Review: Dragon Quest II (a.k.a. Dragon Warrior II)

Dragon Quest has its place in history, but I consider its sequel to be a superior game. It is certainly not without flaw (console RPGs were a fledgling genre in the NES era, still very much in the process of hammering out the details of their formula), but it offers many improvements over the first game.

To start with, the game opens with a dramatic "cut scene" (in which the action unfolds on screen without the player's control), involving a monster army invading a castle. Here we see the narrative potential of the RPG genre expanded in a monumental way. Although it is only a short, solitary scene in this game, this dramatic evolution paves the way for some of the best and most memorable scenes in RPGs later on down the line.

The graphics and gameplay do not seem to be significantly improved since the first Dragon Quest - at a glance - but a closer look will reveal some integral improvements to the gameplay formula. Starting with the fundamentals, you no longer have to select a command to climb stairs - you can just walk over them!

You are also given an option within the menu to equip the weapons and armor you carry, instead of just using the last one you bought (and automatically selling the one you had before that). This change is actually necessary on account of the fact that this game introduces multiple party members (the other two of which you meet along your journey). The game also features multiple enemies as well - up to as much as 8 on the screen at one time (depending on how big they are).

The battle command menu more closely resembles the one I'm familiar with from Final Fantasy. Also, the battles take up the whole screen, instead of just a central window. It's less pretty though, as you fight against a plain black background (even Final Fantasy had geographical backdrops along the top of the battle screen).

We're still dealing with a very basic plot here - evil sorcerer threatens the safety of the countryside and must be defeated. No interesting narrative complexities like, for example, the Big Bad is influencing events from the past through four generals who are draining the planet's energy. However, unlike Final Fantasy (for which each game in the series is self-contained), this game is a direct sequel to Dragon Quest, starring the descendants of the first game's hero, and taking place in a larger section of the same world (the first game's landmass is even accessible in the sequel, though it's been shrunken a bit - but not to the extent seen in Zelda II).

The first Dragon Quest was severely centralized to the starting castle, which was the only place you could save your game. I'm happy to discover that Dragon Quest II features multiple locations where you can save your game, but there's still not one in every town, and you can't save on the world map either. It's a decided improvement, but there's still room to grow.

The dungeons have improved immensely. The need for a light source (torch, magic spell, etc.) has been eliminated, for better or worse (it was a neat gameplay element, but also kind of a pain in the ass). The dungeons are still pretty basic, but much more immersive. Instead of the "dark cellar" look, they now come in two varieties: cave, and tower. The sea cave (which is actually volcanic) introduces some environmental specialization, which is an improvement over the last game, but it's still not to the level of Final Fantasy (whose Earth Cave felt different than its Ice Cave, which felt different than its Volcano, etc.).

Note the introduction of the ubiquitous poison status ailment, that slowly drains health! With multiple party members comes the need to occasionally revive fallen comrades (and the inn doesn't cover this service yet), so the curse remover from the first game has been upgraded, and now not only removes curses, but also poison, and brings fallen party members back from the dead (like the clinic from the first Final Fantasy). At a steep cost, though.

I am very pleased that the keys in this game (there are three of them, not including a certain one-time use special occasion key) are reusable master items and not disposable items that you have to keep wasting money on buying in mass quantities! There's also a spell you learn (at a rather high level) that ultimately makes the keys useless (which is good, because it frees up some inventory space).

On the subject of inventory, this game does not yet have a separate inventory for "key items". Also, your equipment takes up precious space in your item inventory. There are separate inventories for each of your three characters, though, which helps mitigate the need to carry more items for more people. The process by which you can trade items between characters is a bit tedious, though.

As a con, I'm sorry to say that Dragon Quest II has the same problem with encounter rates as the first game. You could walk two steps between encounters, or forty (and two seems to be far more frequent). Plus, with multiple enemies per encounter (and the overall high level of difficulty in this game), combat can become tedious and frustrating very quickly.

With multiple party members we get a glimpse into the compartmentalization of roles in RPGs. In the first Dragon Quest, your character took care of everything - namely, fighting and magic. Here, you have one character who specializes in fighting, another who specializes in magic, and a third who is kind of a jack of both trades. This would seem to be an early version of the class system which Final Fantasy would experiment with a whole lot.

Game progression is far more opaquely gated than last time, with multiple choke points requiring (for example) the acquisition of each of the two additions to your team, in order to advance to new areas. I have no problem with gating itself (though it's fun to try to "sequence break" games after you've mastered them), but I'll admit that having a slightly more logical obstacle (e.g., to use an example from Final Fantasy, having to find some TNT so the dwarves can blow open a canal for your ship to pass through) than a knight or an old man telling you "you can't go further until you do so-and-so" would be optimal.

Battle tactics are much different in a game that is not limited to one-on-one fights. As frustrating as it is to have your only character put to sleep, having an army of Magic Ants casting sleep on your entire party one after another is soul-crushingly annoying (I'm reminded of the paralysis-casting armies of Spectres/Geists/etc. in Final Fantasy). It also sucks that you have a tough fighter at the head of your party, but the enemies will frequently go after your weaker spellcaster. And if they take him out, you can no longer heal yourself. You can't even cast Return to start your trek over from the last village you visited. And it costs a lot of money to revive him. I know the game needs to be challenging, but this setup actually incentivizes me to hit reset rather than tough it out.

I think it's a bit sexist that in your whole group, the female is the only one who can't wear armor. (And it's not just because she's a spellcaster, because your other, male, spellcaster, who isn't much of a fighter anyway, can still wear armor). Maybe I'm just too progressive, though.

Mark this down in your history books, kids: Dragon Quest II features a ship vehicle! It's very slow, though. Your view isn't very wide, and the world is huge. Plus, like in Final Fantasy, you still encounter enemies on the open sea. So, lots of roaming, and again with the encounters becoming tedious.

The world opens up a lot once you get the ship, and it gets a lot less linear, too, as you're sent off looking for a bunch of crests with almost no clues as to where to find them (or what might be the best order in seeking them out). Frankly, I think I enjoyed the game better when it had a concise focus, and I knew what I was supposed to be doing. I love adventure games, but I think maybe the random encounters take away a lot of the fun of exploring and figuring things out on your own, by trial and error.

On the other hand, the larger world (with more places to visit) improves the pace of the game. Rarely have I felt trapped and in need of an excessive amount of grinding to level up before being strong enough to take on the next challenge (at least until Rhone, that is). So I guess it's a mixed blessing, at best.

I have to complain about the treasure chests. Apart from maybe one or two key items, chests mostly contain a paltry amount of gold, or outdated equipment that you don't need and can rarely be sold for a decent price. It seems that dungeons are designed more to trick you into walking down blind alleys than to force you to cover extra ground in order to collect potentially precious treasure.

The seemingly arbitrary scattering of save points and healers (who can bring fallen party members back to life) is inconvenient and annoying at times. Every town has an inn, which is good, but if a party member dies, then you're screwed until you can find a healer. And not every town that has a save point (which are, relatively speaking, rare) also has a healer, which means I'm wandering from one town to the next (and then the next), just trying to get my party member back to life so I can tackle a really difficult dungeon again... (An airship would be super useful here)! I'm not sure what benefit the scattering of healers is (the scattering of save points makes a little bit of sense). It makes the game harder, yeah, but in a frustrating rather than in a challenging way.

Not every town has an item shop, either, which is completely baffling. I can understand different towns having different wares, but you can only sell items (including weapons and armor) at item shops - weapon shops don't give you the option to sell. I have no idea what kind of sense that's supposed to make.

The inclusion of myriad teleporter pods throughout the world in this game would seem to alleviate some of the wandering troubles, but the connections are sometimes arbitrary, and often still require a good bit of walking around to get anywhere useful. Really, the ideal solution here is an airship. But alas, there is none in this game.

The farther I get in this game, the more complaints I'm going to have about the increasingly difficult and frustrating gameplay. For example: I hate the "strange jig" enemy technique. It's a good idea - attacking spellcasters where it hurts: their MP pool - but it's too strong. MP draining techniques have never been this frustrating in the Final Fantasy games I've played. Part of the problem is that the technique saps too much MP, but another part is that there are no items to recover MP - not even expensive ones! Well, there's one, but you can only win it in the lottery, which is a game of chance, and the odds are against you. Poor game design with this decision.

And it's especially frustrating considering that at a certain point in the game, I've come to rely on using a teleport spell to escape dungeons when I get weak, so I don't have to hold back and save my strength for the return journey. But one battle deep in a tough dungeon could have all of my spellcaster's MP sapped and then I'm screwed, having to restart and lose all my progress (read: experience) if I'm not willing to take the hit to my goldpurse. The threat of this happening is perfectly acceptable, but the game should provide an option to the player to avoid it (read: MP restoring items), even if that comes at a cost.

Let me just say that the Cave to Rhone is a real pain in the ass, with all of its unfair sorcery, and tough enemies.

I'm realizing that the enemy encounters are frustrating not because they're hard (although they are frequently challenging), but simply because they're a bore. They're way too frequent, but they also often take too much time to complete. In one floor of a dungeon, I often encounter enemies alone or in pairs, and it doesn't bother me so much. It's true that these encounters are easier, even where the individual enemies are no slouches (three against one or two is still good odds). But it's just that getting into an encounter with five enemies, whittling them down through several turns, then taking two steps and running into another encounter with six more enemies, is annoying.

