Tud, of course, cannot answer because he doesn't know. Even though the player does know, because the player has been given additional information that was not in the original release, so we know Jade is currently being turned into a sexy mind controlled monster girl whose entire identity is built around serving and loving a slug man. But I doubt Carnelian would want to hear that. Our meeting is interrupted by the return of the Hero, the man who Tud came here to assist. And if you thought the reunion with Carnelian was awkward, oh buddy, the hero is Hendrik and the bad blood is boiling. Even though Hendrik knows Tud isn't evil and that he was wrong about the Luminary, Hendrik's stubborn pride will not allow him to ask for the assistance of someone who he had chased to the ends of the Earth. So Carnelian asks on his behalf, Tud must stand with Hendrik lest all of humanity fall. Monsters are gathering at the remains of Heliodor, and they will make their assault on the Last Bastion, on the last human fortress, by nightfall. With little choice in the matter, we join the defense of the Last Bastion, which is where we'll pick up next time.
As you could imagine, we did not fulfill any of our quest objectives. Veronica is still missing, so we haven't had the opportunity to get a Veronica Wins Again. We spent our time in a monster infested dungeon, a dream world, underwater, and roaming the countryside so we didn't get any pumpkins. I imagine pumpkins are probably extinct at this point, to be honest. Which I guess means I've succeeded! But, you know what, I've done this before where I've counted enemies inflicting the "enthralled" status on the party as receiving Puff-Puff, so I'll say that Pang flirting with Rab and causing him to miss turns during her boss fight counts. I'm not keeping a hard counter, but just say 5 times added to that objective. I'm very excited to be out of the intermissions and into Act Two, making moves, making progress. Beating the game before the end of July is becoming more and more likely. Just need to keep on this pace.
7/19/26
I had heard tell that Act 2 was much shorter than Act 1, but I didn't realize to what extent that entailed. I think in total I've spent 4 hours in the second act of the game and already I've beaten one of the major bosses of this section of the game, recruited a new party member (the only actual new one in the game's second part, the rest of this section is about reuniting the party), and moved onto the next new area to regain one of my party members. I haven't gotten them yet, it's Rab in case you're wondering, we get Rab back first for some reason. They're just going to give me my party back in order from least used to most, aren't they? Is Erik next? God, Erik is next, isn't he. Gross. Anyways we're making moves, we're making progress, I hope I can keep up this pace but I know some sidequests are about to pop up and I can't resist a sidequest. Really, I'm just excited to get Jade back ASAP, I keep joking about Jade being a monster girl, that's something I know that happens. It's like the only thing I remember about Act 2 from seeing Thomas play it, Jade becomes a super powered monster girl and since she's historically been my main physical damage dealer, I want that.
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| Hendrik's on our side, so now we have a blue guy to complete the Rainbough. |
So I loaded up my save and took the field for the defense of the Last Bastion. The cutscene that plays is very cool, a small army standing steadfast against a seemingly endless force of monsters that are funneling in through the mountain pass. We see a lot of very good action, the people of Heliodor defending their last hope with their lives against what they believe to be the final assault, Hendrik leading the charge in all his knightly glory. And then the scene shifts to gameplay and I'm reminded that, oh yeah, I'm severely overleveled as enemies go down in a single Falcon Slash and deal 1-5 damage to me. Is... is the game just easy? Is that the problem? Surely not right, surely this is my fault? Anyways, the battle goes very smoothly, with Hendrik and Tud finally joining forces at the arrival of a headless horseman leading the charge. We get no time to celebrate our success, however, as the King immediately calls us to his side to hatch a plan. He believes that, with the combined forces of Sir Hendrik and the Luminary, they can make an assault on the monsters' stronghold: the former castle of Heliodor. More than that, has a method with which we can sneak in undetected, through the castle's sewers. If successful, this assault will not simply free Heliodor from the monsters' grasp, but also end the eternal night. We say goodbye to our friends and family, unable to tell them where we're going, and then set off for Castle Heliodor.
It is, unsurprisingly, a very awkward journey. The bad blood between Hendrik and Tud is always threatening to spill over, despite both being committed to the mission. Quick side note, I do really like how the second part of this game starts you out returning to literally every early game area but like. In reverse. So you're going back to Cobblestone through the areas you left it, and now you're trying to sneak back into Heliodor castle through the sewers when originally you left through there during your escape with Erik. It's one of those gaming tropes that I love, revisiting earlier areas under a new context. I digress, we successfully sneak into the castle only to find the place in ruins. The monsters have destroyed much of the building and holed themselves up in the throne room, a place they believe no would-be hero could possibly reach due to the destruction of the grand staircase. But while Yggdrasil may have fallen, its roots still live. And luckily for us, one such root exists in the Castle gardens.
Touching the root seems to reveal that the Luminary's power is not truly gone, just locked deep within Tud and inaccessible to him at the moment. For the moment we come into contact with the root, the mark on his hand temporarily reappears. Side note, I figured that the Yggdrasil roots would be like more important to the story than they actually were. I think this is like the first time we've seen one since the dungeon where we recruited Serena and Veronica? Anyways, this one shows us visions of Hendrik and Jasper's childhoods, how they grew up together as brothers, their meeting of the newborn Princess Jade (I had for some reason always assumed that Hendrik served Dundrasil until the fall, so this was surprising to me) and the legend of the shield of Heliodor, a royal armament that was given to Heliodor by the king of the now fallen Zwaardrust as a gift to a knight who stood steadfast to save his people. The young knights wish to see this shield for themselves, believing one of them shall one day wield it, and Jasper tells of a secret passage from the king's chambers to the kitchen that the king uses to sneak in midnight snacks. The vision dissipates, with us having received the information needed to progress, but Hendrik is visibly shaken from it. He mourns the loss of his closest friend, who now serves their greatest enemy as his right hand man, and in this moment of introspection he apologizes to the Luminary for his transgressions. Tud of course forgives the man and the duo set off as friends.
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| This is a clown, I don't know what to tell ya. |
When the twosome arrives in the throne room, a familiar face is awaiting us: Jasper. He's dressed like a clown now. Don't know what's up with that. Hendrik asks his friend why he did all this, why did he betray everyone and work to plunge the world into darkness. And uh, it's jealousy. Literally jealousy. He was just very jealous of Hendrik. Jealous of how he always got all the attention from the king while Jasper got nothing. But like... the king was Mordegon since both of them were teenagers. So it was Mordegon who was showering Hendrik with praise, actually. But then also Mordegon who Jasper was serving the whole time. So... surely Jasper knew that the praise for Hendrik was a ruse, right? To keep up appearances. Just throw it on the pile of plot threads in DQXI that don't make a ton of sense, I don't know. Then Jasper turns into a big demon and flies off into the night. We didn't need this conversation at this point in the game, I don't know why this is here. Oh and then the actual bad guy of this chapter shows up, the first of Mordegon's Spectral Sentinels, Tyrian the Usurper. He has been using the power of the Purple Orb, one of the six orbs we obtained in the first act, to plunge the world into eternal darkness. So not only are we retrieving our party members, we're getting all the orbs back too. This really is just a lot like Final Fantasy VI.
Anyways, Tyrian goes down without too much trouble. Hendrik is high key more useful as not a party member than he is as one because he gets unlimited HP/MP and always selects the correct move the situation. Tyrian has a lot of health, mind, so it was a long fight but not a particularly difficult one. Upon his defeat, the eternal night breaks, and Mordegon's army retreats from Heliodor. Hendrik and Tud rush back to the Last Bastion, hoping the carnage is not too grand, only to find the entire encampment survived whatever onslaught Tyrian's men had put upon the village, seemingly by hiding within the caves where Tud started his journey all those moons ago. The encampment has a party which goes all night and, for the first time in many days, greets the dawn. Which means the awful overworld music is back, it's truly the worst, I did not miss it. Carnelian calls us to his tent once more to tell us of a direction to head. Long ago, when the five Kings of the world would meet to discuss measures that would benefit all their citizens, King Robert of Dundrasil (Rab) told of a civilization hidden far within the icy mountains north of Puerto Valor. If Rab survived, he would there, as that civilization has long awaited the Luminary's return to grant him one of his lost powers. Now, because we did the intermissions we already know that's where Rab went off to, so this isn't news. Carnelian orders Hendrik to leave his duty and join the Luminary and, finally, Hendrik joins the party proper, bearing the Shield of Heliodor with him. And so our twosome sets off the mountain city of Angri-La, to find our lost friend, saying what is hopefully the final goodbye to Gemma and Tud's mother, as the next time he returns he will stay for good. And probably marry Gemma. And definitely marry Gemma, to be honest, that girl is down bad.
We did not accomplish any of our quest objectives, that should not come as a surprise. Like Veronica is still MIA and I would not be surprised if she's obtained last given that it seems like, just by sheer coincidence, we're getting the party members back in the order opposite of how useful they were to me in Act One. I'm actually really looking forward to having Rab back, I miss my "use spells to win" strategy. We also were in the midst of a war zone with a bunch of people trying to survive another day so nobody was really in the mood to give us Puff-Puff, even though there was a bunny girl around. I guess I didn't mention that previously, only bunny girls can give puff-puff, it's a whole thing. Dragon Quest is SOMETHING. Most surprisingly, there weren't any pumpkins in this chapter. I figured there'd be some laying about in the Last Bastion or in the Heliodor Castle kitchen but apparently not. Pumpkins may have gone extinct so I guess this isn't too surprising but still. Anyways, here's hoping since I'm already in Angri-La that this pace keeps up and I zoom through Act 2 before we know it!!!
7/22/26
I have officially passed the two days of playing mark!!! Two days of my life have now been spent on Dragon Quest XI. When I posted that a day of my life had been spent on DQ people responded "is that good or bad", and I was like "it's a thing". Just a fact of my playthrough. But at the time I was actually like "I am enjoying it". And I'm really sorry to say that I'm kind of losing steam for this majorly at this point. Like I really liked where Act 2 started out, I enjoyed entering this darker world and seeing the carnage that was brought about by our failure firsthand. How thoroughly the world fell to ruin in only a matter of days. How hope managed to find a bastion even in the midst of all this carnage. But between the Intermissions and the first couple sections of re-recruiting party members, I'm kind of losing it a bit. This game has just been hitting a number of rough patches lately and it's very disappointing, my friend Thomas said "wait until you get the girls and it's great, but then you get turned into a fish and it sucks" and yeah. After being turned into a fish, I'm kind of more iffy on this game again in a way I haven't been since the very beginning when I was like "meh, Dragon Quest, meh".
So I regained two of my party members in this play session, Rab and Sylvando. Indeed two of the party members I used the least in Act One. Erik might actually be next, huh. I just want Veronica back so I can do the funny quote, y'all. Anyways, the vibe in Act 2 seems to be that a party member rejoins after going on some sort of major soul-searching journey or undergoing some grand trial and when they do rejoin, they have unlocked completely new branches of their skill tree that previously weren't accessible. Like stuff the player would not reasonably know about the first time through because it didn't even show up on the skill tree initially. Except for Erik for some reason, Erik's upgraded skill tree was actually there the whole time. I do actually like this part because it means that not only do you get more freedom over your own build, but you're also rewarded more for going hard into a single aspect of a character instead of just evenly distributing your points. And it gives you reason to reset your skill points in the mid-to-late game to better work a character for their build, especially since some characters' roles change drastically in Act 2. Rab is our main spellcaster right now, for instance, so if I had gone with a Claw build I'd probably want to respec Rab into being a sorcerer at this juncture.
So unfortunately the bit of "Rab being a creep who collects dirty magazines" is an actual important plot point. I made it to the mountain city of Angri-La in the last part and discovered that they had been waiting for Tud for quite some time. Not only were they awaiting the return of the Luminary, but they also were awaiting Tud as a prince of Dundrasil, as the princes of Dundrasil typically spend 6 years of their youth training at the temple of Angri-La to be spiritually and mentally in-tune with the world. One of the many things we've encountered on this journey that was robbed from Tud by Mordegon's rise. There is more bad news, however: after waiting a lifetime for him to show up, the woman who would've been Tud's master, Grandmaster Pang, had passed away protecting Angri-La from Mordegon's forces. And her successor has not undergone the necessary training to become the new Grandmaster yet, so all Angri-La can currently offer the Luminary is a bed and a meal. Hendrik and Tud enjoy their hospitality, but fearing this to be a dead end, they agree to set off for other places. Maybe visiting Hendrik's old master in Puerto Valor, the knight captain Don Rodrigo, and seeing what wisdom he has to offer. That is until the duo hears tell of a Hermit who came searching for Pang shortly after her death and, finding her passed on, went up the mountain weeks ago and has yet to come down, and is currently stranded. Being the heroes of our tale, they decide to lend a helping hand to rescue this lost hermit, the future Grandmaster of Angri-La in tow.
