|
 Dragon Warrior is a JRPG originally released for the Famicom in Japan in 1986 to much acclaim, and for the NES in North America in 1989 to not quite so much acclaim. In fact, for a while in 1990, Nintendo gave the game away with a subscription to Nintendo Power. Three years can be a long time for a medium to evolve, kids. That said, the words "Dragon Warrior is a JRPG" are fairly similar in understatement to "the Big Bang is an explosion". It's arguably not the first one, but it's the first one that blew up anywhere close to how it blew up. Of course it didn't come out of nowhere, there were definitely successful computer role playing games before then. In fact, series creator Yuji Horii was sent to the US by Enix as a prize for winning a game programming contest, and that's where he discovered the likes of Wizardry and Ultima. That's a hell of a lot of games today that trace their lineage directly to the bottleneck of this one man bringing inspiration home like a seed floating across the Pacific. Other notable staff members include Akira "Yeah, That Akira Toriyama" Toriyama on monster art duty (though Yuji Horii did the preliminary enemy design himself), and composer Koichi Sugiyama, who at the time was mostly known for scoring TV shows and commercials but was invited to work for Enix after sending them a lovely appreciative postcard. Aaaaaanyway. Let's play it. At this point I'm sure many among you dear readers are asking, "why though?" I've certainly asked myself the same question. I expect this to be a bit of a pill, to be honest. But here are a few answers I found. All things considered, Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest as it is known in Japan) is an incredibly successful and influential game. I want to explore and discuss its game design. I want to see what it did right, where it went wrong. I want context and hindsight. What did its successors improve on? What did they do worse? I have fond memories of the game, and I haven't played it in at least 25 years. English isn't my first language and I barely had the faintest grasp of it back then; I still remember the feel of the controller in my hands and the weight of the dictionary in my lap. Motivation's a hell of a thing. Today I'm a professional translator, thanks to video games and the Simpsons. Go figure. I want to hear its music again. I don't think the series' soundtracks start getting genuinely enjoyable on their own merits until the second game, but nostalgia critically hits for massive damage, as it often does. I want to LP Dragon Warrior 3, but I know that story won't have as much impact as I'd like if I don't go through both its predecessors. I'm not sure I'll make it that far, but I'd like to make it even further. We'll see! Finally, the last time I felt this good about a bad idea, I started a LP series about Shin Megami Tensei. That coulda gone a bit better, but also a lot worse! These will be reasons enough. Dragon Warrior has received several updated re-releases along the years, but today I choose the NES version. It's the one I grew up with of course, but I also think it'll be more interesting to look at in a context where it hadn't had the chance to learn from itself yet, especially if I make it further in the series and would like to detail its evolution. Besides, if you'd like to play it, now or sometime down the line, there'll still be pleasant surprises in store for you if you obtain a later version. There isn't much of substance to spoil here, but I'll still ask that you refrain from discussing events in the game that haven't happened yet, and also especially not to go into details regarding subsequent games in the series, as the first three games form a trilogy and there is definitely a strong chance we'll all get to them together. Oh, and, we have a silent protagonist on our hands, but I'll make him chatty because apparently that's how I roll. Besides, if I couldn't do this, I wouldn't be able to resist bringing in the SMT protagonist for color commentary instead and it wouldn't make sense and nobody wants that.  : Wow, rude.Alright then, that ought to do it. Time to pull the trigger on this bad boy. Come along, descendants of Erdrick, and let us not tempt the Fates. ------ Table of Contents Episode 1: BEGIN A NEW QUEST Episode 2: Reciprocal Slime Ultraviolence Episode 3: Thy bravery must be proven Episode 4: Ringless Episode 5: Woodwind Virtuoso Episode 6: I choose to call it archeology Episode 7: Okay, we're fighting demons now Episode 8: Hatching a scheme Episode 9: The Raid on Charlock Episode 10: Enter the Dragonlord FrankZP fucked around with this message at 22:38 on May 24, 2018 |
#
?
