Dragon Quest Delocalized Projects

[Rabite890]

I get it, they are a little tough to grasp if you look at the whole list and try to take it all in at once. If you were to start on DQ1 and absorb them one at a time, I think the experience would not be so difficult. At least, that's the feedback I've gotten. Even if you jumped into DQ3 and processed them one at a time, I think it would be a lot more manageable.

I understand that our approach was not the most user friendly, but it was important because it recreates the experience that Japanese players had when they encountered the spell names. They were designed to sound like magical words with only a hint of meaning. But in their mystery, they filled Japanese youths with a sense of awe and wonder. We needed to create something that could achieve that, while we know that dealing with yet another set of English names is a huge request.

So, all I can ask is that people give it a chance. While I've had numerous people express their frustration with the idea of a new list, I have yet to have anyone play the games and not be happy with it. And this spell list is actually the thing I'm most proud of.

When I downloaded the .zip file it didn't include the readme file. I don't know if you've fixed that already or not.

I did look through the equipment/item names and they look really good.

"Matango derives from a 1963 Japanese horror film of the same name that involves a species of mutagenic mushrooms."

This explains a few things in Secret of Mana I didn't know about. Neat!

I'll try to play through 1 and 3 to give them a fair shot. Never did like DQ2. Only game in the series I don't like (excluding the MMO).... Might give it a shot anyway. Can't wait to see how fun Road to Rhone is.

Just to be clear, I have no doubt that your translation is high quality. The spell names are (so far) the only problem I have with what I've seen. I'll try to suppress my bias and give it a fair shot.

[Chicken Knife]

When I downloaded the .zip file it didn't include the readme file. I don't know if you've fixed that already or not.

I haven't been in the practice of including a text file in the zip. I figured it's easily accessible enough from the project page. I'm also not necessarily opposed to doing so.

Never did like DQ2. Only game in the series I don't like (excluding the MMO)

I also felt this way at one point. I think I really grew to love the game as a result of working on it. Of the three projects so far, I'd say that DQ2's storytelling was harmed the most by the localization. Some of the design choices are not for the faint of heart, but I really enjoy the world and story.

Just to be clear, I have no doubt that your translation is high quality. The spell names are (so far) the only problem I have with what I've seen. I'll try to suppress my bias and give it a fair shot.

I appreciate you doing this, and I'm genuinely curious whether or not they grow on you and feel worthwhile eventually. Please report back!

[Chicken Knife]

Submitted a significant update for DQ3 Delocalized. Nejimakipiyo did their first play of the finished product and found a lot of little things to fix or improve.

-Corrected default name for Wizard character from Marlene to Merlin.
-Corrected monster name from Mantango to Matango
-Changed H.P. & M.P. in the status menu to HP & MP, aligning better to other uses in DQ3 as well as the status menu in other NES DQ games.
-Made appx 30 other minor script improvements, including rewordings, fixed punctuation & correcting some significant problems with king text after party deaths.


November 08, 2020, 08:32:00 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Our work on Dragon Quest Monsters has been making me reference things in DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized, and a couple things came up that needed to be improved with DQ2. I just submitted an update for version 1.13. Changes include:

-updated prologue to use Princess Moonbrooke's assigned name as speaker.
-updated battle text in a couple ways in order to match conventions with DQ3 while maintaining accuracy.
-used a new and unique string for end of battle victory message to eliminate repetition of "You have defeated X" - Thanks to Choppasmith for pointing me in the right direction with this!

[Rabite890]

November 08, 2020, 08:32:00 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Our work on Dragon Quest Monsters has been making me reference things in DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized, and a couple things came up that needed to be improved with DQ2. I just submitted an update for version 1.13. Changes include:

-updated prologue to use Princess Moonbrooke's assigned name as speaker.
-updated battle text in a couple ways in order to match conventions with DQ3 while maintaining accuracy.
-used a new and unique string for end of battle victory message to eliminate repetition of "You have defeated X" - Thanks to Choppasmith for pointing me in the right direction with this!

Please speed up Terry. Of all the things I loved about DWM1, I hated his speed the most. Especially when you go back after playing the second one.

[nejimakipiyo]

Please speed up Terry. Of all the things I loved about DWM1, I hated his speed the most. Especially when you go back after playing the second one.

The focus of the Dragon Warrior Monsters project is to rewrite it with a more accurate translation and better English. Adjusting walking speed doesn't really fit into the agenda, but if someone wanted to do that hack it could be a cool optional patch.