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| I hate this bit. |
The trio scales the mountain only to find the Hermit seemingly deceased, having died in meditation. They mourn this lost traveler before the pieces start to fall into place. Hendrik finds a dirty magazine right next to the traveler and says he "died at peace, in his own way" (and also leers at the magazine and kind of fanboys out that it's a genuine first issue because it's not enough to make Rab a creep), before the group realizes that this is Rab. And furthermore, Rab is not dead, he is simply in such a deep meditative state that he appears to be dead. The future Grandmaster grants Tud the ability to follow his grandfather into his meditation, and Tud arrives in the Void beyond death where he finally meets the woman who was to be his master. Pang explains where they are, a sort of limbo space where souls are meant to linger until they are reabsorbed into the World Tree but, with it fallen, souls are simply being erased permanently. Which, side note, I don't know what the deal with the World Tree actually is?
Like, okay, the way we first had the tree explained to us was that each leaf is representative of a human soul and when a life ends, that leaf falls. Then Mordegon caused the World Tree to crash down and die, and in doing so all the leaves fell off the tree at once like pine needles when a pine tree sheds. So what I had assumed is that killed basically the entire population, and that any hangers-on are somehow still attached to the tree, their leaves not falling yet. And various NPCs talk about this event like it was a sudden spiriting away, people didn't just die, they were erased. They say things like "I looked for my family members but I couldn't find them", like they didn't even leave a body to bury if the person had wanted to. But then also we're shown people did die en masse and left bodies behind. But then also also it seems like the World Tree dying didn't ultimately do anything and that it was entirely the monster army Mordegon summoned who ended the lives of those in Erdrea. But then also also also NPCs state pretty directly that people died en masse suddenly when the Tree fell. Like I guess I just don't know how literal we're supposed to be taking this connection between the World Tree and the people, but also given how much of a fairy tale-style fantasy DQ is I feel like it's actually meant to be very literal?
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| Wen I left ya, I was only a mere studen' now I am the maste' |
Anyways, we find Rab just as he's finishing his training to master the secret of Angri-La: a powerful spell known as the "Pearly Gates". It's a potent energy ball that decimates opponents when thrown and was invented by a powerful sorcerer who fought alongside Erdwin, the original Luminary, centuries ago named... Morcant? Suspicious how the name of this sorcerer who was a friend and rival to the hero in antiquity has a name similar to Mordegon. I'm sure that doesn't mean anything though. Total coincidence. Anyways, Rab completes his training and is ready to go home, before Pang reveals that the Luminary must, too, undergo training. Pearly Gates has a partner, a technique invented by Erdwin all those years ago, called the Quadraslash. Shockingly, despite its name, it is not a technique where you slash four times at super speed and is instead a technique where you summon a giant spiritual sword to deal massive damage to enemies. After learning this technique by battling Rab (which was the first time I got a game over in this game), Mordegon finds the Luminary hiding in the Void and assaults the afterlife, hoping to destroy it too. Pang then teaches Rab and Tud the final technique, the Solar Flaire, a combination of the two abilities which, when used, will tear through space and time. And for the first time, our party deals damage to Mordegon. He can bleed. Pang, having taught everything she knows, decides to finally move on to the afterlife which doesn't exist anymore because the World Tree fell and you just told us all this girl. Rab rejoins our party with a new powerful technique in hand and a brand new, fully fleshed out skill tree he's able to utilize. This ruins the gameplay for me in a pretty big way.
I want to talk about the auto-battling feature, a feature I use a lot and, up until now, loved. If I knew I was going to be running around the overworld, getting a bit of grinding done as I went place to place, I would turn on auto-battle, get some free experience, do something else on my other screen and keep going until I either got some levels or I reached my destination. And up until now, the Auto Battle system was competent enough to get the job done. It lacked a lot of nuance, mind you, it only has a handful of options which are "pick the strongest move every time", "pick the most efficient moves every time", "randomly pick abilities every time", "only pick standard attack every time", or "play support". But up until now that wasn't a problem. But you'll notice that two of those options, "pick the strongest move every time" and "pick the most efficient moves every time" are shockingly similar. That's because the strongest moves are, in 95% of cases, all the most efficient moves. You are just telling the AI to pick the correct option in both of them every single time, with the latter option only causing variance when the AI goes "he's in normal attack kill range, so just do that". So now we have been given these incredibly powerful, incredibly efficient, incredibly costly moves on two of our characters which, if just chosen in every fight, will drain our MP in a handful of fights. For context, Quadraslash costs 24 MP, and Tud has ~170. He gets essentially 6 of those before he's out. What this all amounts to is rendering the Auto-battle useless for the two party members who have the best use case for it otherwise, with their varied movepool of spells and melee abilities.
But hey, at least Sylvando is back in the party too, right? I could never hate Sylvando, right? Let's just get this over with. So after reuniting with Rab, he tells us that we should probably set course for Arboria. If the rest of the party survived, that's likely where they would head, after all. Our problem is that Arboria is, normally, a place that you can only access by way of Sniflheim, and currently we're lacking a ship. Finding Sylvando would, of course, rectify this problem but obviously no one knows where he's headed off to at this time. Hitting a wall, we decide to head off into the mountains of Champs Sauvage, hoping that maybe a path up through the mountains has opened up that will lead us to Arboria. It hasn't, but in our looking we meet a man who is wandering the wilderness on his lonesome looking for something, though he's cagey about what it is exactly. Said man is in the midst of being assaulted by a monster when we arrive and our trio prepares to jump into action. That is until a parade of dancing men arrives to slay the beast and save this wanderer. That's right boys, Sylvando has returned. How did the Soldiers of Smile even get over here, the geography of Erdrea doesn't really allow for easy transport between where they were (the Hotto/Gallopolis/Gondolia area) and Champs Sauvage without a ship, there are too many mountains surrounding this area, I am nitpicking.
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| Leaning towards "gay". |
Sylvando is, of course, overjoyed to see Tud alive having yet to run into any of the other party members on his quest. But his Soldiers of Smile are in the midst of a rescue mission and so the reunion will have to be put on hold until we bring this wanderer home. Sylvando asks Tud, Hendrik, and Rab (except not really Rab because you can actually recruit Sylvando OR Rab first so Rab isn't in most of these cutscenes or if he is, he's getting Mike Wazowski'd) to lead his parade back to the city of Phohn Nom to bring this man back. This is actually the worst part of the game. I know I've said this before but leading Sylvando's parade is like the worst. Sylvando's parade moves at a pace slower than the slowest pace Tud is even capable of walking, meaning you will constantly lose them behind you. And if you let them despawn, they will just reset to the original location you recruited them. So you have to slowly walk across plains, stopping to let Sylvando's stupid parade catch up, all the while wearing this dumb outfit that makes it so you can't even actually run. It turns what would be a seconds long walk into a whole ten minute excursion, it just wastes time and makes me hate Sylvando, which I didn't even think was possible! Oh, and while you're on this parade, you can encounter enemies, but Sylvando just fights as a party member and not with his parade like in his intermission, meaning that gameplay idea of him being surrounded by a posse of support units doesn't even come back!!! At least you get to see Hendrik dressed up as a clown?
We arrive at the once joyous tourist city of Phohn Nom only to find them all in a state of despair. Which is, you know, normal for the current state of the world but their problem is more immediately solvable. See, not long after the fall of the World Tree a dragon descended upon the town. Her demands were simple, she would protect the town from the monsters in exchange for the people giving her their "most valuable treasures". People were quick to comply, trading jewelry, family heirlooms, even their family members for protection from the horrors of the world. As you can imagine, the dragon was lying, and quickly stole all the treasures away to a cave in the south, claiming to actually be one of Mordegon's generals. As you can imagine, we aren't going to let this stand, especially not with Sylvando here. When that man sees an opportunity to return smiles to the people, he takes it. And so we head south and WE HAVE TO LEAD THE STUPID PARADE AGAIN AHHHH. It's fine, it's fine, we're almost done with this, it's fine. Unsurprisingly, the dragon was lying, she's just a normal dragon with no association with the Dark Lord and her desire for treasure is just because she's a dragon. After a somewhat difficult fight where she's constantly buffing herself and then silencing the entire party, just being as annoying as humanly possible, we return the stolen treasures to the people of Phohn Nom. Thankfully none of the people she stole away were harmed, and also thankfully they aren't mad that their family members gave them away to a dragon.
Seeing all these families reunite causes Sylvando to reflect on his own tumultuous relationship with his father. He realizes that Tud needs him (we don't actually but like, I'm not going to say no to having Sylvando back) and that the only way to accomplish his goal of returning the smiles to the entire world is to defeat Mordegon and save Erdrea. So he makes a tough choice: he'll head to Puerto Valor, confront his father, and ask him to look after the Soldiers of Smile while he goes off to save the world. It's then that Hendrik realizes who Sylvando is: Norberto, Don Rodrigo's son who ran off one day never to be seen again. Sylvando says he'll meet the party at Puerto Valor to talk to his papi, saving us from having to lead the parade all the way there thank goodness. After reuniting the two, Don Rodrigo is furious that Sylvando would dare show his face around here while people are still frowning. Sylvando said he wanted to make the whole world smile, and a knight's word is his bond. Sylvando is overjoyed that his father still sees him as a knight and reasons that his goal is impossible while Mordegon still lives. So, in order to accomplish his goal, he must rejoin the Luminary, but to do so he needs Rodrigo to look after his men for him. Rodrigo accepts, and Sylvando rejoins our party in full, bringing with him our ship. And also the ability to summon our horse from anywhere, which has been sorely missed. And so now, with a ship on hand, we can start our quest to Arboria as well as hopefully finding our remaining party members scattered about. Sylvando and Dave got separated at some point, how did that happen when they were together full time in Sylvando's intermission?
I also took on some sidequests in this section. Now that the world is opening up more, you see more NPCs who have sidequests that aren't just immediate call and responses. There are definitely some, don't get me wrong, there are a number of "slay this enemy with this specific pep power" quests out there. Which is annoying because it requires everyone's pep power to align but you know what. I can just not do those ones. Why do the annoying sidequests, I ain't 100%-ing this. If it aligns like that, then I'll go do them, but otherwise who cares. But there are more quests I've gotten that are like "hey, there's a problem in this other part of the world that's impacting our ability to trade in essential goods, could you go solve that problem for us" and it's a quest you do need to dedicate time to because it means returning to an Act 1 dungeon that you otherwise have no reason to spend time in. It's a much better quest design than in Act 1 where every sidequest was just something you immediately could do with little effort. I just wish that certain sidequests were actually labeled as sidequests because longer quest lines like the Puff-Puff quest aren't labeled as such even though they're big game-spanning questlines.
Speaking of which, I would like to introduce a fourth objective to our main quest list: saving the orphans. When you return to the Medal Academy, you find out that after the fall of Yggdrasil, they have opened enrollment to basically any girl who wants it. This is because many many children were orphaned during and after the fall of Yggdrasil, and the school, which formerly was a school for wealthy children, wants to provide a home for those girls who are now orphaned and homeless. But not the boys. They don't care about the boys. The Academy's roles have also expanded, now being a training ground for these girls rather than simply teaching them to treasure hunt. So Tud has been tasked with traveling the country side and finding orphaned girls to send to the Academy. And I think it would be nice to keep track of this aspect too. We've even already gotten one girl enrolled, an orphan girl who Hendrik saved at the beginning of Act 2 who was all alone in the Last Bastion. Poor kid just sat at the water's edge wondering what is the point in carrying on with her family dead. And now she will find a new purpose: novelty coin collecting.
As for our other quest objectives, I found some pumpkins to smash as I wandered back through the areas I've already been in. Hypothetically these pumpkins should not count, as I've already smashed them, but you know what? I make the pumpkin smashing rules. It's embarrassing how much I pop off each time I see a pumpkin at this point, I'm not going to lie to y'all. Speaking of going back through and getting stuff, I hit up the Phohn Nom Puff-Puff girl for a second time and she provided her goods AND services. This is the one that made me mad because she went "oh I'm just doing your makeup silly", as if that was remotely true. And, finally, Veronica is still MIA so we have not received a Veronica Wins Again still. Getting worried y'all. Like I don't know how much longer until she rejoins and I have bad luck rolling Veronica Wins Agains, I worry our cap is going to be 19.
