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 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 |
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May 11, 2018 16:42
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 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 |
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May 11, 2018 16:43
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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.
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May 11, 2018 16:43
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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.
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May 12, 2018 14:16
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 Ah, that's better. We got two levels after all (no new spells, though), and enough dosh for a Small Shield, a Copper Sword, and even an Herb and replacement Torch! It didn't even take that much time. We couldn't stay for long in Skeletonland, and hunting Punch Wizards to extinction would have taken forever, but it turns out that the other side of the bridge south of Garinham has very beatable enemies for the time being, and it's not far to walk from our refill station.   Scorpions hit fairly hard and have high defense, but no HURT resistance; two casts and a club bonk sufficed to earn us about 12 gold apiece.  Magidrakees are slightly upgraded Magicians and worth only a bit more exp to kill. In other good news, we have our final sprite!    We could keep exploring that region in the west, but I want to go back east and see if we can find a town of some sort. If the Princess is in the cave we saw, she's probably guarded by something a bit tougher than Slimes, and if we have to walk all the way from Tantegel every time we have a go at it, we'll be a quarter dead before we even set foot in the nearby swamp. And besides, we might just be up to fending off a few Skeletons by now.   Ah, here we go.      : Well, that's almost half a piece of actionable information. The Full Plate is new but haha, nope. Depending on how the gold returns are in this area though, we might be in the market for an axe before long.  : Great strength and skill and wit only will bring thee back from that place.: I don't even know how to get there, so I guess I'm safe. : Eh, I'm not gonna make fun of him. Bagpipes make me sneeze. : Look, I'm already looking for three magic widgets and a princess, I don't have time to go find Mister Cute Nod To Corporate Media. : If Golem is afraid of falling asleep, you can make up your next legend about an extremely handsome clubsman who also knows how to put Golem to sleep. Hmm, a bit cheaper than Garinham's inn! I didn't expect that. It might be worth our while to hunt the undead around here for a bit.  Good thing the rheumatism ailment only makes an appearance in Dragon Warrior 4.  : Uh... Old man? Can you... like... shout maybe? : ...: Aw cripes. FINE. : Did I get poison goop in my boots just to hear you say my gear sucks?: Thou shouldst come here again.: Yeah, I'll... "think about it". Eugh. : No. I do not. Leave me alone, alright? I don't see anyone else trying to sort this mess out. Do you? We can bypass the door to the right by cutting through the baths, but this guy is beyond our reach.  : Nice racket they've got going there. "Yeah we're making keys that can open any door in the world." That'll endear you to people who like their privacy! : Not yet. Hopefully not ever.: To the south, I believe, is a town called Rimuldar.: ...right. Okay then, hopes shattered. Thanks, buddy. The item shop has Wings of the Wyvern, which are one-shot items that will fly us from any point on the overworld straight to Tantegel. It's as close to fast travel as this game ever gets, and it's one-way, so you usually just keep it in your back pocket as a panic button, or for when it's way past your bedtime and mom's already told you to turn off the Nintendo twice. 70 gold is still a lot of dosh for now though, and I suspect we all choose our own bedtime by now, so we skip it. That's about it for Kol. I'll want to get that axe for sure, but first, just to the west of here there's a passage to the northern part of a previous region that was unreachable from the south due to a mountain range. It shouldn't be a very long trip, so let's check it out.     Ah, here we are.  