Dragon Quest Academy

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

Something silly, that’s the result of a PM chat I’ having with a forum lurker. I figured the topic was so neat, it should be open to more than two people. :wink:

We were discussing what a DQ dating game would be like. We figured that the high school would use the DQ Marche as its band theme. Town and castle theme songs would fit most of the other BGM. A blue Slime would be the school mascot. Rival school would be Final Fantasy Academy.

Topic naturally drifted into character roles. We thought to keep things simple, only those characters that joined the party should be used, since they are the easiest to figure out a personality. Our notes went like this (neither of us had played DQ6 seriously, so there’s a blank spot there):

Female Cast

Moonbrook (DQ2): Helpless girl who can’t do anything without someone’s aid.

Alena (DQ4): Rebellious tomboy who always gets into fights.

Maya & Meena (DQ4): Twins that count as one. Maya is the flirty outgoing one. Meena is the introverted serious one. Meena is always trying to keep Maya out of trouble.

Bianca (DQ5): Daughter of the player’s landlord. Helps her family take care of the apartment and its tenants.

Flora (DQ5): Gentle rich girl who is stuck in an unwanted arranged marriage.

Mireyu (DQ6): ?

Barbara (DQ6): ?

Maribel (DQ7): Tsundere. Likes to tag along with people all the time.

Aira (DQ7): ?

Jessica Albert (DQ8): Tsundere.

Fleurette (DQS): Religious gothic lolita who worries about the trouble her older brother gets into all the time.

Male Cast

Lorasia (DQ2): Rival for Moonbrook. Yea… it’s incest.

Cannock (DQ2): Cousin of Lorasia and Moonbrook. Has a younger sister.

Solo (DQ4 Hero): Rival for Maya & Meena.

Ragnar McRyan (DQ4): No nonsense gym teacher.

Borya (DQ4): Wizen social studies teacher.

Kiryl (DQ4): Rival for Alena.

Torneko Taloon (DQ4): Goofy economics teacher.

Abel (DQ5 Hero): Rival for Bianca or Flora (whichever one you are trying to pursue).

Botsu (DQ6): ?

Hassan (DQ6): ?

Chamoro (DQ6): ?

Amos (DQ6): ?

Terry (DQ6): ?

Ars (DQ7 Hero): Rival for Maribel.

Kiefer (DQ7): Rival for Aira.

Gabo (DQ7): Weird homeless kid who hangs around the school property.

Melvin (DQ7): Old fashion history teacher who doesn’t understand the new culture trends.

Eight (DQ8 Hero): Manservant of a rich girl named Medea, whom he is secretly dating. Can give advice on romantic courting.

Yangus (DQ8): Best friend of Eight. Always has his back. Makes sure the player never gets to know Medea.

Angelo (DQ8): Rival for Jessica, but randomly flirts with all the girls (doesn’t get anywhere with them though).

Blade (DQS Hero): Rival for Fleurette. On the school swordsmanship team.

#2

haha…

Spellcaster specifically more priestess-type spells, who can see living dreams.

Powerful Pyromancer with amesia (running theme in DQ6).

Dancer descended from a long line of gypsy-like dancers who yerns to fight like her great (male) swordfighting ancestor. She is forced to be in the dancing club (possibly with Meena?), but secretly pratices when she can swordfighting.

Martial arts fighter and a master carpenter (son of a carpenter) with amnesia. He doesn’t like carpentry, despite being considered a master even at his young age.

Priest of the Gent Clan capable of controlling divine ships. He is very polite and formal. He is already burdened with being head preist of the Gent Clan at a young age.

Man by day, terrorizing monster by night. He doesn’t know that though. He is really a good man at heart, if only he had the willpower to control his monstrous form…

Knight who is the rival of Botsu and unknown to everyone but himself, Mireyu’s brother.

He is searching for his lost memories. He lives with his sister, Tania (at least she says she is his sister) He suspects she secretly is in love with him.