7/24/26
If you know this blog and, moreover, know me, then you know I'm always singing the praises of fan-created, incredibly in-depth written game guides. I've played a lot of games over the years and any time I can have a guide up by my side to help me out is a great time. I'm a GameFAQs guide truther and a video walkthrough hater because, and I cannot stress this enough, you can't Ctrl + F a video. And I don't want to talk bad about the guide I am using because, in many ways, it's brilliant. It's incredibly in-depth with tons of great screenshots and map details, it offers a lot of build suggestions but also understands the nuances of making your playthrough your own and so isn't just like "my way is best". I would obviously prefer it to be a lovingly crafted GameFAQs guide with killer ASCII art but this is a brilliant guide and the creator, during its production, took a lot of fan feedback to make it even better.
However, following this guide, I thought today was going to be kind of chill. A relaxing sidequest day where I go back through a lot of areas and finish some sidequests, maybe get a bit of story out of order as the game once again opens up when you get Sylvando's ship. And instead I found out that much of where the guide wanted me to go are areas I'm probably supposed to do once I have the full party, as with only four party members and, more importantly, one of those party members being Sylvando, every battle was an uphill climb. And so I instead chose to progress the story in the direction the game actually wanted me to go. Again, no disrespect to the guide or its author, I just don't think the order they recommend is actually the best one for a first playthrough, which is headscratching since this is a guide. It should be most helpful to people who are on their first playthrough.
So, after we board the Salty Stallion, we hear tell from Dave that people staying at an Inn near the ruins of Zwaardrust have all been experiencing the same dream. Not very similar dreams, the same exact dream, beat for beat. This is incredibly suspicious, obviously, so our crew sets off to investigate. Unfortunately, as they approach Zwaardrust, they run afoul of Alizarin; one of Mordegon's generals, current wielder of the Red Orb, and the destroyer of Nautica. Alizarin does not seem to be aware of Tud's status as the Luminary but he IS an incredibly territorial creature, and so decides to make a move on Sylvando's ship and sink it with all who are aboard. He knocks Tud overboard, causing our hero to fall into the sea for the second time. And just like last time, we are saved by a beautiful woman with unfathomable power.
Tud awakens in a peaceful meadow, the only thing for miles around being a small shack with a fisherman fishing from the rooftop. There's something very odd about this figure, however: every time Tud looks back at them, they're a different person. They even say as much when he finally approaches, they keep changing their form to try and get a read on him. They introduce themselves as the Seer, a character that we know from Erik's storyline. The Seer assures Tud that he is not dead, that his life has more time, but that she needed to talk to him about his lost powers. See, Tud believes that the power of the Luminary was lost to him, mainly because the villain ripped it out of his heart and then used it to murder the world tree before crushing it in his hands. The Seer has a different perspective, though. You could no more kill the Luminary's power than you could count the grains of sand on the beach. She believes, wholeheartedly, that Tud's power is still within him, and he simply needs to find his spark again. And, in Zwaardrust, he will find what he needs to reawaken the Luminary's power. With that, she sends him off back to his friends. Back to his destiny.
The gang arrives at the inn in Zwaardrust to see this peculiar dream and what they find is haunting. The dream depicts a ghostly knight in anguish, consumed by despair, and a voice of a woman asking to find him. To free his suffering. It's not a ton to go off, but luckily Rab recognizes the knight's armor as being Drasilian made. We too recognize the armor as being of Dundrasil as Tud had been wearing this exact suit of armor for like the past 20 hours of gameplay. With no other leads (what happened to going to Arboria, gang), we head to the ruins of the castle in Dundrasil to find Rab's final secret: an abandoned entrance into the castle through the sewers, What meets us as we arrive is the ghostly knight, standing guard for Mordegon's dark forces who threaten to invade the sacred lands. Unfortunately, he has lost himself so completely that he can no longer tell friend from foe. He raises his blade on our band of heroes and a duel commences. It's pretty easy, all told.
The knight, however, does not go down after his battle. He instead speaks of his anguish, his pain. The pain of losing his wife and his son many years ago. It doesn't take a lot of problem solving skills to figure out who this is but Rab spells it out for us anyways: this is the specter of King Irwin, the deceased King of Dundrasil and Tud's father. Irwin has been bound to this world by some unknown force, stuck in an eternal torment. The woman's voice appears again, urging our party to find a way to free him, to allow him to move on. Lacking in options, Tud approaches the man, only to be sucked into the specter. When he comes to, he finds himself in the Dundrasil ballroom, his father entertaining guests at a party held in Tud's honor. This is the night of Tud's birth, the night of the meeting of kings, the night Dundrasil fell. Irwin has been living his final hours for decades. And Tud is going to free him.
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| It doesn't actually look like this in game. |
Tud sees the fall of Dundrasil play out in real time, watching the kingdom he was one day meant to rule fall to Mordegon. He sees his mother and the young Princess Jade holding him as a baby. The council meeting where the four kingdoms decide their single most important goal should be to enable the Luminary to fulfill his destiny to stop the surge of evil. The castle being attacked and his family making their escape. Irwin sacrificing himself for his family to escape. The possession of King Carnelian by Lord Mordegon, who then murders Irwin in cold blood. And as he watches his father bleed out, his father's tormentor reveals themselves. It is a massive beast, similar to a manticore, called a Gloomnivore. It exists in the space between life and afterlife, finding those who are consumed by misery and feasting upon them. This one has been feeding off the energy of the Fall of Dundrasil for near 20 years, and has finally consumed every single morsel. It turns its sights on Tud next, sensing the crushing emptiness of losing the Luminary's powers and allowing the world to fall into endless darkness. A new source of insurmountable misery for him to feast on. And so Tud falls into despair, the darkness surrounding him. It looks exactly like that scene in KH3 when Sora defeats Anti-Aqua and the Shadow Sea tries to consume Aqua.
But in the darkness, light shines brightest. Tud does not get consumed by his misery, he instead comes to terms with his failure and finds new strength to carry on. And as such, his light shines brighter than ever, the Luminary finally reawakened. The power of this hope is enough to break the spell on King Irwin and bring the Gloomnivore into the realm of the living, where it can be properly dealt with. It's quite the boss fight, the beast is capable of debuffing our entire party at once, making our magic next to worthless, as well as putting our key party members to sleep without much trouble. But we persevere and defeat the monster, finally freeing King Irwin. The phantom, now purified, looks upon the face of his adult son. And then is called home by his wife. By Queen Eleanor. I thought the beyond didn't exist anymore? Was Pang just lying? Pang might've just been lying. Tud and crew leave the ruins of Dundrasil, a new hope born from the reawakened powers of the Luminary, and decide to head north to the city of Octagonia, as information gained from NPCs at the inn in Zwaardrust indicates that Jade was spotted up that way. And also we know she's there, currently being enslaved by a slug man, because I was subjected to the intermissions.
Oh and also Erik is back. Because of course Erik is back. Of course he had to be the next party member I got. So when you try to leave the inner sea to go explore the expanse, something I probably should not be doing but only did because the guide said that was a wise choice for my next move, you get a cutscene where the crew hears something rattling about in the cargo hold. When Tud investigates, he finds Erik there, having stowed away on the ship. The group is overjoyed to see him, glad someone is, but as we know Erik has lost his memory and does not recognize them. After some awkward conversation, the group convinces him to join up with them, believing that their proximity will awaken his memories of his past. And so Erik rejoins the party. He does not have access to his skill tree. It has been completely erased. All that work I did in Act 1 of finding builds for this loser that justified his place on my party was for literally nothing. Erik is dead to me, this is the final straw, I hated this guy before for his personality but now I hate him for his gameplay. I literally just said during his intermission that I finally found a practical use for him in combat and now I have to do a bunch of story stuff to get that back. So mad. I get that this is an interesting ludonarrative beat, if I liked this character at all I would be praising this, but this is just yet another way that Erik has made this game just a little bit worse for me.
Let's just get to our quest objectives. I feel like I don't need to mention this but still no Veronica, still no Veronica Wins Agains. I'm so upset, I just want my girl back. We also have yet to find any orphaned girls to send to the Academy, although there is literally an orphanage in Octagonia so I imagine that'll soon change. We did find some pumpkins to smash, I made my way to Gondolia before giving up on my sidequesting and as such there were pumpkins around. Shoutouts to the infinitely respawning pumpkins for letting me continue on with this dumb bit, it brings me so much joy. Also, since we went back to Gondolia, we saw the Gondolian Puff-Puff girl and hit her up once again, meaning our Puff-Puff quota has been fulfilled. This section was actually pretty good, I liked the story told. I am also feeling myself get exhausted with this game. I like it, but I'm hitting the "long JRPG wall" where my motivation is leaning more and more to being done with the game. It happens more than you think, trust me, you should've seen how much my motivation to continue playing FFXV was sucked up after I got to the second half of that game. Alas, I did FFXV before I was doing the blog. Anyways, I'm committed to finishing this one, don't worry. You may not be happy with what that means but I will do it.
7/25/26
Okay, I know I literally said yesterday that I was committed to beating this but doing the Octagonia segment did almost make me stop playing the game period. And it's so silly because the entire Octagonia redux takes maybe 30 minutes. It's one of the shortest story bits I think the game has had. But legitimately, I got Octagonia, found out what I was going to have to do, and then immediately was like "this game just sucks now, it lures you in with Act One and how grand and epic and magical it feels and then in order to sell the misery that the characters are feeling it sets out on a mission to make the player themselves utterly miserable". You know what happens when we go back to Octagonia? We show up, find the place run by monsters. But, bizarrely, these monsters are completely peaceful. The reason being that Booga, you know him, you hated dealing with him, has essentially turned Octagonia into a den of hedonism. A place where human and monster can come and gamble their lives away, seeking fun and freedom from the misery outside of this place. You're served by Succubats who will flirt with you, monsters dance up on the stage to entertain you, and you can buy unsavory items like Love Potions to force people to fall in love with you. It is a place our party hates to be in, but it is a place that they must best as Jade is being kept up on the third floor, in what used to be the arena.
Quick aside, so I have been really down on the intermissions that I was forced to do because they were, you know, bad. But they were bad with the pretense that they were each filling in the gaps of stories we would see in Act 2. Answering questions that the player would be likely to ask. And in this story in particular, it is perhaps most necessary to fill in that gap because the game does not offer any explanation for how the stoic, intelligent, and powerful Jade, who has previously been shown to easily dispatch monsters with her bare-hands, ended up enslaved by a gross slug man and became his flirty, sexy girlfriend. Especially since the game has little interest in filling the gap and, frankly, seems to kind of treat Jade as an afterthought. So it's baffling, then, when very few of the details told to us in Octagonia line up with what happens in Jade's intermission.
The human citizens of Octagonia talk as if Jade was with them when Booga took over, instead of stumbling upon the city after Booga took over as is depicted in the intermission. They speak of a stand which occurs at the orphanage and prevented the monsters from getting through due to Jade fighting them off until they figure it wasn't worth it, that didn't happen. Later on, Booga reveals that all the monsters occupying Octagonia are humans who thought they could beat the house at gambling, which isn't true because we know that he turned the people of Octagonia into monsters as a "reward" for helping him build the casino. It genuinely feels like when they were writing Jade's intermission they just went like "man we really did her dirty. Just like a completely half-baked story. We should fill in the story to make her look more heroic for getting enslaved by a monster and forced to be his bride. And while we're at it, let's make sure the monster is some sort of really bizarre romantic who needs ten dates before they hold hands and will take centuries to kiss their partners so we never have to actually contend with the implication we put forward that Jade was sexually assaulted."
Anyways, I was forced to gamble in this section so I'm pretty angry about it. I will say, to the game's credit, the mandatory gambling is basically impossible to end up in the negative with. The slot machines in the monster casino are heavily rigged in the player's favor because the point in the lore is to make people get so obsessed with gambling that they eventually win enough to be brought up to Booga to be turned into monsters for his army. Still, as a gambling hater, this kind of killed my mood. It honestly feels like the game is sabotaging itself, after an Act 1 I was really positive on most of the things that I'm meant to do in Act 2 are just killing the vibe for me. Luckily I only needed to do like two spins on one of the slot machines to get every coin I needed for the story, slipping a Love Potion to the monster guarding the door to the VIP room and moving on to the boss of this area. I could've done this entire part in like 5 minutes if I didn't want to talk to everyone when I get to a new town. I spent like a half an hour just leading Sylvando's parade about and the entire Jade section is over in 5 minutes, the sheer and utter disrespect to my girl, y'all.