If you're curious about the progress of our DWM hack, I made a project thread for it here:
https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=30993

[Chicken Knife]

Ever since the the 1.01 update four months ago, I've been slowly working on one more round of polishing for DQ3 Delocalized. This has mostly taken place in my downtime from our Dragon Quest Monsters project. Of the changes here, there were a few genuine issues fixed, but most of the work was all about making the text read that much smoother--that much more natural to the characters. Here is the breakdown for the just published 1.02 version:

-corrected minor additional pixel art flaws in two frames of the old man with stick NPC sprite.

-changed "Falling Star Bracelet" to "Shooting Star Bracelet" in order to emphasize the idea of speed.

-changed "Memory of Love" to "Memento of Love". Memory as referring to an object is technically how the Japanese works,
but it doesn't translate well. It is certainly a keepsake type object and the original game art reflects a locket or medallion.

-Performed a thorough test of all Goof-Off antics and corrected a couple issues.

-Fixed a handful of punctuation errors along with well over a hundred other revisions that improve clarity and flow of the text.

[kaine23]

neat! i'm planning to showcase delocalized 1-3 on stream and do a review in june for dragon warrior month for the series 35th birthday too/

[Chicken Knife]

That sounds awesome! Keep us posted. Would love to check it out.

[iridium_ionizer]

I just finished playing through the delocalized version of Dragon Quest III, and I posted my glowing review. Thanks for such a wonderful experience!

[nejimakipiyo]

neat! i'm planning to showcase delocalized 1-3 on stream and do a review in june for dragon warrior month for the series 35th birthday too/

That would be amazing! I'll gladly watch when you give us the details!
I tried to stream III myself (have streamed I and II in the past) but my computer just won't tolerate it anymore.

I just finished playing through the delocalized version of Dragon Quest III, and I posted my glowing review. Thanks for such a wonderful experience!

Very kind of you, and I'm looking forward to reading it!

[Chicken Knife]

@iridium_ionizer

Thank you for taking the time to post your thoughtful review. Glad you had a great experience with the game.

@everyone

I just put out a very small 1.03 update to DQ3D--really just an appendage to the much larger last one. After going through the entire script recently, one of our translation choices kept nagging at me. It had to do with our rendering of the mother's text in the intro where we had her admonishing the hero to give the king a proper greeting. I dug a little deeper, and our native speaking sources tell us that, while our initial rendering was technically accurate, the mother was really focusing more on the overall behavior of her child. So I ended up rewriting that and felt the need to push out another patch. I hate putting out tiny updates like this, but I do plan to be leaving the game alone for the foreseeable future and wanted that issue corrected.

[Chicken Knife]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for the purpose of gathering some input on the best approach to an issue that has been bothering me. Dragon Quest IV Delocalized (NES) is one of the small handful of projects I'm thinking of starting work on in earnest in the near future, but here's my issue:

The DW4 original localization uses a text format where where spaces are not included after punctuation like commas and periods. It's a common format, and I've certainly been warming to it as I play through ChaosRush's FF2 translation presently, but it's not the format we used for DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized. DW4 is a 1024KB MMC1 ROM, which I understand is the largest commercially available NES cart size, and I'm not seeing much at all in the way of available space. I'm aware that the existing DW4 English script is already compressed. What I don't want is to find myself in a situation where we are forced to make ugly compromises to the script because I'm added 3000 space characters that weren't in the original loc. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of symmetry, and would have a hard time feeling good about an outcome where the text formatting changes between the first 3 games and the 4th.

So, possibilities:

1. Go back and alter the formatting of DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized and remove the spaces after punctuation in order to achieve symmetry. (lots of grunt work, but I'm not necessarily unwilling. Will probably have to retool a bit of DQ2's dictionary system because removing spaces might make the script larger.  )

2. Expand the ROM to 2048KB, which I read is the max possible ROM size, and repoint a ton of text into new banks. (I haven't had to do that for our prior hacks, but it seems within the scope of something I could figure out.)

3. Replace DW4's text compression routine with a more effective text compression routine. (This is something abw could have probably achieved, but with my very basic ASM experience, it probably wouldn't be in my wheelhouse, and abw isn't looking to take on any complex new projects)

4. Live with the difference in formatting between the Roto trilogy and DQ4. (Ugghhhhhhhh... Dunno if I can do this)

Would appreciate any suggestions to break my mental gridlock with this! Thank you!

