I just started playing Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker at the end of last week after beating Portable Ops. This past weekend, I took my wife to the mall (as usual) and with the Metal Gear Solid games not working too well for portability in a mall, I decided to bring my DS and Dragon Quest IX instead. After putting about an hour or two into both games now, I’ve started to really enjoy both. I like each so much that I had a very difficult time deciding what to play today on the subway. So…I ended up packing both my DS Lite and my PSP into my bag to bring to work. This can’t keep happening though. Only one will become the victor…who will it be?
Read on for the background behind each of these major portable heavy hitters this summer as well as my very short initial impressions of both.
Background on Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
In one corner, we have Dragon Quest IX, the 9th title in the Dragon Quest line that was released in Japan over a year ago. Unlike the Final Fantasies series in the West, the Dragon Quest series is the most popular RPG series in Japan. After the stellar job that Level-5 did with Dragon Quest VIII, they’ve again been put behind the helm of Dragon Quest IX. (Great, now guys please go and make Dark Cloud 3!). Dragon Quest IX also has many firsts: it’s the first Dragon Quest to appear on a portable console, it’s the first Dragon Quest game to be designed with multiplayer in mind, and it’s the first Dragon Quest game to not have random encounters.
Suffice to say, Dragon Quest IX is big. It’s so big that it’s already sold more than 4 million copies in Japan alone, and it is on track to become the best DS selling game of all time. I also think it has great potential to sell well in the West too, since the developers of the game were influenced by World of Warcraft and decided to make Dragon Quest IX more Westernized with gameplay features such as World of Warcraft’s sidequests system.
Background on Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the 5th Metal Gear title for the PSP (Metal Gear Acid 1 & 2, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops & Portable Ops+), but also the 5th title in the Metal Gear Solid universe. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker is the first PSP Metal Gear game directed by Hideo Kojima, the creator of Metal Gear Solid, and it was originally titled Metal Gear Solid 5: Peace Walker. Supposedly, the development team that worked on Peace Walker for the PSP was as large as the team that worked on Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3!
Unlike Dragon Quest IX, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker’s sales figures suffered terribly outside of Japan, where it has sold at least over half a million. In America, the game only sold about 52,000 copies in its first month, but the big inaccuracy behind America’s sales figures is that the digital purchases of the title were not accounted for in the sales data. In any case, while Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker has received a higher average score than Dragon Quest IX, it has failed to even come close to achieving the level of success that Dragon Quest IX has garnered.
So the question is, how am I enjoying both so far?
My Brief Impressions of Dragon Quest IX
I am not a Dragon Quest fan. I played the very first one on the NES, but after that, never stuck with the series until trying VIII on the PS2. Prior to VIII, it just seemed far too hardcore (and text-based). I played maybe a dozen hours into VIII, but grew tired of all the random encounters all the time and gave that one up too. But so far with Dragon Quest IX, I’m actually loving it. I don’t know if hardcore Dragon Quest fans are finding IX to have “sold out” or something since it seems to be more accessible, but this level of accessibility is exactly what has me loving the game.
The storyline, gameplay, characters, etc. are all simple yet charming. It’s exactly what I want in a JRPG, and especially more so in a portable title. In an age where we have JRPGs like Final Fantasy XIII all moving towards sci-fi, I’m glad that I can still play a fantasy based game such as Dragon Quest IX these days. Being able to travel from one town to another and visit the weapon store for stronger weapons to buy is just such a key JRPG element for me, and fighting enemies to simply level up and collect gold while helping out each town with its problems via the main storyline and simple sidequests also make this aging JRPG fan quite taken in with the game.
My Brief Impressions of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
I’ve only played about an hour of Peace Walker so far, but my impressions of the game are definitely positive, along with a control system that I’m still struggling with a bit to get used to. It looks like Kojima Productions has taken the best of everything they’ve learned from past Metal Gear Solid games and combined them into this one. Peace Walker looks to go back to the epic scope of Metal Gear Solid 3 (my favorite Metal Gear Solid game), with multiple maps and zones that you have to travel through for various missions, while making use of Portable Ops’s recruiting gameplay feature and enhanced interactive comic book style cutscenes.
The biggest hangup I have so far with the game though is the control system. The developers have tried really hard to implement a control system that works around the lack of a right analog stick, and while it’s functional, it’s not the most intuitive. I know that I will learn it with more hours put into the game, but controlling the camera with the face buttons (circle, square, x, and triangle) is a bit jarring. Also, holding the left d-pad and then using the face buttons to navigate the item menu also has me confused as of now. But, it’s slowly starting to sink in.
I like that I don’t have to drag enemy soldiers to a teammate’s crate or the truck anymore, as the new system allows the enemy to be captured almost immediately via the use of a parachute-like balloon that lifts off. Of course, I sometimes found myself in situations where I knocked out enemies under a roof so I couldn’t use a balloon to capture them, and then I couldn’t figure out how to pick up the enemy and drag him outside to capture him. In any case, I think these are niggling issues that are more me still learning the game in the first hour, but for the most part my overall impressions of the game are still quite positive.
Who Wins?
It’s really tough to say which game I want to play more of, but I think the edge may go towards Peace Walker – simply because it’s a shorter game so I want to get through it first. Considering how much of a fan of Metal Gear I am and how much I didn’t originally like the Dragon Quest games, for Dragon Quest IX to make me consider putting aside Peace Walker is no small task. But for those wondering about either game, they both deliver. How much they deliver? We’ll see. Hopefully cmfl3x or I can get reviews out on both games in the future if we can actually find time to make our way through them.
A couple of quick tips for Peace Walker:
You can use the Fulton balloons anywhere to capture soldiers – under roofs, inside buildings, etc. Its cheesy, but essential! Funny though because you can’t use supply drops if you are under a roof. Oh well, that usually isn’t a problem.
Using the face buttons for aiming takes getting used to, but the shooting range helps for practice. The aim assist usually snaps to a headshot when you get close too. And whenever I was in a fire-fight (either an alert or a boss fight), I turned on auto-aim to take out the soldiers. That worked great – as long as you aren’t trying for no kills!
whenever i go to a chinese restaurant, i see some kid playing a PSP or DS under the table while they are eating or waiting for food.
I just bought DQIX in Hong Kong today because I couldn’t wait to get back to the States. It didn’t hurt that it was cheaper either. I would love to play Peace Walker, but don’t have the necessary hardware. There are like a million games for me to play on console/PC when I get home, so I gotta get all my DS stuff done with before I get back! (hopefully) Anyway, DQIX is HUGE over here in Asia – more on that later.