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| You are my world (is a vampire). |
So we get up to the top floor in what used to be the arena and are immediately greeted by Jade who immediately starts roasting us. Jade calls Hendrik "Henny-Wenny" and implies that he's there to get his rocks off, and then calls out Rab for trying to force her into going back to being a warrior when "for the first time her life, she's happy". Which to me may have been a more interesting way to take Jade's story, maybe tie it back into the Gloomnivore hunting around Dundrasil and have them manipulate Jade by mining her life that has been utterly full of misery with the promise of her finally being happy if she just gives in. That would've been an interesting intermission which would add depth to Jade's character, and not whatever this entire storyline was, which was basically "Jade got mind-controlled and now she can turn into a monster" and gives no deeper insight into who Jade is beyond that. And then maybe you could use the things the Luminary learns in the vision of the past about the young princess Jade to snap her out of it, allowing Jade with her new powers to be present when you fight Booga so it feels like her victory. But again, Jade and for that matter Booga, feel like afterthoughts here.
Anyways, Jade does not take kindly to her former party trying to tell her that she needs to give up on the man she thinks she loves and enters battle with the party. Frankly I don't respect Booga's choice of build for her, like, first of all she's using the spear and not the claws so she isn't doing her cool kung fu moves; second of all he's entire respecced her into the allure path on her skill tree so she's just doing all the moves intended to beguile the opponent and it's like. That's just a turn skip, my guy. Inefficient. Jade's at her best when she's doing DPS and getting a million crits. Unsurprisingly, with such an impractical build, she goes down without too much issue, forcing Booga himself to come out here and deal with us. Jade is unconscious for the entire boss fight with the being who enslaved her. I hate this section so much, I'm writing thirty paragraphs about thirty minutes of gameplay. Booga is actually kind of a tough fight, especially since you do not have the opportunity to heal in between battles. He can drain your MP en masse, put on an upgraded beguiling status which rather than just turn skipping, actively turns the opponent over to your side, and is just generally a heavy damage dealer. This fight I could imagine going really poorly with bad RNG, Sylvando is kind of your go-to healer at this point in the game and the one who can easily un-beguile people, so if he keeps rolling Sylvando when he does that attack it could be inconvenient. Unfortunately for him, Hendrik deals 300 damage a turn, so who cares how he fights really?
With Booga defeated, his spell over the citizens of Octagonia breaks, turning them all back to human. Jade wakes up with little memory of what has happened to her the past couple weeks, just a vague, dreamlike recollection of what Booga made her do under his influence (which again, was not even holding hands, very important, Jade says that he "had his way with her" but the DQ writers want you to know that is not true, they don't even know why they wrote that, actually, maybe they didn't). She spies Booga lying on the ground and all that anger towards him manifests in her once again assuming her monster form and slaying the beast in one fell swoop. Even Jade seems surprised that part of her is still inside her, but she embraces it wholeheartedly as it will be a helpful tool in the coming journey. And so Jade rejoins our party with her own enhanced special sauce, now being half-demon. She quickly apologizes to everyone for what the monster version of her said to them, and comments on how much stronger Tud seems to be. Maybe he doesn't need his "big sister" to protect him anymore after all. Also for some reason she has the harp that Michelle gave us, she said she found it before she ended up in Octagonia, another thing the intermission could've covered to be honest. And so we leave Octagonia a worse place than before, as they decide to permanently close down fights and become a casino town. Which means they now have the worst song in the entire soundtrack playing nonstop.
I realize I just went off on probably my longest schpeel for any individual story point in this entire journey, but I assure you, that was only half an hour of this entire play session. Maybe 40 minutes after I went back through and talked to the Octagonians after they were freed from Booga. Luckily I won't bore you with what else happened because after this section that really did just totally kill my vibe for tonight, I just kinda wandered aimlessly around the world. I decided to once again attempt the direction the guide wanted me to go in, tackling the early game areas to try and reach Hotto for when it's important later on in the journey. I did make it to Gallopolis, restoring that fast travel point, but after seeing the prices to upgrade my gear I was once again reminded that this is an area I'm supposed to be going to much later on in the journey. So I went "I won't progress in this side anymore until the plot wants me to". Where the game did want me to go next was up north to Sniflheim, as the city's has been blocked in from the open ocean by a giant iceberg made of gold and now that we have Lorelei's Harp, we can use the underwater passageway to get around the structure. But I was just so bummed from doing mandatory gambling that I decided I didn't want to progress the story anymore right now.
So I did some grinding and some sidequests instead. Killed a few metal enemies for major experience, which is good because Jade needs to get caught up now. Tud is almost level 50 and the rest of the party are mid 40s when she rejoined at 39. Helped a ghost girl pass on to the afterlife to be with her parents, which those things may not even exist anymore, I'm unclear. And then she ominously said "I'm sure I'll see you again soon." Not something you want to hear from a ghost who is moving on. I brought a crystal rose to a girl whose boyfriend died and/or disappeared when the World Tree fell, as he said he was going to give her one when he was alive, and she found a reason to live. I brought salt to Phohn Nohm, which is apparently one of their biggest exports despite the fact that it's mined in an entirely different part of the world. I ignored a girl's request to win her a statue of her hero, Vince Vanquish, because the person who I would have to win it from wanted me to hit the jackpot at a roulette table and I ain't doing that, meaning Tud just pocketed the 3000 gold she gave and ran off. It's fine. I'm sure I'll go back to do that at some point when I'm not so grumpy about mandatory gambling.
Now, as always, our actual quest objectives. Of course, still no Veronica, still no Veronica Wins Again. She's going to be the last party member I recruit, I swear. I also didn't find any orphans to send to the Medal academy which is very surprising because I did literally go to an orphanage in this section. But I guess those orphans already have someone looking after them. Although I was sure that the older girl who runs the kitchen was going to be a prospect after we free Octagonia, since she now is working at an orphanage with very few residents and needs someplace to utilize her skills of making large quantities of food fast and cheap. The Academy could use someone like that now, actually, as the supply routes have been cut off and food is scarce. Speaking of food being scarce, I smashed like 12 pumpkins this time around. Felt good. And, finally, our Puff-Puff counter went up by three this time: one from a Puff-Puff girl in Octagonia who is new to the counter, one from our revisit to Gallopolis and, as such, a second rendezvous with the Gallopolian Puff-Puff girl, and once from Monster Girl Jade, who used the Puff-Puff technique on Tud during her boss fight. I'm honestly feeling like a break game might be in order given how these play sessions have been going but I worry that if I leave DQ to go play something else, I might lose any motivation to come back.
7/26/26
I managed to beat two major bosses in this section and yet it still feels like I didn't do anything. Like the pacing on this is so off, I wandered around this accursed land for like 15 hours without encountering a single big boss fight and in the span of probably the last five hours of play I've encountered 3 of them basically back-to-back. Act 2 is split between "you're just wandering around the world with a vague direction on where to go so it doesn't really feel like you're doing anything because you lack any real structure" and "you're just beating big bosses back-to-back but because you're doing it that way, they all lack any real punch". I guess I really shouldn't be complaining because it's getting me through a game I'm starting to be more negative on faster, but I don't know. I feel like part of the problem I'm having is that they setup this plot of experiencing a darker, corrupted world and having to fight for its hope in the face pf insurmountable odds but it doesn't really feel like it's interested in exploring that story in any meaningful way?
I will grant that a big part of my mixed feelings on DQXI is just wishing to be done, if I was not committing to this playthrough I probably would've balked at how bad the Jade Act 2 stuff was, but I also feel like it's something of a feedback loop. The game is not interested in exploring the ideas it set forward so I am not interested in playing the game. I don't know, I'm going to be happy to be done with this, I'll tell ya what. I'm genuinely so sad, y'all, I was thinking this was going to be an easy Top 5 contender for the year and I was going to come at you all surprised and now I'm just like "Dragon Quest is truly always what I thought it would be". There will likely be no DQ Summer after this.
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| Alizarin? But I thought I said no solicitors!!! |
Anyways, at the start of this session, we took on Alizarin, the giant sea monster that Mordegon appointed to ensure the seas would fall under his control. This is, of course, the third such time we've faced this beast, but now with the powers of the Luminary, the beast's enchanted shield given to them by the Red Orb dissipates, allowing our heroes to finally defeat the giant and save the sea. It is during this fight that it occurred to me how useless the skill trees actually are? Like I'm looking at Jade's skill tree, for instance, and it's entirely full of skills that either are outright useless and just obstacles to necessary stat buffs, are not worth my time to use because they shut off like one single turn and Jade would effectively be trading her turns for the opponent's, incredibly powerful but very situational skills that I am glad I learned but also just won't go for in most instances, and so on and so on. Like, combat just isn't doing anything for me anymore because it seems like there is always a correct series of plays in basically any circumstance I'm facing outside of boss fights and how long the fights last is just up to me on how long it takes me to input them. But it's not like a very satisfying loop? Like I've talked before on this blog about JRPGs that have very good gameplay loops where you execute the correct options each time and it becomes second nature but DQ just isn't getting there for me for some reason. And like, I would like to use the autobattle features but you know. The game ruined that for me too.
After defeating Alizarin, we use the harp to make our way around the golden iceberg and into the kingdom of Sniflheim. When we arrive, we find the city strangely empty, with all the villagers locked in their houses. With nobody around to talk to, we make our way directly to the palace to talk to Queen Frysabel about what has befallen her city this time. She explains that the town has been set upon by a mysterious plague called "Gold Fever", a disease which instantly turns those who are infected by it into gold statues. The cause of this plague is unknown to anyone in Sniflheim but it has beset numerous citizens and has made them prisoners within the city, as it has blocked the way out of the city by both land and sea. The Sniflheimers have become consumed by paranoia, turning their suspicions onto Frysabel's "good friend" Krystalinda, forcing "Fryssy" (that's what she calls her, I hope the people of Sniflheim aren't expecting a continuation of the royal bloodline), and forcing Frysabel to imprison the witch for her own safety. I feel like it should be obvious she's not behind this, personally, Krystalinda is an ice witch, not a gold witch, she turns people into ICE SCULPTURES. We've already been through this, people.
Anyways, our team vows to help our dear friend Frysabel, not like we have much of a choice anyways the Gold Fever is stopping us from making our way to Arboria and, presumably, our girls Veronica and Serena. I'm so mad that they're the last ones, We go to ask around to see if anyone knows anything about the Gold Fever, only to be met by people turning to gold. We continue our search when suddenly, from the sea, comes a gilded ship carrying aboard it a crew of golden undead soldiers. They are here to collect the golden townsfolk for their master, a servant of Mordegon named Goldygga, wielder of one of the orbs of Yggdrasil. Our heroes manage to hold off the monsters from razing the village, but the townsfolk turned to gold are captured in the process. Luckily, the Sniflheimers know exactly where they're going, as the ship the monsters sail in once belonged to the vikings who occupy a cave to the West of Sniflheim. Whoever this Goldygga is, they are likely holed up in that cave as well.
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| Mia looks like someone... someone I seem to have forgotten about.... |
As we investigate the viking hideout, we find a cave in the back that had previously been closed off to the world. The cave leads to a hidden area of the tundra, where a massive golden castle sits overlooking Sniflheim. Within the cave is a root of Yggdrasil, which shows us visions of a girl named Mia. Mia was an orphan who was taken in by the vikings and worked to the bone as their servant. She had big dreams of being a grand adventurer and treasure hunter, however, envisioning herself one day sitting on a mountain of gold. In the aftermath of one of the viking raids, she comes into possession of an old copper necklace which is said to grant its wearer the power to turn anything into gold. Mia's greed begins to overtake her, turning all her possessions into treasures, until one day she crosses a line, turning a living thing into gold. She has a brief moment of clarity and realizes what she's done, and decides to stop her endless quest of greed, but when she tries to remove the necklace it won't come off. Soon a curse consumes her, turning her into a gold statue herself. The party realizes that whoever this Goldygga is, they must be using the power of the necklace and may have kidnapped Mia in turn. The player realizes that Mia is Goldygga. I know DQ are games for like children but I do wish the party had like any actual problem solving skills.
