As prophesied by the great sages and Square Enix’s official site, Dragon Quest 5: The Hand Of The Heavenly Bride hit the Japanese App Store yesterday at a price of 1800 yen, or as Square’s been translating that into American dollars lately, $14.99. Just like Dragon Quest 4 ($14.99), this version is a port of the Nintendo DS remake, originally released in Japan in 2008 and elsewhere in 2009. The original game was released in Japan only on Nintendo’s 16-bit Super Famicom in 1992, and its first remake was another Japan-only release, 2004’s PlayStation 2 version. The Nintendo DS version, although visually resembling Dragon Quest 4‘s remake, has all of the extra content and changes of the PlayStation 2 release, plus an additional option for the choice of the player’s wife.
Dragon Quest 5 is my favorite of the series, mostly owing to its exceptional and unique story. You follow the life of the main character, from birth to childhood, on to young adulthood, and even into parenthood. It’s a bittersweet tale of life and loss told with a measured hand that’s all too rare in the genre. It also introduces a monster-catching mechanic, allowing you to recruit just about any monster in the game to your team, giving you tremendous options for party building. Of course, it’s still a Dragon Quest game, so you’ll find plenty of familiar sights and mechanics. It’s not a series famous for venturing far from its roots in terms of gameplay, after all.
I’ve only had the chance to play a little bit of the game so far, but it appears to be just as Dragon Quest 4 was. The graphics are a bit sharper than the DS version, the music is improved, and the interface is the same one we’ve seen in all of the iOS versions. I’ll have more extensive impressions of the game on Monday, so please look forward to them. As for an English version, Square Enix hasn’t said much, but as there is a pre-existing English script from the Nintendo DS version, I can’t imagine we’ll have to wait more than a few months at most, and with any luck, we’ll have it far sooner than that. As always, we’ll bring you more information as it comes.
Well here goes :-/
What?
There's no where to go but up with my expectations on this one.
lol, true
Downloaded and played for about 10 minutes. Wish I was not at work. Lunch break over. So far game seems great. Early feedback - exactly what I was expecting and hoped for.
Hmm
Another EA F2P. Never again.
Well it can be played offline, and it feels at least kinda like SimCity, and it hasn't annoyed me after the first hour. All that remains to be seen is whether there's a paywall after a certain amount of progress. There seem to be no ads, so pay to win seems likely given the EA track record. Fingers crossed.
And there's a supply chain component that's new to the franchise but I do like it.
I played for four days before deleting the app. It reaches a point where it's obvious you are expected to pay real money to progress, or spend a ridiculous amount of time grinding. It's about $10 if you decide you want to build a premium building immediately.
I would be much happier with a legitimate SimCity game using this touchscreen gameplay mechanic.
There's no pay wall tbh, i've been playing this since it soft launch and made it to level 30 with out paying for a thing.
As for the grinding ?? The mechanics used are the same as c&c or any other rts game. The thing with mobile games uis that we finally notice these timers.
I'm no fan of them and what you normally see on the app store but in all honesty SimCity BuildIt does a good job.
Is this like the sim city game that was on facebook?
No it leans more to the current SimCity with simpler game mechanics.
There is a social aspect thru FB account link but it's not enforced and the global market in which you can trade with other cities.
Choke point seems to be crafting...it's basically a freemium crafter with a Sim City skin. For what it is, it seems fine. I'll play until I get bored of the timers, like I always do.
This is brutal
More EA Freemium...arg!
There is a premium version of sim city
It was pulled from the AppStore in advance of this latest release. It had not seen an update in ages and was seriously flawed.
It was a decent port of Sim City 3000, which was one of my favourite versions of the game. I remember playing it on a 3GS?
What I really liked on the new versions was the 'city specialisation' aspects. Maybe they could have offered these routes for those more willing to invest real money and a basic city with less grinding
I would have loved to play (try) a free-to-get version of SimCity, unfortunately all we got was FarmVille with a SimCity skin.
Played this a bit, the thing that upsets me the most is that nuclear power plants somehow have a larger "dirty radius" than coal ones, as well as being described as giving you a "green complexion". The whole crafting part seems fine right now, but I could see how having to grind out massive amounts of material being an issue.
The crafting is pretty decent the longest timer i have (level 30) is 5h.
And it is something im not using to build. The biggest downside atm is getting expansion drops.
They are out of balance some items drop often and thise you nedd are hard to get or find.
Lvl 25. Animal feed is 6 hours. 2 slots left would make me think this would be for items 7 hours and 8 hours.
Sounds exciting. I must admit I've never actually played a SimCity game. Hopefully this one is great.
This probably isn't the one you should start on.
It is no comparison with to it's pc counter part.
That game runs much deeper, this mobile version ( something people keep forgetting) is fun.
But for the real experience find a cheap pc version EA currently offers A Sim City for free on Origin forgot wich one.
I was ready to give this one a try, but the reviews on the App Store are pretty hostile for the latest tweaks just after global launch....
Its an extremely beautiful, charming, engaging and unplayable game.
I'm sure I'll enjoy this just like I've enjoyed Peggle Blast. Hours of enjoyment and nobody putting a gun to my head to spend money. Of course, the detractors aren't gonna play no matter what...
hey this game wouldn't happen to have any micro transactions would it?
Pretty disappointed. Just another build-timer-collect game. My 6 year old niece loves these.
I have been playing Simcity BuildIt for 1 month now. In my opinion it has many drawbacks.
Biggest is the global market which sucks. It is never updated and you can never buy anything that is advertised because its already sold. Basically the catalog is useless.
The town has airship and other transport methods which are impractical. Surprisingly it has no metro rail system
Raw material like wood steel plastic ore etc are available just like that it. It would be great to have to some backward industrial integration like, mines, wood, steel plant, plastic factory etc that churn out such raw products.
Acres of real estate is wasted because fire station police station or the clinic parks are smaller in size compared to the building plot size.
I think players should be more busy managing the city than scrounging around for raw material, this is by far the biggest flaw in the game logic. We hardly get to manipulate the city and its services. Everything is very static.
There are many other flaws but these are the most glaring. Well one cannot complain because the game is for free but EA should not put out such badly conceived games even for free, they get a bad rap.