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Did Square Enix Make a Mistake by Not Putting Dragon Quest XI on the 3DS?
AXE OF THE BLOOD GOD | Kat and Nadia discuss Dragon Quest XI, The Alliance Alive, and more.
Article
by
Kat Bailey,
04/02/2018.
Axe of the Blood God is our weekly RPG podcast hosted by Kat Bailey and Nadia Oxford. You can find the previous episodes here.
Dragon Quest XI has finally been announced for America! But wait, it's not coming to the Nintendo 3DS. Is Square Enix making a mistake? [download link here]
The news of DQXI's impending arrival in the U.S. stirred frustration among 3DS owners looking forward to a portable 3DS. Nintendo's venerable handheld is 7 years old now, but it's still receiving new entries, and the lack of a 3DS entry seems like an oversight. Or is it? Nadia and I discuss.
But that's not all! The Alliance Alive is also out on the Nintendo 3DS, and it has some big names from JRPG history behind it. Nadia and I discuss its merits, its history, and what "nostalgic JRPGs" are being underserved in the rush to mine 8 and 16-bit nostalgia.
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Show Description
The Alliance Alive is out on 3DS, but it won't be joined by Dragon Quest XI. Kat and Nadia talk about the spiritual successor to Legend of Legacy [5:00] before moving on to the news that Dragon Quest XI will be coming to Steam and PS4, but not the 3DS [25:15]. Is Square Enix making a mistake? And amid the continued stream of "nostalgic JRPGs," what form of JRPG is being underserved?
Music from Axe of the Blood God is courtesy of Lena Chappelle, who has also contributed the themes to Active Time Babble and Roleplayers' Realm. I also use music from the RPG Music Pack over at rpgmaker.net. Check it out!
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Comments 26
Which is basically what Kat said, but it's something that's been bouncing around in my head for a while as well.
I'm also a little frustrated that the Switch DQ11 is coming out later. They've clearly been planning a Switch version for a long time now, and the game has been out for a while in Japan. What's taking them so long?Edited 2 times. Last edited April 2018 by FTLMantis
As for why Dragon Quest never came here I feel people keep forgetting the audience for the Famicom was much different than NES here. In Japan everyone had a Famicom from kids to adults so a massive text heavy game with lots of numbers is easier to swallow for people in their late teens to adults than the little kids that was playing NES here in the west. Which I feel is the reason why it took until the PSX to get people really into JRPG. Because 10 years pasts which meant those kids became adults and could enjoy JRPGs like their Japanese counterpart. Yes there were lots of people that played Final Fantasy 1, 4, and 6 but even Square Enix says the numbers was never that hot. So when Enix tried again after the NES was Dragon Warrior 7 (which I honestly say might be my favorite game of all time) which sadly was a 16 bit style game a few months before Final Fantasy 10 at a time when people didn't really have the fondness for old school graphics.
I really do hope this works out well for them because there was those couple of years of Dragon Quest games coming out for 3DS but refuse to release it here until western fans were finally able to convince them to at least give us Dragon Quest 7 and 8 on 3DS. And I really don't want another couple of years of no Dragon Quest localization again.
Switch would've been the perfect compromise, but it seems like they were to far into development by the time that system gained popularity.
1) Loosen the choke chain! A big thing I like about old jRPGs, and especially old Dragon Quest games, is that they allowed diverging from the critical path. Whether you'd run into a broken bridge or guards or monsters you couldn't handle, you usually had at least some room to get out and go exploring. In the best cases, your exploration would be rewarded with optional towns and dungeons.
More and more jRPGs these days nag at you if you're supposed to GO PLACE then try to go everywhere else but PLACE, and I hate it.
2) Don't phone in the dungeons. Some of my fondest memories of jRPGs are really cool dungeons, whether in layout or art design or puzzles or a combination of the three. The quickest way to lose me is to have dungeons be little more than a pile of samey corridors.
3) Don't copy the same basic anime art style! Seriously, every other anime jRPG looks the frickin' same these days. If you want to go anime that's fine, but take notes from games like Chrono Cross, Xenoblade 1, and the modern Zelda games on how to be anime while also having a distinct look. Don't just copy Tales or Trails or Persona.
4) Please don't streamline towns too much in third person jRPGs! Towns are the places where the player goes to restock supplies and gather information, but they're also the places that make the game world feel more like, well, a world. Not all jRPGs need towns, but please, don't half-ass them if you have them. There's more to jRPG world-building than cutscenes and fighting 'round the world.
Speaking of cutscenes, that brings me to my next few demands-uh, points.
5) Don't be too verbose! Seriously, show some restraint. A cutscene of nothing but talking running for several minutes with little to no player input should be the exception, not the norm!
6) Stop with the talking pictures! Look, I get that 3D choreography takes time and money, but watching photos of anime people or 3D models talking in the same left to right side view just makes boring cutscenes even more boring. I understand if you can't animate the models much but please, just have the talking done on the existing background instead of in some alternate visual novel amateur theatre dimension.
