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Dean
I play video games, watch Star Trek, listen to British punk and drink Guinness.

Age 32, Male

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Scotland

Joined on 2/16/08

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Dean's News

Posted by Dean - May 26th, 2020


I've set myself the task of trying to beat every main series Dragon Quest game with the exception of X, which is an MMO that has no official English translation. That's ten games in total, some of which can be quite lengthy. May post some brief reviews below if I have the time.


Dragon Quest I    [X] - 25th May 2020
Dragon Quest II   [X] - 2nd June 2021
Dragon Quest III  [ ] - On hold pending release of 2D-HD remake
Dragon Quest IV   [ ] - In progress...
Dragon Quest V    [ ]
Dragon Quest VI   [ ]
Dragon Quest VII  [ ]
Dragon Quest VIII [ ]
Dragon Quest IX   [ ]
Dragon Quest XI   [X] - 20th June 2020

Progress Bar
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The games in the picture below should be a complete collection of all the main series Dragon Quest games released in the UK. The exception being the Switch port of DQ1-3 which is an Asian import, however the box and games have full English text, so thought it was a nice addition.


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Bullet Point Reviews


Dragon Quest I

  • Minimal plot. Rescue the princess and defeat the Dragon Lord.
  • You play a single character. There is no party.
  • Combat is random encounters of 1 enemy per battle.
  • Game is an open world with NPCs giving clues of where to go next.
  • Took about 4-5 hours to beat.


Dragon Quest II

  • Game world feels more open and progression is less linear. E.g. multiple objectives to complete in any order
  • There is a much better sense of exploration in this game
  • Introduces party combat. You control 3 characters (fighter, mage and hybrid)
  • Combat is random encounters but this time can be multiple enemies
  • Reputed to be the toughest DQ game, but I played the Switch remake which wasn't too bad
  • On the whole, improves on DQ1 in every way

Tags:

8

Posted by Dean - May 5th, 2018


The world lost something special today. Her name was Kia.

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6

Posted by Dean - May 1st, 2016


Since I moved house, all my video games have been stored away in a cupboard. For something that was once my pride and joy, it seems like a bit of a sorry situation for them to be in. So, I've decided to fix that by picking out some of the best games in my collection and making a display piece out of them. Here are some pics:

 

Top shelf [Mega Drive + Master System] - Castlevania: The New Generation (Bloodlines), Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, Ghouls 'N Ghosts, Starflight, The Story of Thor (Beyond Oasis), Master of Darkness

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Second shelf [GameCube + SNES + PSP] - Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Tales of Symphonia, Super Castlevania IV, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, MegaMan X, Super Probotector (Contra III), Shadowrun, Super Metroid, Star Ocean, First Departure, Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles, Star Ocean: The Second Evolution

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Third shelf [PS1] - Breath of Fire III, Breath of Fire IV, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Clock Tower, Grandia, Tombi!, Wild Arms, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX

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Fourth Shelf [PS2 + DS] - Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, Grandia II, Persona 3 FES, Persona 4, Rogue Galaxy, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2, Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, Dragon Quest IV: The Chapters of the Chosen, Dragon Quest V: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride, Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Reverie, Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

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2

Posted by Dean - February 21st, 2016


It finally happened. At the age of 24 I've officially moved out of my parents house.

Back in October/November I started house hunting and found a house that was almost perfect for someone like me, so I made an offer and ended up buying a house. It's in a quiet area, has a spare room, a garden and if I look out my back window, I see trees. When I woke up this morning (my first night spent in this house) I went into the spare room, switched on the PC, had a look out the window and saw a bullfinch perched on a tree looking in this direction. This is a pretty cool situation to be in.

One of the biggest changes for me is going from having a bedroom to myself to having an entire house to myself. When I lived with my parents, I generally spent all my time at home sat in my bedroom, on a desk chair, staring at my PC screen. It's great to no longer be confined to having just one room that feels like mine. I haven't watched TV in years, but because I have a living room, a sofa and a TV, I felt inclined to give it a shot. It's quite nice to switch myself off and just sit there for a while.

Cooking seems to be the thing that people make most jokes about. "You're going to have to learn to cook for yourself now Dean!" but really, it's not so bad. I made pizza last night. And by made, I mean I took it out of the wrapper and stuck it in the oven. People act like I've never cooked before and that the oven is some kind of mystical object that takes years to master. It's nice to be able to decide my own meals, although I imagine getting home from work and not having diner on the table is going to take a while to get used to.

The rooms are just about fully furnished now, with the exception of a few end tables and a bookcase, I'm pretty much done. My plan for the spare room is to turn it into an office/study type place. I work in IT and I like to play about with that sort of stuff as a hobby too, so I'm going to build up my VMWare environment again and start playing around with some linux servers. Ideally, I'd also like to get back into doing some web development in my spare time too, but I need to pace myself. Usually I take on too much at once and end up buring myself out.

