If you happen to be in Japan right now, I strongly recommend you head you’re your local game store and enjoy the madness that is a DQ launch.  By now it’s 9PM in Japan so chances are all copies of the game are sold out, and all the stores closed, but hey at least you have options.

Earlier today Square-Enix officially launched Dragon Quest X in Japan, and there were the typical huge lineups all over the place.  While we won’t know how well the game sold until sometime later next week, the early signs say this game is going to be a success.

I’ve been really curious how this MMORPG would play compared to others.  Is it more Final Fantasy XII or Star Wars: The Old Republic?  In order to answer this question, I’ve been watching a live stream of Kotaku play the game, and right now it looks impressive.  If you’re curious, be sure to follow their feed here.

My initial impressions are that this looks like a cleaner version of Dragon Quest VIII on the PlayStation 2.  It features an orchestrated soundtrack that sounds wonderful, as expected.  What I love is how all the original sound effect are still here, giving it that ultra old-school feel.  It isn’t in HD, given this is a Wii exclusive, and there’s no voice acting whatsoever, not even during cutscenes.  There are some really nice character customization options, and classes you can choose from.  There’s an introduction that lasts about three hours or so before the main quest finally kicks in, where you select your main playable character.  I don’t want to give away too much for those that don’t want to be spoiled, but I will say that the beginning is all story driven.

The next step is to take this bad boy online, which is when the servers continuously crash.  This is to be expected given the amount of traffic the servers are likely seeing, what with this being the launch day and everything.  There’s an update that’s already available, and Kotaku went off to do just that, which is when I stopped watching and figured I’d give you guys this little update.

For those curious about the fight system, it’s a hybrid system.  As you run around the world you sucked into battles when enemies touch you.  You can try and avoid them, but good luck with that.  Once in battle you can move around your target, but you use commands in order to attack.  You don’t control the other party members (if you’ve acquired any via the story).  To be perfectly honest, this looks about exactly as you’d imagine an MMO DQ would look like.

So all told this looks like a nice combination of old meets new.  We already know there’s no chance of this game hitting the rest of the world on the Wii, but I’m really curious if Square-Enix will release it on the Wii U worldwide.  I see no reason why they wouldn’t, and I’m up for checking it out so long as they keep subscription prices low.  Ok, that’s enough from me for now, I’m heading back to see if the stream is up and I highly recommend you do the same!  Happy Dragon Quest day everyone!