Music: Castle theme   : Well isn't that a new one. Do go on.: Thus, I propose a test. There is a Silver Harp that beckons to the creatures of the Dragonlord. Bring this to me and I will reward thee with the Staff of Rain.We know a minstrel of some repute built Garinham, so there's a nonzero chance we can learn about that harp there. We'll certainly need to access the rest of the town first, and for that, we'll need a key from Rimuldar. It all goes back to that "dreadful Southern Isle", then, and that probably means we could use another gear upgrade. So here's the plan: let's make enough money off killing a bunch of dead people to buy ourselves a Chain Mail and a Hand Axe. Gimme just a moment, then... ...dang, change of plans. For some reasons Skeletons are now harder to find than one needle in two haystacks, and if we don't get their 25 gold a pop, the other enemies in the area give 3 to 10. We make enough to buy a Chain Mail, but I'm gonna go nuts fighting around here much longer. Let's shelve the Southern Isle for now, and see if we can find anything of interest west of Tantegel. I'm not sure what we're gonna fight on the way though, so we're splurging on a Wing, just in case. Oooh, we level up on the way back from Kol, earning a whopping 7 Agility and a new spell.  SLEEP rolls against your opponent's sleep resistance stat; if it succeeds, they stop taking actions until they wake up, which has a 33% chance of happening every turn. High-tier enemies tend to be very resistant, but it always has at least a 1 in 16 chance to land, and it remains fairly effective for a fair chunk of the game. Just like HURT, it costs only 2 MP. Some enemies have a SLEEP spell as well, but you always effectively have zero resistance to it. On the plus side, a quirk of the game's random number generator ensures that you never spend more than 6 turns asleep at once. Interestingly, enemies have a basic AI that keeps them from casting it if you're already sleeping. Alright then. We pay a visit to the King, get two Herbs for luck, and head west.  A bit further south, we start running into Skeletons again. Just when we're trying to save resources, great.   We could see this cave from the Tantegel region, but couldn't reach it from there. That said, I want to see how far we can go outdoors, our Wing won't work underground, and I'm just not super feeling fumbling around in the dark right this moment, so let's keep going south.  : Come on! I haven't even touched a single regular wolf in my life! How about... how about you just forget you ever saw me and take a NAP. Whuh-oh. Maybe we should have tried that cave after all. A second cast lands, and we beat feet. Wolflords only have a 25% resistance to sleep, and sleeping foes can't stop us from running away. These guys are way out of our league!  We spend our last MP on a Heal spell. There's a chance we might get back to Tantegel without blowing our Wing, and I'm gonna try it. Our armor makes us hardy enough that normal attacks don't hurt us too bad, and as long as we don't take too many spells to the face we should be all right.  ... actually we run into a couple Magidrakees too many, but I remember the Herbs we took along, and we end up back at base with 24 gold's worth of consumables used up instead of 70. I'll count that as a win! We're still about 200 gold short of a Hand Axe though, and any other equipment is barely even worth thinking about. Let's check out that western cave. We'll be bringing six Herbs along, but with any luck we'll make more than our money back in spoils.  Sigh... Here we go.  Druins are fairly basic critters, slightly tougher than Scorpions, and without noteworthy resistances. Other than that, we also fight Scorpions, as well as Ghosts and Magicians. Nothing too difficult by now. There's a chest on the first floor that would typically contain a Herb, but we already have six, and...  Oh well. Reaching the second floor from a staircase in the center of the level, we find a chest with 10 gold, and...  Poltergeists are a bit tougher than Druins, and have a 75% chance to cast HURT. That said, they have 0 resistance to HURT and SLEEP. Bringing these Herbs was a pretty good idea, it turns out, as we'll need our MP for offense.  Yikes! These guys are as strong as Skeletons, but they cast HURT like Magicians, and also have a 25% chance to cast SLEEP. Their own resistances are low though, and they drop up to 34 gold. This is getting tricky. Even if we land a good SLEEP, it takes us several turns to put them down anyway. I think we'll just return to the floor above and grind out the rest of that Axe; we're almost there. Aaaand we finish mapping out the first floor just as we reach 568 gold. It's AXIN' TIME! ...in the time it took me to type that, I lost track of where I am on my map.   Welp, there aren't that many west-east-south T intersections, I'm sure I can find my way back out anyway.  Whew. We level up on the way to Garinham! No spells, but decent stat increases across the board.  Aw yeah. That's... five more Attack Power. Welp, it'll still get our work done faster, and we haven't even seen a more expensive weapon than this yet. On that note, we go back to Tantegel to refill, get more Herbs, and then return to that nefarious cave's second floor. Magicians are starting to run away from us at this point, and we don't need to spend MP to fight Skeletons anymore! Alright, let's see...  Ah, sure. I'll just...  : ...  : *seething intensifies*: Rest then for awhile. 