Anyway, I just thought I'd give an update on where I'm at for the few people who find this interesting. Things are pretty good right now.


1

Posted by Dean - January 1st, 2016


I was having a scroll through my Facebook feed and, as usual, there's a lot of people posting about all the good and bad things that happened to them in 2015. As someone who doesn't really post on Facebook all that often, I thought this might be an opportunity to make a new news post instead!

Some of you have probably noticed that I'm not as active on here anymore. Some of you newer folks might even be wondering who I am if you happen to stumble across this. I still browse the BBS every single day, I just don't participate as much, unfortunately. 2015 was a pretty busy year for me and on the whole, it's been a really good year for me. It started out with a promotion at work, then I had more fun over the summer months than I've had in years and, to end it, I'm in the process of buying a house.

I'm not one of the "new year, new me" people, but I think there is going to be a lot of change for me in 2016. The obvious change being that I'm going to be completely independent for the first time in my life. At first, I wasn't too sure what to make of that but the idea has started to grow on me. It's starting to sound quite exciting (minus all the hoovering, washing, ironing, shopping and cooking I'm going to have to start doing for myself)!

So, Happy New Year to anyone who happens to be reading this. Hope you have a good 2016


1

Posted by Dean - October 25th, 2015


Sometimes in life you get a chance to take a path you've never been down before. I got that chance and I took it, but before long I was lost in the woods. I had no idea where I was or where I was going, but I stuck with the path.

After about an hour of walking with no end in sight, I had a decision to make. Do I keep going and hope for the best? Do I call it quits and turn back? Or do I take a gamble and follow a steeper path the branches off from the one I'm currently on, just to see where I end up?

I chose the steep path. This was the result [high res]:

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1

Posted by Dean - June 13th, 2015


So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.

Higher resolution

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1

Posted by Dean - March 19th, 2015


...and that means only one more day before I'm off work for a week. So much to do, so little time. Hoping to watch a few films:

 

  • Ashes & Diamonds
  • Downfall
  • Night of the Living Dead
  • Rififi
  • The Warriors

Also hoping to beat Chrono Trigger on the DS and finally get around to watching Cowboy Bebop. And I have a few hills I want to climb. It's making my head spin how many activies we can do.

 

 


1

Posted by Dean - February 5th, 2015


...makes Dean a dull boy.

 


1

Posted by Dean - January 2nd, 2015


Happy new year and all that jazz. My new year was spent with no internet access, so I felt like caveman for the day. I resorted to primitive forms of entertainment, like books and the Nintendo 3DS. It actually wasn't so bad. One of my "new years resolutions" is to try and read more. I'm still not sure what my target number of books will be but I made a start on The Hobbit anyway. Read it a while ago but I want to get through this and the three Lord of the Rings books. That'll probably take some time. Quite fancy reading through the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books as well. I've already read the first three (I think) before but will start over. Recently saw the old BBC TV series based on the books and that made me want to re-read.

After being told by the ISP tech support that because we weren't using the router they gave us we would have to wait several days until they sent us a new one I thought "fuck it" and tried to fix the connection problems myself. Aside from the usual "switch it off and on again" speel which I'd obviously already tried myself, they uttered something about the broadband account password needing refreshed. But since we weren't using the router they issued, they decided the best thing to do was send out a new router, which would probably take a week to arrive. So I decided to look through the router's config for where it takes the broadband account username and password. Finally found it, re-entered it and... it sort of worked. Mobile devices seemed to be able to access the internet fine. PCs would happily access Google sites but that was about it. Assumed it was a DNS issue, DNS flush did nothing. Thought I'd have a look to see what DNS servers the router was looking at and it was set to ISP default. Thought "fair enough, probably should leave it at that". After 30 minutes of fucking about and still getting nowhere, I tried pinging the ISP default DNS servers and low and behold, no response. Maybe they don't respond to pings, but I had a look online (via phone) to see what the suggested DNS servers were for my ISP. I found different IP addresses. Tried these new ones and just like that, I have proper internet access again.

No internet access wasn't all bad though. Like I said before, I resorted to reading and I started playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds on the 3DS. Was always a bit unsure on how much I'd like that game because it had a couple of significant mechanics that I didn't like the sound of. Renting equipments and the whole merging into walls thing. Renting items sounded like it would take away from the Zelda experience and the wall thing just sounded a bit shit and gimmicky, but so far I'd probably consider this as the Zelda game I've had most fun with. The dungeons (so far at least) have never felt frustratingly lengthy or too maze-like which is my main gripe with most of the Zelda games I've played. I'm just not huge on the art style of this one. It's not bad, it just feels a bit generic to 3DS style.

Also been playing quite a lot of bass since Christmas. I've been learning songs via Rocksmith 2014 and so far I've managed to get 90-100% for most of them. Find it so much more enjoyable than playing guitar for some reason.

So anyway, I'm just happy to have proper internet access again!


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