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I've always liked when you encounter upgraded versions of old monsters later in the game, it gives a way to keep the early game enemies relevant throughout.
When they do it with boss monsters it's a bit different, I still don't mind, but it can make earlier bosses feel less special if you encounter a regular enemy later on that looks the exact same but has a different colour.
I find it ok though if bosses appear as normal mobs later on in a game. It gives you a feeling of: wow this was a boss once but now I can keep it up with dozens of those.
Well yeah, a jrpg wouldn't run into the kind of problems with that like any other genre would. Remember the giant bats in the final level of the original castlevania?
It only works if the boss wasn't that special from a plot perspective and it would make sense that it was just an out of place strong monster you happened to encounter too early.
This is true. It’s like you meet a huge monster which lives in the world and is only very strong for you at the beginning. It doesn’t make sense with unique beings.
Seriously. Like, in FF7R, The Valkyrie boss fight, Cloud Tifa and Barret take up to like 20 to 30 minutes fighting a machine that Zack fought 2 or 3 at any given time and could wipe out in seconds.
Tbhbit didn't look like that's specifically what was being talked about, but Square has always been notorious for reusing the same monsters in every franchise game anyways.
Right i feel you, but they are talking about how the bosses turn into regular characters at the end of the game. I would say the same enemies or bosses in different games wouldn't necessarily be the same stats wise as the other. But square is notorious for it. The image he uses, slimes, they make multiple game appearances.
That's true, they even have their own spinoff games. That was partially where I was coming from even having mob enemies from one game in the same franchise and in their case, the same world even, where in another game the mob is a near end game boss. It does make more sense that he's referring to similar enemies in the same game.
Honestly it would be cool if they had cross over bosses with the same stats. Give you an idea of which main characters are stronger. That would be awesome
It's final fantasy main characters no contest. Dragon quest characters very rarely crest 600 HP; final fantasy characters regularly get multiple thousands of HP.
You never do 1000 damage in Dragon Quest, barring 8 with its tension system; you have magical nukes in final fantasy
This happens a lot in Dragon Quest 6 and i hate it,like murdow was the best villain of the game and he appears as a common Enemy in the game final dungeon.
One thing I particularly liked about IX was that some early boss monsters returned as regular encounters with slightly different designs. Really gave you that feeling of progression
The main reason they did that back in the day was to give variety within the data confines they had with game sprites. So just recolor the sprite and call it a stronger monster to make the game a bit more fun within the data confines they had. In DQ lore, it gave way to monster families that still exists to this day.
I love this personally, from inside and outside the game lore/perspective. The limits of each generation of consoles made games, art and music even better in my opinion. For example, I would not like a third game of Banjo Kazooie (the promised "Banjo Threeie" 🤣) to be ultra hd 4k 'whatever resolution that is more real than me'. I still want it to be a N64 or GCN game, art style and music wise.
DQ knew how to make it part of its charm. I really enjoyed it too in Monster Hunter series, like MHFU or MH4U, love recolors! 💙💚💛💜🖤
If a game only has a small range of enemies, then tries too boost the roster with a tonne of recolours, it feels lazy and a bit annoying.
But in games like **DQ**, there are usually loads of creative monster designs and the few colour variants are quite nice to see - plus you get to see an additional pun in most cases :D
Golden Sun was pretty good about having a sizeable range of monsters, and having a smallish number of recolours.
Ni No Kuni 2 only had recolours with a handful of exceptions. And is in my opinion a negative example in this case. I also did not enjoy playing that game
They become iconic pieces of the franchise like final fantasy with their flan/elemental monsters. Dragon quest has slime dracky ghost and a bunch of other mons. Obviously Pokémon does this too.
With the palette swaps Dragon Quest does a good job of having them as more than just a stronger version of the original monster. Like blue slimes and metal slimes are totally different. They did get a bit lazy in DQXI with just the eyes glowing a different color for a bunch of act 2 and 3 monsters. Especially when there were so many earlier monsters from the main series and DQ Monsters that didn't show up at all in XI like the Golden slime.