May 11, 2018 16:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:03 |
|
|
 Music: Title theme Here we go. Dragon Warrior was published by Nintendo in North America, which explains why they have the trademark. The series has been named "Dragon Quest" from the start in Japan, but there was some legal nonsense involving a paper & pen RPG called the same, and that lasted until 2005.  Man, and how. Music: Town theme We're greeted by a lively tune, that is also in fact the town theme. Later games have their own dedicated start-up menu song, but we have no such luxury today.  Three save slots! That's where their menu song budget went. The triangular cursor is blinking, but you can take my word that we're using Adventure Log 1, because we're worth it.  Holy crap, our name can have an extravagant eight characters! Upper and lower case! Glorious!  We're ZedPower, because I'm like 9 years old, I don't know much English, and it sounds Cool As Hell. As for the choice of message speed, there's typically no reason to use anything less than FAST, especially for a game this wordy. Everything that happens in combat is described in full sentences, so, yeah, you can imagine.  Music: Throne room We start our quest in front of the king, which sure as hell beats starting in a prison cell or on an executioner's block. Ahem. Pressing any button whatsoever, including any direction on the control pad, will prompt the king to start talking to us.   : It is told that in ages past Erdrick fought demons with a Ball of Light. Then came the Dragonlord who stole the precious globe and hid it in the darkness. Now, ZedPower, thou must help us recover the Ball of Light and restore peace to our land. The Dragonlord must be defeated. Take now whatever thou may find in these Treasure Chests to aid thee in thy quest. Then speak with the guards, for they have much knowledge that may aid thee. May the light shine upon thee, ZedPower.The first thing to note here is that the translation is rather well done. It's a bit of a strange thing to point out in 2018, but in that regard, not only was Dragon Warrior an exception in 1989, but it remained exceptional for a long, long time. All of our men are healthy, and all of our bases firmly remain in our possession. The faux-Elizabethan nonsense, I could take it or leave it. But hey, the translation's not merely competent, it also attempts an unnecessary flourish, and does so without falling on its face. The other thing to note is that the king's orders are light on actual directions. He's more of an idea man, apparently.  After a few seconds of not moving, a small status window appears out of the way in the upper left corner, letting us know our level, our hit points, our magic points, our gold, and our experience. Which is to say, all the stats that are good to have close at hand without going into menus. The screen is devoid of any kind of heads-up display while we're actually walking, which is very elegant.  Pressing the A button reveals an aspect of the interface which is decidedly less elegant. SPELL, STATUS and ITEM make sense. As for the rest... TALK should be a function of the B button, which has no use besides canceling out of menus. STAIRS should be redundant with walking on a stair tile, but our hero won't climb stairs without being told to. DOOR is entirely redundant with using a key from item menu, as all doors in the world are locked. And I think SEARCH has any purpose four times in the entire game. Using it on a tile with a chest on it only tells you that there is a chest on the tile; you need to choose TAKE to actually open it. Yikes, huh? Speaking of chests...    So, 120 gold, a torch with a market value of 8 gold, and a key that will open the door to this throne room and then disappear. It's not much of a haul, but it is in fact a door-opening tutorial, and the free torch ensures that a player will not enter their first dungeon without a source of light, even if they forget to visit the item shop. Remember: this is a lot of people's introduction to the RPG. It has to be baby steps. Anyway. Let's chat up the guards.  Oooh, a question.  : The king didn't mention a princess. That's odd. : Half a year now hath passed since the Princess was kidnapped by the enemy. Never does the King speak of it, but he must be suffering much. ZedPower, please save the princess.Bit of characterization for the king right there. He could be excused for not mentioning his daughter, because rescuing Princess Gwaelin is OPTIONAL. You can technically beat the game without ever even seeing her, and she'll be absent from the ending sequence. : Well I do now.: ZedPower, please save the Princess.: I'll see what I can do, but no promises! : Return to the Inn for a rest if thou art wounded in battle, ZedPower. Sleep heals all.More RPG basics that again require explanation.  : Yeah, got it.: Once used, the key will disappear, but the door will be open and thou may pass through. I refuse to use the ridiculous DOOR command and select our Magic Key from the inventory menu.  But we're not getting away from this other ridiculous command. Oh well.  Music: Tantegel Castle We're treated to an alternate version of the throne room music; its pitch is slightly different and it loops before the second portion kicks in. That's a strange choice, since you'll necessarily hear it more often than the throne room variant.  Which is to say, he'll save your game for you. He has the only copy of the Imperial Scrolls though, so he is in the fact the only person in the world who can save your game. Oof.  Gotta remind the new folk not to just turn off the console when they're done for the day! Now if they do it anyway, it's their own fault.    : Not in here for sure, soldier man.  With a flash of the screen, this old man restores our MP for free. Our maximum MP is zero. Dang!  This may be manual-only info, but we're also on the continent of Alefgard.  Garland may knock you down, but the servants of the Dragonlord'll outright kill ya.  Yeah, these assholes don't mess around.  This door only opens with a magic key and we just used the last one. Poor sap.  That's... grinding. He means grinding. Yep.  In case you forgot.  A good third of the castle ground floor is locked behind a magic door. It looks like we could walk around the outside of this tower here, but as soon as we pass the corner...   Music: Alefgard Good grief that takes me back. So, village in the east, nasty swamp castle across the river. We still don't exactly know where to go to stick it to this Dragonlord chump, so let's hit the town for some old-fashioned information gathering.  It's possible to run into a random encounter on the way, which is especially mean since we don't have weapons or armor yet. But the terrain around Tantegel Castle literally has half the encounter rate of similar terrain anywhere else in the world, and we can only meet the two weakest enemies in the game here.  We make it to safety before getting to know the local hoodlums, though. Music: Town theme  : Ah, yes, the ex-paradise. I have to presume these sand tiles are meant to signify terrible devastation. You do what you can with what you got!   There's no poison status ailment to worry about, but stepping in marsh tiles, like we saw around that castle to the southeast, causes 2 points of damage.  