I just finished Dragon Warrior II (NES) and wanted to share my thoughts on the game. I want to see if my experience with the game matches up with other people's who finished the game. Also, it would be nice to give some fellow vgchartz a fair warning as to what they are getting into if they want to play it. I am going to stick with a brief, well known format to this.
Where the game fits in time-wise: Between Dragon Warrior I (NES) and Final Fantasy (NES). Dragon Warrior III was released after FF.
The Good:
- At the beggining, the game has the old school JRPG feel to it. I turned the game on, ran to the overworld, and grinded me a few level-ups. Soon, I was whopping those enemies that were giving me a really hard time 30 min. or so ago. Fun stuff.
- The different areas are different enough to prevent them from blending together. The best way I have to say this is that they have personality. There are destroyed castles, shrines, swamp caves, hidden towns, areas surrounded by mountains, sea caves, etc. It may not sound like much, but for an early RPG on the NES, it must have been tough.
- The quests avoid the same variation of "go to this dungeon and defeat boss #14". There was some of that, but sometimes an important item meant going to a certain floor and perform a certain task to get what you need. You really needed to pay attention to what the NPCs said and maybe jot a couple notes down.
- You were generally free to go any direction you want on the world map to with few exceptions.
The Bad:
- The further I got in the game, the more it felt like level-ups were not impacting my ability to defeat enemies. It still seamed that enemies posed a significant threat to my party unless I leveled for a couple hours or so. Normally, I wouldn't mind the challenge. However,
- Some battles will result in my party dying simply because of the bad luck of not being able to run on the first turn. The worst example are the dragonflies, who's fire breathing ability could destroy my entire party in one turn if there were more than 2 dragonflies. Actually, an even worst example are the batboons, where if one of them uses Sacrifice, your entire party dies.
- The random encounter rate is horrible. It may have been this bad for Dragon Warrior I and Final Fantasy, but I don't remember it being so. Oftentimes, you will find yourself encountering a random battle one step away from the previous one.
- There were a few spells that could be used, but only a couple that were useful. The battles basically boiled down to: main character = attack, Numo = attack weak target, Princess = heal/parry. Even worse is later in the game, where the conservation of mana meant no offensive magic was used and it behooved me to run every encounter I could.
- When the game gives you freedom to go where you want to, there is little direction as to where to go. The NPCs will give you guidance as to which quests need completed, but no indication as to which ones you are ready for. At least in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, you can get a general idea of the difficulty by how far away from the starting point you were. Dragon Warrior II has no such indication.
- The game has a lot of ambiguity I did not cover on the previous bullet. Do you want to know if you character can equip that weapon, armor, if it is an improvement, what that spell does, etc? Too bad.
- There is no background on the battles. It may seem like nitpicking, but I remember that on Dragon Warrior I. It would be nice to be able to look at something other than a black screen when fighting monsters.
The Horrible:
- Numo was useless. The only thing he was good for was a couple spells. That being said, the later I got into the game, the more useless his spells became. I only ever used increase, to increase my parties defense in a battle, and revive. He was the only party member who could cast this spell, but he was also, usually, the first to die. Oh, he could also cast a couple spells, outside and return, that is really useful for getting out of a dungeon and returning to the last city with a save, but even one of those the princess could get. When I was going through the last dungeon, I lost Numo 2/3 the way through. I still beat the game, and I didn't feel loosing him significantly impacted my ability to do so.
I think I covered most of it. What do you guys think?
