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?

I played the first Dragon Warrior when it first came out, and beat the whole thing, and loved it. (I did it again a decade later and hated it, way too much grinding towards the end.)

I played Dragon Warrior II when it first came out... and as soon as I got the ship... I had no idea where to go. Every time I got the ship I'd go to a different island, save my game like a moron, and then die a billion times and then take a few years off and try again. I've still never beaten it. I even tried cheating through an emulator and still couldn't find where to go. I didn't want to look up a FAQ and I couldn't find any clues. Blech. But yeah, that green guy is pretty useless in your party the whole time, and Baboons are horrible.

Good game when I played it back then. However my tastes have been refined and i'm not so much into endless grinding.

The no backgrounds I suspect was because the world maps started to become much larger and more variety in the monsters. Though often just had a palette change.

Numo? Your referring to the other male party member I bet. I recall names were a bit random, but some jumped up more often. Then again i haven't played in 20 some years? Best part of utility spell members was that spells like sleep do work on bosses :P.

Actually, Final Fantasy came out around the same time as DQ3. DQ3 already had lots of information out about it before FF1. It just may seem like DQ3 is a significantly later game because of how much more advanced it is, and how much more content there is.


I am afraid I don't recall DQ1 or 2. I haven't played them in 20 years. Although I played DQ3 5 or 6 years ago (maybe more) on GBC and it seemed alright. FF1 is fairly fun too if you have charts of everything; when you buy weapons and such, no information is given - you can't tell how powerful a weapon (for example) is until you equip it and compare the stats to the last weapon you had, you can't even see who can equip a weapon until you try to do it.

On the bright side; the magic system is WAY more fun than the over-powered system (suck down eithers which can be bought, and blow your enemies away with typical mp consuming spells) of the remade FF games. Plus FF1's art style is more charming. 1 save though, and like Dragon Quest, if you are playing on NES then the game data will erase the moment you turn off the system =P

If you replace the battery, the whole loosing your save when turning off the system would be fixed. I did it specifically to my Dragon Warrior II game so I could finish it without having to leave the system on.