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 06:29 on May 13, 2018 |
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May 13, 2018 05:48
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Gloomy Rube posted:I'm already loving this LP, I'm learning a lot already! I can't fault you for assuming that; even without enemies, the dungeons manage have this very oppressive, menacing feel to them and it's almost a given that you expect to be ambushed at any moment. Adamant posted:Considering there are three stairways down on the first floor of that cave, you should probably start color-coding them on the map instead of marking them as just up and down, or you're going to very rapidly forget which staircases lead where. Yeah, good point, I'm gonna need to rejigger my map stuff before long. I use the pen tool to color individual pixels on a zoomed-the-heck-in MSPaint file with the grid turned on, and I enlarge it all when I'm done to make it readable at a more reasonable size, but it's getting obvious it's not gonna cut it forever. I'll work something out. Huh, I always thought it was the power spike nonsense. Good to have that old wives' tale sorted out at last. Shitenshi posted:I remember the reset button, power off or your saves will be deleted thing used to scare the poo poo out of me. I'd always be worried that I'd do it wrong and my saves would be gone. Combine that with how sometimes Nintendo cartridges back then would randomly require the blowing trick without warning and that alone could jeopardize all your saves, yeah, not a pleasant experience. Especially for games that were as comprehensive as DQIV. Funny thing, I don't think I ever had this problem with Sega cartridges. I can't seem to find pictures or video of this, and I don't know if this is the same for all NES DW games... But I had a friend back then with a DW3 cartridge with corrupted saves, and when you start up that game, right after the main title, it plays the "you got cursed" jingle while warning you that your saves are gone and man that was weirdly scary to hear. Bregor posted:Ah yes, the “I can’t believe I forgot a drat torch” rage-Wings. I remember it well. Adamant posted:At the start of the game, you basically have the option of slooooowly grinding up exp and gold from the weak enemies around the starting area, or making short trips into places with tougher enemies you can't really handle yet and using Hurt/Gira to overpower them and get their substantially higher exp/gold rewards. ZP chose the latter. When I was a kid I was the type to grind around a town until I could afford all its gear, then just blast through the countryside with impunity until the next town. That'd be intolerable for me today, so yeah there's the more interesting notion of finding out what's the most efficient grinding spot for where you're at, and there are quite a few factors to balance. For example, going after the strongest enemy you can kill isn't always the best, since inn costs may be eating most of your profits if the wins are too narrow, especially when fighting requires MP expenditure. Even then the EXP rewards may be worth it anyway, but if you make a wrong move and die, maybe the gold loss won't be worth the EXP gain in terms of time spent. So it's a balancing act. mandatory lesbian posted:wow this game actually looks kinda good for being 30 years old o_0 Dang, yes. Compared to its contemporaries, it's in a league of its own. On the western side, the latest Ultima that was out when Dragon Quest came out in Japan was Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar. It got a decent-looking NES port in 1990, but it looked like this in 1985 on the Commodore 64.  In Japan, we can take a look at The Black Onyx's 1987 SG-1000 port here. There is zero doubt that Dragon Quest being smooth, attractive and colorful had a major impact on it success. And many of its monster designs are still used in the series today, almost unchanged. FrankZP fucked around with this message at 05:29 on May 14, 2018 |
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May 14, 2018 05:17
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Xenocides posted:I think I am the only Dragon Warrior player to buy a bamboo pole, a set of clothes, and the shield as my first purchases. Even as a little kid I wanted one of everything. That's actually not a bad choice, it gives you more defense than just Leather Armor, and the Small Shield is typically the piece of Brecconary gear that gets obsoleted the least quickly. I think it just never occurred to me to buy three pieces of kit at the start for some reason. (Well, apart from the Dragon's Scale of course.)