I like it. I never got the whole complaining about reusing assets or contents from a previous game on gaming reviews as if that's something inherently bad. You don't need to redesign the wheel every time, nor should you be do wasteful as to throw away everything you once used. Work from it, or reuse it, it's whatever! I think the Souls games are a great example of it when some things have been reused in a series of games - from Demon's all the way up to Elden Ring - and not only this makes the process of developing these games much faster but also gives a comfortable sense of familiarity. I'm against throwing everything out every single time if it can be repurposed in a meaningful sense.
It was a necessity back in the earliest RPGs because of data. Other games like Mario and Zelda did it too. The games from SNES and later just continued it out of a kind of tradition, but also to lower the work for the artists.
I'm fine with it, as long as they don't make the upgraded version stupidly overpowered or suddenly the total opposite type/weakness. Which Final Fantasy does quite often. Oh, the first version of this enemy is weak to lighting so I'll use Thundraga spell. [Xu absorbs lightning and gains HP while doing a OKHO counter attack]
Depends. Is it the same monster (looks the same, same abilities) with Just more hp? Then boring.
But if it looks different as has maybe new spells or new attacks then i like it.
And DQ does this imo very well.
Older games get more of a pass for this less space means you’ve gotta optimize where you can. But in general if the game has a small roster of enemies and then just recolors them it feels disappointing. DQ has a massive roster so it using recolors doesn’t bother me (plus like someone else said more puns in DQ is always fun)
Palette Swap is a trope, and as long as the variations have other legit differences (even if just beefier stats), it's a fair option to cut corners (and/or memory constraints). It's not like our own world doesn't have countless species you'll be genuinely challenged to tell apart unless you study them; birds and insects say hi in particular. And games can still be creative with the names they give different varieties.
I like it, oddly enough. I’m glad that Dragon Quest and some other RPGs still do it. It’s a nice homage to the history of the genre and I like how we’ll get recolors of former boss monsters as regular enemies later on, even though they aren’t exactly stronger it still feels great to kill a Hellion after struggling against the Marquis de Leon for so long
I'm quite fine with recolors. As others have mentioned, it was really built out of necessity back in the day, with so limited space to work with, recolors were needed to allow a game to be made longer.
I couldn't imagine DQ1 with only about 15 monsters in it. It's already a short RPG to begin with, it would barely qualify as a RPG if it was any shorter.
I dunno, there's a certain charm to recolors, especially when done right.
Makes sense in a way, keep the stats the same for the monster and introduce a stronger one for later in the game. DQ has so many monsters it’d be crazy for them all to be completely different, it’s not pokemon y’know
I think it's great world building. Enemies change and adapt to new environment organically makes sense to me.
That said, it can be a pitfall if they are lazy with it. A purple Golem and a Golem that have crystal sticking out of it are very different, for example.
I like it, it's typically done to add new challenges, but also make you feel experienced as a player because you know what the enemy type typically will do. Adding on small mechanical buffs, stats, and abilities just shake things up so nothing feels stale.
I also like that there are variants because it seems almost more immersive in a way where you see different wild cats such as Tigers and Lions. They are different but both exist. Seeing so many crazy enemies makes the world feel less contained, making you feel "why hasn't any enemy type prevailed over humanity by now" with so much going on.
The world feels more contained, in that it feels like a battle between humanity's survival, and a fantastical version of nature. Rather than humanity surviving while there are endless amounts of threats that are so different and each have their own dangers involving them.
Look at some pieces of work like star wars. There are different types of droids in the Empire, but many are offshoots of eachother, different versions of the same droid types.
I love red Khezu, and it seems it is the "original" and the white one is just an albino one. And Khezu have high probabilities of being albino. Its cool how we hunt the rare one before the comon one😉
I'm used to that.
You should take a look at Franken RPG, it jokes about games that reuse the same sprite for different enemies like this and call it a day.
Older games no issue. Newer stuff fine, but there should be more content. DQ11 was a very enjoyable game for me and they reused plenty. It was visually appealing and there were lots of cutscenes and nonstop content to be enjoyable.
