Beat with excessive save state scumming and 3 browser tabs open for map, spells, and equipment stats. The PC version sounds like it would have been more interesting with the option to import the high level characters from the first game for ultra high level play. The NES version was more like the same game again, starting off from scratch. So I made my party and decided to do almost the same as the first game but leaving a wizard in town to be an identify bot and taking 2 mages instead. I got lucky with a lord, swiped the gear from the default characters and had enough to buy sturdy plate. I eventually bought all the good stuff from the shop despite this game not having a cheap infinite money trick.

They leveled up quickly at first though the cleric and 1 mage became evil from fighting friendly creeping coins. How does only 1 person in the party go from good to evil? Shouldn't alignment changes affect the whole party? This was a pain in the ass for the entire game as I had to boot the evil ones out every time I wanted to identify stuff, then leave the party in the dungeon to be recruited by the evil ones. The cleric eventually went back to good. I used the maps to bee line for the few quest items and did not waste my time exploring. There should have been useful stashes of gold and equipment poked away to make exploring worthwhile, instead I just grinded enemies near the exits. I was around level 8 when I fought the magic armor. It was a very tedious fight with miss after miss, low damage and all nukes resisted. Then I remembered from Wizardry gaiden that the dildo spell stacked, so I had both mages spam that so the warriors could hit reliability for big damage. The magic shield was significantly more difficult because it hit very hard. I had to go grind some levels to get the front line enough hp to survive a single hit, and even then it took a lot of scumming to avoid deaths. The magic sword was not as difficult once I scummed past a couple instant death hits. I had the lord and samurai buff their armor, and after that the sword could barely do anything. The magic helm and gauntlets were ridiculous with their hit all nukes. I don't know how the hell you would beat that legit without a ton of deaths. Despite intense save state scumming, I still lost 2 people against the gloves. Good thing the cleric knew resurrection by then.

I gave the armor and sword to the lord, and she eventually did the solo run to beat the main story. It was disappointing that there was no final boss. Afterwards I beat all the magic gear again to get it all back. At first I switched the armor back and forth between the lord and samurai for the passive healing, until the samurai got the shield. He was in the first position and I made sure to put the shield into the first inventory slot to make it easier to use the total game breaking infinite healing. The cleric took the helm to nuke every turn even though she could not equip it. The longest part of the game was probably grinding on floor 5 to get teleport so I could get the gauntlets, at which point I gave those to the cleric and moved the helm to a mage. These magic items were so overpowered.

End stats:

Chovus level 13 good samurai elf, 17 str, 20 int, 15 piety, 19 agility, 16 vit and luck, 82 hp. Mace of power, sturdy plate, helm, gloves of copper.

Golden level 13 good lord elf, 17 str, 19 int and agility, 20 piety, 16 vit and luck, 100 hp. Iron shield, helm of hardiness, gloves of copper. She borrowed the cleric's weapon after I lost the magic sword.

Aevariel level 14 neutral thief elf, 17 str, 19 int and agility, 20 piety, 16 vit, 14 luck, 65hp. Blade of biting, padded leather, iron shield.

He was definitely the weakest link on the team as it was a struggle to keep him alive on the front line. It would have been nice if there was an option to reorder characters in combat so he could switch with the cleric. And the mages could have used an option to flee the battle entirely to avoid area spells.

Crystal level 14 good cleric elf, 17 str, 20 int and piety, 16 vit, 19 agility, 13 luck, 79 hp. Mace of pounding, breast plate, iron shield.

Valcaria level 13 good mage elf, 11 str, 20 int and piety, 15 vit, 17 agility, 13 luck, 47 hp. Just basic robes

Celestri level 13 evil mage elf, 15 str, 20 int, 16 piety vit and agl, 13 luck, 49 hp. Again just robes

This game was marginally better than the first but still well within the overly tedious trappings of these early crpgs. The dungeon design was a little better in that you had to at least partially explore each floor, but there needed to be fixed rewards to find to reward thorough exploration. There was still excessive difficulty with it being so easy for things to go very wrong, and way too much obtuseness and randomness. I would never put up with playing this without save states, online maps and spell/item guides.

4.8/10