After making it through the golden castle, we find our way to the throne room and find, shock of all shock, Mia sitting on the throne. When we call out to her, she says not to call her by that name, that she hasn't been Mia for a long time, and that her name is Goldygga. She then explains that Mordegon awoke her to serve him after he rose to power, sensing the darkness within her, meaning she has been Goldygga for all of two weeks. She is angry at a world that has always treated her with injustice, and so she wants to use her power to turn it all into gold. She then summons a monstrous form, a giant golden dragon and proceeds to duel with our party in what is probably the most frustrating battle so far!!! She's able to turn multiple of our party members to gold at once, causing the party to often be cut in half, as well as just going on rampages during her turns dealing like 60 per party member. Very annoying fight. I really need Serena back is just all it is, Sylvando is not cutting it as a healer. Anyways, we beat Goldygga, and for some reason choose to rescue Mia, which is crazy because she was a sociopath BEFORE she got cursed so I don't know why we're eager to save her life. And with that, our way to Arboria and, hopefully, our final team members is finally open.
I just smashed pumpkins this time. The Sniflheim Puff-Puff girl wasn't even available during this section, I think she might've been turned to gold. RIP a real one. I'm starting to regret counting the orphans we save because so far that number has not gone up. Even if there are obvious circumstances where it should, like, there's a girl in Lonalulu who lives in the big mansion in the center of town who says her entire family headed to the World Tree besides her and it's like "oh, good, someone to send to the Academy" and it's like. Of course maybe I should talk to her now that I've beaten Alizarin? Like the sea is safe for travel now so maybe she can move to the Academy? That's probably what it is. And, of course, no Veronica, no Veronica Wins Again. I'm so sad. I'm getting close, y'all, I can feel it. Looking at the walkthrough I'm pretty sure after I get Serena and Veronica the rest of the game is just "completing one more quest and then heading off to fight the last couple bosses", so I'll likely beat the game this week? I hope so, I really wanted to be done before August. We'll see!!!
7/28/26
Well then. Egg on my face, huh? I can't even be mad about the decision to kill off Veronica. Like, bold move to kill off who is, by far, the best character in the game, for starters. She gave this game so much life in Act One, if there was any character the audience was going to be upset is dead, it's her. Like, I've spent the entirety of Act 2 wishing for her back, that's a good metric for how much she in particular added to the game. But also like, if anything, this is Veronica's final win. Act 2 has been such a miserable experience that has, at basically every turn, made me like this cast less that Veronica punching her card and getting out of this before it happened to her too is a respectable play. If anything, I envy her, she didn't have to play DQXI Act 2. I'm joking around, but I actually did like a lot about this specific play session.
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| I don't talk enough about this, but I adore that all the enemies are drawn and rendered to face a specific angle. |
So, after finishing the events in Sniflheim last time, our party finally can head off to the city of Arboria and, hopefully, reunite with our final party member. As we make our way across the tundra, however, we notice something is very wrong. Where once there was a mighty dragon frozen in a lake in the Eastern fjords, now sits a massive hole down to the water. It is not long before we encounter the beast, the mighty Auroral Serpent, who appears to have been freed when Yggdrasil fell. The beast is not at full strength quite yet, however, looking to restore the full might of his powers before he restarts his reign of terror over Erdrea. And so he wants to turn our party members into a grand feast. A fight for our lives begins, and we face what is probably the hardest boss battle thus far. The serpent deals massive damage, can stop our party's turns, has a ton of HP (though shoutout to Jade for slicing through it like nothing, she got huge crits every single time the turn was passed to her, she alone dealt like half of the dragon's health) and can attack twice a turn. I also wasn't really prepared for the fight but what else is new. The first fight is always your test fight, if you beat it, good for you, if you don't, you've gained information so you can adjust your loadout for the runback.
Defeating the massive serpent is not enough to put an end to it, however, and the beast gains a second wind. Paralyzing our party, it goes in for the kill, only to be stopped by mysterious harp music emanating from the top of the cliff. The song played freezes him in place, before breaking him down from the inside, and our party is overjoyed to see their savior. Serena, our girl, has come back to us. She explains that she has been wandering the world as a healer, aiding those who need her magic in the aftermath of the fall of the World Tree. When she heard that the golden icebergs had been melted, she boarded the first trade ship to Sniflheim, attempting to make it home now that the way there is cleared. Namely because Veronica is missing. For the first time in Serena's life, the two have been separated for a significant period of time, and Serena has been guided back to Arboria by their twin bond. Since the party was heading there anyways to ask about a skyship that the original Luminary apparently had (I do not know where this is coming from, I feel like I missed something, I thought they were going to Arboria because that is where the party was likely to head to), they tag along to try and find their last party member. Serena rejoins and then immediately gets benched because she's both underleveled and unable to do anything but heal, which is not great with how tense battles are in the late game. For perhaps the only time in the game, Sylvando is better than Serena.
I've been critical of Act 2 thus far for not really feeling like it's properly selling the ideas it has put forward. It feels so often like this game tells you that the world is dying more than it shows you, after the beginning it feels a lot like we're on a lot of vaguely related episodic stories that, once finished, feel like the world is restored to the status quo in Act 1. But Arboria REALLY sells that the world is in ruin. Not only is it literally ruined, being as close to the World Tree as it is, with the countryside leading up to it broken and shattered, but from the moment you enter Arboria you feel a profound sense of loss. Serena and Veronica's parents are in the town square mourning the daughters they believed they lost, cursing the Luminary and their destiny. The people all mention losing someone in the fall, having to come together as a community and form unlikely families to even make it through. The baby who was getting baptized when we arrived in town the first time is dead, their leaf on the World Tree snuffed out without a chance to live, their parents unable to justify how to live on after such profound loss. And the little girl who was dying of some mysterious illness the first time we were here is completely missing.
Speaking of loss... man. So, Serena follows her compass to the Grove of Repose, the place where her and Veronica played as kids, to find Veronica sleeping under a tree. As we approach, however, Veronica does not respond. Instead her staff, embedded into the ground, begins to glow as if it were one of the roots of the World Tree. Tud touches it to see a vision of what happened the day Yggdrasil fell, the day Mordegon knocked us all unconscious. In the aftermath, Veronica wakens and knowing that her friends will all die if they stay here, puts all her power into teleporting them out of here, scattering them across the globe. She says it's up to them now, that they will have to save this dying world without her and bring the light back into it. She's sorry that this is where they must depart, how things must end. But she knows that the team will be strong, that her sacrifice will not be in vein. When we exit the vision, Veronica has disappeared, having never truly been here. The Veronica we saw was little more than an echo, a way for the group to find her. The party is destroyed by this revelation, all mourning the loss of their fallen friend. But Serena knows the work isn't done. She takes Veronica's staff and heads back into town, knowing that Veronica's soul must be laid to rest properly.
And so the gang attends a funeral service. Funerals for the people of Arboria are community affairs, the Arborians are more like one large family than a town of people. Everyone comes out to mourn Veronica, all stating that she was the best of us. That her passion for life, her unrelenting spirit, her kindness, her playfulness, they all made Arboria and, by extension, the world. They speak of a life robbed long before its time. For the first time in centuries, the people in Arboria have reason to hate the Luminary. Veronica's parents in particular are beside themselves, wishing that it was someone else's daughters, that destiny had chosen another. That their little girls could be safe. Benedictus, the high priest, pulls us aside in the midst of it all, sensing the tension in the air, and talks to the party about a vision he had. A vision of them riding high atop a giant ship in the sky, flying off to a lost island high above Erdrea. A vision that included everyone... except Veronica. He did not know what it meant, but now it's obvious. It's clear that our next goal is in Arboria, but finding out where will take some time. So Benedictus sends us off to stay the night at the inn.
But some of us can't sleep. Tud is stirred awake in the middle of the night by a harp playing nearby. When he goes to investigate, he finds Serena singing an old love song, one written centuries past, about a person whose love was taken from them too soon and how they hope to be reunited within Yggdrasil's boughs when their own time has come. Obviously this song takes on a new context as Serena has lost half her own soul, her beloved sister. She wonders if Veronica knew, that night at Yggdrasil. She had asked Veronica if their leaves would fall together, and Veronica had stated that Serena "was always a bit slow". If she sensed that something was about to happen that would cause the two to be truly separated for the first time in their lives. Serena starts breaking down, talking about how it was Veronica's idea to go on the quest and how she tagged along like she always did, always the tag along, always the weight carried by her sister. She did not want to go find the Luminary. She didn't want a destiny. But she's glad she has one. And now, Serena has something to fight for. She composes herself and says "no more tears" and then proceeds to cut her hair, letting it fly into the wind. In Arboria, tradition dictates that those closest to the deceased offer something of themselves, some part of their essence, to give the soul the strength to fly home. As Serena picks up Veronica's staff. however, something peculiar happens. A ball of light emanates from the stave and flies directly into Serena. The Arborians said that the great sage Serenica, one of Erdwin's companions who slayed the Dark Lord, had reincarnated as the twin souls of Veronica and Serena. And now the two are rejoined once again, Serena absorbing all of Veronica's powers, the last gift from her dearly departed sister. And with this, Serena has now invalidated both Rab and Sylvando, as she is now the best offensive magic user AND healer the game could ask for. My party is basically just three people I want to actually use and then three more that swap around the fourth spot with no concrete reason as to why because I don't have a use for these other guys.
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| Link needed 8 instruments to summon a wind fish, catch up dude. |
The duo decides to return to the inn, noticing Jade was watching them the whole time, always the big sister. When Tud awakens, he finds Serena waiting for him. Benedictus wants to see us up at the top of the mountain. The rest of the party has already moved ahead, but Serena figured she should wait for us. If this game was like any more narratively complex than I know it is I would be thinking that they're trying to imply Serena has a thing for Tud but honestly, I know this game was built around "Gemma is endgame", I know that even if DE technically expanded the number of "marriage options" for the post game quest, Gemma is the only one you truly marry and everyone else you just become life partners with, so it's a moot point. Anyways, in the night, Benedictus had another vision. He saw Veronica sitting at the top of the Mountain, at a shrine called "Luminary's Landing", and playing the flute of Serenica. This had previously been established in Act 1, that Veronica had an instrument alongside Serena that had belonged to their ancestor, but she could never actually get the thing to work. It was believed to have disappeared with Veronica, but it suddenly reappeared within Benedictus' home overnight. It's clear that, to summon the airship, we must unlock the secret of the flute. Serena attempts to play it, with no success, before handing it off to Tud to have a go. The moment the flute enters the Luminary's hands, it springs to life, transforming into a giant fishing rod and pulling up a gargantuan beast. A flying whale known as Cetacea, the aerial transport of Erdwin, the original Luminary. It had been missing for many centuries, awaiting its master to call it home. With this, we can now find the lost island in the sky that Benedictus saw and fulfill our destiny. This was whimsical as heck, loved this part, for real for real. Felt very Ghibli.
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| All these squares make a circle.j |
As we take off with Cetacea, the world seems to yet again open up to us. Many new areas seem to open up, via the "Whale Way Stations", hidden areas scattered across the world which contain within them secret treasures. Unfortunately that's all they are, just little areas, the map doesn't gain more nuances from this newly unlocked mode of transport. Although you get some nice grinding areas out of it, which is always good. Anyways, we make our way to the island in the sky in Benedictus' vision and find it to be a small floating structure with a temple upon it, guarded by a creature called a "Watcher". The Watchers are a race that has, well, watched over Erdrea since time immemorial. never interfering with the world below. They are a powerful race, so much so that Mordegon immediately tried to drive them to extinction upon his rise. He destroyed all but one of their floating islands, the one that our new friend rests upon, which was guarded by a sacred flame that burns endlessly. The Watcher has no idea how to actually aid us on our quest to defeat Mordegon, but he allows us to enter the chamber in the back anyways. The chamber tells tale of Erdwin forging the original Sword of Light, instructing our party on how to forge a new one if the need arises. You must find a significant ore in a mine called the Battleground, gain the forging hammer from the kingdom of Gallopolis, and then forge it within the burning fires of the Hotto volcano. Our goal is clear: if we were to forge a new Sword of Light, we could battle Mordegon and his sword of shadows. With that in mind, we set off to the Battleground to find our way to the ore we need.
Oh, by the way, just want to highlight this since I was complaining about it last time: Jade did unlock a skill that was actually useful to me. Sexy Beam's secondary effect, which beguiles opponents akin to how Booga did in his fight, has never once procced, but it doesn't really matter because it's an attack which deals 150 damage on average and is not a physical attack, which is becoming more and more noteworthy. See, I'm encountering more enemies who can either put up shields to negate all physical damage or all magic damage. Sexy Beam hits through both of those shields, it's so good. Jade finally has options outside of "oddly specific attack types" and "standard attacks with Re-Vamp up". Though I do definitely need to do some skill tree reworking, I've bought so many skills that are completely useless to my builds to try and get skills that are (and then those skills aren't actually useful either). Especially now that I'm heavily incentivized into completely reworking Serena around offense because she's now my main magic damage dealer. "But what about healing" she doesn't need healing, she has a naturally high Magical Mending stat and all her armor buffs it, she needs to be respecced into what Veronica was doing.
