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Funny you should say that, since I always considered Dragon Quarter to be the Grandia series on hard mode. You have to move around in battles, but the game doesn't do it for you automatically and you have to take your movement and attack range into consideration before you can accomplish anything.
The game was frustrating to me at first, since it was just so different from everything else, the Breath of Fire series included. Closest thing I could equate it to was Majora's Mask, what with the whole running timer theme throughout the whole game, but the odds are much more against you. It's an RPG that encourages you to play through the story than stop and explore and level, unless you *want* to play several times, which has its perks in the SOL system. Dragon Quarter game was a big gambit for Capcom, but I'm glad they did it, if only to give the series, which is about as white-bread of an RPG as there can be, a shot in the arm. The music's really nice, too.
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It's certainly not a game for everyone, I've spoken to quite a few people who didn't like it at all because it was so different. I personally loved it, it was just so different from anything you've seen before. The whole SOL restore/restart system was interesting, and more importantly the dragon quarter rating you get, you started at err..8192 and it got halved for each thing you accomplished after you finished the game, forgot what it was exactly, but things like number of saves, areas explored, chests opened all had a factor, now the great thing about this is when you started a new game with a certain rank, you could see new areas and scenes that you didn't get to see before.
The whole Dragon powers that Ryu gets is great as well, you're constantly worried if you are going to make it to the end or not, and because of it you are being very careful not to abuse the power too much. It's also certainly not a easy game either. Right from the start it's hard, you're expected to get through a relatively large area with nothing more then 10 healing potions, but that's what made it so great. I remember those minotaurs that were a nightmare, it was so funny each time you thought "oh shit!"
As much as I loved BoF3, if there ever was a new BoF game I truly wish it would have the same system as DQ, but I know they will never do it again, because no doubt it had more complaints then compliments from players.
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