"Dragon Quest X Awakening Five Races Offline" review: Lose X, leave DQ

"MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online Role-playing Game)".

Twenty years ago, it was the digital form most in line with people's vision of the "future of video games" - a huge virtual world that could meet users' basic needs for "gaming" and "social" at the same time, relying on the update of the content of the network, and could continue to inject vitality and vitality into this fictional world. Twenty years later, when people were excitedly discussing the "meta-universe," it was hard to know how many ideas were taken directly from the already mature MMORPG architecture.

But those MMORPGs with pure Japanese genes have been an awkward existence. From the success of Fantasy Star ONLINE in Japan in 2000, which started the "big MMO era", to the "new version" of Final Fantasy XIV in 2013 to reverse the word of mouth, those traditional manufacturers that we are familiar with have been trying to use the usual thinking to make online games. The end result is what we see today - even if they can harvest a stable user base in a specific region, the high concentration of host pedigree still keeps most of them in the Japanese market.

Among them, the Dragon Quest X Awakening of the Five Races ONLINE, which began operation in 2012, is more typical of typical. As an "incidental" to Final Fantasy XIV entering the Chinese market, its national service version also began operating in 2017, but it was discontinued after just two years.

The reason for this is still the difference in gaming habits and culture. In terms of production concept, "Dragon Quest X" was positioned from the beginning as an "MMORPG for Japanese players" - as the first attempt at "multiplayer online" in Japanese national role-playing games, "Dragon Quest X" still adopts traditional game design ideas. Not only does the setting try to restore the consistent characteristics of the "Dragon Quest" series, but the specific gameplay is also far from many MMORPGs popular at that time. It turns out that this direction has indeed worked well in Japan - until March 2024, the main line of "Dragon Quest X" has entered the "7.0" version, and has maintained a relatively stable reputation among players.

Perhaps, this is also the reason for the lack of other language support in the first version of Dragon Quest X Awakening of the Five Races Offline version - for players in the rest of the world, this "Dragon Quest" work with an orthodox number is too unfamiliar. At the same time, the huge amount of text that comes with the "MMORPG" genre eventually makes all localization time periods significantly longer.

As a player with an extensive JRPG resume, you also know that "text volume" is just one of the many challenges that the offline version faces. In fact, this is where it is most easily misunderstood by ordinary players - although it also inherits the subtitle of the original game "Awakening five races", the "offline version" does not follow the game design of the "online version". Rather than an "MMORPG for the Japanese," it's more reminiscent of the "Dragon Quest" games of the early years for the 3DS -- both a strength and a weakness for those who want to experience a "proper sequel" in single-player.

For example, speaking of "Dragon Quest X", the first thing that comes to mind naturally is its distinctive combat system.

In order to take into account the contradictory relationship between the "series tradition" and "multiplayer online games", the development team changed the series with a deep foundation of turn-based command combat, and redesigned the "online version" based on "equipment matching" and "free walk".

On the surface, player characters engage enemies in faster paced command combat, but the freedom to stand and move around the field provides a more flexible "hate management" mode -- front row characters "push" enemies by increasing their "equipment weight," moving back row or output characters out of the enemy's range of hate. This creates a more efficient and secure output environment.

As one of the most impressive mechanics of the entire "Dragon Quest X", this "pushing" action also appeared in the opening animation of the "offline version" - you can see how important this design was to the Japanese MMORPG market, which was already facing aesthetic fatigue.

Players can push enemies with the amount of "weight" their equipment brings

Unfortunately, the "offline version" does not follow this iconic design, instead of the "Dragon Quest" series players more familiar with the traditional command combat - the character through each turn to choose the command to fight, the game neither the player and the enemy "push", there is no more emphasis on the multiplayer experience of standing Settings, The design of the association between hate and output has also returned to the level of pure skill casting and career development.

It is worth mentioning that the "offline version" has adjusted the "momentum" system used repeatedly in the previous "VIII, IX, and X", so that it is closer to the "environment" state in the "XI" in the launch conditions and the use of special effects, which makes the combat experience of this game more in line with the contemporary RPG's understanding of "strategic layout".

That's easy to explain. After all, when the number of real players is limited to one, those complex tactics that rely on standing positions become a difficult thing. For the "offline version" of the "time-tight task", applying the existing gameplay template is far more cost-effective than new design.

A similar situation also appears in many of the "online version" of the featured gameplay. As a "Japanese-made MMORPG" born in a specific era, 2012's Dragon Quest X certainly absorbed elements common to almost every game in the genre at the time, including a highly customized player's house, a monster (pet) capture and rearing system, and so on. Not to mention the "tavern" recruitment system, which is based on the "MMORPG".

Even though these are gone, you can still see traces of their existence in the game

In fact, this kind of structural restructuring that pervades the game and ultimately changes the nature of Dragon Quest X's gameplay is indeed a very tangled place.

You mean it's not good... However, these classic "Dragon Quest" designs can allow all series players to enter the game without psychological baggage, and the underlying logic of several generations of works can bring the game experience most in line with the flavor of the series.

But you say it's okay... The entire cut of those feature systems still leaves the Offline version lacking some of the "personality" of "X" - rather than calling it "Dragon Quest X Offline", it references the mid-volume "Remake" of the "Dragon Quest X" setting and story. It re-customized the SD image of "2.5 heads" for all characters, but retained some of the "online version" of the equal scale CG; It redesigns the player's perspective in the game, giving the simple polygon map a stylised "pixel" map, while retaining most of the map features and maze structure of the "online version"; It removes the "online version" of the complex web content menu, but leaves a set of user interfaces with a special hierarchy of relationships.

"Dragon Quest X Offline" is a completely new game.

Of course, we can still use the existing information in the "online version" to "quantify" the changes made by the complete game to the existing environment - as its subtitle "Awakening of the five Races" can convey, the "offline version" of the body basically restores the 2012 "Dragon Quest X Online" when all the story content. Including last year's add-on DLC "Sleeping Warriors and Guided Allies," players can now experience two versions of the story in this game. In addition, the "full voice" arrangement of the plot part of this work is also the content of the "online version" until the 2019 version 5.0 "The Witch of Thorns".

For what version 2.0 covers, that's not a lot of money

But also like almost all "MMORPGs" that take a long-term operation route, the initial version of "Awakening Five Races" is more like a "prologue" that introduces the world view and basic gameplay for the "Dragon Quest X" that has been operating for more than a decade and is still in an infinite expansion state, which is also doomed to many foreshadows in the game that cannot be recovered in the current version.

Even so, the "offline edition" finds a relatively reasonable way to make relevant cuts to the entire chapter at the right time. In the case of a standalone, complete game, the addition and reorganization of the story composition in the "online version" also resulted in a very significant expansion of the "necessary" flow of the game -- and this happened very intensively at the end of the story.

The story of "Dragon Quest X" takes place in a world where six races exist at the same time, and as the "Chosen One" players need to solve the plight of each race and country on the way to travel, while collecting key items called "key badges" in order to obtain the qualification of challenging the enemy "Hades". However, unlike the "online version" which focuses on "different game experiences", the "offline version" does not have a detailed selection of those "optional missions", the basic "key symbols" required to open the final chapter are changed to ten, and the story of "500 years ago" and "the second half of the city" are also rearranged and supplemented in the form of scripts. It was reinstalled somewhere else in the main line of the game.

However, as we just said, the underlying structure of "Dragon Quest X" is still an online game, even if it is stripped of its multiplayer properties, you can still see some traces of MMORPG in the story - among them, "the plot difference of the selected race" and "the collection order of key badges" are relatively common open design in online games.

The Offline version, developed for the purpose of restoring the Dragon Quest X story, had to keep these, dynamically adjusting the enemy levels on the map, and adding a more traditional team-up mechanic to the game -- no matter what order the player pushes the story through in the Offline version, there is no obvious "level crush BOSS" situation. Those popular characters who originally occupied an important position in the "online version" also completely replaced the "other players" in the "offline version" and became a member of the "brave team".

But this is where the game's biggest problem lies.

As we mentioned earlier, the "offline version" is a "remake" of the game built for the underlying architecture of "Dragon Quest X Online version", and its outer design is re-taken from the series' already mature gameplay and mechanics, which makes it difficult to find any fault from the gameplay or the "legitimacy" of the series.

The problem with Dragon Quest X Offline is that it does pay too little attention to design: the dynamic numerical design presents a "ramp" ascent without any artificial trace to the juxtaposed bosses in the Online version - note that I said "ramp," not "ladder." As the story progresses, you will easily find that the "offline version" enemy strength curve is too smooth, so smooth that a simple set of "automatic combat" is enough to defeat most of the enemies in the story.

No difficulty

Another problem, too, is the inconsistency between the "architecture" and the "outer" design. In traditional Dragon Quest stories, the characters have a very important relationship with the story, but this logic does not apply to Dragon Quest X Online stories - in the online version, NPC characters are more like the "main characters" of the show, and the "player" is responsible for helping them to drive the story, in this process, Designers tend to encourage more "player" to "player" communication, and "game" and "story" will be placed on two different levels.

But when this story is applied to the "offline version" without a fixed order, it inevitably leads to a less obvious tear between the player character and the NPC -- when the NPC is at the center of the story, they will appear to be very active, but when they enter the story of someone else, they disappear like air.

For the orthodox Dragon Quest works, which have always emphasized "partner interaction in the adventure", this thin characterization has brought a strong sense of disharmony - more often, they will follow you, but they do not belong to the story.

Falling asleep when we're on business

"Urgent" is probably the truest description of SQUARE ENIX in recent years.

And to be honest, when they announced that they were launching an "offline version" for "Dragon Quest X", I really didn't expect them to be able to separate the lines so completely, as if someone was eager to divide the "offline version" and "online version" into two distinct product lines, deleting the things that belong to "X", leaving only a scattered "Dragon Quest" game.

I'm not saying it's bad. However, for an MMORPG with mature gameplay and a big story, there are always other ways to make everything look better -- maybe by spending a little more time, keeping the featured systems, or simply overthrowing the original online game structure... At least for Dragon Quest X, "Drawing a cat from a tiger" is definitely not the best choice.