Dragon Quest VI makes its first appearance on US shores (after being previously released in Japan on the Super Famicom back in 1995) in the form of a DS remake complete with shiny 3D graphics and touch-screen minigames. The addition of these DS-specific features didn’t really surprise me all that much, as these things are par for the course when it comes to remaking games for the dual screen device. What did surprise me however was how little was actually changed from the original game, and how fresh the game felt regardless.

 

Despite the fact that Square Enix saw fit to leave in some somewhat archaic holdovers from the original game (curse you, random battles), many of the other features left in the game seem like additions that you’d find in a modern DS game. I constantly found myself asking the Square Enix rep whether such and such a feature was in the original game or whether it was added for this remake. Much to my surprise, pretty much everything in the DS version gameplay-wise was present in the original game.

 

This fact was pretty astounding to me, as additions like the mid-battle party swapping, experience point accumulation for characters not in your active party, and a customizable job system are all things I would have died to have seen in a JRPG back on the SNES. The way that the game handles your party is delightfully refreshing, allowing you to not only have four active characters, but four back-up characters in your caravan, which can be swapped in and out in the midst of battle. This made the somewhat simplistic battle system a little more interesting, as you essentially have an 8-person team at your disposal, which I found to be pretty cool.

 

 

Since I just mentioned the combat system, I’ll talk about it briefly, if only to note how simple it is. You only have a few options at your disposal, and they are pretty much just the standard RPG tropes of “Attack,” “Magic,” “Item,” etc. There wasn’t a whole lot to really be excited about on that front except that the battles play out very quickly and never get overly complicated, at least based on what I saw. The job system is really what keeps things fresh in this regard, as it helps define just what your character is capable of doing in battle.

Players whose only experience with the Dragon Quest series was DQ IX might remember that there were 12 jobs for players to choose from in that game. In Dragon Quest VI, there are three more, adding up to a total of 15 jobs. The first nine of them are the basic jobs, with the latter six being only unlockable after you have Mastered two of the basic jobs (ie: Paladin can only be accessed by mastering the Fighter and Priest jobs). This system seemed pretty fun, as I am always a fan of job systems in RPGs, and I like the idea of keeping the skills you unlocked for previous jobs even if you’ve abandoned them to make way for others.

 

Another interesting mechanic at play in Dragon Quest VI is that you can actually capture certain monsters in the game and make them into player characters. Now these characters are essentially blank slates that don’t really come with any traits specific to their race. They can be assigned jobs like anyone else and more or less function exactly the same as other player characters with one major difference. They look hilarious. Enemies like the Slime King or the Slime Knight are just too cute and they are even cuter when riding atop your flying bed.

That’s right, I said flying bed. In what seems to be an homage to Little Nemo: The Dream Master, players could actually stride atop a bed and start flying across the landscape. Now, how you might ask does one fly around on a bed, of all things. Well, that’s where the real comparison to Little Nemo comes into play. Dragon Quest VI takes place entirely in two different worlds, the real world and the dream world. Players start the game out in what they think is the real world, but after a while it is revealed that this is in fact the dream world and that the place you’ve been visiting in your dreams is the real world. Yeah, I know. It sounds a tad confusing, but the presentation of the storyline is so decidedly old-school that it didn’t seem like players would get bogged down with huge tirades about how “we need to go deeper!”

 

 

The visual and audio presentation seems pretty great, with a fully 3D update to the classic game’s look. The 3D graphics look nice, and the worlds are somewhat large in scale making for a fairly majestic view when rotating the camera in some areas. The character portraits have all been touched up, but still use Akira Toriyama’s original artwork, which really shines especially in the case of the monster designs. The music is for the most part ripped straight from the original games, but this is mostly a good thing, as the compositions I heard were fantastic and composer Koichi Sugiyama knows how to do the franchise proud.

The other major new addition to the game comes in the form of the Tag Mode that was so popular in Dragon Quest IX that actual businesses in Japan have been modeled after in-game inns to promote swapping items with other players. If you have Tag Mode turned on while your DS is in sleep mode, it will search the nearby area for other players that also have Tag Mode and bring their characters to your Inn so that you can trade items with them. This feature may not apply to everyone who snags a copy of the game, but I figure it’ll be great for school bus rides or long waits outside of gaming conventions.

I’m really happy that I got to make the trip out to Nintendo’s offices to try my hand at this lauded entry in the series, as it really did surprise me with not only how fun it seemed to be, but how accessible it was despite being built around the shell of an almost 20-year-old game. Even though the redone graphics, touch screen minigame, and Tag Mode are the only things that were added to this “remake,” the fact that this game never made it to Western shores means that it will all feel new to most gamers out there. So with all that in mind, I’ve decided to take my first steps into the world of Dragon Quest and have already started playing through DQ IX to ready myself for another dose of slimy goodness when DQ VI hits North America for the first time this Valentine’s Day, February 14.