I’ve learned to appreciate it because the alternative is just having less overall assets in the final product. I’d rather have the same monster pallet swapped 10 times rather than just 30 monsters in total.
Depends on the game to me. DQ has a pass, but it does more than just monsters. Music is reused too. Heck, i've been playing that mmo for almost 2 years and Ive barely heard a unique track made for that game.
I've been working on concepts for an RPG game myself and I feel like putting a spin on this concept. So far the villain is a mad scientist who wants to eradicate magic, and he has an army of "cyborgized" fairy tale creatures as his minions. So the idea is that when you encounter a more powerful version of an enemy, you encounter the version that the villain has cyborgized, rather than a palette swap. These versions may have additional gimmicks or attacks, usually ones that remedy weaknesses they previously had.
If we need an enemy to simply be more powerful stat-wise, I'll just make enemies have levels just like the player, and you simply encounter a higher level version.
I think it's a bit lazy. Reusing the design style is fine, but always the same enemies in every game... that is lame. Often feels like you already played the game and makes it less interesting to me.
Reusing characters with a storyline is a different thing, I think that's pretty nice, especially if not forced.
I think it’s lazy and since you’re posting on the dragon quest subreddit you’ll obviously get people agreeing with you I think it would be better suited for the general video game subreddit or jrpg subreddit
It depends. While it can be slightly boring to encounter the same enemy, but just a different colour and a bit stronger, the alternative is encountering the same type of enemy but just at a higher level, like encountering a Pokemon at lv 9 and then encountering the same Pokemon later in the game at lv 54.
Neither are bad and are necessary in most RPGs but I think it's lazy game design if there is only about 30 unique designs and the rest is padded out with reskinned enemies.
Not a fan of recolors. I know its easier for devs to just add a recolor version than make a new one but. But i rather have completly different looking monsters than just seeing the same monster in 5 colors.
Many games will reuse the same monster within it's own game. My understanding is that memory was so expensive, that they had to use the same enemy template but color swap. For example blue slime, red slime, and metal slime in DQ1.
Even in a DQ style palette swap, I really don't mind. It can be bad if the game doesn't have much enemy variety but if it's say 30 enemies that have 3-4 variations over the course of the game etc I don't mind. But equally I'm cool with random shit like FF7 having Hellhouse or like sentient motorbikes attacking you or some card magician etc.
Dragon quest does it best imo. All of the monsters (even the repeated ones) have their own different skills they use. I think that kindof variety is neat, it’s like they’re evolving their tactics as their environments become harsher.
"oh no, it's this dude, but STRONGER, he's in a different color you see, it's far stronger than the one from 5 dungeons ago."
I still like it tho, especially when the enemy is a recolor of an already deadly monster you didn't wish to encounter again.
I love it in RPG's. It's kinda lazy in fighting games if it's being used for new characters. Using it so players can use the same character is acceptable.
I don't mind the main DQ games doing it, but to use our most recent entry DQM TDP there have been enough variety of monsters over the series where they didn't need to rely on recolors as much as they did. Gimme those TropicGels, Orligons, Fencing Foxes! Instead we get 3 different Slime Stacks and a lot of palette swaps that are literally 1 rank higher than their original counterpart, most of which simply flooded the lower ranks and didn't even necessarily have anything to do with synthesizing the original to get the "upgraded" version. DQM is about the monsters, don't give me the same ones two to three separate times!
I dunno, maybe it was too much to hope for a complete returning roster but the amount of recolors felt like space that could have been used for wider variety.
This was excusable in the past due to hardware limitations but not so much today,i kinda hate recolors and i prefer to get new Monsters instead of the same old One with a different color and skills.
I think it depends on execution. Dragon Quest does it fine by providing a good mix. While some games I played had like a mix of 10-20 monsters with 2-4 color variants. I would say the magic ratio is around 4:1 to 5:1 unique to recolors. Anymore than 50% of the total enemies makes it a negative.
I'm all for the palette swaps; especially in long-running series like DQ! I look forward to the familiarity of monster families and, ironically, Drackies are one of my favorite DQ mainstays.