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May 15, 2018 06:05
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   : Yeah, yeah.It's okay. I'm okay. We're okay. I'm mad, but mostly at myself. It's fine. It'll be fine. It'll be fine soon. Let's try the cave south of Kol instead of returning to that nameless western hole in the ground, shall we? On our way, we do stop in Kol for another set of Wings and a... a Torch. Yes. Ahem. It does help that anything weaker than a Scorpion often tries to run away from us by now, or usually dies in one hit if they stand their ground.  Alright then, it's nose-holding time.   Well that was extraordinarily unpleasant; it's a 20 HP toll at best. Getting this close to the cave entrance does reveal that there's an exit on the other side of the river, so it must be the way to the Southern Isle. Hopefully Rimuldar isn't too far inland. We use an Herb to ensure we don't get ganked by the first twerp we run into, and head inside.  A single Scorpion fight later...   ...huh. I'm not one to look a gift staircase in the mouth, but I can't help but suspect there might be more to this tunnel than meets the eye. Hmm. Hmmmmmm. Ah, to hell with it, let's get outta here.  From a design point of view, the simple straight path through this cave makes a lot of sense, seeing as it's not a one-and-done dungeon, but a path we'll have to take several times. It's even easy to navigate without a Torch if you're just passing through.    Wolves are easily the toughest enemies we've met so far, barring the one Wolflord, but they have no HURT resistance and only the faintest chance to resist SLEEP.  They also drop up to 49 gold! If we can find an inn close by, we'll have decent upgrades before long.   Metal Scorpions don't hit as hard as Wolves, but they have much higher defense power and lower hit points, so it's best to use HURT if you can spare the juice. They have zero resistance to SLEEP but at this point they'd probably wake up before our axe would finish them off.  Oh-ho!   Dreadful Southern Isle my rear end, this was practically trivial! Man, it's been a hike and a half, though. We could really go for some pizza, or spaghetti, or... or even just a refreshing tankard of the purest, coolest tomato juice.  : Madam! Please! I must know! Do you have... Perchance, might you possibly have some tomatoes for sale? : AUGH! NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOO!Behold the tragedy of a world in thrall to the Dragonlord.  : My heart is dust and my mouth ashen at the news of your tomato situation, but I must persevere, and I shall. Let us carry on bravely, brother. That's expensive for an inn without tomatoes, but we can actually make that amount back pretty quick around here, so we spend the night right away.  : It... has been indeed! I'd stay and chat, but, you know, busy, and all. Safe travels!Presumably we met this dude in Brecconary, but I don't think any of the NPCs would be missing from there if we visited again. Or maybe this is the one portion of the dialog that implies in any way that the character we're playing was existing in the world before the game started.  The contents of that chest had better be rad as hell to justify two locks.  It's probably behind that locked door in the northeast tower we saw back then.  : Nah dude, I'm a true warrior and I don't have a ring. Wait a minute. Are you running a jewelry store? Are you trying to make rings cool? Get outta here.  Man that Broad Sword is tempting, but I suspect the Half-Plate would more efficiently improve our staying power, especially since we have to rely on HURT spells to take out Metal Scorpions. The Full Plate would be nice of course but I don't know if I want to grind up 3k right now. (Actually, that's a lie. I apologize. I know very well I don't want to grind up 3k.) The Magic Armor has the exact same defense power as Full Plate, but it reduces received HURT spell damage by a third, and causes you to regenerate 1 HP every four steps you take. That's a hell of a lot of money for these little perks, though.   : Whoops, my bad, sorry, I'll let myself out.Man, it's good to see RPGs kill that whole "going in people's houses and taking their stuff" thing in the egg so early, and we never have to witness this sociopathic nonsense from so-called heroes again.  There's a stream going all the way around this town, so we can't quite reach that building from here. Hmm.  : 'Tis also said that he entered the darkness from a hidden entrance in the room of the Dragonlord.Well that sounds like important information right there.     : No pressure, huh? : Maybe... Maybe a sword made of a high-pressure jet of water mixed in with abrasives. Let me know when you guys work that out. : Nnnnnnno?: Go to the south.: Ah. The south. Where the fierce and terrible monsters live. I love you too, man. It's not, like, super immediately obvious, but we can walk around the outside of the stream from here. Let's try south first.   : Maybe don't wait for him to bring you tomatoes.Retracing our steps back east, then north...  