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DW

Troglodyte wrote:

I beleive the DW series has more content in their games and the game-play and story lines are structured better. FF games have much better graphics, but thats all they are, eye candy, while they lack in many other important aspects of a good RPG.

The original FF games over in Japan had, in my oppinion, horrid graphics. That is not what led me to dislike those original FF games though, what did that was probably the fact that I could not read Japanese.

More importantly though is what you said about content and structuring. I have not played all of the FF games, so I cannot say there, but Final Fantasy III (American FF3) had a wonderful and in-depth story line. I think that was a great game and the only one that I would compare to Dragon Warrior games. Final Fantasy Tactics, the other FF game that I spent a decent amount of time on, was great where graphics were concerned, and it had decent gameplay, but the storyline/content was nothing to brag about. So, about your quote: I think there is one exception to that, as I mentioned above.

I personally dont think that "good graphics" are that important in an RPG.

Amen. I am glad so many people are turning back to gameplay these days. Graphics-only people were beginning to bring the grade of games downhill drastically.

From that alone, and being a long time DW fan I'm gonna have to say that DW is better than FF. Now that square soft and enix have joined I'm extremely excited about the upcoming release of DW8.

I would have to agree. I prefer the Dragon Warrior series over Final Fantasy. The only Final Fantasy game that I consider to compete being the 3rd American version, and that game does it well. If I had not become so attached to Dragon Warrior games before I played Final Fantasy III then I would probably have liked that better, since it isn't the average console RPG (Meaning, you don't start out in a castle and have some king say "Please, slay [villain name]! You are our last hope.") but rather has a wonderful story web which ties back into itself all over the place.

While DW is the best selling video game series in japan, it did not sell as good in America, and FF has reigned champ of RPG's in America. The last dw game released in japan, DQ4 remake for PSX was never brought to America because of low sales of DW7 most likely. So, with this FF twist to DW8 when it's realeased in america it will get a lot more attention from the vast FF fanbase and will hopefully make tons of new DW fans out of them!
I hope you're as excited as I am!

Unfortunately, I am not the kind of person that has the excess cash to buy all these things as they come out, I still have not had the fortunate opportunity to play Dragon Warrior VII. I have to buy my video games used from other people after much time has gone buy and I can find them very cheap. I will most likely be buying DW7 at a garage-sale when DW9 is coming out new, and I probably won't play DW8 for another year or two after that.

Loduwijk wrote:

If I recall, Final Fantasy III had the options to attack, cast a spell, take a defensive position or use a special attack if that character had one (which were mostly just like attack but with different formulas for figuring damage or attacking multiple enemies). And that is on the Super Nintendo! You dis Dragon Warrior for having that same quality that the greatest Final Fantasy game had, and even then the Final Fantasy game did not duplicate it untill the Super Nintendo came out. The biggest difference was in the graphics used to display those options. When you break it down, Dragon Warrior doesn't seem so primitive compared to Final Fantasy after all.

Dragon Warrior 1 had a whopping total of 10 spells. Of these, 4 were exploration and utility spells; there were only 6 spells that could be used in combat, and of these, there were only 4 unique functions (2 of those spells were purely more powerful versions of other spells, with no effect other than bigger results). The weapons had one, count 'em, one attribute: how much they added to attack power.

I'm too lazy to go count, but suffice to say that Final Fantasy 3 US had a lot more than 4 different possible spell effects, and weapons were considerably more complex than a single variable. When I say DW1's options were "attack, magic attack, or heal", those are not categories of actions, those are specific actions. In a game with a more complex battle system (i.e., basically every Final Fantasy game [the first is arguable]), you can say that the battle system boils down to those sorts of options, but those categories contain a considerable amount of freedom of action; even "attack" covers a very wide range of effects. Moreover, Final Fantasy games have consistently shown greater flexibility and strategic depth in party formation, development, and equipment; not only does the game offer you more strategic options in combat, but on the whole they offer you more control prior to combat as to what options you'll have available in that combat.