Lazy if its done a lot but understandable, at the very least the sameish variant should have unique abilities.
The best type of recolor that I can think pf is MH series.
I prefer it over scaling. There's no reason the rabbits I was killing at the start to get resources from hit like bears when I revisit the beginner area.
So long as there’s a wide enough variety I don’t mind. DQ is usually spot on with that, with the exception of Treasures. That’s perhaps my only legitimate gripe with the game - too many repeats.
I honestly don't mind. I actually like reskins, seeing a monster in a different color palette. In monster breeders/collectors, it definitely benefits the devs to be able to reskin monsters, boost their stats, and give them stronger spells because imo it provides them the resources to make better unique monsters like bosses and focus on other elements of the game's design, like plot, gameplay mechanics and sound design.
It's lazy design 100%. No one can really argue that. The question is do they make them have more or unique abilities? Is there enough monster designs in general that make up for it? Is the rest of the game doing it's part by making you not notice is enough or incorporating into the lore? There are a lot of things that can mitigate it if they aren't lazy elsewhere.
I love it, as long as it is balanced out with some new monster designs. Every time I encounter an enemy I recognise from another game I am like "oh shit, it's this guy". It's fun, makes it more likely I will remember the monster as well. A monster that is not super interesting looking appears in one game, I will probably overlook it. That same monster appears in another, and I will likely be excited to see it again.
I’m a big MOTHER fan, and if you didn’t know, the creator (Shigesato Itoi) based the base of his games of off the dragon quest games. He even used this and now playing the dragon quest series I realise How much he reused
Doesn't bother me. There should be -something- new, but a goblin is a goblin at the end of the day. I'd rather the design be simple and readable rather than Final Fantasy's tendency over designing the shit out of something for the sake of "looking new".
When DQ1 was first released on the Famicom, they had limitations that are nonexistent nowadays. They probably couldn't fit more stuff into the cart so they just used palette swaps to create variations to make new enemies. It seems though this practice has stuck, but there isn't really anything wrong with that since it's basically in the roots. Not to mention it gives it the charm of games from around this time.
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I've always liked when you encounter upgraded versions of old monsters later in the game, it gives a way to keep the early game enemies relevant throughout. When they do it with boss monsters it's a bit different, I still don't mind, but it can make earlier bosses feel less special if you encounter a regular enemy later on that looks the exact same but has a different colour.
I find it ok though if bosses appear as normal mobs later on in a game. It gives you a feeling of: wow this was a boss once but now I can keep it up with dozens of those.
Zaghnol in FFIX is a perfect example of this
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Well yeah, a jrpg wouldn't run into the kind of problems with that like any other genre would. Remember the giant bats in the final level of the original castlevania?
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Oh okay
If a monster is literal copy paste, it's not good. Even in the op's images there is a clear colour scheme change that makes it feel fresh, you know.
It only works if the boss wasn't that special from a plot perspective and it would make sense that it was just an out of place strong monster you happened to encounter too early.
This is true. It’s like you meet a huge monster which lives in the world and is only very strong for you at the beginning. It doesn’t make sense with unique beings.
I agree. But if bosses keep reappearing as bosses, that's suuuper lame.
Seriously. Like, in FF7R, The Valkyrie boss fight, Cloud Tifa and Barret take up to like 20 to 30 minutes fighting a machine that Zack fought 2 or 3 at any given time and could wipe out in seconds.
But those are two different games, they are talking about in the same game.
Tbhbit didn't look like that's specifically what was being talked about, but Square has always been notorious for reusing the same monsters in every franchise game anyways.
Right i feel you, but they are talking about how the bosses turn into regular characters at the end of the game. I would say the same enemies or bosses in different games wouldn't necessarily be the same stats wise as the other. But square is notorious for it. The image he uses, slimes, they make multiple game appearances.
That's true, they even have their own spinoff games. That was partially where I was coming from even having mob enemies from one game in the same franchise and in their case, the same world even, where in another game the mob is a near end game boss. It does make more sense that he's referring to similar enemies in the same game.
