Through some careful bargain hunting I recently snagged myself a copy of a game that really ought to be right up my alley: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker for the Nintendo DS. Except, somehow, it just isn’t.

Seeing as I just spent a year’s worth of free time assiduously cross stitching each and every monster in the first game in the series, you might think a game that actually stars a wide range of these monsters would be perfect for me. I thought so too. But there’s just something off about this one.

The devil’s in the details, and I think that’s what is killing me about Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. The art style is as close to that of Dragon Quest VIII as one can get on the Nintendo DS. All of the townspeople look just like those in the PS2 game. Most of the environments are quite similar too, and there’s where the first little niggling issue appears. The interior environments of Joker have many of the same elements from DQ VIII, yet you cannot interact with them.

In (nearly) every other game in the Dragon Quest series there are cabinets, wardrobes, bookshelves, and hanging sacks that can be examined for potential items. These same things are in Joker, but they’re only window dressing. I’ve only been playing for a few hours and yet I still cannot get it through my head that no matter how enticing that cabinet might look, there’s absolutely no way it will have anything or that my character will even be able to pretend to search it. I don’t know why this is so aggravating, yet it is.

The 3D nature of the game doesn’t lend itself so well to the Nintendo DS’s control scheme either. With only four cardinal directions and no sensitivity moving from place to place isn’t as easy as it ought to be. I certainly hope that Dragon Quest IX, which I assume to be developed by a different team, will do something to make 3D movement a bit less irritating. I’d have preferred the 2-and-a-half-dimension style of Dragon Quest IV for DS to this.

But, it does still have many of the monsters I’ve come to love and what promises to be a very aggravating yet intriguing monster synthesis option. Unless I get distracted—quite likely with Retro Game Challenge and Dragon Quest V both out, to say nothing of my as-yet-incomplete game of Dragon Quest IV—I might still putter around with it. I feel I owe it to the Slimes and Drakees.

Ahh, Dragon Warrior! What peculiarly fond memories I have of you. Like most of the NES generation I lovingly slaved through the original quest. I fought countless Slimes and Drakees, saved a princess, and agonized over the question of “club and clothes or bamboo stick and leather armor?” The Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior games are renowned for their steadfast refusal to adapt to the changing whims of the times.

Not too long ago I got onto a classic console RPG tear after I found Final Fantasy I&II: Dawn of Souls cheap and played through the first installment — I hadn’t so done so in something like 14 years. I picked up a used copy of Dragon Warrior VII after the unusually helpful clerk at a local game store demonstrated how the disks were almost pristine. The second disk hadn’t ever been played it seemed. It was almost like buying a brand new copy of a 5 year old game.

So, I took it home and started playing it a little bit at a time. Then, when Staci left for Florida, it became a lot of bit at a time. And, godamnit, I can understand exactly why the previous owner had never touched the second disk. The game is relentless in its commitment to making you loathe continuing. It almost dares you to keep playing. Finishing Dragon Warrior VII is a feat that should not be unheralded. Completely finishing it, well that is just about insane.

If you’ve played any of the series you know exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t get any of the breaks from the later installments of the Final Fantasy series. Early on in the game you will have to kill multiple enemies just to get enough money to stay at the inn. Buying new equipment is a time-consuming grind. And the talking! Dear lord the amount of text in this game is staggering!

The gist of Dragon Warrior VII is that long, long ago there used to be entire continents but through the devilry of the Demon Lord these were split apart and lost. By finding stone shards and forming maps you can go to these lost islands, correct whatever terror the Demon Lord had brought, and they’ll pop back into regular existence. At some point I wager I’ll probably have all of them back. I haven’t been able to make it that far yet. So the basic play style goes like this: find a few shards, plug them into a ruin, travel back in time, visit a few towns, brave a few dungeons, go back to the “real world” and see what good you’ve done. There you’ll find some more shards, maybe a fight a few people, and continue the cycle over and over again. Much to the game’s credit, this allows for an episodic feel that rewards the player repeatedly after a (relatively) short play session. It’s a double-edged copper sword though, because it really starts to get repetitive and the overarching plot only becomes apparent in little bursts.

Oh, and it’s slow. Real damned slow. How slow? When I first started the game I played for over two and a half hours before fighting my first battle. Better than two and a half hours running between two towns and a ruin doing nothing but talking to people and collecting items. The real world is a peaceful one, and with a few exceptions there are absolutely no monsters in it. No random battles is a nice break once in a while but that’s pushing the limits of sanity.

Yet, I can’t stop. I keep coming back to it. “Just a few more battles and I can level up in Mariner,” I’ll say, or, “Let’s just see what kind of island these shards make,” or, “Just a few minutes longer.” Much like a drug, it hurts you but you just can’t stop without your fix.

Staci has gone off to West Palm Beach, FL which is apparently where good things go to die as far as I can tell from her description of the place. Until she returns on the 20th it’s just me and the boys in the house. We’ll try not to wreck the place too much and we all sure do miss you.

My PowerBook done went and crapped out again. Inexplicably she worked like a charm for a week and then back to shitty no video land. Realizing that arranging for shipment to the Apple repair center would be troublesome with my work schedule, I went ahead and left her in the care of the fellows at my local Apple Store. I trust she’ll be just fine.

In Staci’s absence I have turned intermittently to Dragon Warrior VII to pass the time. I’ve become strangely obsessed with it. When I’m playing it I tend to get bored because it’s a Dragon Warrior/Quest game and those tend to be proudly obtuse. But when I turn it off and start to do something else my mind keeps drifting back to it. I really can’t explain it. I haven’t even made it to the class changing system — I expect it will cause me no end obsessive consternation.

The weather has been nice lately. I think I might take Leroy down to the river tomorrow.