Of course, I did overstate the simplicity of DW1's combat system, since it actually gives you a whole two effect spells to use, one (possibly both, I forget) of which only did anything against certain enemies--not an awful lot of strategic choice there. And if you're going to argue on DW's behalf, then FF3 US is a good target; by this point Square was actually beginning to backslide a little, and although character development was still pretty free-form and there were lots of unique equipment choices, the strategic significance of in-combat options was beginning to dwindle. FF2 US is another good target, for the completely opposite reason: it had a challenging combat system that did an excellent job of preventing "uber attacks" from dominating and maintained the strategic usefulness of a variety of oft-overlooked tactics, but party formation was static and character development was linear. The best FF games are those that weren't originally released in America, particularly the Japanese FF2 and FF5 (now available in the Playstation compilations Final Fantasy Origins and Final Fantasy Anthologies, respectively, although FF2 Origins was butchered in the port). But compared to the NES Dragon Warrior games, at least, both of the American SNES Final Fantasies still beat the NES Dragon Warriors soundly.

Final Fantasy III & II are two of the greatest SNES RPGs in my opinion. Now just recently, i've managed to settle down with an emulater and at least try to sit through the graphics and the horrid game-play of Dragon Warrior. Big mistake. While after considerable thinking Dragon Warrior was way ahead of its time, and in my opinion, it beat the original Final Fantasy! Now, i'm not dissing Dragon Warrior, but the only thing I just can't stand about it is the horrible first-person view battle system. Now, maybe i'm just an FF fan boy, but I much brether to see my characters in actual combat, it adds a much more "descriptive" peice of the characters, I mean, who can possibly judge a good appearance by a small little 32x32 icon?

Dragon Warrior is a good game, but nevertheless, I still think Final Fantasy wins the battle, and yes, the titles are getting kind of monatanous, however you should never judge a book from its cover! Before judging the game, you should play all of the series, 1 - 10, then make you opinion. I myself have played all 4 of the availible ones for the NES, and quite personally, I found the game rather bland. Final Fantasy III had the best open-ended story line of the whole SNES trilogy, I mean you can find two secret characters, and fight the ending boss whenever and however you want! Not to mention the spell system was rather unique; you have to equip shards of summons and gain skill points to get all new spells from what that shard specifically has. While Final Fantasy III didn't pack much of a personal storyline, Final Fantasy II did. Sure you couldn't customize your party like FFIII, but the storyline was much, much better, you actually got to know your character and become attached to it, unlike FFIII where once your character is recruited he hardly says anything at all.

My ending vote:
Dragon Warrior: 6 out of 10
Final Fantasy: 8 out of 10

Theodis wrote:

I think they were just as bad. With the except of Final Fantasy 1 & 2(japanese one), all your random fights are trivial and can usually be won by holding down the accept button provided you heal up after so many battles. Boss battles were slightly harder in that you just had to keep your health above the amount the boss could do as damage in one hit. If all your characters are above this amount just use the strongest attack vs. the boss. This is the case for the Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior games which is why they are boring. They are only a few exceptions to the boss stratagy but that usually just amounts to trial and error until you find which order to kill the individual boss elements.

For American FF titles, this almost holds true, since you exempt FF1, and everything FF6j/3US does fall into this pattern. However, FF4j (and to a lesser extent, the dummied-down FF2 US) only fit into this if you spent lots of time leveling up, and while FF5j did feature quite a few straightforward fights, most areas did feature at least one tougher encounter, and a handful of encounters which weren't very dangerous but which could be sped up very substantially with proper tactics. FF3j is essentially a more primitive version of FF5j, but for some reason it has a fairly vocal fan base, so I'll assume that it offers something unique over FF5j too (or not, considering the source...)

All the Final Fantasy titles, with the exception of the first few, may have embarrasingly over-the-top spectacle storylines, but Square has consistently turned out games whose innovative mechanics and depths of tactics made it undeniably worth sitting through the lame and tedious story scenes just for the sake of playing with all the cool toys the game provides.

Uhh for the most part that was just how you attained your limited use skills and what they were called. But were rarley unique in function in combat.

The prosecution would like to introduce exhibit A: Final Fantasy 5 (J).

The prosecution rests.

Admittedly, a lot of skills available in FF5j were not strictly unique compared to some of the other skills available, but one of the great things about the game is that it gives several different options for achieving a certain effect--you still had freedom to develop your party as you saw fit, but while you might end up suffering from the lack of a certain ability, you're not likely to get stuck.

Uh you could do some interesting stuff with class chaning in DW3. This idea was later expanded into a heirarchy of classes in the later Dragon Warrior games which is pretty similiar to what Square has been doing.

