Characters - 7/10

Maybe I should do party chat more, but while the characters that join along the way are just fine, I don't think I'll ever see them as memorable as pretty much any other DQ game ever. They're there, they do their job, but maybe it's the DQIX feeling that they're just empty shells. They definitely do have personality, but it's not quite always there.

Story - 9/10

There are so many good stories here. Much like DQIX, there are awesome stories going on all over the place. There are the Key Emblem quest stories, which are pretty good to amazingly excellent, and then each job has a series of 5 quests that go with them, and they've proven to be fair to excellent themselves. Right there that's 10 good storylines for the Key Emblems and another dozen plus for the job quest line stories. The Key Emblem quests are hand-translated and well done, while others are machine translated and good enough!

Progression - 10/10

There's so much stuff to do! To start off with, there are 2 main towns on each of 5 continents. Each one has something going on there, so 10 big adventures to get the 10 Key Emblems. 40+ hours only netted me 6 because there's so much else to do with sidequests and job quests and just the immense size of the world, and fishing, and a casino, ...

Battle System - 9/10

But it's just the same ole' DQ battle system, right? Well, it's a great blend of DQXI and DQIX. There's a reason this came right between them. Main character can switch jobs like DQIX, but the rest of the party are set character types like DQXI. You enter commands when it's your turn, not at the start of a full turn, and there's a convenient Auto button per turn, so if you don't want to go full auto or just want them to do the best thing for a single turn, have at it. Really liked that button and therefore haven't put anyone on full auto.

Characters - 7/10

...

Story - 9/10

...

Progression - 10/10

...

Battle System - 9/10

...

Characters - 7/10

There are quite a few characters around town(s) that would have good discussions. I liked talking to many daily because there seemed to be a lot of depth to some of them. Never did much of the romance stuff outside the girl you ride into town on the train with, that's not why I play.

Farming - 6/10

It's fine. It's basic. The profit margins off the food you grow is absolutely crap. I eventually stopped because what did it really do except help me make some recipes and sell them. Those were better, but money wasn't really needed a whole lot mid to late-game, so I backed off. Took forever to get a fast way to water and the can holds too little.

Progression - 5/10

Some times just draaaaaaaaged. There were times in the elven city and the monster city that I was stuck for hours upon hours because I needed ?,000 of some currency and it took forever to get all that. Heck, I set this aside for months because of the monster city request. I feel like the request for 12,000 fish at the end was a joke about them knowing things too forever.

Fun - 9/10

When the game wasn't grinding to a halt with huge requests, I really did enjoy it. It's got a lot of bugs and pacing issues, but I really really enjoyed it. There are a lot of 3/5 games out there that are someone's jam. This game is my jam, despite all the problems with it.

Open World - 9.5/10

I'm not sure I've really played a fully open-world experience like this before. Sure, Ryza was 95% of the way there, but there was a lot of places to go into and such. This never had a load screen, you just kept going. Loved the million things to do and the Progress Effort checklists to keep me focused on completing checklists and moving foward! Had some Switch-not-powerful-enough moments that pulled a bit from this score.

Story - 9/10

I was so invested in this. Yumia is the Alchemist of Memories, and I swear they took the concept of "memory" and built an entire game around it. From the character backgrounds and little story beats along the way to the entire overarching plot, they focused on memory the entire time and it was excellent!

Alchemy - 8/10

This was kinda of a mixed bag. On one hand, I could take granular control and add items and I think I figured out how to make awesome stuff, but it felt a bit too long to get done often enough. But that's where the auto-alchemy took over. The auto button had a TON of different options to do, and once I spent some time playing with those, alchemy setup became a breeze, and I was still making amazing gear quickly as well as flying through all the mid-level alchemy needed for materials.

Battle System - 7/10

This is where the game stumbled. I never had to get good, I never had to figure anything out. It was button-mashing, and honestly after hour 8 or 9, I almost never lost a single HP. I crafted amazing stuff, hit max level without grinding 20+ hours before the end of the game. Battles were kinda meaningless. They were fast and fun and I loved beating the crap out of things, but in the end, it was a bit hollow. At least in Ryza, I felt like I learned how to do well and earned it. Here it was just served up on a platter.

Exploration - 6/10

Just didn't seem like a whole lot to do and explore. The areas were super small and not very interesting. I was left wishing there were more zones like the final one or the shipwreck that had multiple zones in 1 map location. At least there wasn't a time limit!

Story/Characters - 9/10

I really liked this. More about the Dusk that's taking over the world. This didn't really wrap it up as nicely as maybe it should've as a series ender, but it was a hopeful ending. Loved the characters and their interactions.

Alchemy - 8/10

It was done a little bit better in Escho & Logy. I don't know exactly what they changed for this version, but it didn't seem as interesting to play with. I enjoyed it and spent a lot of time on it, but never really feel like I mastered it as much as Escha & Logy or the Ryza games.

