Dragon Warrior II (1987)

So in my goal of playing every dragon quest game in (release) order, naturally I played and finished the second game. I honestly liked it for what it was. You start out the game as the prince of Midenhall. This time you're not alone like in the first game; the prince of Cannock and the princess of Moonbrooke join you in your fight. Exploration is encouraged, as some really unimportant and highly missable NPCs will tell you where the convoluted items are that you need to beat the game (or you can skip this and just use a walkthrough if you're too lazy). The music is nice, very dragon warrior-esque but not the same tunes as the first game.

However, this game is grind-HEAVY; you need to grind so goddamn much to be at a good level and some fights cough Hargon with HealAll cough make you depend on RNG to win. I personally like grinding so I didn't mind it that much. The biggest downside to me however is the spells. Ok so you have the main character who essentially only attacks and the princess of Moonbrooke is clearly supposed to be the healer but the prince of Cannock? He can't really hit hard (even with good equipment), he doesn't have the best healing spell and all of his other spells (like fireball, firebane, etc) usually don't hit the enemy and make you waste your turn with him. So he's essentially a second, less good healer. I only understood that near the end of the game and it made fights a lot easier, but it saddens me that his other spells seem to be so worthless. If you've got a lot of time on your hands and are interested in playing then i'd definitely recommend trying out this game!

I love these games, and played them initially when I was a kid. This game has a lot of old-school mechanics that are now outdated, but that doesn't mean it's a bad game. Fairly breezy for a Dragon Quest game, so even if it's difficult to figure out what to do the game doesn't overstay its welcome too much.

If you are a fan of NES style RPGs, you'll love this game. If you don't have nostalgia for it, you might find it a bit tougher to get into. The third DQ game is where I feel the series starts being closer to what the more contemporary games in the series do today. That being said, overall great game and improves on the simplistic 1 person party of the first DQ.

Look: 7/10 Absolutely beautiful intro and menu screen. Also, loved how the final boss couldn't even fit in the devoted space. But anything notable stopped there. I usually screenshot the end of games, especially RPGs, just for memory/nostalgia, but there was nothing even notable. Plus the plotline's conclusion was simply poorly done.

Sound: 8/10 Can't include this in the rating, but this definitely was a step up when it comes to having some emotive and special tracks.

Play: 7/10 Oddly, I preferred the first DW's menu system over this one. You would think the menu and item mechanisms wouldn't be more frustrating/archaic than the older game. And sheesh did they like to use poison. I do appreciate, however, how quickly the game forces you into the grind again--one of my favorite attributes of DW1. The Wings of Wyvern item was brilliantly explained, too. Let's be honest, though, this game may have increased the difficulty of DW1 considerably (DW1 was too easy if you like to grind, one of my complaint about it), but it seems they tried too hard to compensate for that in turn-based games. While I secretly enjoyed the endgame's brutality, I just didn't find the challenge enjoyable: maybe the issue is that it was right before the SNES' ability to make turn-based games' challenges more dynamic, but they also didn't want to release another rote, press-action-button-to-win DW1. I dunno--either way, I love grind-heavy NES RPGs, I love a good challenge, but overall, despite the nostalgia I have for this game, I was hoping to be struck by the gameplay. Gotta give credit to, as far as I know, the first or one of the first games with a ship to explore the world, plus extraneous and optional islands etc.

Feel: 8/10 This rating is probably askew from my nostalgia from my grandma having owned this. (Not that I ever made it far, ha.) The way they incorporated the original continent more or less as a place to explore than a necessity is beautiful and love the introduction of “secret”/optional places within the open world motif. Traditionally I have claimed to prefer linear over open world, but I like the idea of late game open worldness to uncover more, rather than immediate open worldness (except when done well like in early Final Fantasys, the first Zelda, etc. where linearity is ostensibly enforced but exploitation or heavy grinds could manipulate it). Similarly, I loved exploring the obscure islands and most of all, loved returning to areas for new items. Though sheesh, who thought “let’s have the shop guys move around from their platform for no reason, that is an essential thing we should spend time coding." And I know this is petty, but I accidentally used too many items to claim to fully enjoy the game lol, especially when I accidentally used a Wing of Wyvern when I was far from my save spot RIP. Overall, despite its positive qualities and my nostalgia, I did not enjoy this nearly as much as I expected. It definitely started feeling like a chore near the end, which probably ruined the potentially remarkable difficulty at the end.

Attachment: 7/10 Even though I can claim to have "replayed" this, I never finished it in the past anyway. And I really don't see myself returning to it any time soon except when playing through the Dragon Warriors or intensely in the mood for a different turn-based NES-era RPG than the ones I usually play. Undeniably good game, but not nearly as special or attaching as I had hoped. I kept awaiting returning to Link to the Past while playing the DW2 endgame, which is surprising since Link to the Past has overall been iffy to me.

I can do this (I think) Did some research and feeling brave, lol.

I think I'll continue the tradition of naming my playable character after a bad babysitter cousin I had from when i was young. Imagine he probably played the game, but I have pretty much just took over his save file ever since.

MIKE

Hoping these battle scenes in VR might be chill

Playing this game was a journey. A journey that I almost wasn't able to finish, due to a bug in the English translation of the SNES port (which I eventually found a patch for).

My first impressions were kind of positive: "This is almost exactly like DQ1. But, oh!, you get multiple party members and fight multiple monsters at once. And there are tiny shreds of a story this time. It's almost Final-Fantasy-like"

Then some the ugliest examples of early JRPGs started to rear their heads.

• This game relies heavily on searching random unmarked tiles to find items needed to proceed. Good luck progressing without some sort of walkthrough guide.
• Even though you eventually get a boat, exploring the massive map is a plodding trudge filled with way-too-many random enemy encounters. And good ducking luck finding your way around without a copy of the world map handy.
• The final 10% of this game is absolute unmitigated horseshit, littered with one-shot-killing enemies (in a game without revives in the field), assholish & asinine mazes, countless hidden pitfall traps, and everything else that makes a bad JRPG bad. I generally find the use of save states abhorrent, and try my best to avoid walkthroughs. But in the final stretch of DQ2, I unapologetically used the everloving shit out of emulator save states, and I'm not sure anyone could navigate the Cave to Rhone without a map. The final section of this game is so bad that it takes a 2.5 star game down to a firm 1-star game.

On the bright side, my initial impressions of DQ3 seem quite positive.

Well, crap.

After about 8-10hrs of playing, I discovered that the English translation of this game for SNES has a game breaking bug. When you give your sick party member the Leaf of the World Tree, the text where it says he's healed just loops infinitely.

Oh well. Traveling around the ginormous map in my slow-ass ship was getting annoying anyways. On to Dragon Quest 3, I guess. DQ2 wasn't quite fun enough to replay those 8hrs on another platform, given that 90% of that time was grinding EXP.

PROS

• Greatly expands upon the framework laid out by the first Dragon Quest
• Multiple protagonists add plenty of new combat possibilities
• Significantly larger world and addition of sailing make exploration more fulfilling
• Story progression is still natural and uncontrived despite the larger scope
• Toriyama's art and Sugiyama's tunes hold up perfectly

CONS

• Dungeons, while better than the first game's, are still lacking in flavor and ideas
• Encounter rate is still too high, fewer but more challenging fights would be better
• Grinding is still practically mandatory