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Dragon Quest Heroes

by ddegenha

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Original Thread: Rushing into Trouble and Grinding on Turbo: Let's Play Dragon Quest Heroes!

 

Introduction

Hi friends, we’re back with a new game to have some fun with:



What IS this game?

Dragon Quest Heroes is a partnership game between Koei and Square-Enix featuring the style of Koei’s Dynasty Warriors games with Square-Enix’s Dragon Quest universe and lore. Oh, and art by Akira Toriyama, the man behind Dragon Ball Z and primary artist of the entire Dragon Quest series.

What this means is that we’re going to be controlling up to four heroes against vast hordes of enemies in what some people refer to as a “musou” game after the Japanese name of the Dynasty Warriors series so if you’ve played Dynasty Warriors you’re probably pretty familiar with the setup. Dragon Quest Heroes gives you 13 different characters who level up individually, learn skills as they level up, and have their own individual fighting styles. You can switch between characters in your party on the fly in battle, so you can home in on trouble spots to manage the flow of combat.

It’s a bit confusing, but it actually works surprisingly well in execution. Dragon Quest has always been about grinding until you can progress the plot, so speeding up the grinding process by just having the enemies right there instead of forcing you to wander around the map actually just streamlines the whole experience. It also highlights the monster genocide that takes place in Dragon Quest games, but that’s just kind of a bonus. It makes battles a lot more interesting and there are some cool set-piece battles that really change up the game play..

What’s the LP Plan?

We’re going to stream once, maybe twice a weak and post gameplay videos in between. We may do some transcription of plot scenes, but that’s going to be based on what people want. Speaking of “we,” the streams are going to be me playing, my wife co-commenting, and both of us drinking. Our cats might an appearance from time to time and add their vocals. I’ll do profiles of each character as we get to them. There aren’t too many areas where thread input can really play into the LP, but if something comes up we’ll post about it. Maybe we’ll have polls for who to include in the party for each week once there's actually some variety there. We’ll have our first stream on Wednesday, the 12th of July, around 7:30 PM central time (UTC -5) at on this channel. We’re intentionally putting this up a couple of days before the first stream just so people actually have a chance to see it and possibly to discuss whether people are more interested in seeing a normal difficulty play through as opposed to a new game+ slaughterfest. As far as spoilers are concerned: don’t. Some people have probably never seen this, so let them enjoy it.

Table of Contents



Dramatis Personae

Luceus

Luceus is the male protagonist, uses fire as his element, and is the cool-headed and reasonable type who develops complicated strategies when faced with problems and then discusses them at great length to anyone who is around to listen. He's kind of a stick in the mud, but he does have his good moments.

Aurora

Aurora is the female protagonist, uses ice as her element, and is the hot-headed type who pretty much just charges in and starts wrecking face when a problem comes up. It tends to work out pretty well for her in practice, so it’s hard to argue. Although she and Luceus are supposedly equal, her ice skills have a chance of freezing enemies in place and as such are objectively superior.

Healix

Healix is our little heal-slime buddy, and evidently king of the Slimes judging by the crown. He’s also the tutorial NPC, and he accompanies us in battle and occasionally lends a healing tentacle. He also makes terrible slime-based puns, because this is a Dragon Quest game.

King Doric

Doric is the king of Arba, a former colosseum fighter, and pretty much a pro-wrestler who happens to be king. If that sounds awesome you’re completely right, and Doric is right up there was one of the best characters in the game and I’ll go ahead and say pretty much the best original character to show up in the game. We’re supposed to be his bodyguards, but that’s a glaringly unnecessary job.

Isla

Isla is another original character for the game, and she's kind of terrifyingly predatory at times. She's also inexplicably Scottish or Irish (there's some argument about this) and a boomerang/wind magic user. She can be a bit tricky to use in battle, but I tend to like her because she livens up every scene she's in. She also has some applicability when it comes to using technological set pieces, so that's a bonus in some battles.

Alena

Here comes Tsarevna! Alena was described as a “Russian punch wizard” by someone in the stream and that’s a pretty fair description. Her entire schtick is fisticuffs and critical hits, but she also gets a cool duplication ability and is a lot of fun to use in battle. I find that she works best on smaller groups of large enemies, and she’s a pretty good choice for boss battles. She comes from Dragon Quest IV, where her initial solution to an escape puzzle is “apply foot to wall.” She’s also right up there with King Doric as the best character in the game and I will fight you if you say otherwise. Inward, to combat!

Kiryl

Kiryl is also from Dragon Quest IV, and is Alena’s long suffering guard. He’s also got a huge thing for her, which she couldn’t care less about. He doesn’t even get the dignity of being an “elite lancer” having to settle for just being “advanced.” As a spear user he’s pretty linear, but he also gets instant death spells and some buffs. His high tension attack is one of the more entertaining ones, and is a pretty good callback for anyone who’s tried to use instant death magic in prior games. Not my favorite character, but occasionally useful.

Terry

There's no way to really be nice about this... Terry's kind of an asshole, and not in an entertaining way. He's got a whole complex about being the best and how everyone should stay out of his way, but he doesn't really back it up in practice. He also doesn't improve as a character over time. Terry evidently comes from Dragon Quest 6 so I'm not too familiar with him, but his role in this game is lightning-elemental clone of the main characters. He's got a few neat tricks like learning Miracle Slash, and lighting can hit robotic weak points, but since our main character also has Zap that really doesn't make him valuable enough to keep around.

Jessica


Described by one person in the stream as more decolletage than woman, Jessica hails from Dragon Quest 8 and is the descendant of a line of sages. As you'd expect, her skill set runs heavily toward elemental magic and whip attacks, along with weaponized sex appeal. She can be tricky to use, but is actually a pretty good option who can hit all elemental weaknesses in one package.

Yangus


A reformed bandit, Yangus comes from Dragon Quest 8 as well and his entire deal is hitting things with axes. Hard. He can also attract monster attention, and he's got a defensive stance that can be used to tank attacks. He's a disreputable but honest sort, and he often makes use of Cockney rhyming slang.

Bianca


Hailing from Dragon Quest V, Bianca is the main character's childhood friend and adventuring companion. She's a country sort with I believe a Cornwall accent, and tends to be a bit on the less refined side. Her specialty in this game is archery, including some great wide-area attacks and her ordinary attacks being chargeable. She's also involved in a love triangle of sorts with:

Nera


Nera is the main character from Dragon Quest V's arranged bride, but gives him an out when she discovers that he and Bianca have had a thing for literally years. Being a refined lady she doesn't have much experience as an adventurer but does have a wide array of magical abilities that can turn her into a person of mass destruction if you know how to use them.


Maya


Hailing from DQ4, Maya's can be viewed as something of a precursor in terms of "scantily-clad person of mass destruction." She specializes in fire magic and fan attacks, and her High Tension attack is awe-inspiring. In DQ4 Maya's a greedy and cunning sort, and they've dialed that up to eleven in this one along with giving her a British voice actor's best attempt at what appears to be an Indian accent. She might just be putting on a bit of a show, however, as her speaking patterns occasionally slip. Maya's a solid choice as a party member, and can wreak a considerable amount of havoc on the battlefield.
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