Also I did kind of do some sidequesting in this play session? Which is to say I gathered sidequests and then tried to do them and got walled at every turn. Can I just say that I actually do hate all the sidequests that are like "defeat this enemy using this specific Pep Power". Like, I've complained about this before, it's very difficult to get a specific Pep setup in general because Pep is dictated by a meter we don't have access to seeing and so it is seemingly random, and the only way you can really control who is pepped up is to rotate out pepped up team members into the back which may mean team members that aren't very useful in a specific circumstance taking point. And this is assuming you don't get Pep at inconvenient times like boss fights. But also now the quests function in such a way that you also have to slay the monster with the ability, it's not enough to just use it during the battle. Which means you also have to plan around a random turn order where your Pepped up guys might go first and lose Pep. These quests are dumb and I hate them and I don't think I'm ever doing them at this rate because I probably have two play sessions left before the end game and just want to be done. "But what about Act 3" you're lucky I'm finishing Act 2 after Sylvando's dumb parade.
Finally, let's do our quest objectives. I do regret adding the saved orphans counter, I have yet to find a single other orphan to save, I'm dying here mans. I just wanted to do something nice for the orphans! I didn't see any pumpkins this session either, really regretting not keeping count for this bit, I would love to do just a rollout of statistics when I finish this game but I don't have pumpkin stats. I did hit up the Sniflheim Puff-Puff girl again, so that counter has gone up by one. I was about to say that's probably our last Puff-Puff girl but Hotto has one too, that'll probably be our last one. And, finally, our final Veronica Wins Again count is 19. So sad it's that low. She will be missed. I have been playing this game for almost 70 hours and I'm over it, please free me from this game, even if I liked this portion, which I did, a whole lot, this is ridiculous. Games should not be this long. Long games used to be 30 hours with 100 hours of optional content and now they're 100 hours with 30 hours of optional content and we should go back to the old way, imo. God I'm never doing Persona 5, am I?
7/30/26
You ever just realize something awkward about a game and once you do realize it, you can literally never unsee it? I realized in this section that, throughout Act 2, the majority of the cutscenes only feature Hendrik, Sylvando, and Rab and, if the rest of the party does appear, they appear as lifeless dolls standing in the background, never contributing anything. I realize a big part of this is that the stuff in Gallopolis and Hotto that I touched upon in this section was technically stuff I could've done much earlier in the game so they didn't know if I would have Jade and Serena at this point, so the most cost-effective way of doing things was to kind of pretend I didn't have them unless the camera allowed for a big group shot. But still, I can't not see now how the girls just awkwardly stand there any time they're in a cutscene they weren't originally supposed to be in. But I guess these games are for teenage boys so maybe not letting women speak was a selling point, to be honest. The disrespect.
So, I basically did the entirety of the forging the Sword of Light quest last night, which meant going to the Battleground. Reaching the Battleground made me realize that like, this game has dungeons? I was aware this game had dungeons, mind, but I don't know about y'all but it feels a lot like modern JRPGs tend to not really have dungeons that feel like dungeons? Every modern dungeon JRPG is normally like "there's a single correct path forward that's really obvious and then a bunch of dead ends that branch off so you know where the treasure is". It's something you don't really think about because like, let's face it, dungeons are the worst part of JRPGs (and also Zelda games, fight me), so them being deemphasized in favor of the parts of the game people actually like is a net positive, it's just you know, weird. Anyways the Battleground was whatever. It's kind of neat how you go halfway down only to find the cave has collapsed in on itself and so you have to climb down a vine all the way down to the bottom and then climb back up to get to the ore vein. Otherwise it was just, you know, a dungeon. But we got our special ore, everyone's favorite fantasy metal: Orichalcum. I will remind you all, Orichalcum is just brass. It is just brass.
With that out of the way, we head off to Gallopolis to get the forging hammer. I have obviously made it to Gallopolis before in my repeated unsuccessful trips to make headway into this part of the map, but I've not done any of the story stuff here in fear I would fight a boss I'm not prepared to fight because it was supposed to be later in the game technically. Which would've been a good assumption, just like. Not yet. Anyways, Gallopolis is experiencing an end of the world level crisis. A star, Erdwin's Lantern, has been falling from the sky since Mordegon's rise to power and it has almost reached the ground. The kingdom has almost completely evacuated as the giant mass nears the ground, although nobody is quite sure if this action is futile. Obviously a star crashing into the ground would cause a great cataclysm that might destroy the entire land of Erdrea. Our party arrives just in time, however, as the Sultan is sending out a part to investigate the star as massive runes appear on all its faces, needing to be deciphered. Unfortunately, this means spending more time with Prince Faris, who is still an insufferable liar overly convinced of his own value, because Sylvando's teachings did not make a dent into that thick skull. Also the sultan freaks out seeing Rab which does not make sense as he saw Rab already, he sold him the Rainbough, this game's continuity is like network drama levels of bad I swear.
Our party agrees to help the Prince, with Rab actually being able to decipher the runes on the side of the Lantern, and we set a course for the northern desert. We see that the star is actually falling above a specific spot, there are ancient ruins in the desert that have no clear origin, with Faris saying that they were built in the time of his grandfathers' grandfathers' grandfathers or something to that effect. He doesn't actually know, because much like his knightly training and his horseback riding, his scholarly studies are also something that he is lying about doing. How does he get away with this? Like surely the Sultan hires him tutors? They are surely reporting to the sultan, right? I digress.
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| E V I L |
Rab starts to investigate the runes on the side of the star when the Luminary notices something bizarre: a tockle, one of the weird owl-like spirits, walking into the center of the ruins. But this tockle is different from the others, it's pitch-black and has a glowing red heart within it. Normally tockles are white and somewhat transparent. The tockle begins to dance, and the star begins to fall faster. The tockle ominously stating that he shall reclaim what was once his, as a series of tentacles spawns from his back and starts to reach up to the Lantern. However, before the star can reach this small creature, a shadowy figure appears in the sky and begins slashing at the Lantern, slicing it into pieces. The figure is, of course, Mordegon, as he ominously states that "no one shall oppose him" before flying off. Gallopolis is seemingly saved, and the tockle falls into the sand, defeated. But before the star was able to be destroyed, Rab successfully deciphered the runes on the side. It was only one word repeated around the side, over and over. "Calasmos". We are not going to ever find out what that means because that is Act 3 stuff and that's post game baby, I ain't doing that.
Returning to Gallopolis, our party informs the Sultan of what happened (although keeping quiet that their mysterious savior is actually the Dark Lord himself), and we receive the forging hammer for our trouble. And also a reminder of how irresponsible the Sultan is and how his constant extravagant spending will make his country destitute in his lifetime. He's a tyrant and we should be taking him down for the good of his people. Unfortunately, our job isn't to make the world a better place, it's to save the world, and so we head on to our final stop in our sword quest: the mountain city of Hotto. Which is also where we encountered the GOAT for the first time, RIP Veronica, you are missed. Hotto is actually my favorite town in the game and I'm glad we get to go back and have it be like actually relevant for once. I just love the way the citizens only speak in haiku, it's super creative.
As we arrive in town, we find it in distress. See, long ago the town's leader, the High Priestess Miko, left for the volcano that overlooks Hotto to slay the great dragon who rests inside, Tatsunaga. With the beast slain, Miko has been regularly offering tribute of grand feasts to the volcano gods who are believed to reside in the mountain to appease them. Usual stuff, enable a bountiful harvest, stop the mountain from erupting and killing them all, standard "offering to the gods" type stuff. But they have an issue: the path to the mountain has been blocked by a large beast who threatens all who approach. They have not been able to make their offering to the mountain and the people are feeling the effects, their harvest is dying, the mountain is acting in anger, and unless this is resolved it looks like a swift death for Hotto is incoming. Miko would normally solve such an issue herself, but she has been beset by a mysterious injury which makes her unable to make the journey up the volcano. So Tud and the gang decide to investigate the mountain trail for her.
Upon arrival, the beast shows itself quickly, a massive bear claiming to be an Earth spirit. However, when the party doesn't back down, the bear quickly panics and falls over, revealing it to just be a large puppet piloted by two children, Atsuo and Atsuko. They used to live in the village of Hotto but very recently ran away. Also they reveal that the haiku thing that Hotto's citizens do is actually just them speaking in "proper" Hottotian, and that the Hotto citizens can speak normally when the need arises. The children bring the gang back to a small hideout in a cave on the mountain trail and explain the situation: not too long ago, Miko had told the villagers that their offerings of food were not enough to appease the volcano anymore. It hungers for more. It hungers for flesh. And so Miko had chosen a human sacrifice to appease the mountain: the children's mother. The family quickly fled from the village and have been hiding here ever since, trying to scare off all who would look for them. But their mother seems to accept her fate, that Hotto should not die on her behalf.
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| Gee Johnny, why do you get multiple Dragons in your Dragon Quest? |
There is only one problem: Miko is lying. An outcropping above the cave leads into the volcano and gives a look at the caldera. Within is Tatsunaga, the great dragon that Miko has told the villagers her son sacrificed himself to slay. It's clear to Atsuo that Miko has been trying to appease the dragon in an attempt to sate its bloodlust, hoping that Tatsunaga will leave the village alone if Miko gives him what he wants. Betrayed, he chooses to return to the village to expose the High Priestess for her crimes. Miko tries to deny her transgression before admitting to it and telling the child he does not know what's going on. Their verbal sparring match gets interrupted by the arrival of Tatsunaga, who begins rampaging within the village looking for fresh meat. Miko realizes that this has gone too far, that she has let her own emotions cloud her judgement, and so willingly sacrifices herself to appease the beast.
After a brief battle, the dragon returns to the mountain, and the truth is revealed to the party: Tatsunaga IS Miko's son, Ryu. Ryu had indeed slayed the beast in the past but, with its final breaths, it put a curse on Ryu. Overtime, the boy had transformed into the mighty dragon, and Miko had been trying to keep it sated while she found a cure. Unfortunately, the magical artifact she had did not work, and until it did, Miko vowed to do anything to keep her son alive. With great sorrow, she chose to sacrifice villagers for the chance to save her son. She knew it was wrong, but what is a mother to do? The group mourn her, realizing that she was doing what she thought was necessary when faced when overwhelming tragedy, and go to fight the dragon to stop the curse once and for all. Too many people have suffered at the hands of Tatsunaga. Including me, this boss fight was hard, I kept getting bad rolls where it would go for its desperation attack every turn and deal like 3/4 of my health at once and also it attacks three times a turn, it was wild. At a certain point I just said "screw it", stopped trying to revive my party and hoped that if I simply did as much damage as quick as possible I could beat him. I guess I was never in any danger though because I had Rab and Sylvando in the back if I needed them, by the time they would've come out the dragon was almost dead. It's like Pokemon, brah, sometimes you don't need to outplay them if you can simply outpace them.
With Tatsunaga's defeat, the magical artifact Miko was attempting to use finally springs to life, turning the dragon back to Ryu. For context, it was around Miko's neck, so it was in the dragon stomach. Ryu is briefly overjoyed that he is back to himself, likening it to awaking from a dream, but his return is short-lived. The injuries he has suffered are too great, he feels Yggdrasil calling him home. His last wish is for his mother to know that he loves her, and that he awaits her on the other side. Completely unaware that she's already there. Completely unaware of who sent her there. As the gang returns to the village Atsuo tells the villagers not to hate Miko. Everything she did, she did out of love. She gave this village another chance to live by sacrificing herself to Tatsunaga, a chance to move on into the future, and they should sieze this chance. To build a brighter future. And with that resolved, we can finally access the forge for the sword of light, which lies within a hidden shrine in the volcano. I think I'm beating the game next play session, y'all. The Dragon Quest is at its end. Unless I want to sidequest, I guess, but I don't know so many of my active sidequests are the dumb "defeat x enemy with Pep Power" quests that I don't want to do them even a little. I'll probably try and finish up the quests that are more like favors for people. Either way I'm close to closing the book on this thing.