Still in RPG 101.   Dang, look at these names! There's uppercase, there's lowercase, and when there's a second word, it gets a second line! No CP.SWRD or SM.SHLD nonsense here! Is this really 1986? Anyway, this is our first gameplay decision. The Copper Sword is very strong (even though an actual sword made out of copper would be pretty awful), but considering the enemies around here drop 1 or 2 gold each, it's beyond our reach at the moment. The Small Shield is not very cost-effective, but it does stack with armor and the next best shield is extremely expensive, so we'll get it sooner or later. So the choice is between a crappy Bamboo Pole and decent Leather Armor, or a decent Club and crappy Clothes. We go with the Club and Clothes for now, it'll make the early battles end a bit faster and we can set our sights on the actual Armor once we have enough money. It's a defensible choice to get the Club and skip the Clothes, but I want to start exploring the area as soon as possible and I'll feel safer around the tougher monsters with at least a little bit of protective gear. It's distressing to think that the king's stipend can't even buy us a single piece of metal equipment. Maybe if the castle's treasury wasn't locked behind a door no one can open...  Interestingly, our equipment doesn't go in our inventory, and we don't have to manually equip it. Instead, it directly goes to appropriate slots on our status screen. We literally can't hold more than one weapon, armor and shield at once, and the merchant will offer to buy them off us at half price when we upgrade. Regarding the stats... Strength is added to our weapon's bonus to determine our attack power, half of our agility is added to our protective gear's bonus to determine our defense power. Apart from max HP and MP, that's it. Cheers for minimalism! One more thing before we move on.     Our little dude's sprite now visibly holds a weapon! And you can't see it when he's facing west because he holds it in his right hand. Holy. Frikkin'. Crap. If we had a shield, we could also see it there. There's even a variant with a shield and no weapon if that's how you decided to spend your allowance.   : That's nice, but unless the Dragonlord lives there, I don't know why I'd want to go.  : But for thee I wish success, ZedPower.: Those other guys must have been real douchebags.: Oh wow, is that... No way! Are you Princess Gwaelin? : Oh. Uh. Yeah, okay. Sorry. : The king seems to think so. Unfortunately, there's a sand trap where Brecconary's DNA lab used to be, so no, I don't have proof. : Yikes, no. : Okay. Good-bye, traveler.This is an excruciating expense in the early game. If you grind just outside of town, it'll take 3 to 6 fights just to pay for your lodgings.  : Yours, maybe.: I am almost gone.... It's a good thing this guy is here to point out that this is a building, and that stepping past the brick tile will allow you inside.     It's an item shop. Herbs restore 23-30 HP, and you can have carry up to six, if I remember correctly. They're a bit too expensive for us right now. We do get the Dragon's Scale, though.  Using it from our inventory menu increases our defense power by 2 for as long as we keep it, and we'll keep it to the end.  Yup. That town isn't the only place in the world where keys can be bought, but the other places require keys to access.   Another reminder to save often, basically.  : Danger grows when thou crosses.He's not kidding. The overworld map is divided into 64 square zones, each with its own set of enemies to fight, and the bridges are usually placed on boundaries where the combat difficulty increases significantly. That's good, simple signposting right there.   : The fortress of the Dragonlord.That's right. You can see the final dungeon as soon as you reach the overworld map. Boats weren't invented until Dragon Warrior 2 though, so we'll have to find an overland route. Alright. There's a locked room in the inn, and an entire locked building in the northeast corner, but we've otherwise seen all Brecconary has to offer. It's time to go.  We've got a king, a princess, a warrior carrying a big stick, an evil castle with an rear end in a top hat inside, a quest, and a continent. What else would we ever need? FrankZP fucked around with this message at 17:22 on May 11, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 16:43
|
|
|
Alright then, let's take out this Dragonlord chump and be back to Tantegel in time for tea. Ah, I see. There's no going around this body of water to the east. Let's try the other way.  Music: Battle theme   First blood! That coulda gone worse. The standard Slimes are practically the symbol of the Dragon Quest series, but it's not for their combat prowess. On the off-chance that we don't kill them in one hit, they'll hardly ever hit back for more than one point of damage. This is as good a time as any to point out how remarkably small the damage values are, especially in the early going. Slimes have 3 HP and we sometimes only deal 1 damage, even with our Club. There are probably more points of damage dealt in the first thirty seconds of the first battle of Final Fantasy XV than in the entire first hour of Dragon Warrior. I rather prefer smaller numbers myself, given that it makes even small statistical increases seem more meaningful. The same goes for experience and gold. For example...   The Red Slime, slightly tougher than a regular Slime, drops two gold instead of one. You can pay for an inn stay in Brecconary by killing three Red Slimes, or six Slimes, and over time that'll be some difference. It also teaches a new player that seeking out stronger enemies is more rewarding. We can't exactly find stronger enemies around town, though, as the immediate area here only has those two types of Slimes. Let's head a ways southwest.  Before we can get much further, something happens after we defeat another Red Slime.  Thy power increases by 1. Thy Maximum Hit Points increase by 6. And that's level 2. Stat gains per level are not random. There's a table that determines what stats you have at what level, and it has four variants, each of which has two stats growing faster than the others. The variant you're on is set at the start of the game, and it's actually decided by assigning an arbitrary numerical value to the first four letters of your name, adding them up, dividing the sum by 4, and taking the remainder (which will be a single digit from 0 to 3, of course). "ZedP" has Type 3 stat growth, which has fast Strength and Agility growth, but slow HP and MP growth. This system ensures that there is some slight variance between players and that you won't end up underpowered by endgame, but its effects don't seem pronounced enough to be worth worrying about.  Another fight leaves us with less than a quarter of our max HP, which turns the white portions of the interface red, as well portions of the background that share their palette with the interface. As far as low health warnings go, this one's hard to miss without being totally obnoxious, so take that, Legend of Zelda.   Anyway. We didn't find the stronger opponents we were looking for, but we've just about gotten our butt kicked, and the southwestern path is a dead end. Time to hoof it back to town and catch some Zs.  