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I'm excited about the upcoming Dragon Quest IX for the Nintendo DS. Putting such an amazing and economically effective series onto a portable system is a great and innovative idea. Four player co-op? Real time battles? I'll most likely be picking this title up the day it arrives in the U.S. whenever that is. The Dragon Quest games, previously called Dragon Warrior in the States, are great, but they just take so long to get localized for us English speakers. For instance, Dragon Warrior VII was released in Japan in August of 2000 but the US release for that game was November 2001! Dragon Quest VIII saw a Japanese release in November of 2004, only to be released a few days short of a full year in November 2005 in the States. Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, the latest Dragon Quest title, reached the Japanese public in December of 2005, but didn't become available to US retailers until September of last year. The last title took the least amount of time to localize. That just might be evidence that Square Enix is smoothing out the process of getting their games into our hands, or it could just be that, of all the games, Rocket Slime has the least amount of text to translate. Whatever the case may be, Dragon Quest titles take an unusually long time to reach our shores.
I'm actually one of the many people that got interested in the series because of Final Fantasy XII. I'd played Dragon Warrior I-II for GBC before, but I got bored of it due to lack of story direction, and since I was used to turn-based titles like Final Fantasy games where you could see your characters move in battle, I was slightly annoyed by the text-based battles. "Slime A attacks" got old very quickly. I wanted to actually see the slime attack an on-screen character. At any rate, playing the demo of Dragon Quest VIII got me interested in buying the game. The included Final Fantasy XII demo was enough incentive to actually go pick it up. That's just good marketing in my opinion. The changes to the US version, such as the addition of voice acting, orchestrated music, and improvements to the menu design were icing on the cake. I'm certain these improvements were attempts to make the series somewhere near as popular as Final Fantasy in the States. Surely, that's why Square Enix took such a long time localizing it for the US. Sadly, those improvements just weren't good enough for the game to sell well enough to reach red labeled Greatest Hits status. Well, I can understand why.
I enjoyed Dragon Quest VIII for the first ten hours, but then everything went downhill. I suddenly got bored with the game and sold it. Because I am so accustomed to games like God of War, not just RPG's with sweeping stories, it was difficult for me to stick with the title's slow pacing. The series clings to its RPG traditions while other series innovate them. That might have been the main reason why I got so bored of it. It's hard to play through random battles again after being spoiled by games with visible enemies and real-time combat. But, in retrospect, I've decided to pick up the game again and appreciate it for what it is, a classic RPG in its roots. Unfortunately, I believe that is what keeps it from reaching the level of success that Final Fantasy has in the States, where gripping stories and innovative gameplay are everything. As a consequence, currently Dragon Quest is only limited to cult status.
Cult status equals modest sales. This probably makes Square Enix a bit hesitant to release many Dragon Quest titles here. So, regrettably, Dragon Quest Yangus will most likely not see a US translation any time in the near future. Low sales are also evidently the reason for the dramatic price cut for Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, from $34.99 to a slim $24.99. These sales figures might be why Dragon Quest titles take so long to arrive here. Square Enix might be holding off US release dates until the holiday season to entice holiday shoppers. The last Dragon Quest came out right after Thanksgiving. The company also takes extra care to improve the games in hopes of better sales. DQVIII, of course, is a good example of this. I'm sure we'll see some sort of major improvements to Dragon Quest IX before it reaches the States.
So, I'm probably going to pick up Dragon Quest VIII again to help curb my enthusiasm for the upcoming sequel. I have to do something to get my mind off of it considering that the game is definitely not coming here for a very long time. The release date for Japan is sometime in the summer, unless it gets delayed, which means it might not even reach the US until spring of next year. There's a chance that it'll arrive during the holiday season though. One of Level 5's greatest games Dark Cloud 2 took less than three months to localize, and it featured an excellent translation and top-notch voice acting. So, Level 5 and Square Enix just might surprise us with an imminent release, but knowing Square Enix's track record with Dragon Quest titles, it might not happen. But, hey, we could all just learn Japanese and save ourselves the trouble of waiting.
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