Try as we might, there is nothing we can do to reunite these star-crossed lovers. They insist on waiting for each other at opposite ends of town. It shows the importance of compromise in a relationship, doesn't it? If you retain only one lesson from this adventure, dear viewers, let it be that one. Or the one about bringing torches in dark places. Either or.      So here's a kick in the pants. Each key can only be used once, and you gotta buy them for 53 gold each. And most doors don't have the courtesy to stay open when you leave the area. I'm buying four right now. We were one fifth of the way to getting an armor upgrade, and now we're destitute. Welp, let's start using them up right away and check out that chest at the inn.  : You wouldn't know that Nester guy, would you? Ah, never mind. ... Eh, okay, Wings cost 70, and the extra key we used to get them was 53. Fine. That's all Rimuldar had to offer us. We could go open a few doors right away, but right this moment we're just going to explore the island and make a bit of money off the local wildlife. Let's see...  Oof, we burn through MP fast, and we use up our stock of Herbs on our first trip of any distance. In addition to Wolves and Metal Scorpions, there are also Warlocks and Skeletons wandering around. It's rough going! Unfortunately there is no item shop in Rimuldar, so we can't even completely restock. Guess we'll be grinding nearby for a while until we can afford at least a Half-Plate, and maybe a Broad Sword. Alright then, see you in a bit. ... ......  SON OF A-  : I... I fell asleep.: ...: That's not what it sounds like! Just take my money and let me go, will you? Cripes.Welp. At least we can open a couple doors in here, and restock on Herbs.   : ...Well then they'll call me the coward who defeated the Dragonlord. Out of my way!    So that's... 36 gold. We're upside down 17 gold on that key.     : It's a legend.: Oh! Right! Stones of Sunlight, Staff of Rain, Erdrick made a rainbow. I get it. So here's another kick in the pants. You can buy keys in Tantegel. They cost 32 more gold than in Rimuldar, and you need to blow a key just to get in every time you want to buy a set. Le sigh. We pass this time.   : At the World-famous Warrior Wishing Well!: May the light be thy strength!  These horrible trap tiles each cost 15 health to step on. This dude better be worth it.  That... actually sounds like useful information. Alright then. Finally, going around the east side of the castle...  I suspect the whole deal with Orwick and his paramour is there to teach us we can do this.    : Take the Treasure Chest.: Are you sure? No proof needed, no bullshit? I can just take it? We can just take it!  Well that's one widget down.  : Gosh, sorry for showing a little happiness then. I'll show myself out!  The Stones do nothing on their own, they're a plot coupon. Still, one fewer to go after. Alright then, time to head back to Rimuldar, grind up at least one gear upgrade and as many keys as we can carry. I'll let you know if anything interesting happens. Achievement unlocked! The real Dragon Warrior starts here. FrankZP fucked around with this message at 17:37 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 06:21
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DeathChicken posted:I question the business method of the key salesman who has his shop behind a door only his keys open He's probably subsidized by the Crown, but that's still many years of showing up to work every day, looking wistfully at the dusty crate behind the counter, and whispering "soon, soon". Besides, there's the dude stuck behind 15HP death-traps just across his shop, so he figures things could be worse. Shiki Dan posted:For what it's worth, the woman talking about 'tomatoes' was originally offering to sell you a "Puff-Puff" for 50 gold in the original DQ.  : Wh... What!? No tomatoes, and no Puff-Puff? This is truly the darkest timeline. 
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 17:55 on May 16, 2018 |
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May 16, 2018 17:52
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And we're back, two levels stronger. Level 9 gave us 8 Strength, 2 Agility, 4 HP, 6 MP, and a new spell. RADIANT is a Torch replacement! It costs 3 MP, and unlike Torches it has a set duration. It keeps its initial 3 tile radius for 80 steps, then shrinks to 2 tiles for 60 steps, and lasts for another 60 steps before it fades completely. We can refresh the duration anytime, though. Level 10 gave us 5 Strength, 9 Agility, 3 HP, 4 MP and... another spell!  STOPSPELL costs 2 MP, and rolls against your opponent's STOPSPELL resistance. If it succeeds, it permanently prevents them from casting spells. They'll even waste turns failing to cast, so against magic-inclined monsters with weak physical attacks, it's much better than SLEEP. Non-casters typically have a 15/16 resistance to it, but it has no effect on them so it doesn't matter. Some enemies also know STOPSPELL, including Wolflords for example. Fortunately, the player has a 50% resistance to it, and the effect does not persist after combat ends. Another mechanic that came up a few times during the grind is the critical hit chance, or "excellent blow" as the in-game text calls it. Every time we use the ATTACK command, we have a 1/32 chance of performing a special attack that ignores defense power. Monsters never roll for excellent blows, so you don't have to worry about random damage spikes if you have a basic idea of how hard a given critter generally hits. That's an extremely good design decision; getting caught with your pants down by a new enemy that you don't know much about is one thing, getting one-shot out of the blue by an old enemy because of a rare dice roll is another. Unfortunately, the enemy's dodge chance does apply to your excellent blows, so you can very much roll a crit that your opponent immediately dodges. This sometimes has dire consequences.  