Dragon Quest II is Much Better than the First Game

Dragon Quest II is a step up from the first game. It is also a game that I really want to like. When I played it a few years ago, I enjoyed most of the game, but I found it frustrating. There are a lot of good things in this game.

The graphics didn’t see much of an upgrade, but the gameplay was improved. Dragon Quest II also has a better story and a few other things that I personally like to see in an RPG. It is a more complete game.

When I first played this game, I grew tired of the seemingly endless fetch quests for key items and the subsequent grinding for levels and money. I don’t think this was really the game’s fault. It had more to do with what was going on in my life at the time.

Thankfully, I decided to do a project where I compare retro RPGs, and I gave this game another chance. I’ll do what I normally do for games like this and review it, then I’ll compare Dragon Quest II to the second entries in the Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star series.

TLDR: Dragon Quest II has a better story and slightly better graphics than the first game

Narrative

This game picks up years after the end of the first game. The descendants of the hero from the first game have gone on to create three kingdoms. One of those kingdoms is attacked, and a messenger goes to get help from the other two.

Once you’ve assembled your party, the player continues on a series of quests to gather the items, weapons, and armor that are required to reach and defeat the big bad guy. Something like this happens in almost every RPG.

Eventually, the story leads you back to the land where the first game took place. This is a nice part of the story, and it shows that the game’s world is much larger. This is something I’ll talk about more when I get to the third game.

You get to meet a descendant of the Dragonlord, which made me smile the first time I played this. Everything is leading up to a confrontation with another big bad guy, much like the first game and many other RPGs.

This is an improvement over the first game’s story. I like that you go on a short quest to find your party members, that you can go back to the first game’s kingdom, and that this adventure feels grander than the previous game. While I have a few minor issues with it, I found it to be a fun high fantasy adventure.

Gameplay

In Dragon Quest II, you have a party of three characters, and you have to go on a quest to assemble your party. This is something that I love in retro RPGs. It’s a really cool way to do things, and I think this game does a great job with it.

There are three main characters in the game. Two are princes and one is a princess. They don’t have classes per se, but they’re set up in a way to complement each other. Here is what I mean:

• Main Protagonist – This is the character you start with. He is set up to be the Warrior/Knight, and doesn’t have magic.
• Esgar – The second character you get. He is set up to be a cleric or battle mage. This means he can carry some strong weapons and armor, but also has healing and combat magic.
• Roz – She is your mage. Which means she has weaker physical attacks, can’t wear heavy armor, and knows stronger magic compared to Esgar.

The magic system is mostly unchanged, aside from being spread between two characters. As they gain experience, they learn newer and more powerful spells. Both have healing, status effects, and attack magic.

There is more strategy to the combat in this game. You fight more enemies, and your characters have different skill sets, as opposed to having one character that does everything. It is nicer than simply having your character attack the sole enemy that you’re fighting.

The game’s world is much larger than the first game. This allows developers to create a way for you to travel around in a ship to get to some locations a little faster. This was something missing from the first game, making this one a little more fun.

Dragon Quest II also has more puzzles for the player to solve by using key items. This also happened in the first game, but the second gave us more and made them more fun.

There are more boss characters in this game. They look very good, and aren’t simply enemies you’ll have to fight later in the game. It is one of the better parts of this game.

You can also find walkthroughs of the game online. Here is a link to the one that I used when I was playing it for this review (Link).

Overall, I like the gameplay quite a bit. It is much better than the first game, and I like the improvements the developers made to the formula they had. The developers for the Dragon Quest series make small changes to the base game in each sequel, and the changes to the gameplay in Dragon Quest II resulted in a better game.

Visuals

This is a more cinematic game than the first. Dragon Quest II has the player fighting more enemies, features more cutscenes, and has a larger world map. This game is a slight upgrade graphically over the first game, but it has a few problems.

My biggest issue is with the battle scenes. They’ve been turned into the same boring black background with text boxes that you’ll see in Final Fantasy and Destiny of an Emperor. While there are more enemies on the screen, they don’t make up for the lack of graphics on this screen.

The battle screens don’t have animations, and you don’t see anything special when you use a spell. Dragon Quest II’s battles look the same as the first game, but don’t have the graphics for the location you’re fighting in. It is in a first-person perspective, and you don’t see your party members.

The enemies look a little better than in the first game. The original group of monsters is still here, and there are more that look great! You still get quite a few palette swaps, but there are more boss characters, and they stand out more than in the first game.

Overall, this is a step up in graphics, but not a very big one. I can’t really say that it is due to when the game was released, because all four Dragon Quest games on the NES have similar graphics. The second game has a more cinematic approach than the first.

8/10. Dragon Quest II is a step up from the first game in many ways. The gameplay is better overall, but the graphics are only marginally better. I like the story in this game more, even if it is still a standard high fantasy plot.

Pros

• Party System instead of a Solo Protagonist
• More Cinematic
• Good Story

Cons

• Similar Graphics to the First Game
• Grind Heavy Game
• Lots of Backtracking

Conclusion

I had fun with this game. Out of the first four games in this series, this was the game that I liked the least. When I first played it, I didn’t have a good time, which was most likely a result of what was going on in my life back then.

Looking back at this game, I can see that the developers had greatly improved on the first game. Having a party of characters, a better story, and more things to do made this game much better. Graphically, it isn’t too different from the first game.

I like the graphics, and I can understand that the developers didn’t have the time to make any drastic improvements to them. The battle screens suffered the most from this. Dragon Quest II is more fun to play than the first game.

If you liked this post, please check out my other reviews of retro RPGs, such as Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy.