>Ripped off superior western RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry
>Is the same exact game with barely any innovation mainline entry after mainline entry
>Japanese audiences still buy new installments in droves for some reason
I don't get Dragon Quest's popularity Any Forums!
Wizardry and Ultima, despite being relatively simple games themselves, are filled with lots of strange design decisions that needlessly complicate how you interact with the game. These design decisions stem from their table top origins. Dragon Quest combines the best parts of both games while simplifying everything else. It has a very strong loop of investigation, exploration, and combat, that all feed back seamlessly into each other. Pretty much every single rpg evere developed for a console has the DNA of Dragon Quest inside it. Playing at confusion (or worse actually being a retard) about it's reason for prominence is like being a self proclaimed lover of horror movies and "not getting" nosferatu.
>>Ripped off superior western RPGs like Ultima and Wizardry
The only obtuse shit early Dragon Quest had was Gadabout being the only vocational that can become Sage, those two were even more obtuse and even had permadeath and level down.
Wizardry is fucking merciless (and also still more popular in Nipland than it ever was in the west) and Ultima, while great, doesn't really translate to console any better than FF/DQ did (both of which predate Ultima NES ports anyway).
I wouldn't consider it unchanging to be a negative. In a world of pointless subversion and tryhard drama flooding fantasy, it's nice to go on a good old fashioned quest.
DQ took Ultima and trimmed all the fat off.
On top of that, Yuji Horii embraced turn based combat in a way that western developers didn't. While WRPGs of the time were using turn-based combat more as a means-to-an-end, Horii is the one who saw the inherent strategic potential and thrill in a turn based system. Being a lifelong fan of gambling, Horii added just the right spice of randomization to turn based encounters and saw the push-and-pull of turn based battles as exciting in their own right. As long as you don't intentionally overlevel yourself, DQ boss battles are full of exciting risks and "betting" on what the enemy will do and who they will target.
DQ isn't famous for innovation, but for streamlining and codifying the ideas that inspired it.
And that's just the design side. While people think Sugiyama was phoning it in in later years, having an honest-to-god classical composer make tunes for a video game made the game feel truly cinematic back then. And no one does cute characters and rolling green plains like Akira Toriyama. All of it combines into the quintessential quest, the platonic ideal of leaving your hometown to go on an cozy adventure.
Not requiring to reroll characters for hours or to read a manual to know how to perform basic functions of the game helped its accessibility
Enemy design by Toriyama also shot its popularity way up.
>Wizardry
wizardry was vaporware when the first dragon quest was released
>watches a youtube video talking about the series influences
>uses it to seem like he knows what he's on about
lol, what a fagoon.
>Pretty much every single rpg evere developed for a console has the DNA of Dragon Quest inside it.
And that's why jrpgs are garbage. Don't play them
Dafuq?
Why couldn't I have a cool grandma like her?
Gadabout wasn't the only vocation that could become sage, it was the only one that could become a sage without a special item. Gadabout was mostly worthwhile if you wanted more than 1 sage.
Fpbp
/thread
Good posts. Dragon Quest is legendary
>I don't get Dragon Quest's popularity Any Forums!
It basically transported RPGs from computers very few people had at the time to the famicom (a thing that was the sensation in Japan in the 80s), that's basically it.
>the west had one very poorly executed half decent idea
>japanese chads take the idea, fix it, and run with it
based
RIP grams, we based DQ enjoyers will carry the flame forward in your stead
Sucks that Sugiyama died but knowing he was a racist xenophobe who decided that us westerners should get cucked out of the orchestral ost in XI made it hurt way less
We got the orchestral soundtrack in XI though?
DQ and JRPGs as a whole >>> whatever your favorite game is and that's a fact
>racist
>xenophobe
yeah im thinking he's based and you're a big fat faggot
Holy shit nailed it.