I was in a bit of a lull in games while I waited for some that I had ordered to show up, so I decided to just attempt to clear out Dragon Warrior II before my new ones showed up, and it turns out that Dragon Warrior II is actually a lot longer and deeper than its predecessor! So I ended up sitting on the new games for a few days while I wrapped this one up, but now I can retire this cart. Like with my review of Dragon Warrior, I played the Game Boy Color remakes of the game.
Dragon Warrior II is known in japan as Dragon Quest II, and is the sequel to the hugely influential Dragon Quest. The game takes the basic mechanics of its predecessor, and adds in a ton of new elements, some good, and some bad. It's still a turn-based RPG with the same basic plot, however, as you control descendants of the legendary warrior Loto (Erdrick in the Japanese version) as they attempt to stop an evil figure from conquering their world.
There's a lot of new stuff here to digest, so I cover these quickly. First, and best, your party now has three predetermined members, each of whom has their own skills and specialties. This, along with the fact that you can now encounter more than one enemy at a time, creates some new strategic decision making in a series that, prior to this, had an extremely limited scope of decisions to make on each turn. It also does away with the old, and dreadful, system in which you needed to buy individual keys which would break after each use, and allows you to grab permanent keys now that will progressively unlock new areas for you to explore. The world is absolutely enormous compared to the first game, and that's wonderful. You also get a world map that helps you to keep track of what part of this world you've been to and where you are currently, and a ship that will allow you to cross the seas to visit all of the newly unlocked areas. There are also little quality of life upgrades throughout, most notable of which is that you can now at many spots throughout the world, a necessity now that the world is so much more sizeable.
I found that a bigger world would have been completely fine, especially with the new tools given to explore it, if there was a more defined objective for the player at each point in the game. While Dragon Warrior felt like there were a mere handful of things to accomplish, and there was clear communication as to where to go next, Dragon Warrior II felt too wide open, and the clues given to you as to how to find the next objective are sparse and vague, and the landmarks you're looking for are frequently difficult to find, particularly when they're tiny islands in the middle of the ocean. I complained in my review of Phantasy Star that the game felt so difficult to navigate that it was unbeatable without a guide, and this game felt similar, albeit with far less oppression. I think you could beat Dragon Warrior II without a guide, but it legitimately would have taken over 50 hours of exploring the map, writing down clues, and a lot of trial and error to get there. I'm not down for that kind of thing these days, with many children and decreasing amounts of time, but it was at least slightly more manageable than Phantasy Star. But to clear the game, you'll need to find (and this is not an exclusive list, just my best memory) an evil statue, sun crest, water crest, life crest, two other crests I can't remember, a Rubiss charm, a wind cape, and that's to say nothing of the premium gear you'll need to survive the crushing journey to the end boss. There are clues to find each of these, but only a handful are particularly obvious, or have some sort of natural gameplay funnel that help you to continue to progress, rather than to spin in circles.
The visuals were identical to the first. Fine, but nothing special.
I actually had a few chances to listen to the music this time, and thought there were several standout tracks. It's nothing that would stand up to an average Uematsu score, but it was very good.
This game felt a bit like the early Final Fantasy titles-pushing boundaries, possessed of great promise, but ultimately unfulfilled until a later title (Final Fantasy IV). But I know very little about the Dragon Quest series, having played only the first two games in the series, so I'm not sure at what point they'll hit that nice equilibrium, if at all. I definitely preferred the simplicity of the first game, but appreciated the big swings that they took to broaden Dragon Quest into what feels like a tremendously grand epic. I'll give it an 8.5/10.
Up next on What I'm Playing is a quick jaunt through a newly acquired title that's definitely on brand. Check out a little teaser below...
-TRO
No comments:
Post a Comment