It wasn't that interesting (seeing how most of the classes could only "pass on" their attributes, and there were limits on attributes which eliminated virtually all attributes from more than one switch ago, and limited the attributes you got from your most recent class), and I think it comments on DW more negatively than positively that it took Enix three titles just to come up with one interesting character development hook. Square had already come up with two completely different and unique character "class" systems in FF2j and 3j, and had come up with a class-changing-less (mostly) version of DW3's party system back in FF1.

[lengthy comparison of individual Final Fantasy to Dragon Warrior titles 1-4]

So to me it looks like they mimicked each other through the whole early stages.

That is an interesting point, but I don't know how accurate that conclusion is; the comparisons being drawn are pretty broad, the timeframe for each respective sequel is different between the two series, and in general I think it's probably more indicative of each company's natural exploration of the series rather than any sort of concious mimicry. Each numbered pair is just too different to establish much of a direct influence.

Enix rewards players who spend time levelling up by taking all the time they spent killing monsters, sucking it into a black hole, and never ever giving it back.

This is true of many console RPGs. I have yet to see a console RPG that has done a good job with building up your characters except for Tactics Ogre and the other games that cloned it.

I really liked Ogre Battle, but from what I've seen of Tactics Ogre and the other games in the series, they seem too different from OB for me to get very interested. OB was a great example of a game that relied on character development and equipping issues outside of combat for its strategic depth (technically even in the map screen you were still participating in a combat, but you know what I mean), but the main problem I had with it is that it was just so easy... I would attempt to play through using a crippling arbitrary set of rules to handicap myself with, and by the time I got through the first dozen stages my army was still ridiculously powerful, which is all well and good except I still have to sit through 30+ battles for each stage.

In my opinion, the better FF titles (which are mostly the earlier ones) are pretty analogous to this... you get lots of freedom to work within an interesting character building system, but you have to sit through lots of silly and pointless story interludes. They just manage to space the waiting time out better, and at least in the earlier games they kept a better handle on the player's power level.

Theodis wrote:

It's quite simple if you can't maitain your health above the amount the boss can do in one hit or you can't defeat the boss in the time it takes for it to wipe out all your characters you can't beat the boss. It's not about being clever though it helps to some extent. It's about being the right level to handle the boss. Just because you give a boss a lot of health and a large max damage potential doesn't mean the boss is harder you just need to be a higher level to beat it.

But you don't. Dragon Warrior games come a lot closer to being mere matters of what level you're at than do Final Fantasy games; you can solve any problem in a Final Fantasy title by leveling up and beating the boss's brains in with power attacks, but the earlier ones give you the ability to use a variety of effective but nondominating buff and de-buff spells. Dragon Warrior games do this too, but they're fewer and farther between, and less complex to boot.

I didn't see it as being more than have a larger quantity of differently named skills that preform virtually the same thing as something else. It was just a matter of mastering the cheapest ones with the most impact :P.

This is misleading, though, because if you do branch out, the cheap ones aren't quite as good a deal as you might have thought when compared to some of the other available tactics. And if you're not over-leveling (which, as in many FF titles past FF1, means spending any extra time leveling at all beyond what it takes to walk from one point to another), you do have to do some serious budgeting.

FF2j may have been unique but the system was highly unstable and didn't balance out well. DW3 and DW2 were at least balanced. And FF2j and FF3 didn't advance much past FF1 either they just redid how you got your atributes/skills, but the basic principles of combat were nearly identical(which continues on to the current FF).

Sure they were--and yet they were still more advanced than any of the NES DW games. Not terribly more advanced--that's where the pre-combat development and strategization comes in.

and in general I think it's probably more indicative of each company's natural exploration of the series rather than any sort of concious mimicry. Each numbered pair is just too different to establish much of a direct influence.

I'm just saying they aren't much different not that they really copied each other. The gameplay is a lot more similiar than you seem to admit. The most unique was FF2j but it had big balance issues.

The overview of gameplay in combat was pretty similar. The amount of character/party building options aren't even close, though.

Since you were much more powerful than your opponents I'm guessing you got the worst ending. The best ending in Ogre Battle is ruthlessly difficult to get and I never really tried to get it after the first few sets of stages :P.

I got the "get stupendously bored by the first few floating islands and quit playing" ending on every single play-through. As I said, though, the more times I attempted it, the more I handicapped myself--the most recent time I had a go at it, I was playing without using any evil units whatsoever (including any of the primary wizard class), building as many diverse units as possible and rotating the lowest level/most suitable units in as necessary... and I was still demolishing everything in sight by this point in the game (the harder bosses did take a couple units attacking together and/or a tarot card or two, but that's hardly a show-stopping obstacle). I think if you actually want any challenge in the middle portion of the game, you'd have to disband half your units and recruit new ones every few stages in order to keep them good and weak (or more likely neutral and weak). And also, absolutely no princesses whatsoever, and probably no sky knights either, although those aren't so bad since they each represent one kickass unit instead of an entire enemy-demolishing kickass group.