That 6 gold charge hurts, it literally cut our day's profit in half. We're definitely not paying for that Leather Armor with Slime money, but we ought to be able to explore further this time. Let's try the northwest. We've heard the town of Garinham is in that direction, and while we have no reason to go there, if we can't make it to the closest town, we definitely can't make it to Charlock.   A few Red Slime fights later, we find a strange cave entrance. Nobody told us anything about this cave. Nobody will ever tell us about this cave. It's just there, on the way to the only place we've been given directions to. It'd be rude not to oblige. ...is what I'd like to say but...  Magicians are tough customers! They have four Slimes' worth of HP and have a 50% chance to cast a spell on their turn instead of attacking with their... fists I guess? Punch Wizards! Oh my!  Their only spell is the HURT spell. A little on the nose, eh? It inflicts 3 to 10 damage and completely ignores our defense power. We make good use of the RUN command, succeed in our escape, then immediately run into another Magician, who gets in a hit before we can sneak away again. Escape odds are largely random, but there is an influence from both our and our opponent's Agility stats, and every enemy in the game also has a stat with one of four values that indicate how difficult it is to run from them. Tougher enemies are usually harder to run away from, but that's not always strictly the case. In addition, if our Strength is at least twice as high as our opponent's, they have a 25% chance of escaping the battle every turn. But that won't be a concern for a while. If we encountered another Magician right now, they could one-shot us. Time to fall back a bit and try to find critters more our size.  Uh-oh. Gotta run again.   Music: "You were killed by a Slime" theme  : ...huh? Is it dinner time already? : Dude, get off my case, I just got ganked by a Slime! A Slime!: I will give thee another chance.: That's kind of you but I'm going to need therapy too.: To reach the next level, thy Experience Points must increase by 7. Now, go, ZedPower! Ah, death in Dragon Warrior. Classic. As you may notice, we just lost half our gold, leaving us with less than we had when we left the inn this morning. If the King took our money, then he's a dick. So we must have been robbed by monsters! Except the monsters would have taken all of our money, not just half. So the King's a dick. In terms of gameplay, this sort of punishment is fairly controversial. It has more leniency than the typical "game over, better reload from a save" because you do get to keep all of your experience and any items you may have found, but there are times when losing half your money feels cruel to the point of naked sadism. I tend to think that the mechanism has slightly more advantages than disadvantages, especially in terms of giving weight and consequence to death, and heightening the tension when you're in over your head, but I certainly remember hitting the reset button in rage and despair more than a few times when I was a kid, so who knows? Welp, chin up, eyes forward, and once more unto the breach. This is 1986, princesses aren't rescuing themselves yet. Man, that'll be the day.  : Save thy money for more expensive armor.: No, really. : If what they say can't help me get this Slime joy-goop out of my hair, they can gently caress right off.   : Whatever's inside of this cave better be worth it. Music: Dungeon theme (first layer) So, first dungeon. It's hella dark. There's a loud thud when we try to walk into a wall tile so we could navigate by sound if we had to, but that's a colossal pain in the rear end and no one should ever put themselves through that. Besides, we came prepared!  The match is struck! A blazing star is born!  ...oh. Lighting a torch illuminates the eight tiles immediately around us. This is actually quite realistic vis-à-vis real life torches. Less realistically, it will stay lit as long as we remain in this dungeon, then burn out the instant we see the sun again. The darkness mechanic doesn't add much to the game in the grand scheme of things. I suspect it's there mostly to make the dungeons feel bigger than they really are. That said, I have to admit it also imparts a certain claustrophobic atmosphere. Let's navigate this cave in real time, maybe you'll see what I mean.  Video: First dungeon This dungeon is tiny and I ssssssorta remember the way, but you get the picture. There are two things to note here. First, there are no monsters in this cave. You can probably think of it as a tutorial, letting players get used to finding their way in low light without constant combat pressure, which is especially welcome at this level and this far into the wilderness. Second, the music slightly changed when going down stairs. Music: Dungeon theme (second layer) There is only one dungeon theme for the entire game, but it pitches down and ever so slightly slows down as you go deeper, which is a pretty clever way to go about it, even if the melody itself gets old after a while.   The red squares are up staircases, the blue square is a down staircase, and the green square is the single chest here. Let's see our reward!  I am Erdrick and thou art my descendant. Three items were needed to reach the Isle of Dragons, which is south of Brecconary. I gathered these items, reached the island, and there defeated a creature of great evil. Now I have entrusted the three items to three worthy keepers. Their descendants will protect the items until thy quest leads thee to seek them out. When a new evil arises, find the three items, then fight! : Huh.Our quest now has slightly more direction, even if it's short on actual... well... directions. At least we know not to waste time trying to find our way directly to Charlock for now. That said, it's somewhat questionable to put information this critical in an optional cave that no one ever tells you about. At any rate, there is nothing else to find here, so we walk back out.  So, finding the descendants of the "worthy keepers" it is, then. Garinham shouldn't be much further; we didn't have a reason to go there before, but maybe someone there will have some sort of clue for us.  Ghosts are mostly unremarkable critters, tougher than Red Slimes but not by much. However, they do have fairly high evasion rate for this early in the game. None of your character's stats affect your accuracy in this battle system; instead, all monsters roll a dodge stat every time you attack. For example, Ghosts have a 1 in 16 evasion rate, whereas Slimes and Magicians have it at 1 in 64. We end the fight with 9 HP, so I decide to return to Brecconary before we push northwest any further.  And we level up just in time. Two more Strength, two more Agility, two more HP, and...  We also get 6 max MP and a spell! That's right, we've got a spellcaster here! Which is good, because this is one-man operation. We're not putting together a party here. We couldn't even if we wanted to. ...did I neglect to mention that? Anyway, new spell.  HEAL costs 4 MP, and restores 10 to 17 HP. This considerably extends our travel range, but it also means we can get free MP refills from the old man in Tantegel and never have to pay to sleep in Brecconary again. Glorious! We're still far from being able to afford our Leather Armor though, so we fill up and set out back towards Garinham.   Ah, here's the last remaining monster type in this region. Drakees have nothing especially noteworthy going on; they're stronger than Red Slimes but not as strong as Ghosts.   We make it to Garinham not much richer, but in decent shape and with our MP intact.    The item store has the same inventory as Brecconary's.  If you think this is a reference to the late 80s early 90s de facto Nintendo Power mascot character, you might be right!  That doesn't narrow it down by much, but it's a start.  Hahaha wow, yikes. Any given encounter near Garinham has a one in five chance of being a Magician, who will drop about 10 gold. Trying to save up for any of the stuff here that's not also on sale in Brecconary would take a ludicrous amount of time. For now, our next goal is still a Leather Armor, until we can reach a place where our income increases considerably. This is an interesting aspect of equipment upgrades in this game. The Half-Plate here makes Chain Mail and Leather Armor obsolete, but trying to make money by grinding the few monsters we are able to kill with our current gear is unreasonable, so there is still a strong incentive to "waste" money on smaller upgrades that allow us to travel further and make money faster. Nevertheless, we have nothing more to see in this shop.   Oooh, now we've got two pieces of info to rub together: the Princess was taken east of the castle, to a cave. Worth the trip!  : You're a funny man, you know that? And here we see that half the town is behind a locked door. That'll be for much later.  So. We're now in a situation where we can still barely survive the local bestiary for long, but we've exhausted the locations of interest on the map. What's left is a bridge south of Garinham where danger definitely awaits...   ...and a path northeast of the castle we haven't explored much yet. The bridge definitely makes me nervous, so let's see how far we can go the other way... once we've filled up and saved, of course.  : Well, I'm certainly pleased I didn't pop in here the same way I did last time.: Before reaching thy next level of experience thou must gain 12 Points.It seems a little weird to hear this from him, but it's the only way we can access this information. It doesn't appear anywhere on our status screen. : Will thou tell me now of thy deeds so they won't be forgotten?: Uh, sure. I went to Garinham, a shopkeep made fun of me with his eyes and I couldn't open a door. Please make sure future generations are able to learn from these glorious exploits.: Thy deeds have been recorded on the Imperial Scrolls of Honor. If you want to take a break and shut off the game, that's where you say "no". But we're not done for now. : Goodbye now, ZedPower. Take care and tempt not the Fates.: Well dang, now that you tell me not to, I almost feel like I should.     Oooh, there's a bridge in the northeast. This one's mostly safe to cross though, because there's an overland path to the other side of the river if you go a bit to the southeast and don't mind crossing a poison swamp, and the encounters there are the same as around Garinham. That said, just before we can explore that way, a fight against a Ghost dangerously depletes our resources, and coincidentally earns us level 4. Two Agility, 6 HP, 10 MP, and our second spell.  It's our stronger version of the Magician's HURT. It only costs 2 MP, and deals 5-12 damage instead. Considering our club attack has never dealt more than 4 damage at once so far, this is a big deal. It really allows us to punch above our weight, and it remains useful for longer than you might think, since it ignores the defense stat. Unfortunately, many monsters have at least a small chance to resist HURT and completely ignore its damage, but this is not something we have to worry much about for a while. This spell is also a reason why I want the Leather Armor and maybe even the Small Shield before our next weapon upgrade; it's a big step up for our offensive capabilities, and it doesn't depend on our stats or our gear. Speaking of gear, we make it back to Tantegel with 4 HP and 71 gold!  Ah, at last. Maybe we can fight more than two Ghosts in a row without having to run home now.  Back to the east bridge.     Further east, another bridge. I suspect this one isn't going to mess around, but I'm feeling saucy, and if the King wants to have half the money we've got right now, he's going to be disappointed.  Oooh, a cave, in the east. Let's... maybe just check out the environs first.   Skeletons are several times tougher than anything we've seen so far. They're as dodgy as Ghosts, but have no resistance to HURT at all.   And it's a good thing too, because our standard attack has a chance to do nothing. This happens when your attack power is lower than the enemy's defense power; in that case it's a coin toss whether you do 0 or 1 damage. Still...  Hot drat, now we're cooking with gas! ...we're also feeling considerably less saucy. Maybe another level or two and a shield would allow us to take out more than one enemy here before getting winded. We'll return to Tantegel, and then it's grinding time! I'll spare you the... the de... tails... Uh.  Oh dear. Let me... let me just get back to you in a bit.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 16:43
|
|
|
I'm so happy to see this! I never played the original Dragon Warrior--I didn't have a NES, but I made my friends play it while I watched; they were never into it as much as I was--but became a big fan once the series made the jump to SNES and I could play DQV (in Japanese) at home. I've since caught up with the series and eagerly await the next installment.FrankZP posted:I have fond memories of the the game, and I haven't played it in at least 25 years. English isn't my first language and I barely had the faintest grasp of it back then; I still remember the feel of the controller in my hands and the weight of the dictionary in my lap. Motivation's a hell of a thing. Today I'm a professional translator, thanks to video games and the Simpsons. Go figure.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 18:16
|
|
|
Ground floor on this! Absolutely loved your SMT Let's Plays and am delighted to see a new project. God speed sir 
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 18:33
|
|
|
I never noticed that they actually made separate left- and right-facing sprites for the protagonist. That's more detail than I would have expected. It's always interesting with these "prototypical" genre-founding games to look at what the devs decided to spend their attention on.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 18:36
|
|
|
I played both this and Final Fantasy when I was super young and couldn't actually read. I couldn't leave the throne room of Dragon Warrior but I could actually do things in Final Fantasy (with characters named "AAAA" "ADSS" "HUJS" and "SXSZ" because what are letters to a one year old?). That's how I became a fan of Final Fantasy. Still can't get over having to use the menu to talk, use stairs or do anything really. And why they continued to use it in later games. 
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 18:45
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:I never noticed that they actually made separate left- and right-facing sprites for the protagonist. That's more detail than I would have expected. It's always interesting with these "prototypical" genre-founding games to look at what the devs decided to spend their attention on. Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Still can't get over having to use the menu to talk, use stairs or do anything really. And why they continued to use it in later games. 
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 18:57
|
|
|
Looks like the learning curve is pretty steep, combat wise.Hirayuki posted:These are new additions to the North American version--the Japanese version had a front-facing sprite that stayed front-facing. You still had to go into the menu to select TALK or OPEN or whatever your verb was...but then you were prompted to choose a direction in which to perform that verb. Oh dear god...
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 18:58
|
|
|
FrankZP posted:That said, the words "Dragon Warrior is a JRPG" are fairly similar in understatement to "the Big Bang is an explosion". It's arguably not the first one, but it's the first one that blew up anywhere close to how it blew up. Of course it didn't come out of nowhere, there were definitely successful computer role playing games before then. In fact, series creator Yuji Horii was sent to the US by Enix as a prize for winning a game programming contest, and that's where he discovered the likes of Wizardry and Ultima. That's a hell of a lot of games today that trace their lineage directly to the bottleneck of this one man bringing inspiration home like a seed floating across the Pacific. It's also worth mentioning that Horii specifically created Dragon Quest to be a dumbed-down variant of the Wizardry experience aimed at the rather young target audience of the Famicom at the time. The game's simplicity is not so much a product of its time as it is Horii looking at Wizardry and making choices regarding which gameplay elements to keep and which elements would be too complicated for your average 7-year-old Super Mario Bros player. azren posted:Looks like the learning curve is pretty steep, combat wise. On the contrary. Look at what his options are: Attack, Powerful attack that uses some MP, heal (either with a spell or with those Herb items he didn't buy any of) and run. There's not much room for experimentation and strategizing here - if the monsters are too much for him to handle, the game's limited options don't exactly allow him to fight smarter, so the solution is pretty clearly "increase your defense so the monsters won't hurt you as much, or your offense so you can kill them faster". This can be done either by grinding gold and buying new equipment or grinding experience to gain higher stats automatically, both of which are accomplished by fighting monsters you CAN handle. It's the complete opposite of stuff like modern Pokemon, which is ridiculously complex, but with such an easy main quest you can just hammer random buttons and win without really understanding why you won. Dragon Quest will kick your rear end HARD if you don't understand how to play it, but it's so simplistic and hand-holdy even a very young child won't have trouble understanding the gameplay. Adamant fucked around with this message at 19:37 on May 11, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 19:08
|
|
|
I definitely got this for free with a subscription to Nintendo Power. I loved it then and I'm looking forward to your journey from here to Dragon Warrior III.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 19:57
|
|
|
I was a big fan of your Nocturne LP and it looks like you've got another good thing going here. I'll be watching this.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 20:51
|
|
|
One of my absolute favorite NES games growing up, hell yeah. And yes, playing 1 and 2 are useful if you want 3 to have its full impact. (DW3 is incidentally one of my favorites for the GBC) Gonna be streaming a few of these games myself soon, but in the meantime I'll have to keep an eye out in here!
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 20:52
|
|
|
Lots of fun memories here, but the last time I tried to re-play it didn't go so well. Made back in the days when level/cash grinding was a game feature and not a time waster.
|
|
#
?
