Much like when I compared Sweet Home with Dragon Quest, these two games are very different. Dragon Quest II is a vast improvement over the first game in its series, even if it still has issues. Sweet Home didn’t have a sequel, and it is a unique RPG for the time it was released.
Despite being a sequel, Dragon Quest II isn’t graphically different from the first game, but it is more cinematic. It also has a party of characters, and has more similarities to Phantasy Star than the other games I’ve looked at. I like the game, but it has some issues.
Sweet Home only has a few similarities to other RPGs. It is a turn-based RPG, but it is also a survival horror game, which makes the gameplay and story quite different. I’m going to give a brief introduction to each game before I get into the main differences between these games.
Game Descriptions/Overviews
As I look over the list of retro RPGs that I’ve played, I’m realizing that they are quite different from Sweet Home. It is fun to go over them and see how each was able to stand out in its own way. In this case, Sweet Home and Dragon Quest II are very different from each other, but have a few of the same mechanics common with turn-based RPGs.
Dragon Quest II has a lot of what I like in an RPG. It is a high fantasy game where you have to go on an adventure to find your party members. There is more grinding in this game than in other RPGs from the late 1980s. I like it, despite the high difficulty.
Sweet Home is a hybrid of an RPG and a survival horror game. It is a horror game where you have to explore a mansion. You control a group of five characters and divide them into two or more groups to solve puzzles, gather key items, and eventually fight a restless spirit.
These are short descriptions of what is in the games. They have quite a few differences, and it can be a little tricky to do a comparison of these games. Let’s go over the major differences between them, and then go into some of the other differences.
Main Differences
There is a lot to say about the differences between these games. I’ll focus on three of them here and get into the other in the next section. What I’ll cover here is the setting, gameplay, and graphics.
The two settings are dramatically different. Sweet Home is a horror game set in a mansion. It is a smaller story, but you’ll still have a large area to explore. Dragon Quest II is a high fantasy game where you go on a globe-trotting adventure to gather your party, key items, and eventually fight a big bad guy.
Sweet Home and Dragon Quest II have very different approaches to gameplay in an RPG. Sweet Home has more elements of a survival horror game in it; you have to do more inventory management, and there is a multi-party system that makes things more interesting. Dragon Quest II is what you might expect from a high fantasy RPG. You go on a quest to assemble your party, it has turn-based combat, and each character has a defined role as a fighter, mage, and healer.
The graphics and the games approach to storytelling are quite different. While Dragon Quest II is more cinematic than the previous game in the series, it still uses in-game graphics, and it isn’t much of a graphical improvement over the first game. Sweet Home looks wonderful! The enemies are well-detailed, it has cutscenes, and the graphics are as creepy as the setting.
There is so much more that I could get into here. Some of the core mechanics are the same, but just about everything else is different. Let’s go over some of those core mechanics next.
Comparing Core Mechanics (Combat, Story, Visuals, etc)
There are some similarities between the combat and battle screens of the two games. The stories are quite different, and the settings are also total opposites. I’ll try to keep this brief, as I’ve brought this stuff up earlier.
Both games are turn-based RPGs with the battle screens being in first-person. This is where the similarities end. Dragon Quest II has you fight multiple enemies, you can use magic, and battles take place on a black screen. Sweet Home has the player fight one enemy at a time, there isn’t magic in the game, and the battles are more detailed, with the battle screens showing you the location where the fight takes place.
I want to look at the magic system a little more. Dragon Quest has two characters use magic. They have offensive, healing, and status affecting magic. Sweet Home has a prayer ability. This kinda resembles magic if you squint a little. It increases your attack, and it has more uses outside of battle, where you have to use prayer to solve some puzzles.
Visually, the two games are far apart. Dragon Quest is bright and colorful, which reflects the game’s high fantasy setting. Sweet Home is dark and creepy, which is what you should expect from a horror game.
I’m going to stop here, because I already think I’ve repeated myself too much. Overall, it is fairly hard to find things that are similar between these games. I’m going to pivot here are get into what each of these games does better than the other.
What Does Dragon Quest II do Better?
Dragon Quest II does a few things that I like. It does a better job of setting up its story, and I like the way you put your party together. It is also an easier game to get into because it is a more traditional console RPG.
I really like it when RPGs have you go on a quest to assemble your party. It feels like a soft tutorial as you learn how each character plays while you level them up. Dragon Quest II does a decent job of doing this.
The battles are overall better in Dragon Quest II. You fight more enemies, and this makes the battles more difficult. Combat is one of the weaker areas of Sweet Home, and Dragon Quest II does it better in terms of gameplay.