Battle System - 7/10

This was better than average, but did leave me frustrated sometimes. I felt pretty good about it 90% of the time, but then I'd get into some battles and bosses would occasionally get 4 or 5 attacks in a row. At that point, no matter how good I was doing, it was game over. Just didn't seem any way to win battles that started to drag. Those were always losses.

Remaster? - 9.5/10

blah blah blah 

Story - 9/10

blah blah blah 

Charm - 8/10

blah blah blah 

Battle System - 7/10

blah blah blah 

Graphics - 5/10

The backgrounds were pretty good, but honestly I felt the human sprites were crap. The monsters were so-so, a real 5/10 on their design graphics. I prefer higher quality sprite work. These were just too blocky and unrecognizable for me.

Writing - 9/10

I wouldn't say that the overall narrative was super-awesome, but I thoroughly enjoyed all the writing in this game. The bread puns & how they came back around later. The sincere dialogue like the pic above. The overall humor (nudist NPC was a memorable favorite).

Polish - 3/10

I lost 5+ hours to crashes of this game when I first got it. Waited weeks for a better build. Tons of graphical ghosts everywhere, item names still in basically alpha naming convention stage. Bad grammar (well, once at least). Menus changed and save style while I was playing it. For a game weeks away from release, it was a mess and not everything was fixed in time.

Battle System - 4/10

The player character spent 80% of the game basically having no agency in battle, doing minimal damage until I found a specific weapon. The monsters did ok, but their AI was definitely not aggressive, and they spent a great deal of time not attacking hostile creatures.

Progression - 8/10

I'm not one for roguelikes much. I like to see myself make progress. I love how the menu screens and finishing screens show my progress with playing races or winning with multiple race combinations, etc. I like to see graphics fill up! I enjoy getting new cards added to the stock to use on future runs. I played until all races were max level. 

Fun - 7/10

I usually cannot gain much enjoyment from doing the same thing over and over, but I really felt this was fun repeatedly... for a while! I didn't even consider one successful run as "beating it" like I have for many other roguelike games, but oh boy, did having successful runs end soon enough. I must've had 6 or so in my first 20 runs, and then none for the next 20. Ugh.

Variety - 10/10

Not gonna lie, a lot of my enjoyment of this game came from winning my 3rd run. After that, I'd usually win around one out of every 3 or 4. What got me really excited every time was how I won, it was completely different every time. The mix of artifacts and how I could build certain units made each victory completely different than before.

Battle System - 9/10

I usually like card-based battle systems, and yep, this was no exception. I loved manipulating things to get more cards and be able to play more cards per turn. Never completely broke the system as it's so random each run, but I really had a ton of fun every few runs doing massive damage and trying to break that run at least.

Progression - 10/10

This nicely moved from city to city, traveling through season-specific towns and overworlds. After a while, you could fly around and there were additional islands in the sky to visit, many of which had dungeons and such. What to do was always clearly marked on the map and available to see. 

Relationships - 10/10

THIS WAS SO MUCH EASIER THAN ANY RUNE FACTORY EVER!!!!!!! I almost completely skipped relationships in Rune Factory 5 because I was lost in the systems. This was so straightforward. You had 4 choices daily with everyone and could clearly see what they liked and didn't and what level you were at and what level the activity was best for. So great leveling up lots of people.

City Building - 8/10

Wasn't sure I was going to like this. Honestly, I'm not much one for aesthetics & setting stuff up and sure enough, I stacked piles of extra decor in certain spots, but it was great how many benefits were conveyed by building different things. While I enjoy the farming aspect of other games, I was happy to manage citizens and let this part of the game almost be on autopilot, with just some minor farming work sometimes.

Battle System - 9/10

Great action RPG. You had special weapons that corresponded to the various gods you unlocked in the cities. They were super powerful, but at the same time you could equip a couple other weapons at the same time, like a sword and a bow or magic wand, so basically you had 3 weapons available at all times in each fight. You can lock on to enemies and see damage total and life remaining very easily.

Crafting - 10/10

I absolutely love the little crafting games. Granted, I can't stand the one that makes me spin the stick, but whatever, I can still get a perfect when I have to do that. I love bringing the extra people along to help me do the crafting. I can sit and do this for hours.

Life Quests - 8/10

This is where I initially burnt out. I wanted to do all the quests for every life, but the battle ones just got so annoying repetitive to do. I was having to run dungeons a dozen times or more to kill 10 rabbits for one life, 3 big rabbits for another, another 10 for a third, and then 3 big rabbits for a fourth. And there was only 1 big one and a couple small on each floor spread far apart. Eventually I got over this and did it all!

Ginormosia - 9/10

I avoided this place for a long time, but then started seeing the absolute fun in the huge open-world area. Came here because I wanted quicker access to large piles of metal resources and stayed to find all the people turned into items.

Battle System - 9/10

Love this light action battle system. Pick a combat life and go go go! Really like that you can go from combat life to a resource job like mining or fishing just by approaching a collection area, and that you can bring 3 friends with you to either battle with you or collect resources with you.