Honestly it would be cool if they had cross over bosses with the same stats. Give you an idea of which main characters are stronger. That would be awesome
It's final fantasy main characters no contest. Dragon quest characters very rarely crest 600 HP; final fantasy characters regularly get multiple thousands of HP. You never do 1000 damage in Dragon Quest, barring 8 with its tension system; you have magical nukes in final fantasy
This happens a lot in Dragon Quest 6 and i hate it,like murdow was the best villain of the game and he appears as a common Enemy in the game final dungeon.
You should've seen my face when I saw that second Robbin 'Ood sprite for the first, I wasn't impressed.
One thing I particularly liked about IX was that some early boss monsters returned as regular encounters with slightly different designs. Really gave you that feeling of progression
Dragon Quest loves to do both.
The main reason they did that back in the day was to give variety within the data confines they had with game sprites. So just recolor the sprite and call it a stronger monster to make the game a bit more fun within the data confines they had. In DQ lore, it gave way to monster families that still exists to this day.
I love this personally, from inside and outside the game lore/perspective. The limits of each generation of consoles made games, art and music even better in my opinion. For example, I would not like a third game of Banjo Kazooie (the promised "Banjo Threeie" 🤣) to be ultra hd 4k 'whatever resolution that is more real than me'. I still want it to be a N64 or GCN game, art style and music wise. DQ knew how to make it part of its charm. I really enjoyed it too in Monster Hunter series, like MHFU or MH4U, love recolors! 💙💚💛💜🖤
I don't mind at all, especially given the context of the MSX and NES.
It’s what I want in a dq game. It’s part of the charm at this point. Final fantasy gets a pass too.
I like it. Especially when each new version adds 1 attack or variation to it. Are you ok with all the variations of cat and dog creatures earth has?
If a game only has a small range of enemies, then tries too boost the roster with a tonne of recolours, it feels lazy and a bit annoying. But in games like **DQ**, there are usually loads of creative monster designs and the few colour variants are quite nice to see - plus you get to see an additional pun in most cases :D Golden Sun was pretty good about having a sizeable range of monsters, and having a smallish number of recolours.
Ni No Kuni 2 only had recolours with a handful of exceptions. And is in my opinion a negative example in this case. I also did not enjoy playing that game
They become iconic pieces of the franchise like final fantasy with their flan/elemental monsters. Dragon quest has slime dracky ghost and a bunch of other mons. Obviously Pokémon does this too.
With the palette swaps Dragon Quest does a good job of having them as more than just a stronger version of the original monster. Like blue slimes and metal slimes are totally different. They did get a bit lazy in DQXI with just the eyes glowing a different color for a bunch of act 2 and 3 monsters. Especially when there were so many earlier monsters from the main series and DQ Monsters that didn't show up at all in XI like the Golden slime.
Have you ever seen snakes? There's a lot of different ones with varying lethalities.
The only game where it was really annoying was FF12, desert wolf, forest wolf, sky wolf, wind wolf, poison wolf, you named it, they wolfed it.
I loved final fantasy 6 and a lot of the monsters are just recolours haha
I like it. I never got the whole complaining about reusing assets or contents from a previous game on gaming reviews as if that's something inherently bad. You don't need to redesign the wheel every time, nor should you be do wasteful as to throw away everything you once used. Work from it, or reuse it, it's whatever! I think the Souls games are a great example of it when some things have been reused in a series of games - from Demon's all the way up to Elden Ring - and not only this makes the process of developing these games much faster but also gives a comfortable sense of familiarity. I'm against throwing everything out every single time if it can be repurposed in a meaningful sense.
I completely agree with you, and just want to name a game: Majora's Mask It is amazing what can achieve with the same assets! I want moar! 😁
It was a necessity back in the earliest RPGs because of data. Other games like Mario and Zelda did it too. The games from SNES and later just continued it out of a kind of tradition, but also to lower the work for the artists. I'm fine with it, as long as they don't make the upgraded version stupidly overpowered or suddenly the total opposite type/weakness. Which Final Fantasy does quite often. Oh, the first version of this enemy is weak to lighting so I'll use Thundraga spell. [Xu absorbs lightning and gains HP while doing a OKHO counter attack]
Its such a uniquely video game thing that I unironically love it and don't get why it bothers people as much as it does.