PS - Japanese vs English ROM as a base is a whole other debate, but when it comes to the English ROM, I've already solved decensoring all the sprites, I should be able to solve decensoring the backgrounds, and I wouldn't have to deal with the major headache of expanding the text boxes from the Japanese version. The title screen will be the largest bit of labor, where this time I'll want to import the Japanese title sequence in full.

[Rabite890]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for the purpose of gathering some input on the best approach to an issue that has been bothering me. Dragon Quest IV Delocalized (NES) is one of the small handful of projects I'm thinking of starting work on in earnest in the near future, but here's my issue:

The DW4 original localization uses a text format where where spaces are not included after punctuation like commas and periods. It's a common format, and I've certainly been warming to it as I play through ChaosRush's FF2 translation presently, but it's not the format we used for DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized. DW4 is a 1024KB MMC1 ROM, which I understand is the largest commercially available NES cart size, and I'm not seeing much at all in the way of available space. I'm aware that the existing DW4 English script is already compressed. What I don't want is to find myself in a situation where we are forced to make ugly compromises to the script because I'm added 3000 space characters that weren't in the original loc. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of symmetry, and would have a hard time feeling good about an outcome where the text formatting changes between the first 3 games and the 4th.

So, possibilities:

1. Go back and alter the formatting of DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized and remove the spaces after punctuation in order to achieve symmetry. (lots of grunt work, but I'm not necessarily unwilling. Will probably have to retool a bit of DQ2's dictionary system because removing spaces might make the script larger.  )

2. Expand the ROM to 2048KB, which I read is the max possible ROM size, and repoint a ton of text into new banks. (I haven't had to do that for our prior hacks, but it seems within the scope of something I could figure out.)

3. Replace DW4's text compression routine with a more effective text compression routine. (This is something abw could have probably achieved, but with my very basic ASM experience, it probably wouldn't be in my wheelhouse, and abw isn't looking to take on any complex new projects)

4. Live with the difference in formatting between the Roto trilogy and DQ4. (Ugghhhhhhhh... Dunno if I can do this)

Would appreciate any suggestions to break my mental gridlock with this! Thank you!

PS - Japanese vs English ROM as a base is a whole other debate, but when it comes to the English ROM, I've already solved decensoring all the sprites, I should be able to solve decensoring the backgrounds, and I wouldn't have to deal with the major headache of expanding the text boxes from the Japanese version. The title screen will be the largest bit of labor, where this time I'll want to import the Japanese title sequence in full.

2 should be off the table since only the Everdrive Pro can run ROMs larger than 512KB/512KB of the flash carts and some emus can't run it either. I don't know for sure but the NES emu for GBA might have a problem with it as well.

4 is probably the best option.

3 is off the table for the reason you gave.

1 seems like too much work for not enough gain.

[ZichzMaster]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for the purpose of gathering some input on the best approach to an issue that has been bothering me. Dragon Quest IV Delocalized (NES) is one of the small handful of projects I'm thinking of starting work on in earnest in the near future, but here's my issue:

The DW4 original localization uses a text format where where spaces are not included after punctuation like commas and periods. It's a common format, and I've certainly been warming to it as I play through ChaosRush's FF2 translation presently, but it's not the format we used for DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized. DW4 is a 1024KB MMC1 ROM, which I understand is the largest commercially available NES cart size, and I'm not seeing much at all in the way of available space. I'm aware that the existing DW4 English script is already compressed. What I don't want is to find myself in a situation where we are forced to make ugly compromises to the script because I'm added 3000 space characters that weren't in the original loc. On the other hand, I'm a big fan of symmetry, and would have a hard time feeling good about an outcome where the text formatting changes between the first 3 games and the 4th.

So, possibilities:

1. Go back and alter the formatting of DQ1-DQ3 Delocalized and remove the spaces after punctuation in order to achieve symmetry. (lots of grunt work, but I'm not necessarily unwilling. Will probably have to retool a bit of DQ2's dictionary system because removing spaces might make the script larger.  )

2. Expand the ROM to 2048KB, which I read is the max possible ROM size, and repoint a ton of text into new banks. (I haven't had to do that for our prior hacks, but it seems within the scope of something I could figure out.)

3. Replace DW4's text compression routine with a more effective text compression routine. (This is something abw could have probably achieved, but with my very basic ASM experience, it probably wouldn't be in my wheelhouse, and abw isn't looking to take on any complex new projects)

4. Live with the difference in formatting between the Roto trilogy and DQ4. (Ugghhhhhhhh... Dunno if I can do this)

Would appreciate any suggestions to break my mental gridlock with this! Thank you!

PS - Japanese vs English ROM as a base is a whole other debate, but when it comes to the English ROM, I've already solved decensoring all the sprites, I should be able to solve decensoring the backgrounds, and I wouldn't have to deal with the major headache of expanding the text boxes from the Japanese version. The title screen will be the largest bit of labor, where this time I'll want to import the Japanese title sequence in full.

I think it should be 4 as it's most likely the easiest way for it to be most compatible with things in order I would say from best to worst is 4,3,2,1

[Piotyr]

2 is off the table if it limits the audience imo, 4 would be fine but would it be fine for you? 1 is only on the table if it doesn't reduce the quality of the original 3 and 3 would be the best but as you said may not be on the table. Thats my opinion being both a translation enthusiast and a DQ fanboy

[Goznog]

I thought I'd resurrect this thread for the purpose of gathering some input on the best approach to an issue that has been bothering me. Dragon Quest IV Delocalized (NES) is one of the small handful of projects I'm thinking of starting work on in earnest in the near future, but here's my issue:

I'm going with 4. 1 sounds doable but you probably don't want to wear yourself out before you start work on DQIV. personally, I don't mind the formatting difference.

and hi, I've started playing through the DQ series with 1 via your hack and I've really enjoyed it so far!
I dislike the liberties taken with the official translations and the cheapening of the game in the remakes, so this is pretty much perfect. I don't understand why the official releases felt the need to distort the original text in such a way. your script is really nice and readable, and it's helped me get immersed into the game.

I planned to finish the game before submitting feedback so I could catch anything else, but I'll post it now while you're asking about IV. I made it all the way to the dragon king's castle, so I doubt I'll have anything else to add.

1. there's a minor typo in this dialogue when speaking to the sage who wants the harp (before finding it and handing it to him).
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/193026433054932992/839214000020914216/unknown.png
"I will recognise you as hero" should be "as a hero"

2. the hint for finding Roto's Emblem is worded confusingly, in my opinion.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/730690199268491317/841809132209438740/unknown.png
when I first read this I interpreted it as the sage telling you to go north and west FROM the castle, with a typo. I realised that couldn't be right since the map cuts off before that point, but was still totally stumped as to what was being asked.
I looked at the japanese script and saw your usage of north and west was the same, so I then checked the NOA script and saw they rephrased the dialogue.
NOA wrote it as "Thou may go and search. From Tantegel Castle travel 70 leagues to the south and 40 to the east.", making the hint harder to misinterpret in case the player wasn't paying 100% attention to the phrasing. also of note is their usage of "search", referencing the game command and providing an additional hint.
I get what your script is saying now, but I think NOA had the right idea with this one. this is probably really subjective, but as someone who never played this game before and didn't already know about the item, it threw me for a loop.

3. there's a missing line from the japanese game.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/193026433054932992/842580316526346270/unknown.png
fairly confident that I'm not misremembering this from my playthrough, but when taking princess laura to an inn and sleeping the innkeeper spits the same dialogue at you that he normally does.
in the japanese original, he says something along the lines of "you certainly had fun last night".
obviously this line was removed by NOA because of its sexual nature, and so it's missing here since the hack is based off the american rom.
apparently, this is an especially famous line amongst Japanese fans. does it show up in other games?

thanks for taking on this project! the translation stance you've taken here is right up my alley, and I think you've finally done the game justice in a way that the official translations did not. greatly looking forward to all the future DQ projects you guys do.

[Chicken Knife]

@Everyone

It looks like we have a strong consensus that we live with the different space formatting in Dragon Quest 4 versus the Roto trilogy (even nejimakipiyo strongly agrees). I tend to have a bit of an obsession with things being symmetrical, but yes, with all of your help, I can be rational enough to admit that leaving the different formatting in place is going to be the best and most realistic option.

and hi, I've started playing through the DQ series with 1 via your hack and I've really enjoyed it so far!
I dislike the liberties taken with the official translations and the cheapening of the game in the remakes, so this is pretty much perfect. I don't understand why the official releases felt the need to distort the original text in such a way. your script is really nice and readable, and it's helped me get immersed into the game.

Thank you! I strongly agree that those liberties taken were generally needless when it comes to understanding the game and being immersed. The fan base tends to advocate for them now, but I think that's mostly because of nostalgia.

"I will recognise you as hero" should be "as a hero"

While I agree with your other two points, I'm not so sure about this one. It's easiest to explain my use of this format with an alternate example:

"Pull Excalibur from the stone, young Arthur, and then, you shall be king."

