Here's a look at Dragon Quest of the Stars

Dragon Quest of the Stars is the latest freemium smartphone title from Square Enix, now available on Google Play and the App Store. Based on the Dragon Quest series, the game spins an original story where your character embarks on a quest to save the world – all par for the course.

In the video below, we play through the first hour of the game, which walks you through its suite of features:

The first thing you’ll do is create your avatar from a modest amount of options: gender, hair color, hair style, eyes, face, and name. After that, you and two companions are found stranded on a beach by Cyril the Squirril and his slime pal Gregoory. The pair tutorial-ize everything you’ll need to know and serve as a mouthpiece for the protagonist. Eventually, you’ll meet other characters who set you on the hero’s path, including a warrior named Atomos and a ghost grandpa who lives in a book.

You’ll navigate around the world from a top-down perspective, rotating the globe as you go. Travelling is done on rails between locations, which may yield encounters. Mission themselves will also take place on rails through several waves of enemies monsters and sometimes a boss.

In battle, you’ll control characters and a guest supplied by another player. Characters will automatically attack a target that can be selected with a tap. Abilities are set on cooldown timers that appear vertically below each party member. Using these abilities in conjunction on a single turn will grant a bonus, especially if they defeat an enemy in sequence. In fact, the game sets them up as a core point to master – chain as many abilities together in a single turn as you can. Enemies will also dole out powerful attacks, in which you’ll need to manually set everyone to defend or heal. Items, equipment, and gold rain down at battle’s end.

Equipment and magic can be strengthened in the typical gacha fashion: by imbuing them with strengthening materials or other similar items. You’ll have a free daily roll to gamble for better loot – but subsequent rolls will involve currency powered by in-app purchases. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

Dragon Quest of the Stars features all of the trappings of similar gacha titles, and manages to have a decent interface to help you navigate what are often very cluttered experiences. Scrolling to select actions in combat feels a little dicey though, especially when you need to make a quick decision. Aside from that, it’s presentation is charming enough with typical Dragon Quest flair in its localization and trimmings. I’m not really one for gacha-style RPGs, given how they’re often designed to funnel you towards in-app purchases, but those who can get past such things will likely find this worth a try.

Dragon Quest of the Stars is now available on iOS and Android.


About the Author

Tony Garsow Tony joined Nova Crystallis in 2015, and has spent more than a decade writing in the Final Fantasy community. He also contributes to the Nova Crystallis Twitch and YouTube channels, where you can watch select gameplay highlights, previews, and streams.

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