Maybe the problem is that there is no "kill" spell like Nuke or Ultima or Meteo or what have you, that you can use (even if it requires great cost) to annihilate screens full of enemies (provided they're not super strong). That would go a long way in alleviating my frustration. But of the most powerful spells I've learned up to the second to last dungeon in the game, one of them only targets groups of like enemies (not every enemy on the screen), and the other one, though it does target every enemy on the screen, is not any stronger than the spellcaster's attack (he's a mediocre fighter (which says a lot about the spell), unlike my other spellcaster, but still not a good fighter), so the only advantage there is hitting all the enemies and not doing any more damage to each one, like a good upper level spell should. (Correction: you do learn a stronger spell at a certain point, but that doesn't really help at lower levels).

Interesting note: Attackbot seems like it might be a precursor to Final Fantasy's WarMech (superstrong robot enemy in high level dungeon), although it isn't quite on the same scale of woah.

It may be that I've lost my patience, or else that I'm trying to play through these games too quickly (I want to experience as much of them in as little time as possible, to boost my experience and fuel my inspiration while working on my own RPG). When I first played Final Fantasy (as a child), I considered the fact that playing it through to the end and beating it wasn't a task that took hours or days or weeks (as with most non-RPG games), but more on the scale of months, or even years, as part of what made it such a unique and awesome experience. It definitely seems that old games like Dragon Quest II would benefit from a slower pace, picking it up every now and then and playing for a bit until the difficulty and the grinding get frustrating, then putting it down and taking a rest, then picking it up again later and making some more progress, and slowly, gradually getting stronger and getting farther through the game. Trying to hurry through the process (as I am) leads to much frustration. That doesn't mean the game is broken, necessarily, but it certainly seems to be a different playing philosophy than what's popular nowadays.

On the other hand, some of the things you have to figure out to progress (like, in this game, the location of five hidden crests), are prohibitively difficult for someone without a strategy guide (and at this stage in my life, although I do have some pride in figuring things out for myself, I'm not above seeking aid to speed along the process and alleviate frustration). I'm a fan of games at least giving you some clue so that you can put the pieces together and figure everything out without relying on random, dumb, blind (mute?), luck. There are plenty of clues doled out by NPCs in these RPGs, but so frequently they are overly vague or otherwise inadequate. Whether this is a symptom of poor translation, as I think is often the case, or not, it's really not forgivable.

I like the whole idea of Rhone, as an endgame area (and not just a dungeon). It's hard to get to, and it has really tough enemies - big enemies that look intimidating, and pack a powerful punch. But the game is also merciful in that it gives you a free heal/save location right in the midst of it, which makes building up your levels until you're ready to face that final dungeon relatively easy. It's not only good from a gameplay standpoint, but it also has an effective mood and atmosphere for the player, which is a far cry from the last Dragon Quest, where even the last time you turned on the game before beating the final dungeon, you were still setting out from the same castle you started the game in. It gives that sense of geographical progress that the last game was missing, and that will be expanded upon in RPGs to come (for example, Final Fantasy IV's final dungeon is located on the moon).

Lack of pointers on what all the equipment does would be a lot more frustrating if I didn't have a strategy guide to consult. It would suck spending lots of gold on something that turns out to be not that good, or can't even be equipped by the character you bought it for. And I've heard rumors that the Magic Armor has special defensive properties against fire magic, which makes it more desirable than the hella-expensive (really, ridiculously overpriced - highest priced item in the game, and by far - even if it was worth a damn, which it may not be) Mink Coat, which has an only slightly higher defense rating. How are we supposed to figure these things out?

Rhone is accurately described as a death land. Not only are the enemies tough enough to wipe you out pretty quickly if you're not careful - and you need to grind for several levels after reaching Rhone before you even stand a chance inside the final dungeon - but they also have techniques like Defeat, which can instantly kill your party members, and, even worse, the Gold Batboon's "Sacrifice", which might as well be called Instant Game Over. So far as I've seen, it's 100% effective, and it wipes out your entire party, so if the Gold Batboon chooses to cast it, that's it, game over.

You do, thankfully, learn a Revive spell at higher levels, which helps, but it can only be used by the same character as the Return spell - which can rush you back to safety (where you can heal up and save) - which means that if he's dead, it's not like you can just bring him back to life and then zip outta there. If that one character dies, you're pretty much fucked. And when the monsters have the capability of completely wiping out your chances in a single battle (even when you have high HP and MP), well...let's just say it's hard. Nintendo hard.

The fact that your spells are frequently ineffective is really frustrating. I understand spells like Sleep and Defeat being occasionally (even frequently) ineffective - that's part of their gamble. But when regular damage spells like Firebane and Explodet aren't working against enemies - and not because they're immune to the spell - it kinda sucks. It's a waste of MP (and a waste of a turn, too).