I'm sure we would agree that adding an article before "king" in that sentence would not improve it. It would take away some of the weight of the kingship if Arthur were to simply become "a king." I think the same can be said for "hero" in the sentence you cited. That all said, I'm open to further discussion on this if you feel it's warranted.

when I first read this I interpreted it as the sage telling you to go north and west FROM the castle, with a typo. I realised that couldn't be right since the map cuts off before that point, but was still totally stumped as to what was being asked.
I looked at the japanese script and saw your usage of north and west was the same, so I then checked the NOA script and saw they rephrased the dialogue.
NOA wrote it as "Thou may go and search. From Tantegel Castle travel 70 leagues to the south and 40 to the east.", making the hint harder to misinterpret in case the player wasn't paying 100% attention to the phrasing. also of note is their usage of "search", referencing the game command and providing an additional hint.
I get what your script is saying now, but I think NOA had the right idea with this one. this is probably really subjective, but as someone who never played this game before and didn't already know about the item, it threw me for a loop.

I happened to have gone back and forth about how to render this line when I worked on it. I was aware that going with the Japanese format here might come across a little less clearly to the reader, but at the time, I went with the more direct approach. Seeing that it's causing user issues like this, I'm going to chalk it up as an improvement and revert that to the approach taken by the original loc for the  next update. I'm also probably OK with using the word "search" there instead of "look". But FYI, as you play through DQ2 in particular, you'll find that not every hint given by the NA loc will be present in the Delocalized version pursuant to the Japanese. Most of them are present, and some hints are certainly made clearer in our translation, but I do remember a couple being invented by the localization. For the most part, they seemed to be redundant with other hints, and I didn't consider them necessary to retain.

fairly confident that I'm not misremembering this from my playthrough, but when taking princess laura to an inn and sleeping the innkeeper spits the same dialogue at you that he normally does.
in the japanese original, he says something along the lines of "you certainly had fun last night".
obviously this line was removed by NOA because of its sexual nature, and so it's missing here since the hack is based off the american rom.
apparently, this is an especially famous line amongst Japanese fans. does it show up in other games?

Seeing this point--and especially the screenshot you linked--was a majorly "wow" moment for us. We were convinced that this text was something for remakes only, and somehow eluded our scrutiny of the original script. I immediately did some scrubbing my script insert file to look for a duplication of the Inn text or some other suspicious line. I'm not immediately seeing it. In pretty much other instance of dummied text in DQ1-DQ3, there was a replacement line that I was able to easily swap. But let's see what happens here. If I need to repoint the line or reinstate some kind of check routine for carrying the princess, we will absolutely do what needs to get done to resolve this. I already started a sped up playthrough to get there and root out the issue.

thanks for taking on this project! the translation stance you've taken here is right up my alley, and I think you've finally done the game justice in a way that the official translations did not. greatly looking forward to all the future DQ projects you guys do.

Thank you! We really appreciate your high quality and detailed feedback, and hopefully will continue to receive more of it!

[Goznog]

Thank you! I strongly agree that those liberties taken were generally needless when it comes to understanding the game and being immersed. The fan base tends to advocate for them now, but I think that's mostly because of nostalgia.

I have a feeling it's a marketing strategy. it's kind of like how Working Designs would use premium packaging and bonus features to cultivate a small following that would buy up all their releases.
translation's been a big topic recently amongst gamers and japanese media crowds, and publishers are keenly aware of this. if you can plant the idea among fans that treating the text that way is an improvement, and you're giving the english markets special treatment, you'll definitely sell more games more quickly.
at least that's the case for the modern releases. the original NOA release is just them aping all the other fantasy gamebooks and media at the time instead of letting the series do its own thing. maybe I'm being too cynical :P

While I agree with your other two points, I'm not so sure about this one. It's easiest to explain my use of this format with an alternate example:

haha, while I was typing this I was wondering if it was an obscure grammar rule that I was missing or something. I think I agree with you, but I've never seen that usage before when it comes to "hero".
do you know of any books that write it like that? I'm genuinely curious, I need to read more!

