Wombat's Corner

A sequel to Okami was announced recently, which was as good a reason as any to finally pull the game off the shelf and pop it in my PS2’s disc tray after having left it untouched for likely close to a decade (my backlog of games is extensive and only grows larger). I was not inexperienced with the game, as even longer ago I had seen a Let’s Play of the title, but this is the first time I’ve put hands on it personally. It’s good. That goes without saying, right? It’s a classic game, one people remember fondly to this day. The announcement of its sequel led to dozens if not hundreds of screaming reaction videos, so it has to be good. But I do mean it’s just good. Don’t get me wrong, parts of the game are mind-blowingly fantastic. The animation and art style are absolutely stunning, and the soundtrack is a wondrous accompaniment, especially in the moments where you heal a Guardian Sapling and the camera pans over the entire field as the land is renewed and the music swells and yo...

  This article spoils the entirety of a major subplot in Dragon Quest 3 I’ve never had a strong relationship with my own father. We’d be sent off to his house for between two weeks to a month over the summer, and that was about it. He never made an effort to really be around, something that has carried on into my adulthood (though, for various reasons, I’m glad he keeps his distance). And I’ve never had the best of relationships with stepfathers. They’ve been bad for the stereotypical reason stepfathers are usually bad. This is all to say, I don’t relate easily to strong father-child bonds or extremely present fathers in the media. Dragon Quest 3 doesn’t give me a present father. My father, Ortega, left when I was a newborn, leaving my mother to raise me all on her own. Immediately, this is a situation I can relate with. Ortega isn’t around, and a void is left in his absence, felt by both me and my mother, a void that is desperate to be filled but, in the likely scenario of Ort...

       A great game is a great game, no matter when it’s released. And Dragon Quest 3 is a great game. I had never played any version of this game, nor have I ever beaten any Dragon Quest game, despite certainly pouring hundreds of hours into Dragon Quests 7, 8, and 11. Dragon Quest 3 is precisely the game I needed to resolve this.      Freedom. That’s really the greatest draw of Dragon Quest 3. The opening hours, as you’re first finding your feet, are (helpfully) fairly linear, with a couple of side paths to get distracted down like the fantastic sidestory involving Norvik and the Faerie Village. But help out enough people, find yourself in enough new cities, and you will eventually be rewarded with a ship. And that ship is freedom.      The game truly opens up in an extraordinary new fashion, and this was my favorite part of the game. You start on the western side of the westernmost continent, and you can go either north or south. ...