Anyway! The grind was slow going at first, with us barely making more money on each sortie than the cost of an inn stay. The 8 Strength increase from level 9 tipped the scales in our favor, and every subsequent upgrade allowed longer, more profitable hunting trips. By level 10, we could efficiently kill Metal Scorpions without HURT and Wolves without SLEEP, and our new STOPSPELL completely neuters Warlocks. And so...   Our next upgrade is going to be the Large Shield from Garinham, but I'm about at my limit for grinding right now. Let's explore the rest of this Southern Isle. If we can't find Princess Gwaelin in this eastern region, it means she must be in the tunnel from Kol, and we can check it out on our way back.   Up in the northwest, we find this peculiar terrain. Looks like it would be a nice place for a rainbow bridge! In fact, the landmass to the west is indeed the Isle of Dragons, where accursed Charlock stands; even if we could make it there right away, we'd probably catch a hell of a whupping.  This is the southern tip of the Southern Isle. We've been warned of tough monsters living even further to the south, but if we get in over our heads we can spare a Wing.  Wyverns are a bit stronger than Wolflords, with a 25% resistance to SLEEP and no other notable attributes. One might expect that they would drop Wings of the Wyvern, but there's no such thing as an item drop in this game. Anyway, let's... just take out this one and turn back, shall we?  93? Oh my! It... might be worth our while to go a little further.  At least to this point of interest, maybe.  Oof. Goldmen are highly resistant to everything but HURT; they don't hit as hard as Wyverns but are much more durable. Given their substance, they also have the highest possible gold drop in the game: 150 to 199. We're running away from this one though, we're hitting for 8 and it's hitting back for 11.     : Uh. Um. Okay? Wow. That's... okay then. Not gonna lie, weight off my shoulders. But... I don't have a plan B, man. Zero head for business. Do you have any advice? He unceremoniously teleports us outside. Welp. That's it for these islands, let's head back to Rimuldar. The Dragonlord's off the table but maybe we can still find the princess.  That was by far the furthest from Tantegel we've ever been.  : If you mean that rear end in a top hat's house down south, then yeah.: In this temple do the sun and rain meet.: They'll have to meet for somebody else, I guess.That's about it for this place. We've made enough money sneaking in lucky Wyvern and Wolflord kills on our way back north to upgrade our shield, so let's hoof it to Garinham right quick. Or heck, we have an extra pair of Wings, let's save some time. We level up off a Ghost on the way, earning a good amount of stats across the board, including an exceptional 9 MP.  Oooh, that Shield gets us a respectable 6 more Defense Power. I'll take it! Before we go on the last phase of our much-shorter-than-expected-dragon-quest-with-very-few-dragons-actually, let's open a couple doors in Brecconary.   Well, we had that one deduced, but it's good to have confirmation. Not that the harp will be any use to us now.   Fairy Water is a one-shot item that prevents random encounters with enemies whose defense is lower than our Strength, and it lasts 128 steps. It's a pleasant convenience, so we pick up a couple and use one right away for our trip back to the eastern tunnel.  : Actually I was going to drink it, but I fat-fingered the bottle and spilled it all over. I hope it still works. It does!  Okay, lessee...   Oh this is much better! If the Princess is here, we almost can't help but find her now. Let's get to exploring that eastern section.   !!! : Alright you overgrown corn snake, I may not be the descendant of Erdrick, but I've got a real-rear end sword, and I've got a real-rear end suit of armor, and I've got a real-rear end shield, and I know real-rear end magic, so BRING IT THE HELL ON. : Maybe that old fart had a point.The Green Dragon is much stronger than anything we've encountered so far. Mostly it just has high stats, but it also uses a fire breath attack 25% of the time, causing between 16 and 23 damage, bypassing both defense power and the Magic Armor's special resistance (not that we have it). I've tried putting it to sleep because it "only" has a 9 in 16 chance of resisting it, but to no avail. Our Broad Sword couldn't put a dent in its hide, and I doubt chipping away at its HP with the HURT spell (which it slightly resists) would have killed it faster than it could kill us. I think this is very effective, thematically. This is the first dragon we meet, in this game called Dragon Warrior. It does not screw around. Taking it down will be a Big Deal.  : It was an actual dragon this time, so you gotta agree I'm moving up in the world, right?Oh well. It doesn't look like the actual descendant of Erdrick has showed up yet, and we got a bunch of keys, so we might as well tie up some loose ends. Let's head for Kol.  What did that Howard guy say? Four steps south of the bath...?  Let's see if that menu option even does anything.  Video: Playing the Fairy FluteAh! Alright then. This must be what the fairies used to put Golem to sleep. Shame it probably doesn't work on dragons.  : Yeah. It sucked but I made mad bank, so it's okay.: I have heard that powerful enemies live there.: You heard right, broseph. The wizards there have sticks!  : Your... uh... Your precious, legendary village treasure? Nah.: Howard had it, but he went to Rimuldar and never returned.: Is there a reward for bringing it back? What should I do if I find it?: Go to the town of Cantlin.: I'll keep it in mind thanks goodbyeeeeee!Next on the list: that cave in the west that we were forced to leave half-unexplored due to completely unforeseeable circumstances beyond our control!  This is so much better, dang. We can one-shot basically everything on the first floor, so let's head to the second right away.  The Drakeema is the strongest Drakee variant, which... doesn't mean much. It's about equivalent to a Skeleton, but it has a 25% chance to cast HEAL if it's below 25% HP, otherwise it casts HURT half the time instead of attacking. We can one-shot it.  And this weird thing is also basically a Skeleton equivalent, maybe a bit weaker. Man, it's been like a quarter century and I still have no idea what it's supposed to be.  These two chests in the north side yield a Torch (ha. ha.) and...   The Fighter's Ring does nothing. Zero statistical effect, doesn't change your resistances, nothing. Maybe we can impress that one jerk back in Rimuldar with it, though.  And this one chest in the west... contains 117 gold. Ehh. That's it.  That's all she wrote. From a game design perspective, this cave is kinda weird. The enemies on the second floor are generally a bit stronger than around Kol, and weaker than around Rimuldar, but it's on the other side of the world so it's not an intuitive mid-point. It's also too far from an inn to be a convenient grinding location, and the contents of its chests are either garbage or not worth the effort. It does have three staircases you can use to go from floor to floor, so maybe this is to help new players realize that dungeons can have multiple ways to traverse layers. On the other hand, modern open-world games are often peppered with various dead-end caves containing dubious rewards, and Dragon Warrior has the courtesy to have only this one, so who's to say which way progress goes? Anyway. Let's head back to Rimuldar to fill up on keys and obtain some random adventurer's approval.  : What!? I'm not... This is not a... It's a... Bah, forget it. Alright, that's over with. What are our next objectives? -Killing a dragon that we have every reason to believe is guarding a princess. I hope she's alright in there, because this won't be within our reach for a while. -Exploring the southwestern regions, in Wolflord country. More plausible than dragonslaying, but I'm not too keen yet. -Grinding up a suit of Full Plate. Yikes, no. -Digging up a dead bard to reduce the workload of the actual descendant of Erdrick, whenever they show up. How hard can it really be? Welp, Garinham it is. Let's hope we don't have to buy a shovel. FrankZP fucked around with this message at 20:26 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 04:40
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I think the re--releases make it give something like +2 attack power, so it's a counterpart to the Dragon's Scale. The mechanical numbers are low enough in this game (and in the series, mostly) that this would completely make it worth the inventory slot. But here, in this version? Yup, nothing.Shitenshi posted:I never completed this game because that crotchety old man stumped me on what to do next. I even had pet theories that you had to grind up all the way to learn all the spells and buy all the highest tier equipment for things to go right. Then again, given what he said and how rough an actual dragon is, maybe I wasn't so misguided after all. Ooof, yeah, I can see that situation happening. Some of the links in the chain of information that leads you to the endgame are really far apart. And if this is one's first game of this type, it'll be even easier to miss or overlook this or that clue. FrankZP fucked around with this message at 12:12 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 12:06