Normally I'd do my "penultimate play session thoughts", you know, set up the review but like, we don't need them here, do we? DQXI has been a game that I started out being really surprised by and thinking it was going to be a surprising hit and it turned out to be exactly what I thought it was. Let's just do the quest objective check-in so we can beat this thing and I can play something else. We didn't get any Pumpkins smashed, there aren't really any in Gallopolis or Hotto to smash so this was an entirely pumpkinless venture. And honestly that might be the end of the pumpkins because if I don't sidequest, next play session is just going to be finishing the sword and flying up to the final dungeon. Maybe some grinding, I don't know. Still no orphans, this was a foolish thing to add, I thought I would be finding one every town and I found one period, I guess it's an Act 3 thing more which is absurd. But I did hit up the Hotto Puff-Puff girl and met a new one. Somehow, against all odds, there is a Puff-Puff girl on the Battleground. This one takes you bungee jumping and the "Puff-Puff" is the sound the chord makes when it pulls you back up. I was sure she was going to be a monster, like an optional boss or something, but no. Just a normal bunny girl. Girl, how did you get up here? It's a floating island in the sky. Anyways, see ya next time for end game.
8/1/26
I'm sorry y'all, I wasn't strong enough. I didn't actually beat the game in this play session. And not because I did a bunch of grinding or filled out my entire sidequest catalog, I just got to the door to the final bosses and was like "I need to stop for the night, the final bosses might take 10 minutes or they might take 2 hours and I can't be staying up till 3 AM playing Dragon Quest". Am I going to be upset when I turn the game on tomorrow and the final boss gauntlet is like literally 5 minutes long all told? Yes. But gotta make the best decisions for the vibe I'm feeling at the time and the vibe I was feeling tonight was "I've been playing for 4 hours, I do not want to play more Dragon Quest, I need a break". I'm as mad as y'all are that this monster of a post isn't going to be done, I want to play Dispatch!!! That's a game I'm going to love!!!
Picking up where we left off from last time, we receive a key to the hidden forge within the volcano, a magical forge hidden beneath the lava. Lighting the forge with the eternal flame we received from the Watcher, Tud gets to work forging a new sword of light, with minimal success. Although the sword is taking shape, its development is quickly stagnating as Tud hammers it over and over. Needing a break, the rest of the party vows to take over, each adding their own hopes, dreams, and wishes to the blade. Sylvando speaks of proving himself to his father, of accomplishing his goal to return smiles to the world. Rab speaks of his departed family, and how proud they would be of how Tud has grown. Jade speaks of how she spent her entire life thinking her goal was to stand behind the Luminary as their big sister but now sees that it is to stand with them as two warriors united. Hendrik speaks of penance for his blindness to the true evil and avenging Heliodor by defeating Jasper. And finally, Serena speaks of Veronica, how she never wanted to know a life without her sister but now that it's here, Serena will be strong enough for both of them. With each of the hero's companions putting themselves into the blade, the forge roars to life, imbuing the blade with the magic of the eternal flame and forming an exact replica of the Sword of Light. With our new blade in hand, we finally have all we need to mount an assault on Mordegon's Lair, a flying fortress where the World Tree once stood.
But first we'll do like 15 minutes of sidequesting because why not? There were certainly sidequests. I beat every sidequest I wanted to beat in this section. Like, I was never going to do the Tickington stuff because, a, I have never played a Dragon Quest before so I would get nothing out of them, b, I don't 100% games in general so I'm okay with leaving a bunch of things undone, and c, I was told the retro DQ stuff sucks anyways. So like half the sidequests are just not worth it to me, frankly. And then obviously I'm not doing the Pep Power stuff because it's dumb and I hate it, I don't know why they chose to make so many sidequests that you have to get lucky to finish. Like I'm already doing all the Puff Puff stuff, we don't need more sidequests about getting lucky. Which left me with like 10 sidequests I wanted to do and well. They're Dragon Quest sidequests, they are not more complicated than "go somewhere, do a thing, come back". I helped a mermaid use institutionalized racism against sharks in Nautica to win a legal case, I helped a boy in Lonalulu save a mermaid to overcome his prejudices and after hearing her sing once he's ready to abandon his life to go under the sea with her, I scoured the entire world looking for a letter which contained a song from the great sage Serenica to her love Erdwin. The only thing I didn't do was gamble because screw gambling.
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| This is just a guy. |
With that out of the way, I boarded Cetacea and set a course for the Fortress of Fear. The sword of light shatters the dark barrier surrounding the castle and we vow to slay Mordegon for revenge. They say that specifically, this is not about saving the world, this is very specifically about getting revenge for the death of Veronica. And you know what, I can get behind that, that's the primary reason I want to kill Mordegon too. How dare he cause my girl to die. As we arrive at his doorstep, however, we are assaulted by the sixth of the Spectral Sentinels (Jasper is technically the sixth but we met him first), Lord Indignus, a giant demon wielding a dual blade. Indignus is, much like his Spectral Sentinel brethren, just a big guy who deals a lot of damage to the entire party each turn and can attack twice a turn and then immediately dies after his boss fight. I feel like this game's only solution to the question of how to make its "platonic ideal of generic JRPG combat" interesting is to give the opponent a lot of turns in a row and make it so you have to kill turns healing everyone up. Mind you, I'm not exactly running optimal kits so any attack can be dangerous for me sometimes. But also I don't really like playing "optimally", I like playing the game with my own choices and having to figure out how to work within those choices. Like I could be doing more damage with a Greatsword on the Hero but I want to play with the sword! It's an RPG, it's about choice.
With the last defense of the Fortress defeated, we enter the end game dungeon and, gotta say, it's a dope dungeon. Like it's once again one of those instances where Ed complains about something in the game only for it to address that criticism immediately after. I was complaining about how the dungeons don't really feel like dungeons a section or two ago and then it drops an absolute banger on me. This is why you should always complain, you are always rewarded for it. So, this dungeon, for starters, ramps up the difficulty immediately. The "weak enemies" in the Fortress of Fear are the strongest enemies we had encountered up to this point, many of whom would only be encountered in optional areas accessible only via Cetacea. A player coming in here lower than me would probably be in serious trouble because these enemies would, likely, chase you throughout the dungeon. As for me, I could avoid them, which made points where I had to leave the dungeon to access the heal point and come back very quick affairs overall. But I could imagine a lower level run being very stressful, especially since the game is not conservative with enemies. There are sometimes a dozen of the same mobs in the same room.
Not to mention that, after you get past the first couple rooms, the enemies you fight are all unique to this dungeon. You are learning how to fight new enemies on the fly and these are enemies that can be tricky and burn through your resources. The Dark Headless Horseman, for instance, can deal pretty massive party-wide damage, block attacks, debuff the entire party at once, cause the party's attacks to miss and knock them all down. It's a wide variety of truly obnoxious things that an enemy can do and because these enemies come in threes usually, they can do most of it in a single turn. You have to learn to play as defensively as you do offensively, playing smarter and not harder, because the dungeon expects a lot out of you to earn your ability to access the heal point. I guess you could just like avoid every enemy hypothetically, especially if you're in a situation where none of them will aggro you like I am, but if you're attempting to gain some much needed last minute level ups (especially for Serena, who is probably several levels lower than the rest of your party due to how much longer it takes to get her back) you are going to be put through the ringer.
The enemies also scale in difficulty with each subsequent floor. They start out at "the strongest regular enemies you could fight at this point in the game outside of this dungeon" and then climb to refights with major Act 2 bosses except now as regular enemies such as Booga, incredibly strong variants of existing monsters like the Golden Lady who is a stronger variant of the Iron Maiden/Dora-in-Grey enemy, the Jerkules who are these giant four-armed monsters that can destroy your HP in one turn through attacking like eight times a turn sometimes, powerful support units like the King Healslime, and even incredibly strong Dragons when you reach the top. In fact, not only do you often have to fight the Great Dragons, regular enemies who are as strong and resilient as most of the bosses in this game, but you sometimes have to fight two of them at a time. Or one with a squad of Dark Headless Horseman for support, making it super obnoxious to deal with the dragon as you keep getting debuffed. Heck, the boss we JUST FOUGHT, Lord Indignus, gets a generic variant on the top floor of the dungeon that you have to fight multiples of at a time. It's an absolute gauntlet of a final dungeon, a true test of how good you are at Dragon Quest.
But, it isn't a war of attrition. You are not doomed to run through the entire dungeon all in one go like you think you would be. This is where the best part of the dungeon design comes in: the central room. The entire dungeon is built around a singular central room where, as you progress up the dungeon, you return to this room and destroy the barriers within it. This barrier allows you to have easy access to the heal point on the bottom floor of the dungeon, giving you the capability to fly back up to the top after you've healed and saved your progress. This dungeon is not an endless gauntlet, every time you make progress you earn the right to return to your heal. It's incredibly good design, the dungeon is difficult but never feels aggressively so, it always feels like a necessary heal is around the corner, pushing you on. It almost makes the entire rest of the game having pretty bad dungeons worth it, this is such a fun dungeon design. Although I am curious what the deal was with the dungeon we saw during one of the Intermissions, the third one? I figured that would be part of the final dungeon and we would have to work our way in through the bottom to get into the Fortress. I guess that was just a random one-off location. But also like, I don't know why I'm still expecting the Intermissions to have mattered at all.
Obviously since we're now in the endgame and I basically just did the final dungeon in this section, we didn't do any of our quest objectives and, since I'm not going to be playing more of this game for the forseeable future, I'm willing to call it on our quest objectives here, so here are our official numbers:
- Veronica Wins Again Count - 19
- Puff-Puff Count - 20
- Pumpkins Smashed Count - A Lot, I Was Dumb And Forgot To Count And I'm Mad About It
- Orphans Saved - 1
So NOW let's do the penultimate play session wrap-up, because this feels like a better place to do it and I think I'm settling into my opinions more on DQXI. As I've mentioned before, I have been equal parts disappointed and surprised by Dragon Quest XI. At times, I have adored this game, during Act 1 I genuinely believed it would be an easy Top 10 contender for the year and would rank among my favorite games of all time. Its very simple, fairytale approach is endearing and it's a nice breezy experience. THE turn off your brain JRPG, if you will, just play it, let the numbers go up, experience a fun and simple story, hate on the soundtrack until you tune it out, it was kind of a game with nothing wrong with it.
But then the game gets to the Intermissions and it feels like it really starts to lose itself. It struggles to provide depth to its story and characters after such a pivotal plot shakeup, it fails to justify its darker tone and changing characters in a meaningful way. It is not serious enough but also too serious, the blend of light-hearted and serious tones that makes Act 1 so special kind of ruins Act 2 and makes these characters a lot worse for it. There are a couple very good things in Act 2, the defense of the Last Bastion and King Irwin's storyline are both very well done and very compelling. But for the rest of it, it feels all over the place, uninteresting in exploring its own ideas as it tries to maintain what people expect out of a Dragon Quest. But at the end, it kind of comes together again, from Serena rejoining to the end game I've been really enjoying myself again. I feel like it has maintained a good flow narratively and has tried to make the sometimes rather dull gameplay of the platonic JRPG kind of interesting. It's been an experience that has been all over the place.
Part of me almost wants to forgive its often disappointing mid game except that the disappointing mid game was like 30 hours of my life. And also I think it is disingenuous to be like "well I hated this game for a large portion of it but I liked it at the end so the entire game is now good". I have been equal parts very positive and very negative on the experience and I think, at the end of it all, the game is fine. It is just fine. It is a good game but not one I'm overly passionate about. I have a habit of being too generous on a game as I play it and then growing to hate it over the years since I've played it (hi Banjo-Kazooie) so I wouldn't be surprised if we check in again in a year's time and I hate this game. But for now, it's like a 7/10. I said at some point I probably won't do another Dragon Quest when I was deep into "this game sucks, actually" times, I don't think I believe. I don't think any Dragon Quest will be a priority for me but I also don't think I'll NEVER play another one. I might go for 3 someday, tbh, especially with the HD-2D remake out there. Anyways, see ya next time for the finale, may the final boss go smoothly so I can wrap this one up and start a game I will be way more positive on.
8/1/26
Yeah so it was like 20 minutes of game left. Oops. Look, I can never know, like I said, sometimes the final boss of a JRPG is really short and sometimes it's horribly long. I grew up with Kingdom Hearts, okay, the final boss of the first game takes like an hour. I didn't know if they were going to do the JRPG thing where the final boss is a full gauntlet of bosses and, frankly, I wouldn't have been surprised if they did. Like this is a game where the big bad has a group of generals that all were slain across the story AND it's a very traditional JRPG, you'd expect it to be like "you enter the final boss area and there are five doors ahead of you, and in order to get to the final boss(es) you have to beat the five Spectral Sentinels you've already defeated in rematches. And then after that the true way to the final boss appears. Actually, there is a moment right before the final boss where it looks like that's exactly what's going to happen but we'll get to that. But nah, I could've easily beaten this game last play session if I didn't psyche myself out. Oh well, we managed to squeeze just a little more content out DQXI, didn't we? That's always a plus. I say this like anyone's reading still, I know how long this thing is, I know we're at like novella length. I'm so sorry y'all.
So after saving and healing up, we head through the door past the Fortress of Fear and into the "Palace of Malice". Crazy that there's an evil castle INSIDE of Mordegon's evil castle. Way to get around zoning regulations, my guy. Inside the Palace, we initially find it cloaked entirely in darkness, with a little girl crying at the center. It is Veronica, who is seemingly alive against all odds, except she's crying like a child which is how you know it's not Veronica. I don't think whoever conjured this fake Veronica knew that Veronica is a grown woman and also that Veronica's response to moments of weakness is "get 100% sassier". Anyways, Serena is cautiously optimistic about this apparition, because like. If your sister, who you presumed dead, turned out to be alive, wouldn't you be happy about it. And "Veronica" is similarly overjoyed to see her. She runs over to the Luminary and Serena, talking about how great it is to see both of them, how happy she is the two of them came here together. For, you see, "Veronica" has a request for both of them. She wants them to hit the 2016 YouTube special. Girl says "kys", stating it's unfair that she had to die while they get to live. She practically begs the duo to sacrifice their lives too.
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| I'll give Jasper this, the demon design is sick. |
Luckily, Serena knows her sister better than this, and begins playing her magic harp to dispel the illusion. Veronica died with hope in her heart, she would never have regrets or hold grudges. And also, as previously stated, she would never be caught dead crying inside the villain's layer. Unsurprisingly, this Veronica was an apparition created by the sixth and final Spectral Sentinel, Mordegon's right hand man and the primary antagonist of much of this game, Jasper. Jasper greets the party with arrogance, speaking on the futility of their quest. The Lord of Shadows has already won, after all, what good is their crusade now. They have simply come all this way to die at his feet. But, since they did make the trip, far be it from him to make their trip in vain. He shall take care of the Luminary personally so his master doesn't even need to concern himself with these insects. With that he transforms into his demon form and look, I gotta talk about Jasper, I'm sorry, but this has been driving me mad.
So like, Jasper is the "main antagonist" of the game, right? Not literally, mind you, obviously Mordegon is the main antagonist of the game, but Mordegon was also the insidious puppet master, pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Jasper is like the actual villain we encounter throughout the game, the face of Mordegon's forces. So why is this only the second time we're actually fighting him in the entire game, and the first was all the way back in Gondolia at like the 1/3 point of Act 1? Like technically we fought Jasper at the World Tree at the end of Act 1, but like, that was a fake fight. That was a "we need to show this guy is a major threat" fight. We could not even do damage to him. Heck, let's even discount the fact we haven't fought him, why haven't we SEEN him since the beginning of Act 2? Something that has bugged me throughout Act 2 is how disconnected the story feels, how despite building up this idea of Mordegon using the Orbs to create a group of generals that Tud and the gang need to slay throughout the Act, the Spectral Sentinels often feel pretty disconnected from the conflict and hidden away in their own little corners of the world. It would've made the whole thing feel so much more connected if you arrived at a location and Jasper was there and you have a little spitting match with him before he disappears and the boss of the area takes over. It wouldn't have fixed all the issues with the Spectral Sentinels not feeling especially substantial but it would've been SOMETHING.
Second issue, why is it that when we fight Jasper, he immediately transforms into his demon form. When Jasper appears in Act 2, he does so in this extravagant sorcerer's garb that makes him look quite a bit like a clown. I imagine it's meant to be an intentional reference to Kefka, the very similar main antagonist of Final Fantasy VI. He wears this outfit when he appears in the throne room in Heliodor, he's wearing this outfit when he spies on the group entering the castle, and he wears this outfit when he first confronts the group. And, spoilers, when he does a fakeout at the end of his boss fight and then captures the gang, trying to force the Luminary to confront his master one-on-one, he's wearing this outfit again. This evil sorcerer Jasper, this "prince of darkness" vibe he has going on is what the game wants you to associate with Jasper. So why is it that we don't get a Phase One where Jasper fights as the sorcerer form and then a second phase where he becomes the demon form. They even make a big deal about Jasper transforming in the cutscene and name this form "Jasper Unbound" which implies we have previously fought a "Jasper Bound".
Third issue, the association between Jasper and Hendrik that they have continuously established throughout the game kind of makes it feel like this is more Hendrik's story than Tud's/the players. Like don't get me wrong, we have had encounters with Jasper previously, he assaulted the party in Gondolia, he burnt Tud's village down, he obviously attacked us at the World Tree. Jasper is a pretty major villain for Tud, he has a lot of skin in this game too. But since the beginning of Act 1 and ESPECIALLY in Act 2, the game has been establishing the camaraderie and rivalry between Hendrik and Jasper. They were the reason for Heliodor's military dominance together, Hendrik's unyielding spirit combining with Jasper's brilliant strategic mind. They grew up as brothers, always challenging one another to be better, to do better by Heliodor. Jasper's narrative arc is built around the deep seeded jealousy he has for Hendrik, a force that drove a wedge between the two that Mordegon exploited for all their lives. Jasper is a prominent villain for Tud but he is THE villain for Hendrik and so especially now, as we face him as the penultimate threat in the story, it feels like the story focus is on Hendrik. And this is especially noticeable because it's not like they had previously established a pattern where Spectral Sentinels are connected to the party members. Outside of Booga and Jade, the other Spectral Sentinels just kind of exist on their own, completely separate from any of our party. Although I guess there are six of them and only five of our party members besides Tud so the math doesn't work but like, you could make it work out. Just discount Tyrian and then like, Booga is for Jade, Alizarin could be for Sylvando because of his boat, Goldygga could be for Serena because proximity, and then you figure out how to connect Indignus and Rab.
Anyways, Jasper was very easy. Like make no mistake, Jasper hits hard. He deals about 1/4 of each party members' health a turn and can create duplicates of himself to make things a bit more frustrating, but also I took him down in 3 turns and it was barely a problem. Serena just kept healing everyone up and we were golden. I think it's very funny how much my strategy has evolved since Act 1, in Act 1 it was like "always be using your magic and only go on a physical offense with Jade if the enemies are magic resistant" and now in most battles Serena's primary purpose is to heal every turn and Tud, Jade and Hendrik are there to go on an all out offensive. It helps that between the three of them, I'm usually doing 1000 damage a turn into enemies that rarely have over 3k health. And even more if Jade crits. Which Jade not only crits, she usually crits twice in one turn. Anyways, with Jasper down, he expresses his frustration with Hendrik, how even now, as an all powerful demon (dude you have 3500 health) he still isn't better than Hendrik. And even now, Hendrik simply walks past him, as if he were nothing. As Jasper dies, he expresses how all he wanted in life was to be like Hendrik.
And if it wasn't for the fact that this death is a fakeout and I already told you it was, you might believe that. Nah, instead we approach the portal that will lead us into Mordegon's throne room and Jasper reappears, summoning puppets of the five other Spectral Sentinels to bind the party. This is what I was talking about earlier when I said it seemed like DQXI was going to do a boss rush at the end, it seemed like Jasper summoning these five back to life was going to lead into a sequence where the Luminary would have to fight them all to reclaim his party members. That doesn't happen. Instead what happens is that all our friends are like "we are absolutely NOT going to let Tud fight on his own, are you kidding me right now?" and then they all go Super Saiyan and break their bonds, destroying the revived Spectral Sentinels in the process. Jasper is once again defeated, and as he lays dying, Hendrik finally tells him the truth: he was only great because of Jasper. Because of the bond they shared, the way they pushed each other on. If Jasper had only seen it, then none of this would've happened. I think the kids call this toxic yaoi.
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| How did he get UGLIER? |
With that, the last line of defense is truly gone, and we head up to the throne room of Mordegon. The walkthrough I use states Mordegon "gives the typical ultimate bad guy speech" here and yeah, that's pretty much it. "Humans find hope in despair but hope is meaningless, yet they cling to it." "You have done well to come this far, but this world belongs to me." "Darkness light light light darkness darkness". And then we enter the two-phase final boss. In the first phase, Mordegon faces us on his own and while I wouldn't say the fight is the more dangerous of the two, it is the more tricky one. The second phase is kind of just an endurance test where Mordegon can deal massive damage each turn and you just have to survive it and burn through his HP, but in this first phase he is always doing some tricksy stuff. He can parry attacks so hitting isn't always guaranteed (he parried Hendrik literally four turns in a row, I missed like 1600 damage). He can remove all buffs at once. Make copies of himself that will give him buffs if not dealt with quickly. All while hitting basically the entire party with massive damage each turn. It is unfortunate however that the more tricky an enemy is the more caveman your strategy ends up? Like, I've talked about what I've been doing for the endgame, Tud, Jade, and Hendrik on offense, Serena on heals. And that's just where we are. An enemy that can remove all buffs benefits from you not even trying, especially when buffs are killing heal turns. Just hit the strongest attacks every time, keep your health up, and win.
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| Be careful who you call ugly at least one paragraph ago. |
After his defeat, he does the usual "you're good, but now it's time to stop playing around" and enters his true form. Y'all have fought a JRPG final boss before, you can just picture what this guy is saying. I realize that I have yapped for this long recapping mostly very minor conversations and now, as we approach the finish line, I'm suddenly like "y'all can picture this, I don't need to explain it" but like. Mordegon is just a JRPG bad guy! Anyways he turns into a dragon, because what would this quest be about if he didn't? Not like we haven't fought a million dragons up to this point or anything. Anyways, this second phase, fittingly titled Mordragon, is kind of three phases. In the first phase, Mordragon's head retreats into the background and his tail, which actually has the Dragon head, takes point, in the second phase they reverse, and then in the third phase they both attack at the same time. Like I said previously, the big problem with this phase is just that it hits hard. It is very caveman, always dealing the most damage it possibly can a turn, with the unique movement of locking down a character for multiple turns at a time only to poison them when they can move again. It's not a hard battle but it is a tense one as any move can knock out one of your guys. But ironically he's actually worse equipped to deal with damage in the Mordragon form, as he gains a bunch of weaknesses and loses a bunch of resistances he did not have in his original form. Hubris, I tells ya. Hubris.
With Mordragon defeated, Mordegon does the typical bad guy thing of "how can I have been defeated? This is my world, I was supposed to rule it!" before dissolving into nothing. Our party escapes on the back of Cetacea and watches as the World Tree once again springs to life, restoring Erdrea to its former glory before them. They take a moment to mourn Veronica, saying how much they wish they could've been here altogether to witness their victory, and then the credits roll. I am not exaggerating, that's like actually it. It's almost as if there's a whole other Act to do. Almost. Over the credits we see scenes of our party returning home. Sylvando reunites with his parade and his father, having accomplished his goal. Rab decides to return to the ruins of Dundrasil, needing a moment to truly mourn his daughter now that the world has been saved. Serena returns to Arboria, welcomed as a hero, and tells her story to Veronica's grave. And our remaining trio returns to the Last Bastion, reuniting with the people there. Tud joyously talking to his mom and future wife, Hendrik greeting his men, and Jade finally reunites with her father after all these years. The last shot we see is the party reuniting at the place where Tud was first found as a baby, before leaving to hold their own private service to celebrate Veronica. And we end on a Tockle, finding a mysterious gear, with an ominous "To be continued..." playing after the credits. Except I don't like this game enough to do post game and I want to move on with my life so it won't be continued, we're done. We are done.
I believe I have said more than my fair share about DQXI. I've recapped the entire plot, discussed the playthrough in some depth, I've even already given my review of the game. So I just want to say: thank you. I know this post was twice the length of anything else I've done. I know it's been an absolute rollercoaster, a game I loved and hated and then kind of liked. I know that reading this was a Herculean task, I wrote an entire novella about this game essentially and it's very intimidating. If you got here, thanks for reading. Sometimes I feel like I'm writing into the aether, I know my numbers and I know they've gone down and as much as I don't like to admit it, it hurts me. I always write for myself first and foremost but I do want people to see it, want people to experience it. And if you're here experiencing it, thank you. I appreciate you more than you know. I promise to not do something this long for like another 3 years, I swear. Until next time, y'all.
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