May 11, 2018 23:26
|
|
|
For anyone interested in seeing this game get completely broken by a speed-runner, this AGDQ video is pretty bonkers. I guess there are other similar (and faster) speed runs, but this guy gives great explanations of the insanity he pulls off.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 00:03
|
|
|
This one's a classic. Definitely looking forward to following along.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 00:09
|
|
|
You're as far as I ever got in this game. I'm curious to see the rest of it.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 00:10
|
|
|
My first experience with the series was Dragon Warrior Monster, the first one. Then I got the Dragon Warrior 1 and 2 Gameboy Color cartridge, which did away with most of the fiddly annoyances this game had (DOOR, STAIRS), updated the graphics (such as they are), and generally made the game a lot more playable. I never beat this version due to how many little annoyances there are compared to the one I had.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 00:11
|
|
|
I haven't played Dragon Warrior (the only game in the series I have played is Dragon Quest 8), but this has been a good read so far. It's weirdly funny to see NPCs talk about game mechanics in psuedo-Ye Olde English.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 00:21
|
|
|
Hirayuki posted:These are new additions to the North American version--the Japanese version had a front-facing sprite that stayed front-facing. You still had to go into the menu to select TALK or OPEN or whatever your verb was...but then you were prompted to choose a direction in which to perform that verb. That's nuts. Stuff like this makes me seriously wonder how Dragon Quest had such a foothold in Japan for so long, let alone actually getting any traction to begin with.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 01:09
|
|
|
I'm less familiar with the early Dragon Quest series and the RPG world around it than I am the early Final Fantasy games, but my understanding is that it was pretty far ahead of everything else out there at the time.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 01:13
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:I'm less familiar with the early Dragon Quest series and the RPG world around it than I am the early Final Fantasy games, but my understanding is that it was pretty far ahead of everything else out there at the time. IIRC, it was the first of its kind, at least on this scale. The only stuff that came before it was like... Ultima. The game is also not quite as blatant of a D&D ripoff as Final Fantasy I ended up being, which is nice.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 02:07
|
|
|
Ah, there's only one thing a weeb like me can post in response to Dragon Quest 1. This song. Shitenshi posted:That's nuts. Stuff like this makes me seriously wonder how Dragon Quest had such a foothold in Japan for so long, let alone actually getting any traction to begin with. Because DQ1 was more or less the first JRPG; they made the formula. FF and later DQ games are what made them less pains in the rear end.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 02:43
|
|
|
ricdesi posted:IIRC, it was the first of its kind, at least on this scale. The only stuff that came before it was like... Ultima. The game is also not quite as blatant of a D&D ripoff as Final Fantasy I ended up being, which is nice. It wasn't the first RPG to be released in Japan, but it was the first RPG to be released for the Famicom, and thus the first RPG most kids from that generation had tried. Comparing it to Final Fantasy is unfair, that game came out much later.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 02:50
|
|
|
DragonWarrior.png right here. This is kicking me in the nostalgia so goddamn hard 
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 11:55
|
|
|
I love the dungeon music in this game. I keep it running in the background while playing Nethack
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 13:37
|
|
|
DeTosh posted:I haven't played Dragon Warrior (the only game in the series I have played is Dragon Quest 8), but this has been a good read so far. It's weirdly funny to see NPCs talk about game mechanics in psuedo-Ye Olde English. Better still, Squenix liked the '80s translation enough to use a similar style when the mobile version of the game was released (despite the GBC version having released with a "normal" script in the interim), including the changed names. Seyser Koze fucked around with this message at 13:57 on May 12, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 13:51
|
|
|
Hirayuki posted:This is me, but with FFIV and V--that is, until I played DQV (and FF7, ugh) and I landed firmly in the DQ camp to stay. I was very pleased to find some obscure JRPG terminology on the big standardized test for Japanese fluency. See, playing video games can be educational! Yeah, it's hard to overstate how big Dragon Quest is in Japan, I'm not surprised RPG verbiage made its way in unlikely places. TooMuchAbstraction posted:I never noticed that they actually made separate left- and right-facing sprites for the protagonist. That's more detail than I would have expected. It's always interesting with these "prototypical" genre-founding games to look at what the devs decided to spend their attention on. Hirayuki posted:These are new additions to the North American version--the Japanese version had a front-facing sprite that stayed front-facing. You still had to go into the menu to select TALK or OPEN or whatever your verb was...but then you were prompted to choose a direction in which to perform that verb. Adamant posted:It's also worth mentioning that Horii specifically created Dragon Quest to be a dumbed-down variant of the Wizardry experience aimed at the rather young target audience of the Famicom at the time. The game's simplicity is not so much a product of its time as it is Horii looking at Wizardry and making choices regarding which gameplay elements to keep and which elements would be too complicated for your average 7-year-old Super Mario Bros player. I think these are related notions. Half the work here is taking Wizardry and removing cruft until anyone who is literate and has at least one appendage to hit buttons with can beat the game without a manual, maybe even to the point of a going with a "remove stuff until you think you've removed too much, then remove a little more" philosophy. The other half is to make the whole thing attractive and playable, with outstanding polish (for the era), good art direction, and just solid mechanics and flow. Considering they didn't really know if anything they were trying was going to work out, I think they did really really well. ricdesi posted:One of my absolute favorite NES games growing up, hell yeah. And yes, playing 1 and 2 are useful if you want 3 to have its full impact. (DW3 is incidentally one of my favorites for the GBC) My train of thought went something like, "I want to play 3, but then I'd have to play 1 and 2, and that's a lotta work, I should just do 4, it's standalone, but 1 is short and 2 only gets obnoxious towards the end, okay fine cripes I get it, 1 to 3, mmmmmmaybe 4, man how do I keep falling for this". 