Dragon Warrior II: First Thoughts
I’ll begin this by pointing out that I never finished either Dragon Warrior II or III. I rented them as a youth, and on-cartridge saves made finishing an RPG quite a task. That being said, owning I and IV made me see DW I as a pure anomaly, an artifact of history.
II has changed my mind; II is evolutionary, not revolutionary. The implementation of multiple save points and multiple party members bring it into line with a Final Fantasy I. An interesting feature of the “ancient” games was the lack of per-monster selection. You attack a “group” of two slimes and the actual attack placement is random (or implemented as a quiet heuristic in the game system). The strategic catch to this is that if both slimes, say, disappear before the attack, your attack is wasted (i.e., not redirected). This requires that the player devise a number of heuristics for directing attacks to maximize damage and minimize taken damage.
I have enjoyed this little quirk more now (perhaps because I am playing the game at 2.5x game clock!). One fairly interesting aspect of this is that the heuristics must change as the relative strength of your party against an enemy group increases. The big jump is when one player is able to kill the strongest enemy in one hit, at which the entire battle strategy must be rearranged.
Most of this is totally common sense. However, the mechanics of it are of interest to a wannabe game designer.
But, all in all, DW II is DW I’s legitimate son, not a redheaded stepchild.
One complaint: my party is a bunch of pansies (two magic-users supporting a magic-less tank???). And, HP does not increase sufficiently at level, although the wavelength on level gains has shrunk considerably (it’s good for sanity to jump two levels in thirty minutes to an hour).
I can’t tell if there is a fourth party member, but these two losers are really making me mad. Maybe I should actually let them start casting offensive magic…