If you want interesting character building systems play computer RPGs since they tend to be a lot better and you're generally allowed to breeze through the plot sequences. Temple of Elemetal Evil is an awsome example if you can get by all the numerous bugs in the current version :P. http://www.greyhawkgame.com

I do play a lot of computer RPGs too, but another thing I like about the FF titles (and most Square games as well) is that you're allowed to breeze through combats while still making strategically significant choices. An annoying large percentage of computer RPGs feature combats with lots of unnecessary delays. I've been hearing good things about the current generation, but I need a new computer before I can start worrying about that.

Theodis wrote:

I like about the FF titles (and most Square games as well) is that you're allowed to breeze through combats while still making strategically significant choices.

<font color=red> True, but I think battle should strategically chosen (like in Final Fantasy Tactics. I personally love the dam game same with FF7)</font>

combat is the main part of the game without it you're just left with bad plot. Past the NES combat became ridiculously easy and you didn't really need to make strategetically significant choices other than keeping your HP up. Unless you avoided getting experience at any cost your characters were generally overpowered by just finishing off the all the random combat on the way to your destination. Making strategetically significant choices just made an easy game even easier(ie: The whole vanish then doom thing).

<font color=red>Wrong about combat, think about Zelda(3 or higher) if you didn't have all enemies (except for bosses/minis) the game would still be a challenge. With all the puzzles and where you have to go and such. Yes NES has become insanely easy. Now ah-days games like FF10, you need major strategy for some battles like the one guy on the bridge who does haymaker (kills your guys in one hit.) That guy took me forever to kill and pass. But, to make a game more interesting you need abilities like the Ability grid where you have to get spheres. You also need some good graphics or some people wopn't try it (I'll usually go with decent graphics, but if there crap forget it). But, you also need good characters a background on them and in-depth stroy line like FF7's (But that took some time to work into). </font>

Which is why I like the few games that use turn-based combat better.

<font color=red> Same here. But with ATB</font>

adjacent turns to move simultaniously. This speeds combat up a bunch while still maintaining it's turn based nature.

<font color=red> AMEN!</font>

That doesn't mean that combats need to take a lot of time, particularly since many RPGs (console or no) feature many, many combats. Nor do brief combats automatically mean easy combats.

I'd rather take one quality fight over 10 fights that are won through holding down a single button(ie 99% of all fights in FF games). Battles in say ToEE(Temple of Elemental Evil) can take a long time but that's generally due to the fact you're taking on 20+ enemies at once(though one well placed fireball can drop that number in half :) ). But even despite the fact that ToEE is a hack n' slash dungeon crawl you probably face 1/10th the number of encounters that you would in an FF game possibly even less, but 90% of them are challenging meaningful combat whereas in an FF game you're lucky to have 1% of the battles challenging or meaningful.

Only in the past couple years. Considering that we're talking about two game series which stretch back 15 years, and a lot of the conversation has focused on games within those series that are 10+ years old, I think it's very relevant to include the strong turn-based tradition of older computer RPGs.

Well most of the CRPGs I've played have been Fallout and later. I haven't played the old CRPGs much so I don't know much about them other than they had a shitty interfaces.

The best computer I currently have available (which still needs repairs) just barely meets the minimum system requirements, which in my experience tend to be the system specs required to run the installation program, and have little bearing on whether you can actually run the game itself for more than 30 seconds. This is a game here that's known for bugs and crashes, in an industry that's also known for bugs and crashes--you do the math.

heh Well this varies from game to game. I played Pool of Radiance 2 on a below minimum system requrments machine and it didn't run too bad. Diablo 2 wasn't playable until you had a good amount more RAM than they suggested as recommended. But due to ToEE's buggy nature it might be best to wait to get a better computer :).

[Edit] Just remembered while making the other post that if you havn't played Avernum yet play it! http://www.avernum.com . As far as I'm concerned the avernum series is the pinnacle of the RPG genre. It's also visually a very simple game and you could easily run it on a computer that was purchased a decade ago :). Basically if you can run Windows 95 you can run it.