Grandia used its talking heads to compliment its cutscenes, not replace them.
7) Not every jRPG needs voice acting! Seriously.
8) Not every jRPG needs to be 800 billion hours long, either! Short is not bad, and if the only way you can make the game longer is make the player do all the dungeons again maybe you should just save that for an alternate difficulty setting or something.
9) Playing things safe isn't bad, either! Not every jRPG needs a crafting system. Not every jRPG needs a quest list. Not every jRPG needs to reinvent the turn-based battle wheel.
10) And please, PLEASE don't be afraid to be weird when it comes to what can be a party member! Flaming cougar/coyote hybrids, sentient voodoo dolls, lobster people, fat cats, cartoon ducks, plant monster dolls, fat robots, snowmen, lizards, sentai aliens, molemen, yetis, bunny girls, frog people, skeleton clowns, it's all good!
Switch may be all the rage these days, but the 3DS retains an incredible install base and that version of DQ XI has a charm that the PS4 version simply lacks. Penny wise, pound foolish decision on Square’s part.
I feel that a lot of potential "Switch-only" people would otherwise be buying the 3DS version if it was available. Edited 2 times. Last edited April 2018 by slimehunter84
So there's 3 possibilities: 1. They already had that meeting and Nintendo rejected the publishing proposal this time around, 2. They haven't yet approached each other (unlikely), or 3. they are still in the private negotiations stage.
Unless some one can provide the verbatim (please), I haven't seen any words from Square saying that they are absolutely not pursuing this. They've only said from a business standpoint it doesn't make sense for them to spend resources localizing it themselves. Edited April 2018 by slimehunter84
I'll start by saying I really liked Legend of Legacy. I'm surprised to hear they were trying to recapture the nostalgia of 90s RPGs because what they ended up with was an intriguing game that was in many ways antithetical to the pillars of RPGs - being completely bereft of narrative, an unpredictable character progression system reminiscent of SaGa games or FF2, and an exploration system that confined you to certain locations until you've searched all the books until you've discovered the one secret you need to move on. All these elements wove together a game unlike any other on 3DS: a game that knew what it wanted to be and did not give a fuck if you liked it or not.
In the Alliance Alive, FuRyu lost their nerve. They've readopted the familiar RPG tropes and piled more systems on. They're trying to be more crowd pleasing. This game has so little resistance or ideas or vision that there won't be anything to remember it by. I'll always remember Legend of Legacy because that game had vision. I'll remember Alliance Alive as Legend of Legacy's toothless follow up.
That said, I enjoy the battles and the little dungeons I've encountered so far. And one quick correction - battles are not random. Perhaps they will be once I get further into it. But that would be weird.
Nintendo shouldn't have to do the legwork for SE every time they bring a DQ to 3DS though, right? It's SE. They're not a tiny indie studio or mid-tier developer. Geez, throw your fans who have 3DS's a friggin bone. Atlus can handle it but a Juggernaut like SE can't?
Anyway, that's my Hawt Take. DQ has never been my jam (unless we're talking Dairy Queen) so I don't have a horse in this race. But I feel for people who wanted to play the 3DS version.
There is a really good non-Japanese first person dungeon crawler RPG called Legend of Grimrock. It also has a sequel that is great as well, but spends a lot more time outside of dungeons, and the larger area makes it a little easier to get lost. Both games are grid based and you have a party. They're really fun.
Lichdom: Battlemge is another first person fantasy game; it leans a little more toward first person shooter, but has a pretty cool spellcrafting system that is is deep enough to consider it at least part RPG. And it's gorgeous. They made a patch to simplify the magic system, but you can use the old one too. I played it on a 6 year old PC and it ran great, but I hear it's borderline unplayable on consoles (at least when it came out).
The original Xbox Bard's Tale was pretty fun from what I remember. It was fairly clever and subverted rpg expectations of the time.Edited April 2018 by donkeyintheforest
Where there are enemies that run faster than you
That randomly appear
Then they are VISIBLE RANBATS.
Combat is where Alliance Alive really shines. Comparisons to games like SaGa Frontier and Romancing SaGa are both welcome and appropriate. Traditional leveling up has been replaced with a system that upgrades skills as they are used in battle.
Alliance Alive ranked among my most anticpated releases of 2018 (with Octopath Traveler and Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology) and it has not disappointed. Nostalgia may be a powerful force, but the game has more going for it than fond memories of years past. With a little luck, we will soon see Jeremy authoring a piece that highlights the game’s strengths—similar to what he did for Legend of Legacy:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usgamer.net/amp/below-the-cut-legend-of-legacy-a-3ds-tribute-to-the-vanishing-rpg-nicheEdited April 2018 by Gamer-Law
Side note: As much as I adore this series (and I really, really do), I've just never been able to get into DQ9. I've tried on multiple occasions, and it always falls flat for me. I want to like it, but I think it's a combination of the slower pace of the game (especially at this point, even the easier battles feel like they take an eternity to get through) and the lack of personality within the player-created party.
real fun meandering episode