But FYI, as you play through DQ2 in particular, you'll find that not every hint given by the NA loc will be present in the Delocalized version pursuant to the Japanese. Most of them are present, and some hints are certainly made clearer in our translation, but I do remember a couple being invented by the localization. For the most part, they seemed to be redundant with other hints, and I didn't consider them necessary to retain.

oh yeah, I had a feeling that the other NES translations would add in extraneous hints, it's just this line in particular where I felt Nintendo were right to tweak the phrasing.
I've had no issues with the other hints in this game, so I think the original writer (Horii?) knew what they were doing and had a good sense of what was necessary to put in the game. if the sequels keep up that same level of quality then scrubbing the added hints in translation should be fine.

I already started a sped up playthrough to get there and root out the issue.

pro tip: with some luck, you can beat the dragon at a much lower level than what most people suggest. I did it at level 10!
stock up on herbs, get some good equipment (I believe I had the iron armour and shield, at least) and run from all fights along the way.
once you're fighting him you need to keep throwing out slumbara until it works, then go to town with flara. if you're lucky with wake ups and landing slumbara again, you should be able to down him with just a slither of MP left. use the herbs to heal so you don't waste MP.
mini tangent: it's really incredible just how much you can do in this game without any huge grinding. I've been taking notes and making maps, not using guides and just relying on strategy and some luck (and what's in the manual). people do not give this game enough credit.

Thank you! We really appreciate your high quality and detailed feedback, and hopefully will continue to receive more of it!

no problem! I'm more than happy to give feedback to clearly passionate projects like this. definitely going to write a recommendation in the reviews once I'm done.
it'll be a while before I start DQ2, but I'm hoping to beat 1 today. looking forward to checking out your Monsters hack along the way as well.

[Chicken Knife]

the original NOA release is just them aping all the other fantasy gamebooks and media at the time instead of letting the series do its own thing.

I recently had the pleasure (and pain) of playing some of the early Ultima games, and with Ultima being the main reference point for video game RPGs in those days, I think that they were pretty clearly trying to win with that fanbase with their medieval text style. And these days? Exaggerated translation styles have proven themselves to sell with the general public. Our concerns with faithfulness to the author's original work are ultimately niche concerns, unfortunately.

haha, while I was typing this I was wondering if it was an obscure grammar rule that I was missing or something. I think I agree with you, but I've never seen that usage before when it comes to "hero".
do you know of any books that write it like that? I'm genuinely curious, I need to read more!

I'll run this by a friend of mine who is an English teacher. He's been a helpful resource with things like this.

pro tip: with some luck, you can beat the dragon at a much lower level than what most people suggest. I did it at level 10!
stock up on herbs, get some good equipment (I believe I had the iron armour and shield, at least) and run from all fights along the way.
once you're fighting him you need to keep throwing out slumbara until it works, then go to town with flara. if you're lucky with wake ups and landing slumbara again, you should be able to down him with just a slither of MP left. use the herbs to heal so you don't waste MP.
mini tangent: it's really incredible just how much you can do in this game without any huge grinding. I've been taking notes and making maps, not using guides and just relying on strategy and some luck (and what's in the manual). people do not give this game enough credit.

I love the kinds of strategic approaches that a higher difficulty level opens up as well. I'm definitely not the type to just sit and grind when you can approach challenges in fun and creative ways. The pacing of the new versions, especially with DQ1, mostly ruins this. I'll forever be an original versions guy, but if I do end up working on the remakes, I'm sure as hell going to include a patch that alters the difficulty to approximately that of the NES versions. And btw, the fact you are taking notes and/or mapping things out is really the ideal way to play these games.

no problem! I'm more than happy to give feedback to clearly passionate projects like this. definitely going to write a recommendation in the reviews once I'm done.
it'll be a while before I start DQ2, but I'm hoping to beat 1 today. looking forward to checking out your Monsters hack along the way as well.

Thank you! We really appreciate when people take the time to post reviews. The monsters game was probably the most flawed original translation out of all of these in our opinion (weak writing in general, botched or missing humor, evidence of poor understanding of the Japanese script, the usual censorship, etc.), so we are particularly proud of what we put together there. All the text in the game was written by Horii himself, unlike everything after the first sequel.

[Piotyr]

I love the kinds of strategic approaches that a higher difficulty level opens up as well. I'm definitely not the type to just sit and grind when you can approach challenges in fun and creative ways. The pacing of the new versions, especially with DQ1, mostly ruins this. I'll forever be an original versions guy, but if I do end up working on the remakes, I'm sure as hell going to include a patch that alters the difficulty to approximately that of the NES versions. And btw, the fact you are taking notes and/or mapping things out is really the ideal way to play these games.

I would kill for this duder. If you do this I'm gunna have to replay all the DQS! I would love not having to play the android version of 4s remake too.