5 and 6 blind runs aren't off the table but it's way too far down the line to make any kind of promise. And I'm definitely not making it to 7. I love it to bits but I can't even imagine doing my schtick for the entire duration. Tuxedo Ted posted:Lots of fun memories here, but the last time I tried to re-play it didn't go so well. Made back in the days when level/cash grinding was a game feature and not a time waster. I remember doing a lot more grinding when I was a kid, but I was ridiculously cautious back then. I'm a tiiiiny bit ahead right now, and I'm surprised at how little of it I've actually had to do so far, but there's plenty of game left to change my mind! ultrafilter posted:I'm less familiar with the early Dragon Quest series and the RPG world around it than I am the early Final Fantasy games, but my understanding is that it was pretty far ahead of everything else out there at the time. In terms of general user-friendliness and playability, that is definitely the case. And starting with 2, the series get a lot more ambitious than it typically gets credit for in many ways. And it's always good to keep in mind that while Dragon Warrior 2 came out in America a few months after the first Final Fantasy, in Japan DQ2 actually came out almost an entire year before FF. From a western point of view, it kinda skews our perception of the genre's early evolution and erroneously makes it feel like a step backward, instead of the colossal step forward that it really was. hopeandjoy posted:Ah, there's only one thing a weeb like me can post in response to Dragon Quest 1. Oh that is glorious. "I shall tell you thy experience points" made me lose it. XD Shei-kun posted:DragonWarrior.png right here. Gah, I hear you. To be honest I kind of expected this whole thing to be a chore but the game just found its groove into my heart and settled right back in again. I'm not gonna overlook the warts, but man, this is Comfort Gaming for sure.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 14:16
|
|
|
FrankZP posted:Yeah, it's hard to overstate how big Dragon Quest is in Japan, I'm not surprised RPG verbiage made its way in unlikely places. I'm a big fan of game music and how it uses themes, and the DQ series is great for carrying over so much of its incidental music throughout the entire series. DW's music left such an impression that I automatically hum right along with your LP. Here's a playlist of the DQ vocal album by Loula (which is the Japanese word for the spell Zoom). It's excellent if you're a DQ music nerd like me. I first found the CD (and dubbed it to tape) in Japan in '94, and I still sing "People of the Town" (the DW town theme we've heard) at karaoke there today. (I once wrote up a whole set of translated lyrics, but it looks like I have to kick the server to get it working again.) Then there's Theatrhythm DQ...oh, man, good stuff.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 15:32
|
|
|
FrankZP posted:My train of thought went something like, "I want to play 3, but then I'd have to play 1 and 2, and that's a lotta work, I should just do 4, it's standalone, but 1 is short and 2 only gets obnoxious towards the end, okay fine cripes I get it, 1 to 3, mmmmmmaybe 4, man how do I keep falling for this". 4, 5 and 6 are a loosely connected trilogy, just in case that affects your decision making.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 16:28
|
|
|
ultrafilter posted:4, 5 and 6 are a loosely connected trilogy, just in case that affects your decision making. And I'm pretty sure 7, 8, and 9 are not connected in any fashion. At least I didn't see one. 
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 17:59
|
|
|
I played Dragon Quest Builders, which takes place in an alternate version of this game, so I'm looking forward to seeing what was referenced in DQB specifically from this.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 20:12
|
|
|
A neighbor owned this game, so I spent all my free time watching him play. Years later, when I was an adult, and bought my first NES, FF1 and DW1 were the first two games I bought. Best. Decision. Ever.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 21:01
|
|
|
FrankZP posted:My train of thought went something like, "I want to play 3, but then I'd have to play 1 and 2, and that's a lotta work, I should just do 4, it's standalone, but 1 is short and 2 only gets obnoxious towards the end, okay fine cripes I get it, 1 to 3, mmmmmmaybe 4, man how do I keep falling for this". 1-3 form a pretty tight trilogy, while 4-6 are a very loosely connected set. As in, as far as I know, the only real connection (originally) is a location that appears in all three games, and the characters within. In the DS remakes, they tweak the script so that each game explicitly takes place after the previous one. I prefer 5 to 4 by a small amount, and 6... I'm just having a hard time getting into at all, to be honest.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 22:15
|
|
|
ricdesi posted:1-3 form a pretty tight trilogy, while 4-6 are a very loosely connected set. As in, as far as I know, the only real connection (originally) is a location that appears in all three games, and the characters within. In the DS remakes, they tweak the script so that each game explicitly takes place after the previous one. I'm pretty sure that at least with 4 and 5 another connection was the Zenithian armor, helm, shield, and sword and I'm not too sure how easy it was to tell that you were gathering the armor, helm, shield, and sword that would become the Zenithian set in the original release of 6. I'd say that 4-6 is a trilogy that focuses on the world instead of a trilogy that focuses on a bloodline like 1-3.
|
|
#
?
May 12, 2018 22:33
|
|
|
I clicked the title music link and was instantly 6 years old, barely able to read and no idea what I was doing playing the poo poo out of this game. This is the game that sparked a lifelong hobby for me. Super stoked for the LP man.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 01:01
|
|
|
Hitlers Gay Secret posted:And I'm pretty sure 7, 8, and 9 are not connected in any fashion. At least I didn't see one. You can see a vague thematic connection of them all having some sort of prominent use of Pseudo-Christian imagery in their plots, but nothing continuity wise
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 01:33
|
|
|
The Ayshkerbundy posted:You can see a vague thematic connection of them all having some sort of prominent use of Pseudo-Christian imagery in their plots, but nothing continuity wise By that reasoning, Dragon Quest is a Shin Megami Tensei subfranchise.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 03:07
|
|
|
Blaze Dragon posted:By that reasoning, Dragon Quest is a Shin Megami Tensei subfranchise. Give me a Jack Bros. / Rocket Slime crossover and I'll be a happy lad.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 03:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:03 |
|
|
I played the GBC Dragon Warrior I and II game, and somehow managed to beat both, despite Dragon Quest II's insane difficulty. DQ1 is mercifully short, but DQ2...is ball-bustingly difficult and not terribly fun. My favorite two are the DS remakes of DQ IV and V.
|
|
#
?
May 13, 2018 03:37
|
|