Actually, of all the NPC characters, Tania is probably the most developed. Moreso than many of the PCs. Maybe King Trode and Princess Medea might be contenders for development.

#3

We thought about Medea, but then imagined it would be easier to just stick with “actual party members” than “support characters” as winnable: not that we’re planning to make a DQ dater… it’s more of a mental exercise than anything else. This was based on the notion, that DQ has a lot of “support characters” and it would make things really complex from a production standpoint… which is sorta the same reason why we thought it wouldn’t be a good idea to try and make the concept allow a player to pick their sex, so they could go for the male DQ characters. :stuck_out_tongue:

Forgot three more playable characters:

Psaro (DQ4) - Leader of the local street gang. Overprotective boyfriend of a foreign girl named Rose.

Anlace (DQS) - Son of a rich mother, who also happens to be the Head Principal of the academy. Something of a mama’s boy.

Claymore (DQS) - Father of Blade. Used to be a gym teacher until he had an accident; now teaches science classes.

Something of a stumbling block for us: How to handle DQ3.

Main hero is Roto. No problem there… issue is the girls: which classes should be used? I think the default team was Hero, Soldier, Priest, and Wizard… but they kinda lacked personality. And only the Hero had an official name. The DQ3 manga never covered the actual DQ3 game. :?

For “hidden” characters, we toyed with the Legend of the Hero Abel. The “playable party” in that series was Abel, Moko Moko, Yanak, Daisy, and Tiala.

#4

DQ3: Main thing here was just have 1 for each class possible (except sometimes sage and/or fool, but those are still legit classes. You could have a male character will 3 female fools. :stuck_out_tongue:

DQ4 had some merc characters that could join with Torneko (although he really shouldn’t be a character available since he’s married already, and by the party talk, happily so). There was also Healie the slime who became a human.

DQ7 also had a lot of temp characters, probably more than the entire rest of the series combined (unless you include monsters).

Well there are 4 basic options here:

  1. Not put them in (least amount of work, but also reduces character development and thus makes the game less interesting for most people.
  2. Include them in as NPC characters. Not so much work, and adds to flesh out some characters. More work than #1 and can cause complaints with peanut gallery about “non-romancable character” being the one they’d really want to try for.
  3. Make them the same as the rest, most work, and opens a can of worms about “which character would be worthy”
  4. Make them hidden characters, requires a bit less work than #3, but more than #2. If they are hidden or difficult to get it may piss off some players but might make others happy. Problem of #3’s “bag of worms” still applies here though.
#5

sigh

You hit on the same problem we were trying to avoid, but I suppose can’t be avoided: to use the whole range of DQ minor “support” characters. I guess a DQ fan would expect all the named DQ characters to feature a part somewhere, despite the effort to only stay on the playable ones. That only expands on the amount of time and resources needed though. :expressionless:

I’m going with the #2 idea… have them has school faculty and “just there” type classmates. If one were to make EVERY female from the DQ series datable, that would expand the roster beyond your “average” dater typically handles.

One would also like to avoid the, “Sacchin” factor (having an unwinnable girl so well liked).

#6

#2 is probably the most likely to appease the largest number of people for the amount of work.

Some extra things that could help reduce workload: Any merc or temp/guest character could also be relagated to this category. Most of these characters are unnotable anyway. Second, for DQ3 characters I’d simply go with the Sage as the only one, both male/female. After all, anyone who did things right in that game should have ended up with a party of Loto/Sage/Sage/Sage :p. You can have the other classes represented.

That could be harder to do. Every DQ game has it’s fanboy club, although some of them, like DQ1, are quite low. The original trilogy, only #3 would be the most likely. The Heaven trilogy is harder to say. Japanese market has had all 3 and #5 has been the best, but the rotw (those who don’t play original Japanese or translated roms) have only been able to access #4 with NES graphics until recently. #6 also had the first really developed (before party talk in DQ8), Tania. DQ7 had more NPCs than any other DQ game in existance…and 2 entire maps for every region… DQ8 didn’t quite have so many, though it was the most graphically enhanced. Most of the notable npcs were stock character builds or male figures (which being a DQ game, the target audience is more likely to be males wanting romanceable female PCs than anything else).

