Let's Play DQ9 Part 1: Days of our Celestian Lives

Where we last left off, I made us a main character, and now she was off to go do wonderous things! But... what SORT of things? (heads up: gonna be using dis color for LP commentary. )

"If you're there, say something. Show yourself."

I'm here! I'm here! You...you just can't see me! Yep, definitely can't!

"Thus do the mortals plead, ever hopeful of our existance.
For how long have we watched over their realm...?
For how long have we Celestrians existed?"

I hope long enough so that we could have ridden a dinosaur! That would be fun! Wait...

(This is raaather image heavy, sooo I'll be typing out some of the dialogue as I go along. Sometimes I'll just skip it altogether and summarize. Fair enough, eh?)

Welcome to town, where two angels are watching everything you do. EVERYTHING. EEEEVERYTHING

 I did? I did. Yeah, I did... What did I do again? How'd I get this far, anyway? Why do you remind me of this kid from DBZ?

 I didn't even do anything! Its the first hour of the game, you weirdo!

Baldy: When Apus Major bade me, 'Aquila, take Sonia as your apprentice,' I never imagined that I would see you bloom so. You are worthy of your title indeed, Sonia, Guardian of Angel Falls.

That doesn't sound like suspicious foreshadowing at all. Nope, not at all. And wait, your name is Aquila? It rhymes with Tequila! Teehee! (Shoot me.)

F

Whaddya mean, "Hm?" Whats with that look on your face? What is going-

*FLASH*


Tequila Aquila gets some vision or farsight or something ,and we zoom in on...

 Goddamn, Aquila, you have odd tastes. 


Who's this Erinn girl he's talking to, anywa-

Aquila, why the hell are we spying on a touching moment between a girl and her grandpa? You're not checking out dat ass, are you?

...He's not answering me, guys. This could be bad.

Some monsters pop out of a bush and hide behind a rock. Weird...

So a cucumber and a blob are checking those people out. Wait, why the hell does the cucumber have legs? WHY IS IT EVEN ALIVE?!?

 I solemnly swear that they are up to no good.  And they look pretty happy about that. That cucumber scares me, though.

 You say that as if I was going to let them hurt a girl and her grandpa! Come on, lets kick some ass!

We spread our wings like angry, angry birds and fly our asses over there, posthaste-

 
Hello, my name is Sonia. You're about to hurt my people. PREPARE TO DIE. Oh yeah and there's Aquila over there.

*BATTLE TIME*

 ENEMIES ENCOUNTERED:

Angel Falls Slime (8 HP. Gives out 2 EXP. Difficulty: Easy)

Cruelcumber(10 HP. 3 EXP. Difficulty: Easy)

And now we have our wonderful battlescreen!  Ain't it lovely? Although green doesn't suit me. I'll change that eventually, though. At any rate, this is the first screen you get to once you get into a battle.You have four options here: Fight, Examine, Flee, and Misc. Fight and Flee are self-explainitory. Examine allows you to examine the enemies and see what statuses they have or see any cues they may give for their next attack. I don't really use it much, though. Misc options allow you to change your equipment (weapons only), change whether you're in the front line or back lines (ala Final Fantasy), and also give orders to your other party members. We can't order Aquila around since he's our superior and all, so lets go ahead and select Fight.

 
 Now we have a ton more options. Well, sorta. Most are self explainatory, but there's a difference between spells and abilities. I'll go into more depth about it later, but basically, it boils down to "Spells are learned by mage-types, Abilities can be learned by all." And Coup de Grace... Well, for now, think of it as a One-time-use ability thats really, really awesome.

We can't do much else aside from attack, so lets start swing-

OOOOOW. You asshole! How dare you!

 Take THAT, you awkward, weird-looking, stupid vegetable!

And while I wasn't looking (read: forgot to screenshot some of the action cuz I slow), Aquila murdered the slimes. Its safe to say that he one-shots everything in this battle, based on the fact that HE'S LEVEL 20 WHAT THE HELL.

Just seven EXP and 13 measly gold for our good deed. Hmph, no respect! None at all! I also got an antidotal herb out of it, but I won't be needing that for a long, long time. Or ever.

And with that done...

                                                                 Hi guys hows it going?
 
*Aah, I honestly believed that I'd never set my tired old eyes on the place again. But here we are at last. Home.
Erinn: Oh, don't be so melodramatic, grandpa! The village Guardian will have been watching over us all the way. Nothing bad could have ever happened to us.

Unless I was taking a coffee break somewhere up in heaven. I mean, I can't watch over you guys all the time! An angel's gotta eat, too!

But but but I'm right over THERE. LIKE TWO FEET AWAY FROM YOU.

 Holy shit this thing spawned out of that girl's chest. Did we just steal her soul or something, Tequila? 

Aquila: No, we did not. Also, my name is not Tequila. :I

A benevo...what? Can I just call it a McGuffin? 

Baldy then goes on to explain that its the kind of essence we try to get out of people so we can give it to this world tree called Yggdrasil and make it bloom. I don't know how the hell some shit that spawned out of some girl's torso is gonna help that tree, though. Souls for the soul god? I don't know. But apparently its so important that now we must deliver it unto the heavens.

SONIA PREPARE FOR LIFTOFF

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Next time: We actually get to control our heroine and talk to some other people, as well as go over some stats! I know that this would probably do better in a video format (like a lot of things), but Hypercam doesn't really agree with me most of the time and this game is laggy. I don't want to lag it too badly. I have patience issues.

Lets Play: Dragon Quest 9 Intro

Hello, everybody! HarpyKuro here, welcoming you to my first Lets Play! I've been replaying this game a lot lately, so I might as well show off why its so great!

Dragon Quest has come a long way. It started off as one of the earliest JRPGs, up there with Final Fantasy. It was the standard fare: Your hero needed to rescue a princess and had to go slay a dragon to save the world,  all that standard stuff. What really made it stand out was that Akira Toriyama, the artist for the Dragon Ball series, contributed his art for this series. Not to mention, back then, Enix had no right to "Dragon Quest" (so the first few games were known as "Dragon Warrior") and was sort of rivals with Squaresoft.

Fast Forward to today, where we now have the best of both worlds. Technology has advanced, and with it, so has the game quality. We now have our fancy Wiis and PS3s pretty much chugging out high-definition graphics. The Nintendo DS was no slouch, either. Hell, the 3DS is pretty much a portable Wii! Only the 3D function hurts your eyes like hell. Or maybe its just me...

Anyway, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is a Square Enix game for the Nintendo DS. It pretty much involves your angelic character chillin, relaxin, and protecting people until shit happens and you gotta fix the problem. Like all good JRPGs. And of course, it will be a fun, fun, FUN ride. Sure, there is a lot of grinding involved, but there are just so many colorful characters and combinations of abilities you can use... But I'm getting too deep into it. Say hello to the intro.

  Aw, maaaaan. Why does Japan always get all the good music?           

Yep, there's class changing and a lot of mix-and-matching involved in this game, and I absolutely love it. Of course, its hard to do a few things until you get to the post game, but you shouldn't worry about that on your first run. Unless you're really THAT concerned about maxing skills and capping levels...

As for how I'm gonna do this? I'll probably post small bits at a time.  I will post all enemy info and show off a battle with each one, at least once. Once it gets to the point where I'm actually level grinding, I'll just skip it and just post a few pictures depicting all the character levels after said grinding. I may make fun of a few plot points along the way.... And who knows? Maybe a few characters I know from other places might pop in... 

Since I still have some time left, I might as well show off character customization.

You get to customize your hero to whatever kind of style you want. Its a limited to Akira's artstyle, but meh, I'm fine with it. There are a multitude of styles and colors to choose from, although it may seem like only a few at first.

As for who our hero is...

Welcome Sonia! She will be our angelic hero and always be in the party. ALLWAAAYS. Hell, you could probably solo the game if you grinded a lot. But eh, thats boring. 

Next time, we eat dinosaurs we will plunge right into the game! Sadly for all of us, I WILL have to go over all of the technobabble. ALL OF IT. Read: Attributes. After thats out of the way, though, we'll be clear for fun!

Harpy, Out!