I like this game more now than when I first played it. This is a difficult comparison, and much of what I said is all down to personal preference. If you want to play a high fantasy RPG, then this isn’t a bad option. It is a little more frustrating than others, but it is a good RPG.
What Does Sweet Home do Better?
There are a lot of things this game does that are better than Dragon Quest II. The visuals are better, I love the setting, and the setting is more interesting to me. I also like the gameplay and mechanics more than other RPGs on the NES.
I love the look of this game much more than Dragon Quest II. Sweet Home was released two years after Dragon Quest II, but that doesn’t really matter because the Dragon Quest series didn’t change art styles until they moved to the SNES. The sprites are more detailed, it looks creepier, and I love how the mansion looks.
I really like the setting of Sweet Home. There is something about exploring a creepy old mansion that I find very compelling. It also works in the puzzles and clues very well. You can see some of the things that would be reused in other horror games.
Sweet Home has some mechanics that are very fun! Having two parties is something different, and they work well with this game because it makes the puzzles more fun and the inventory management more of a factor in the game. The call mechanic is a very cool idea, as it helps to keep your characters close together and helps to keep everyone at the same level.
I could keep going, but these are some of the major things, and I don’t want to keep repeating myself. These are the big areas that I can point to as being better than Dragon Quest II. Let’s get into which is better and which one I would rather play.
Which is Better Overall and Why?
As I look at these two games closer and consider everything they bring to the table, I think Sweet Home is the better game. They both have some frustrating mechanics, but Sweet Home’s aren’t as bad. The setting, story, and gameplay are all better than Dragon Quest II.
There is something about keeping the setting small and limited to one location that I love. It works for a game like this, and it is refreshing to have something like this that isn’t trying to be a grand story, but still has you doing a lot of exploration. The mansion is set up like a maze, and you really have to work at solving the puzzles so you can explore all of it.
If you play through all or most of the RPGs on the home consoles from the 1980s and 1990s, you might get fatigued with high fantasy stories. Sweet Home is a horror game that is set in the 1980s, which helps it to stand out. In terms of the other RPGs, this one has you dealing with something mundane like defeating a ghost, instead of trying to defeat a god or emperor.
The gameplay took me some time to get the hang of because it was a little confusing. Both games use a menu system, but Sweet Home has commands that are very different because you can swap between party members, so you can solve the different puzzles. It is also possible to call the other characters to help you fight enemies. It is an ambitious game, which makes the gameplay better than some of the more traditional console RPGs.
This is somewhat closer than you might think. I simply love this game, and that has a lot to do with why I think it is better. The horror setting is very good, a nice change of pace, and it feels more grounded than the high and low fantasy RPGs on the home console.
Which Would I Rather Play?
Sweet Home is the game that I would rather play. I had more fun with it than Dragon Quest II. The graphics, story, and gameplay are better in Sweet Home.
The graphics are so much better than Dragon Quest II. Part of this is due to when the games were released, but there wasn’t as big a gap as you might think. Sweet Home looks creepy, has cutscenes, and the characters look better on the battle screen. Some of this is personal preference, but I really like how the enemies in Sweet Home look.
I’m a sucker for a good horror story, and Sweet Home has a good one. I like how you have to hunt for clues as to what happened, which adds to the story but isn’t necessary to enjoy it. You already have a cool setup of being trapped in a haunted house, and knowing that another group tried to fix things is a fun twist to the story.
Sweet Home does something different with its gameplay, and it is one of the biggest reasons why I like it. You control multiple parties, manage the inventory of each character, and swap party members around to solve puzzles. It is such a cool way of doing things in an RPG, and it isn’t like anything else on the NES.
I was very impressed when I finally got into the game. It took some time because the controls felt clunky, and I wasn’t sure what I needed to do. After I looked some things up, I started really enjoying what was going on, and enjoyed the game more than several other RPGs I’ve played.
Conclusion
The more I think about Sweet Home, the more I like it. There are so many unique things about it, and it really stands out from the other RPGs. It also helps that I love the story and setting. It fills a niche that I didn’t know was there.
Dragon Quest II is a perfectly fine RPG. It has issues, but I don’t think they’re as big a deal as other people do. It is an improvement on the first game in the series, but that doesn’t make it better than something like Sweet Home or Destiny of an Emperor.
I really like games like Sweet Home. It’s a unique game that is fun to mess around with and try to figure out how to play the game. Looking up information on the game was even more fun than playing it. Because it wasn’t officially released in North America, you’re at the mercy of fan translations, but many of them are very good.
If you liked this post, please check out my other posts, such as Sweet Home vs Final Fantasy or Sweet Home vs Phantasy Star.