Also, what sense does it make to give the Sacrifice spell to the same person that has both Revive and Return? I can understand that giving different people Sacrifice and Revive kind of reduces the high impact cost of Sacrifice (although you'd still have the added cost in terms of MP, having to bring your character back to life after using it), but Return too? I can see using Sacrifice when you get really desperate, just to survive a battle and then warp back home to save your skin and try again. Except, you can't warp because the person who knows that spell was your sacrifice! So there's really no point in using it, except like one time in the final final battle, if that...

We see here, in Dragon Quest II, what I presume to be the first example of the "boss gauntlet" in the final dungeon of an RPG. It's a great idea, and it really ups the stakes at the end of the game, although the sheer difficulty and reliance on luck rather than skill in order to persevere in this game makes it more frustrating than exciting.

The endgame here is just a real chore. Final dungeons in my favorite Final Fantasy games were also tough, and required multiple passes to clear, but I don't remember them being nearly as frustrating. Take the Crystal Tower in Final Fantasy IV, for example. The dungeon itself was interesting enough, with changing level design as you go deeper and deeper, that held your attention, and enough goodies (not just bosses serving as physical obstacles, but optional challenges that reward you with powerful equipment) to keep you motivated to explore and keep pushing on.

Here, though, after a while of grinding and pushing forward bit by bit, I'm just sick of it and want the game to be over and done with already. And I'm several levels stronger than I was to start with when I reached this area (and we're talking high levels here, like from Level 25 to Level 30), and I can still get pretty much wiped out in a single battle if my luck runs sour. (Plus, those encounters are still too frequent, on average). I don't want to have to rely so much on luck. I'd rather rely on my own power. But even at this high level, sometimes I'll cast an expensive offensive spell, and it won't even hit the enemy...

This game's replay value is essentially zilch, mainly because by the time you've beaten it (if you make it that far), you're so sick of it that you don't even want to play it anymore.

Giving bosses, in particular, the HealAll spell makes them especially challenging. I have yet to see an enemy exhaust its MP supply - but even that, if possible, is bound to require a lot of time. Otherwise, when the boss can just replenish all its HP with a single spell, it generally means the surest way of beating him is having a damage output (within a single turn in most instances, two or more only if you're lucky) that exceeds the boss's max HP, which is a high bar to pass. I think I prefer the approach that just gives bosses tons of HP to draw the battle out and make it more about endurance than the simple binary of whether or not you're a) lucky, and b) super-powered enough to obliterate the boss in a few turns. (Especially when leveling up further at this stage of the game involves zero novelty and extreme tedium). I haven't had any luck effectively casting StopSpell on bosses in this game either.

Functionally, it would seem that the final boss is simply a rehash of the first Dragon Quest's sorcerer transformed into a monstrous dragon (in a classic "this is the real final boss" move), but thematically, it introduces the concept of "Evil's Hand", in which what you think throughout the game will be the final boss is actually a puppet for the stronger, more monstrous evil that you will have to face in the end (Final Fantasy's Garland/Chaos and, better yet, Final Fantasy IV's Golbez/Zemus/Zeromus fit this pattern).

The final battle doesn't feel like a great challenge where you have to put all your strength and tactical knowledge together to defeat a powerful opponent. It feels like you just have to rail against him as much as you can, and hope that, by the power of luck, you happen to beat him (which depends largely on him not using HealAll too frequently). Your best spells don't even affect him. The only reliable damage you can deal is from your fighter. It got to the point where I was willing to break down and manipulate luck via the usage of save states (which is not something I like to do unless the game really makes it necessary), so I could just try fighting the final boss again and again, until I finally managed to beat him - not with any stronger stats, which would require way too much mind-numbing grinding, but with just a better roll of the dice - without making my way to him and beating all the prior bosses each and every time. It was frustrating enough doing it that way, I can't imagine how it would have been to original players without save state technology.

Concluding Remarks:

Dragon Quest II is really two different games. With all due respect to Dragon Quest - its place in history, and the foundation it laid down for a whole generation of video game RPGs - the first half of Dragon Quest II is a much more fun, and much less frustrating game. It feels like more of an adventure, with more exploration, and more characters, and not simply the distilled essence of tabletop RPG cliches. That having been said, it still comes up a little short of the first Final Fantasy in terms of epic scale, engrossing plot, and diversified gameplay mechanics.

Then you have the second half, where the difficulty gets ramped up, and the limitations and imbalance of the game escalate to a high level of frustration. It's worth giving Dragon Quest II a try, and, certainly, if you're looking for geek cred, you can put in the work to finish it. But don't feel bad if you have to drop it before the end, because I honestly can't imagine how the effort required to beat it could possibly be worth the paltry reward you get for seeing it through to the end. (Don't feel guilty about peeking in a strategy guide to see what the final boss looks like). There are better RPGs out there, with much better balance, that are much less frustrating to play, and to complete.