It’s... okay – DRAGON QUEST OF THE STARS Review

If you want a Dragon Quest game there’s already 1-8 ported over available on this store (all of varying quality, but if that’s all you’re looking for I’d suggest one of those instead. The first game tends to be only $2-3 and is MUCH shorter than modern JRPGs) As to what this actually is, pretty much just the typical FTP type of mobile game. It’s not amazing, the gameplay is boring, the story might grasp your attention (you and your party members are the grandchildren of a great explorer) but it doesn’t really save the gameplay any. It, of course, has gachas (since those tend to be standard in FTP now) and to clarify I haven’t paid for anything yet or even really paid attention to the iap, so at least as typical it’s not unplayable for free in the first few levels (there’s a free fast forward in the battles and stamina regenerates 1 point every 2 minutes) As far as I’ve seen (I’m at the end of chapter 1 starting chapter 2) the battle system is completely automatic except for the skills which you decide to activate. Skills are connected to equipped weapons (rather than learned over time) Characters still have individual levels, probably just for stats. I would have liked a closer tie to Dragon Quest’s class system, though I can understand why they went the direction they did for a mobile game. Honestly I’d rather just play an actual mainline game, but that might be because I’m in the middle of playing 3, 8, and 11 (yes I started them somewhat around the same time) and would rather focus on finishing those instead. Still, it’s cool to see Square Enix is giving the fans over here more than just occasionally a mainline game finally. Hoping this means we’ll get Monsters releases as well (I miss that series) along with Rocket Slime (I wish we had gotten the third one) I may keep it for a while because, as said, Square Enix has had a tendency to neglect the western audience of Dragon Quest and if showing support for a mediocre mobile game means getting more of the series officially translated then I’m all for it. If not, then I’ll just go back to contently playing the mainline games while grudgingly hoping for the side games to come back again as well.
Review by small hobbit on DRAGON QUEST OF THE STARS.