#7

You’re missing the only gal from the series that I’m familiar with (since I’ve only played the original Dragon Warrior for NES). Since Narg said “to keep things simple, only those characters that joined the party should be used”, I’ve worked her out as a character that can’t be won (for good reason).

Gwaelin (DQ): Grandmother of Moonbrook, Lorasia, and Cannock. Widow of the (unnamed) founder of the academy.

#8

Well if we are going with some kind of consistancy in the DQ world then any girls based upon 3 and the princess from DQ1 would be unmarriable and much older women in such a game. The rest of the series has no “formal” trilogy and has in fact been denied as such by the creators so there wouldn’t need to be any problems.

That would solve the "What class(es) from DQ3 do we use? problem because naturally the person would be a sage married to the hero (whether they were male or female). Their son would be married Gwaelin. Thier descentdanants, however are romanceable.

#9

Anyone happen to know the official name to the “Descendant of Roto” from DQ1? I don’t think he had one. I know Gwaelin’s original Japanese name was Lora (hence the Kingdom of Lorasia in DQ2). The DQ3 hero is obviously named Roto. :mrgreen:

The official party that beat Zoma in DQ3 - at least as far as the official Enix strategy guide shows (had all these cute manga strips in it) - was a male hero, with a female Soldier, a male Wizard, and a female Priest. If memory serves, this is the same class layout as the “premade party” in DW3 for the NES (if you didn’t make your own custom party). There’s also some way out of print manga thing about DQ3 that had the same layout.

You can tell it’s official and not a doujin: there’s the old Enix logo (that stylized “e” emblem) on the lower left hand corner of the front page. Plus the artwork looks like authentic Toriyama stuff.

On a long shot, I guess that would make the Soldier and Priest winnable, with Roto as the rival for them… Wizard would be a teacher… whatever their names are.

#10

female sage is very popular. Just go check out stuff made for DQ.

As said though, i wouldn’t make those members as “romanceable members” but use them as basis for classes for the other characters. In other games you were able to change classes. Making them the generic versions of those classes would be imo best, assuming an equivalent class existed elsewhere.

There is also the fact that DQ4 has a male a female hero, though the game and comics done for it assume the character is male, most of the time.

So in such a game you’d have fellow classmates with the soldier, priest, etc. 1 of each gender being a classmate, plus the special characters. The “sage” would be the classmate who is in advanced classes while the fool would be in remedial classes. You’d also have various clubs:

Dancing Club Membership:
Maya
Aira

Magic-Users Club: (non-priests)
Mireyu
Maribel
Flora
Meena
Cannock
Borya (Advisor)

Swordfighter Team:
Hero(ine)s from every game
Keifer
Terry
Amos
Alena (when she can)
Aira (unoffically)
Angelo

Martial Arts Team:
Hasan
Gabo

Teachers:
Ragnar (Serious Gym Teacher)
Borya (Old Science/Magic Teacher, who likes to teach history (Rival of Melvin))
Torenko (Goofy Bussiness and Remedial Teacher)
Chamoro (Serious Student Religious Teacher)
Melvin (Old, perverted, History teacher who doesn’t realize the world’s moved on)
Trode (Self-centered Social Studies Teacher who dotes over his daughter) *
Papas (Semi-retired substitue teacher for everything)

*npcs

Well that’s what i had time to come up with.

#11

The only reason I went with her story being along the same lines as the games was that it conveniently makes her a non-winnable character.

As far as I’ve read, he doesn’t have one, which is why I set him up as being deceased. Dead people not having a name is much easier than live people without a name, don’t you agree? :stuck_out_tongue: