sudotstar

sudotstar, rok temu

My hope, though I'm keeping my expectations low, is that since these supposed live-service games will be supposedly releasing alongside remakes of the original games the IP is based on, that if the remakes sell significantly better than the live service games it might hopefully inform better decision-making around them.

While they haven't been controversy-free in terms of their monetization practices, Sega has released a slew of back-to-back AAA games: Persona 3 Reload, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Sonic Frontiers, that have generally been complete, single-purchase packages (with a few questionable omissions from base game moved to DLC that I'd consider "regular bad", but not anywhere near the level of egregious monetization seen in most live-service games).

sudotstar, rok temu

I'm a big fan of the series and would consider it to be my favorite JRPG series, not just for the story but because I enjoy the gameplay it offers as well.

It's a fairly "cheap" series to try out and see if you're into it. The entire series is a singular, continuous story, so the recommended place to start is Trails in the Sky First Chapter, which can be picked up fairly cheaply on Steam, especially during Steam sales. It's not as long as future games in the series, and is fairly representative of the pacing and storytelling format that later games will follow (though it is considered one of the slowest-paced games in the series). Basically if you're not a fan of Sky FC, you're not likely to be a fan of the future games in the series either (especially given that the substantial improvements to gameplay over the series' 20 year history likely won't have much appeal to you).

There are also demos available for some of the newer games in the series (e.g. Trails of Cold Steel III), and while I would not recommend actually playing through those games out-of-order, they may serve as a quick/cheap way to see if the format of the games is right for you.

I will say that while the combat of the games is rarely very difficult, and the game provides difficulty modifiers to make it even easier if you'd like, that the combat system is still fairly fleshed out and quite good casually IMO, but if you're really not into doing it even at easy difficulties, one option (PC exclusive) may be to download completed game saves and play through the games on New Game+ and completely trivialize the combat.

sudotstar, rok temu

Thank you for your review, I think this is enough information for me to hold off on this game, potentially until a non-Switch release or some other updates.

I am a huge fan of the original DQM series. DQM2 (released as Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 in the West on GBC) is a game that I put in a lot of time into as a kid, and is a game I still regard today as one of the best experiences I have ever had in a monster catching game, or even most JRPGs in general. The balance between the game's minimal-but-still-present story, the immense amount of post-game content (seemingly infinite randomly-generated worlds to explore and find new monsters in), as well as the incredibly in-depth monster breeding trees is, for me, the exact perfect balance I want out of a game and few others have really scratched that itch as well as DQM2 (mainline Dragon Quest IX is probably the closest I've gotten). While a lot of those mechanics, particularly the "randomly generated content" as well as the "deep" monster breeding trees, don't really hold up to modern scrutiny and are put to shame by what hardware more powerful than the Game Boy is capable of, I haven't yet found a more modern game that provides a better version of that specific experience.

The newer Dragon Quest Monsters games (I've played through Joker 1, and tried the definitive versions of Joker 2 and 3) haven't really done it for me, and a big reason is just how "clunky" the games felt to play compared to the original. I was hoping this game going back to the "mainline" branding would also signify a return to DQM2's seemingly infinite content, but that does not appear to be the case, and the atrocious performance of the game on Switch would probably just leave me reaching back for my GBC and DQM2 again.