Ramblings of a Gamer

At the end of the Original Dragon Quest, our hero, descendant of the hero Erdrick (sometimes translated as Roto, or Loto) conquered the Dragon King and set out on an adventure to new lands. Taking the princess with him, the hero went and established his own kingdoms across the land. 100 years later, descendants of the hero and the princess rule kingdoms across the world, each being descendants of Loto themselves. The 100 years of peace brought about by the Dragon King’s death is ended in an instant when the evil wizard Hargon attacks the kingdom of Moonbrook. A lone survivor of the attack informs the King of Midenhall, and he sends his son the prince to defeat Hargon. The second game in the Dragon Quest series, this game takes a big step forward for the RPG genre. Released almost a full year before the original Final Fantasy, we begin to really see what makes the Dragon Quest spectacular. However being released in an age restricted by the NES’ capabilities and the RPG genre’s youth, it feels a lot like taking two steps forward and one step back.

For the second part of my Dragon Quest Marathon, I actually used the same medium as the first game. That is to say, both were played on a translated emulation of “Dragon Quest 1+2″ for the SNES, compliments of a group called “RPG-One”. This version of the game includes the same updated graphics and sound as the first game, and virtually no other changes. Even despite being packaged together, you can tell that the graphics in Dragon Quest two are a slight step up from the original game, though the difference is negligible. The graphics and sound for the first four Dragon Quest games on the NES were virtually identical as it is. The big changes in this game come in the form of pure gameplay. Where the first Dragon Quest’s largest stumbling point was it’s sheer simplicity, the second game goes to great lengths to greatly increase the scope and complexity. This makes the game far better and much more enjoyable to play, but in my opinion it also makes some of it’s graver flaws more noticeable and more of an impediment than in the first game.

The first, and in my mind most significant change to the formula is bigger battles. While the first Dragon Quest’s battles were essentially a matter of “do I have enough MP to keep myself alive long enough to kill this thing”, in this game you not only have multiple enemies, but also multiple party members. While you start off alone, you quickly recruit the prince of Cannock and the Princess of Moonbrook as allies. The three allies even vary from one another. The hero is your warrior, he can equip any weapons and armor and has high physical attack and defense to make up for his complete lack of magic. The Prince of Cannock (who, in the SNES remake is named Rolando) can wear most of what the hero can despite beings considerably weaker physically, but has access to many spells. The Princess of Moonbrook (dubbed Linda) is very limited in equipment, but is a powerful spell caster. So rather than choosing between kill or heal, you have three unique characters with different arrays of abilities, facing off against multiple enemies, each with their own abilities and strength levels. This makes the battles much more rewarding, and means a battle can be hard beyond the opponent just having a lot of health. My victory over the final boss was almost as narrow as the final boss in the first game, but it was so much more rewarding. The only time the battles were ever a nuisance was near the end of the game. In between the last dungeon and the second last is a big field, and a shrine where you can save and heal for free. In this field the enemies are much harder than those in the cave you just emerged from, and after that you have the final dungeon. Essentially you are expected to grind say 5-10 levels here, on enemies that could well wipe out your party. This was the only time I needed to level grind, but it was brutal.

There is more new in this game than just the battles though. A big one is the fact that the world is so much bigger. That isn’t to say that the first game felt small, but it relied primarily on wandering back and forth aimlessly and highly repetitious battles for it to feel at all big. Dragon Quest 2 is so large that the entire overworld of the first game is actually in it. While you technically don’t need to go there, and most of the towns and dungeons are gone, the continent (now called the land of “Alefgard”) is almost completely intact. It even has the same music. Alefgard makes up around 20%of the game map, the rest of the world being accessible by boat. This is the second big upgrade over the first game. You have a much larger world to explore, and there are plenty of places to find new items and information. After about the first 1/4 of the game, the world basically completely opens up to you, and the only thing restricting you from going most places will be your character’s experience levels. The prospect of exploring this world sounds enticing, and it is better than wandering around until you stumble on what you need, like the first game. However I feel that the much increased vastness of the world ultimately makes the games one significant flaw all the more apparent.

This flaw of which I speak is one that was apparent in the first game and is, in honesty, very typical of old RPGs even through the SNES era. What I speak of is the feel of aimlessness. The story is thin and your immediate objectives are essentially not laid out for you. The portion of the game before you get your boat is actually pretty solid in this respect. You spend your time recruiting your allies and following a fairly logical/linear path. Once you have your boat however, you find yourself in the same pickle as the first hero. You have the whole world open to you, and no clue where to go or what to do. If you visit towns and talk to people you get tidbits of information, but your overall goal is not very well illuminated at all. In fact it is quite possible to get all the way to Hargon’s Temple and not know how to dispel the illusion guarding it. You have to collect 5 crests, and have them combined into the charm of Rubiss in order to break this illusion. Where are the crests? Who knows. A couple of them are pretty easy to find, and even have very direct clues. Some of them are hidden seemingly completely at random. Your only real clue is in the form of the “echo flute”. If you find some sunken treasure and give it to a certain person you get said flute. When played it will echo, telling you a crest is in the area. So basically once your leads are exhausted, your only course of action is to play this flute in every area in the game, and when you find the right area search every single tile in the area. I honestly feel this game would have been so much better if the crests were hidden in 5 dungeons like every other game, or at least in chests instead of on a random tile that is exactly the same as every other tile around it. When you are reduced to scouring every area of the game, this is where the bigger game world is a curse rather than a blessing.

In the end of the day Dragon Warrior II is much better than it’s predecessor. In my experience it even had considerably less grinding for gold and experience. The battles are much more complex and interesting, and the exploration is an improvement over random wandering. It fails miserably in giving you direction, and lacks in storyline, but it is still a notch above the first game in both these categories. It also introduces many of the things that have become commonplace in the Dragon Quest series, such as many of the trademark enemies or the system of multiple types of locked doors and corresponding keys. It was overall much less painless than the first game and much of it was pretty enjoyable, but it still feels quite aged. As I said at the beginning, it feels much like two steps forward one step back. You can taste the greatness in this series’ future, but it just isn’t there yet.