Of course, after borrowing the 4th game, falling in love with the series, buying the first, trying to buy the 4th that I played and not getting it, then chasing the other three for 5-20 years in between....Dragon Warrior II was one of the releases I thought a little less about, because every time I read about it, it was talked about like it was the "dark horse" of the series. As such, I never seriously gave it a play through until 2020.

The game was so rushed to release that they could not properly playtest it, and that seems, per many interviews, to be something that hangs on the head of the developers of the original 8-bit release(s) to this day. However, what came out is actually not bad at all, actually, it's actually something I'd consider well in-line with the Dragon Quest franchise's quality overall in general. TBH, it's a bit impressive it works so well given the story of it's lack of playtesting.

Of course, in 1990, due to the failure of the initial release in 1989 paired up with Nintendo, Enix released this game on their own with Nintendo's blessing as Dragon Warrior II. No graphics alterations were required, but there were tweaks to various sexual and religious references from the Japan original, as well as the addition of battery backup just like last time with Dragon Warrior. The game did just a little less as successfully than the initial release, and thusly is a little bit less as common - like $15 vs. $50 uncommon.

From the get-go, the tropes are blown out of the water. Your Niece might be dead, and her family for sure IS. Meanwhile, your nephew keeps puttering around the countryside and you have to chase after him. Along the way, you'll go through many interesting side quests including saving the daughter of a town official, looking for lost treasure, invading many towers and castles, using new vehicles, and opening up more information on Hargon.

First is the obvious introduction of larger "stone" graphics, as well as now a new, front-and-down 45 degree angle fiew which gives some "depth" to the picture now. We now have 4 tile objects such as large doors, large stones, and even large 4-tile castles. This gives a bit more of a perspective of "scale" and makes things feel just a little more immersive. Back are a lot of the old tiles from Dragon Quest 1 though like the trees, sand, grass, mountains, hills, force fields, poison, and whatnot. It does not veer from the original aesthetic so much though that it feels like a completely different game from a completley different maker, it's still very much a Chunsoft production.

And graphics play a more vital role in Dragon Warrior/Quest II than previously in that we have 3 types of door, and a new feature similiar to Ultima's "Moon Gates" known as "portals" or "Warps" - usually found within a new land item type - Monoliths. Monoliths are little structures, usually found near a body of water or in a valley somewhere, that when you go to them, you'll find at least one of these "portals" and possibly even an NPC to go with them.

That said, the Overworld theme does make a re-appearance but with some instrumentation changest hat make it a little more comedic, bubbly, and ear friendly on repeat, as Alefgard takes up about 1/9th of the map, and it's only on that one specific continent, indicating there's a lot more musical context in DQII than there was in the first. Once you obtain all three party members we obtain a new Overworld theme a bit more uptempo than the one you get when you're starting out and all alone, and it's another long, long, piece of music.

How this is achieved is the first half of the game is very linear like the first Dragon Warrior. You start off with the King of Midenhall, sent off on a clear quest to find your relatives and go defeat Hargon. So you are sent to Cannok to find the prince, then sent to a cave, then back to Cannock, then to Midenhall again, only to find him in between in a little town. Then we snag him, find Princess Moonbrooke, go through some adventures in various towers, caves, and rescuing a lady in a town from which we recieve a ship....and then...we get to Alefgard - familiar territory.

It is with Alefgard that the game breaks from a linear fetch quest into something resembling a Western RPG - non-linear, choose your own path, and this is the part that everyone seems to complain about. It's sort of like you've been doggy paddling in the shallow end of the pool in swimming lessons all year, and now it just tosses you off the 20 foot deep diving board end of the pool, and you have to figure it out before you drown. But what you lose in linearity, you make up for in true adventure. While many complain how HARD this is - the hardness is really not that bad at all, actually, with some extra exploration, I've found it to be VERY well balanced.

That said, it's not to say that Dragon Quest/Warrior II lacks some rather challenging moments. One of hte toughest parts of the game is the "Cave to Ragnarok/Rhone" - a very strange, if a little convoluted, cave that ends with a Super mario Bros. 4-4 like section where the pathway only works if you take SPECIFIC paths. To make it worse you have fallaway floors that drop you into the infamous Hork pit, and even if you do survive you start to encounter the hardest baddies in the entire game, and they can cast spells that will wipe out your entire party in a single pass if you're extremely unlucky. Immediatley after this, the game becomes almost entirely abour grinding - which is the one thing EVERYONE gripes about in Dragon Warrior II.

The gripe starts with a story that Enix/Chunsoft was set to make the game before even a year had passed since the first one, and so they hurriedly had to rush it out and never got to complete playtesting before reproduction and distribution. So this lead to a rather challenging scenario of a huge "difficulty spike" toward the end of the game, while fighting monsters in Rhone. I would like to argue though that they made the perfect concessions for this in this particular game - a Monolith/Healer House/Savegame spot with a portal back to the main overworld - sparing you the horror of surviving that bloody infernal cave again. And it's only about a 5 minute walk from Hargon's castle.

Battles in this game are turn-based where you select all of your character's moves at the start of the battle, and then theh computer parses the battle commands telling the story of the fight. Each character has an option to fight, spell, item, or the new "parry" command that halves the damage inflicted by an enemy. The leader (first guy in line) gets the "Run" command to attempt to run away. If you fail to run, you lose a turn and the monsters take theirs. We have lost the swanky backdrops in favor of the cmore complex calculations required in DQII, but what we gained was a true RPG experience in the unique Dragon Quest vein.