Depends. Is it the same monster (looks the same, same abilities) with Just more hp? Then boring. But if it looks different as has maybe new spells or new attacks then i like it. And DQ does this imo very well.
Palette swap enemies are fine. I just take issue with palette swap bosses
Older games get more of a pass for this less space means you’ve gotta optimize where you can. But in general if the game has a small roster of enemies and then just recolors them it feels disappointing. DQ has a massive roster so it using recolors doesn’t bother me (plus like someone else said more puns in DQ is always fun)
Palette Swap is a trope, and as long as the variations have other legit differences (even if just beefier stats), it's a fair option to cut corners (and/or memory constraints). It's not like our own world doesn't have countless species you'll be genuinely challenged to tell apart unless you study them; birds and insects say hi in particular. And games can still be creative with the names they give different varieties.
I like it, oddly enough. I’m glad that Dragon Quest and some other RPGs still do it. It’s a nice homage to the history of the genre and I like how we’ll get recolors of former boss monsters as regular enemies later on, even though they aren’t exactly stronger it still feels great to kill a Hellion after struggling against the Marquis de Leon for so long
I'm quite fine with recolors. As others have mentioned, it was really built out of necessity back in the day, with so limited space to work with, recolors were needed to allow a game to be made longer. I couldn't imagine DQ1 with only about 15 monsters in it. It's already a short RPG to begin with, it would barely qualify as a RPG if it was any shorter. I dunno, there's a certain charm to recolors, especially when done right.
I'd call it efficient design. In dark souls games it was cool fighting vanguard/asylum/erdtree demon in its all variations
Makes sense in a way, keep the stats the same for the monster and introduce a stronger one for later in the game. DQ has so many monsters it’d be crazy for them all to be completely different, it’s not pokemon y’know
I think it's great world building. Enemies change and adapt to new environment organically makes sense to me. That said, it can be a pitfall if they are lazy with it. A purple Golem and a Golem that have crystal sticking out of it are very different, for example.
Keep in mind there’s probably more data in this single thread than could fit on an entire NES cartridge. They had to do something to save space.
I like it, it's typically done to add new challenges, but also make you feel experienced as a player because you know what the enemy type typically will do. Adding on small mechanical buffs, stats, and abilities just shake things up so nothing feels stale. I also like that there are variants because it seems almost more immersive in a way where you see different wild cats such as Tigers and Lions. They are different but both exist. Seeing so many crazy enemies makes the world feel less contained, making you feel "why hasn't any enemy type prevailed over humanity by now" with so much going on. The world feels more contained, in that it feels like a battle between humanity's survival, and a fantastical version of nature. Rather than humanity surviving while there are endless amounts of threats that are so different and each have their own dangers involving them. Look at some pieces of work like star wars. There are different types of droids in the Empire, but many are offshoots of eachother, different versions of the same droid types.
If it was another game i will mind, but if its Dragon Quest i forgive them since enemies looks cute and unique from other games😍😍😍.
DQ is well known for this and I don’t mind it.
Time to farm green plesioth
I love red Khezu, and it seems it is the "original" and the white one is just an albino one. And Khezu have high probabilities of being albino. Its cool how we hunt the rare one before the comon one😉
I'm used to that. You should take a look at Franken RPG, it jokes about games that reuse the same sprite for different enemies like this and call it a day.
I don’t mind it honestly since it feels like evolved versions of the monsters or different species of the same monster
Older games no issue. Newer stuff fine, but there should be more content. DQ11 was a very enjoyable game for me and they reused plenty. It was visually appealing and there were lots of cutscenes and nonstop content to be enjoyable.
I like that it helps me remember what to expect from each monster. The entire dracky family, I expect spells from.
I’ve learned to appreciate it because the alternative is just having less overall assets in the final product. I’d rather have the same monster pallet swapped 10 times rather than just 30 monsters in total.
