22/12/2013

Dragon Quest IX-The Elusive Solo Run (1): Introduction



On with the show! In this first feature, I am going to tackle the very specific and little-known subject of the Solo Run in Dragon Quest IX. For the sake of clarity, it will contain several separate articles, on which I will expand on various matters. And first, let’s start with a nice, juicy introduction!

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, developped by Level-5 and Square-Enix and released in 2009(jp) and 2010(na, eu, aus) for the Nintendo DS exclusively, is one of the most well-known and praised RPG available on the system. It is the ninth installment of a venerable series of turn-based Japanese RPG that started way back in 1986 on the Famicom and enjoyed a huge popularity in its native country. The series came to American shores very sporadically in the 80’s and 90’s, with only a handful of games being released there under the name “Dragon Warrior”, while it avoided Europe entirely. Only with the worldwide release of the eighth game for the PS2 in 2005 and 2006 did the series’ recognition really pick up the pace in Europe and USA, where it became a new favourite amongst RPG lovers. The Dragon Quest series tend to be fairly old-school in its approach, harkening back to the old days of the RPG genre. It usually involves a team of typically specialized characters such as warriors, mages, healers and so on, fighting turn-based battles and exploring a vast world that they invariably have to save, all that wrapped in a rather bare and basic storyline and generously peppered with tons of grinding. It’s also highly recognizable, with features that reappear in every entry and give the player an immediate sense of familiarity, such as the main musical theme, the job system or the slime enemies.

Many western gamers, including myself, probably discovered the series with this ninth installment. An installment that is famous for its local multiplayer feature, a first in the series; and while this feature was hugely appreciated and made the most of in Japan, where everybody and their brother owns a DS and plays it virtually everywhere, it mostly failed to catch up in Europe and USA. Fortunately, you can also play the game on your own, and replace the enrollment of friends’ avatars through multiplayer by the recruitment of a team of customized mercenaries generated by the game, which is the option that most players choose. But, to quote Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, “there is another”. And that other option, young Padawan, is the Solo Run, which basically involves playing the whole game with only the main character, without recruiting a team. Yep, it is possible, and very much so; and it's a great experience to boot. But I'm getting ahead of myself here: let's first clear that murky matter a little bit.

The Solo Run in Dragon Quest IX is a subject that tends to be inexplicably shrouded in mystery. An internet search on the matter only garners a handful of results, most of them being excerpts from fan forums, in which gamers do wonder and ponder if a Solo Run is really, indeed, an attainable feat. Despite the fact that nothing actually prevents the player from choosing to attempt a Solo Run in the course of the game, most gamers and reviewers alike seem to be entirely unaware of this option. In fact, many gamers and reviewers go as far as to claim that it is mandatory to recruit a team if one wants to progress in the game and clear it, which is entirely false. Even more baffling, the official Dragon Quest IX Strategy Guide from Bradygames itself does not refer to this way of playing a SINGLE time over the course of its nearly 450 pages. Clearly, random individuals may make false claims about something they didn’t experience first-hand; but a supposedly well-researched strategy guide ignoring the matter entirely? Now that’s something far more unexpected and puzzling, and that says a lot about the elusiveness of the whole Solo Run matter.

The very way I personally came upon experiencing the Solo Run fits perfectly into that picture, and speaks volumes about how ridiculously elusive it indeed is. I did not attempt a Solo Run because I was seeking challenge, nor because I was curious about the matter. In fact, that possibility didn’t even dawn on me a single second when I first played the game; instead, like virtually every Dragon Quest IX player, I went for the “classic” way by dutifully recruiting a team when the option was made available, a few hours into the game. And while I had deeply enjoyed these very first hours as a loner, everything started to fall apart from the moment of that fated recruitment. As time went on, I grew intensely bored with the constant toiling and cumbersome micro-management that I had to put into my team, and totally blasé by their lack of participation in the storyline; so much so that I finally gave up on the game, entirely disgusted. Shortly after that first aborted playthrough did the idea of trying out a Solo Run rise out of the blue, and it was solely motivated by a desperate desire to get rid of the chore of pampering that accursed team and rekindle the passion I had felt for the game in the early hours, when I was still roaming the world as a solitary hero. And so, with a great deal of trepidation and anticipation, I started the said Solo Run. What followed was one of the most thorough, fulfilling and exhilarating RPG playthrough I ever experienced in my whole gaming life, a playthrough that left me deeply sated and content, with a little bit more than 200 hours of intensely enjoyable gameplay under my belt.

So yes, a Solo Run in Dragon Quest IX is indeed an attainable feat, which I successfully attempted myself. And since the matter is so elusive and so deeply shrouded in mystery, it may be useful to dispel a few misconceptions about it that tends to be running rampant; and that will precisely be the subject of my next posts. (Here are part 2, part 3 and part 4.) Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

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