Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation Review for Nintendo DS (DS)

Dragons, quests, and angry eyes

The Dragon Quest series is one I’ve avoided, but only because the art style doesn’t appeal to me. There are plenty of other JRPGs to choose from, should I acquire a sudden craving for random battles. What makes Dragon Quest stand out from the others besides looking like Dragon Ball Z? The first thing I noticed is that Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation does not allow you to name your character a swear word. What’s the deal with that?

Upon doing some research, I learned that there are a couple of cool features in Dragon Quest VI that keep things interesting. There is a Monster Master class that allows players to recruit baddies to the party. The monsters actually fight alongside you in battle, which sounds like it would be pretty awesome. I wouldn’t know, however, because they removed this feature in the DS remake.

The only other thing to catch my attention was the Gadabout class, wherein the PC pretty much does whatever it wants and doesn’t listen to your commands. If nothing else, it’s a bold move on the part of the developers to include a class that is designed to be annoying. Also there’s some sort of dress-up contest for people who like that kind of thing.

Although the publisher of the Dragon Quest VI remake is Square Enix, I was relieved to learn that when the game was first made, the publisher was simply Enix. Therefore I knew that the writing couldn’t be terrible, since everyone knows that the separate entities of Square Enix could make games with comprehensible plots prior to their union. The writing of Dragon Quest VI is indeed palatable, even good at times. It contained some twists that I didn’t see coming, and the dialogue was consistently adequate and occasionally funny, which is more than I can say for certain Square Enix games. The only thing that was annoying was the game’s habit of tricking me into thinking it was over. Each time I thought the game had wrapped up to a satisfying ending, it turned out there was even more stuff for me to do. It got a little old.

The best thing about the story may be that Enix doesn’t try to cram it down our throats with ten-minute cutscenes and character conversations. Things are kept brief, allowing players to coast along at a good pace, while additional plot details can be found by making voluntary conversation with NPCs. This is how an RPG should be. Story is important in a game, no doubt, but just in case the story is no good, it’s wise to give the player the option to avoid it as much as possible and get to the gameplay.

Dragon Quest VI is a classic JRPG, turn-based with random battles. It’s never very difficult, and you don’t need to use a whole lot of strategy to get through it, especially since any difficulties can be overcome by a bit of training. It’s a pretty relaxing game—something that’s great to play while watching TV or on the go. I never found a battle frustrating. Character and monster HP were generally low, making for short fights that I didn’t mind losing and re-playing several times over. The entire game was pretty fast-paced. The characters even walked faster than they do in most games, and travel distances were short. It was refreshing, but maybe detracted a bit from the sense of accomplishment that you get when you have to put in a lot more work.

One thing that surprised me about this game is that it actually makes decisions for you. During battle, you can select which type of monster each PC attacks, but if there is more than one of a type, the game chooses. This bothered me at first, until I realized that most of the time the game chose the smartest move. It would have my two weaker characters attack one monster and make the strongest attack another, knowing that the stronger character could wipe it out in a single hit. It did occasionally make a decision that I would not have made, but never caused any disasters. So I accepted the feature and grew to enjoy it. It took some of the redundancy out of the turn-based RPG and allowed me to focus more on my television watching. It may not seem like a good thing that a feature made me pay less attention to the game, but I’ve known the alternative, and it’s not fun. It’s mostly only an issue in regular, non-boss battles anyway.

I was excited when I found that Dragon Quest VI has an interesting class system, complete with hybrid classes and exclusive abilities. However, while I did enjoy trying the Gadabout class, this game’s class system seemed pretty uninspired. Each character’s stats were predetermined by their personality, so although I wanted to make the giant muscle man a Dancer, it would have caused him to be pretty useless. Plus, once a character learns an ability, they can’t lose it by switching classes, and they can learn as many as they want. So, there’s really nothing stopping the player from switching classes all willy nilly, which is another thing that drains the strategy element from this game.

The graphics have not been improved in the remake, and I can’t imagine that anything was done to the sound. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with either. Although I’m not fond of the character art, the scenery is fairly nice for an older game, and the music is pleasant enough to keep the sound on the whole time.

The one thing they did add to the remake is a little Slime minigame using the stylus. It’s curling with Slimes. You rub the stylus on the screen to control the path of the Slime. You can collect things along the way to earn points. I played two levels of that and got bored, but maybe someone would enjoy it.

Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation can be described as simple, even casual. If it weren’t for a few difficult boss fights, “Baby’s First RPG” might be an appropriate description. There isn’t much to challenge the mind, but it also doesn’t test one’s patience. It’s perfect for someone who wants an easy bit of distraction to add to their sitting-around time, and it’s something that a challenge-seeker should avoid.

Unfortunately, the only really interesting aspect of the game was taken out of the remake, so the best that can be said of the game is that it’s not bad. I was definitely never tempted to hate Dragon Quest VI.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.0 Graphics
There’s nothing wrong with a classic look, at least in a DS game. Nothing great, but nothing that made my eyeballs bleed. 3.2 Control
Easy to use, easy to master, and the characters walk fast. Not much innovation to be found here, though. 3.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The music is pleasant enough, and the sound effects are acceptable. Once again, not bad, but it doesn’t stand out. 2.5 Play Value
It’s never frustrating, but it’s never interesting. Too little strategy is involved, and it’s generally too easy. There’s no reason to go through this game twice. 3.1 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.