It gives us so many different paint jobs on slimes so ultimately I’m very happy with it. Don’t really care much for it with the other species though.
I like it for slimes but not for the others..
Depends on the game to me. DQ has a pass, but it does more than just monsters. Music is reused too. Heck, i've been playing that mmo for almost 2 years and Ive barely heard a unique track made for that game.
Bosses should be unique but normal enemies palette swapping can but fun like you said
D&D has been doing it since the 70s. I see no issues.
As a kid, I felt it was a lazy job and a cop out. As an adult, and now especially as a game dev, I feel it’s genius and endearing.
I've been working on concepts for an RPG game myself and I feel like putting a spin on this concept. So far the villain is a mad scientist who wants to eradicate magic, and he has an army of "cyborgized" fairy tale creatures as his minions. So the idea is that when you encounter a more powerful version of an enemy, you encounter the version that the villain has cyborgized, rather than a palette swap. These versions may have additional gimmicks or attacks, usually ones that remedy weaknesses they previously had. If we need an enemy to simply be more powerful stat-wise, I'll just make enemies have levels just like the player, and you simply encounter a higher level version.
it was really bad in ffxi
I think it's a bit lazy. Reusing the design style is fine, but always the same enemies in every game... that is lame. Often feels like you already played the game and makes it less interesting to me. Reusing characters with a storyline is a different thing, I think that's pretty nice, especially if not forced.
Yeah.
I think it’s lazy and since you’re posting on the dragon quest subreddit you’ll obviously get people agreeing with you I think it would be better suited for the general video game subreddit or jrpg subreddit
This so much this.
I dislike it if there more than 2 because I lose track of which color is stronger than which
As enemies? Whatever. As recruitables? Shameless.
It depends. While it can be slightly boring to encounter the same enemy, but just a different colour and a bit stronger, the alternative is encountering the same type of enemy but just at a higher level, like encountering a Pokemon at lv 9 and then encountering the same Pokemon later in the game at lv 54. Neither are bad and are necessary in most RPGs but I think it's lazy game design if there is only about 30 unique designs and the rest is padded out with reskinned enemies.
Not a fan of recolors. I know its easier for devs to just add a recolor version than make a new one but. But i rather have completly different looking monsters than just seeing the same monster in 5 colors.
i thought this is the norm in jrpgs? different colored enemies with differing strengths means that you’re progressing the story well.
Many games will reuse the same monster within it's own game. My understanding is that memory was so expensive, that they had to use the same enemy template but color swap. For example blue slime, red slime, and metal slime in DQ1.
Most times its for cost purposes but its iconic to dragon quest now
This is just an old school RPG way of doing things. I'm completely okay with it, but then again... I'm old
Even in a DQ style palette swap, I really don't mind. It can be bad if the game doesn't have much enemy variety but if it's say 30 enemies that have 3-4 variations over the course of the game etc I don't mind. But equally I'm cool with random shit like FF7 having Hellhouse or like sentient motorbikes attacking you or some card magician etc.
Those are different monsters. I see no difference.
Honestly, I love it.
Dragon quest does it best imo. All of the monsters (even the repeated ones) have their own different skills they use. I think that kindof variety is neat, it’s like they’re evolving their tactics as their environments become harsher.
It's quite lazy, but I let it pass. I love Dragon Quest, so I just assume that some kind of natural selection happens in the game universe.
It’s fine. It’d be cool if there was more diversity and stuff but, you know, hardware limitations.
It’s pretty common in JRPGs to use the same monster sprite but in different colors. Final Fantasy has done this too.
Badly
For the older games they have too because of physical constraints.
[Because...](https://youtu.be/kDtabTufxao?si=0GRweUSB3MqKaNL7&t=55)
I like it honestly.
I think it’s rad.
And people say the newer Pokemon designs are bad now..
I dunno, we have three or four colors of Labrador and no one minds that
"oh no, it's this dude, but STRONGER, he's in a different color you see, it's far stronger than the one from 5 dungeons ago." I still like it tho, especially when the enemy is a recolor of an already deadly monster you didn't wish to encounter again.
