Incredibly basic combat

It shat the bed the moment it dropped random encounters for visible roaming enemies.

Dragon Quest has dungeon crawler roots. Dungeon crawlers have random encounters.

What'd they do with pep that you disliked, user?

it's worse shit than fucking FFIX trance, and the pits is how many quests revolve about this trash heap of a limit mechanic. I've preferred every other DQ simply for not having that tripe.

Well they kind of shit the bed with Quest, but they were able to recover and wrap up the series on a really high note.

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this
it's becoming more and more common for JRPGs to add mechanics and features that are just bloat, not adding anything meaningful to the game.
>add skill tree
>it's just a linear boost that unlocks as you play the game with little or no player input
>have interesting party members with unique skills
>can't play them, leaving you at the mercy of shitty AI
>add abilities that work best in special types of battles
>only include the special battles in the postgame

JRPGs are in a terrible place, it's like people want to add interesting mechanics but are too afraid to challenge their audience with them so they make them amount to nothing or make them flat out worse

If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Pep is a massive upgrade over Tension

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dq11 is probably the most soulful jrpg i played in the last years
i looked up older games but they all seem to have boring party members

I did not care for either. Incidentally I'm not fond of 8 as well.
Either way it worsened the game in my book, really bad way to do special attacks in RPGs.

4 has a great cast, plus each group of characters has their own prologue before the entire party meets up

They are aware of what they are making.

cause it being bland and basic is what the nips like so no need to change it. its a shame that almost every other jrpg has a more interesting everything especially aesthetics while DQ has the better core gameplay

Wrong, Dragon Quest IX had visible enemies and it still was great, especially since it allowed for some OH SHIT moments like running from enemies in tight corridors.

play 3
they have no personality
if you think its boring, it means you are boring person with no imagination.

Pep is not something you're meant to plan on having at any given time. When it pops off, you can at least store it by switching out party members. There are also Pep Pips from the casino for late game powers if you don't have the patience for waiting for it to activate.

Pep was always about changing the time of battle, giving you a slight advantage and empowering your party to strike harder. Dragon Quest has always had elements of luck in it, and this is just an extension of that design to make battles even more entertaining.

so you're saying that it's a good thing, enriching combat, that another random factor is added into it you can at best postpone or only trigger much later into the game rather than from the beginning. I'll have to disagree. A well done limit mechanic is force break of EON for example, and a well done combination attack is found in SaGa Frontier, Phantasy Star 4... DQXI fails at both limit and combination attacks.

I'm not saying it makes combat any more complex. I'm saying it gives the player a power trip while it kicks in, creating more peaks in combat where big dick damage gets dished out. The player learns what stats get beefed up and can act accordingly. The portrait of the character also starts to flash just before the pep wears out, which gives the player a chance to perform a strong move with other party members.

Dragon Quest is never going to be as systems heavy as SaGa or Etrian Odyssey.

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pep is lame except that it's kind of interesting as a postgame grinding mechanic, you have to judge the value of the pep pips vs gold vs levels vs skill seeds

>Dragon Quest is never going to be as systems heavy as SaGa or Etrian Odyssey.
which is part of the reason why I'm so baffled at Dragon Quest's popularity. There's no effort in its design and yet it gets called "soulful" even in this thread.

Personally I preferred DQ when it had an actual open world, minimal cutscene shit, and no "haha your character triggered pep when you didn't need it, sucks to be you!" taunting me in my face. Those Alefgard/Zenithian games are pretty basic in this day, but they had the excuse of coming out way long ago. DQXI is recent and did massive steps back.

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Again, when do you never not need Pep? If you need to hold on to it beyond the several turns it lasts for, just swap that party member out for someone else. The cast is versatile enough where you can easily replace one caster with another if you're pressed to hold out activating a Pep Power.

so if I personally like Eric and really wanted him in all my battles, the game punishes me for using him a lot and wants me to switch him out for a character I don't like if I'd rather use the pep during a boss instead of trash mobs... th-thanks.
It's really schizophrenic design, user. Shit I haven't seen since FE5, really.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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You're allowed to use Pep in mob encounters, my dude. Maybe if you realize you're close to a boss fight you'll want to hold out on using Pep, but again this isn't something to be relied on by design.

I don't know what part of this is so hard to grasp.

you could just not use the pep

Can't name a single bad SaGa game.

What is VIII 3DS, IX and XI?

IVA is shitting the bed you fool.
Literally pandering to ironic weebs and newfags.

I haven't played XI yet, what's pep? Is it similar to the tension mechanic in VIII and IX?

Unlimited SaGa.
>inb4 brainlet
No, fuck the shitty roulette battle system, barebones overworld, and convoluted story progressions. The music was good though, I'll give it that.

Pep is a status that beefs up a character's stats for a number of turns. While the character is pepped up, they can coordinate a team attack with other party members, removing their pepped up status after the move is activated.

There's no tension system in 11, and pep activates on its own unless you use an item to activate it.