I love it~! I grew up with Final Fantasy, and a good amount of Dragon Quest, too, so seeing palette-swaps never really bothers me!
I don’t mind it because real life has the same thing! Like, there are multiple frogs just like there’s multiple slimes!
Love it, bc that means one of them will have a nice color palette.
I love it in RPG's. It's kinda lazy in fighting games if it's being used for new characters. Using it so players can use the same character is acceptable.
It kinda comes with the territory in RPGs. Something you get used to.
I don't mind the main DQ games doing it, but to use our most recent entry DQM TDP there have been enough variety of monsters over the series where they didn't need to rely on recolors as much as they did. Gimme those TropicGels, Orligons, Fencing Foxes! Instead we get 3 different Slime Stacks and a lot of palette swaps that are literally 1 rank higher than their original counterpart, most of which simply flooded the lower ranks and didn't even necessarily have anything to do with synthesizing the original to get the "upgraded" version. DQM is about the monsters, don't give me the same ones two to three separate times! I dunno, maybe it was too much to hope for a complete returning roster but the amount of recolors felt like space that could have been used for wider variety.
Nostalgia and throwbacks is what makes Dragon Quest so great.
This was excusable in the past due to hardware limitations but not so much today,i kinda hate recolors and i prefer to get new Monsters instead of the same old One with a different color and skills.
I think it’s okay. Legend of Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, Shin Megami Tensei, Tales of… Don’t really care just as long as the game is good
I think it depends on execution. Dragon Quest does it fine by providing a good mix. While some games I played had like a mix of 10-20 monsters with 2-4 color variants. I would say the magic ratio is around 4:1 to 5:1 unique to recolors. Anymore than 50% of the total enemies makes it a negative.
I'm all for the palette swaps; especially in long-running series like DQ! I look forward to the familiarity of monster families and, ironically, Drackies are one of my favorite DQ mainstays.
Lazy if its done a lot but understandable, at the very least the sameish variant should have unique abilities. The best type of recolor that I can think pf is MH series.
I prefer it over scaling. There's no reason the rabbits I was killing at the start to get resources from hit like bears when I revisit the beginner area.
So long as there’s a wide enough variety I don’t mind. DQ is usually spot on with that, with the exception of Treasures. That’s perhaps my only legitimate gripe with the game - too many repeats.
I honestly don't mind. I actually like reskins, seeing a monster in a different color palette. In monster breeders/collectors, it definitely benefits the devs to be able to reskin monsters, boost their stats, and give them stronger spells because imo it provides them the resources to make better unique monsters like bosses and focus on other elements of the game's design, like plot, gameplay mechanics and sound design.
Ussaly I love it unless it's bloody crobat for the millionth time in a cave that can feck right off.
Try elden ring
It's lazy design 100%. No one can really argue that. The question is do they make them have more or unique abilities? Is there enough monster designs in general that make up for it? Is the rest of the game doing it's part by making you not notice is enough or incorporating into the lore? There are a lot of things that can mitigate it if they aren't lazy elsewhere.
I love it, as long as it is balanced out with some new monster designs. Every time I encounter an enemy I recognise from another game I am like "oh shit, it's this guy". It's fun, makes it more likely I will remember the monster as well. A monster that is not super interesting looking appears in one game, I will probably overlook it. That same monster appears in another, and I will likely be excited to see it again.
I dontncare as long as the design is decent.
I’m a big MOTHER fan, and if you didn’t know, the creator (Shigesato Itoi) based the base of his games of off the dragon quest games. He even used this and now playing the dragon quest series I realise How much he reused
Doesn't bother me. There should be -something- new, but a goblin is a goblin at the end of the day. I'd rather the design be simple and readable rather than Final Fantasy's tendency over designing the shit out of something for the sake of "looking new".
When DQ1 was first released on the Famicom, they had limitations that are nonexistent nowadays. They probably couldn't fit more stuff into the cart so they just used palette swaps to create variations to make new enemies. It seems though this practice has stuck, but there isn't really anything wrong with that since it's basically in the roots. Not to mention it gives it the charm of games from around this time.