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   Huh. It's like half the town lives in here, what's the deal?  : Would have been too much trouble to just leave it at the castle, eh? This gives us a goal in our later travels in that direction for sure.  : Sheesh, fine.Maybe that explains the lock.  We have a friend helping us out with cartography. His name is Marvin Simonson Paint. Very famous.  : So. Uh. I presume no one minds if I open these crummy old chests that someone carelessly left on the ground here, right? Anyone object? Anyone?No one. Sweet!    Well, we already had a Torch, and I presume the empty chest would have contained an Herb if we weren't already maxed out.   : Aight, gotcha. Hey, I- : ...wh... Err... Ooooh, I get it. Your secret's safe with me, boys. But I'm not spending another key to shut the door behind me. Hmm. It doesn't look like we're any closer to finding Garin's tomb. But it's got to be around here somewhere. Let's think about this for a moment... ...  A wall of darkness! Maybe this is... Let's see...   Score! The north wall here isn't visible, since it's cunningly made to be part of the "outside" section of town that we can't see from inside. Trying to leave that way usually results in a THUD sound since we're hitting our head on a stone wall, but the third brick tile from the west has an actual exit.   This is as much of a warning as we're likely to get.   Garin's grave is the first real dungeony-dungeon-with-a-plot-item-at-the-end we get, and it is not messing around. I'm not 100% convinced we even have any business in here with our current level and gear, but I guess we'll see. This is where the Dragon Warrior death penalty mechanic brings a bit of freedom, for two reasons. First off, no matter what happens, we'll get some experience out of this, so it doesn't feel like I'm entirely in danger of wasting time, or at least not quite as much as if I had to reload and just wipe out all our progress since the last save. And second, if we find what we're looking for, of course it's best if we can walk out with it under our own power, but if we get ganked on the way back we'll still get to keep it. Alright then, let's bring some peace to Garin's spirit, shall we? We run into Skeletons and Poltergeists on the first level. Taking HURT casts to the face worries me, but luckily they mostly hit for 1 damage or run away instead. Dang but I'm still really happy about this Half-Plate. Heck, we might even be close to a Full Plate once we get out of here.  Huh. I'm glad we stocked up on keys after all.   The grey square is the door. We're not done mapping out the first floor, but we can do a thorough clean-up later; for this first run I just want to see how far down we can make it. Since we've found this staircase behind a locked door, it's probably the right way down.  Ehhh, this one seems almost too convenient, but maybe that's what Garin's gravedigger wants us to think! Let's keep going down. We run into a Wolf just before we reach the stairs. It's easy pickings by now, but things are definitely escalating.  ...well we've been outfoxed. Back to the second floor then.  There's another staircase to the south, with a Metal Scorpion nearby. These are definitely Rimuldar-grade enemies, so we'll probably start meeting some new critters below.  Druinlords are about equivalent to Wolflords in stats, more robust but not as strong. They're highly resistant to SLEEP, but completely vulnerable to other spells. Considering they're 75% likely to cast HEAL when wounded, and 25% likely to cast HURT otherwise, they're worth spending a STOPSPELL on.  Specters are Wolf-equivalents, with very slight resistances to SLEEP and STOPSPELL. Seeing as they have a 25% chance to HEAL themselves and a 75% chance to cast HURT otherwise, they're also worth the slight MP expenditure to silence. We're starting to take some real damage from attacks, so I pop an Herb. MP is way too precious a commodity this deep in to spend it on healing if it can be helped.  Ooooh, a lone chest in the northwest corner.  : Yeah... Yeah, no. Maybe I'll just... not put that thing on right away.Definitely not what we came in here for. Let's keep going. The path we were on ends in an up staircase, taking us back to the second floor, and eventually to some place we already went through. It's becoming apparent that diffent staircases going between the same floors don't maintain exact distances from one another from floor to floor, so you can't use their positions on one level to map their exact positions on another; that's kind of a shame. That said, they've mostly been off by a few tiles so far, so it's not completely disorienting, just tricky to map. Finding an alternate way into the center of the second floor...  ... leads us to a previously unexplored region of the third floor. RADIANT helped us see a down staircase from our previous jaunt here, so I suspect there's at least one more floor underneath here.  Okay, that's a second inaccessible down staircase on the third floor. Our MP's still holding up so far, gotta keep going.  Aw man, that super-important-looking staircase in the center of four pillars just leads to a couple dead-ends. Back to the second floor then. There must be another stairway down from there that'll take us deeper; maybe in the southwest corner.  Yup, southwest. Fingers crossed.  There's still maybe a third of the third floor we haven't seen, but this is our first stairs down to the fourth. Whew.   Hmm. A way back up. We don't run into anything down here, but we've seen Wolflords on 3F and I'm not in a hurry to see what's worse than this right now.  Ah-ha! ...as if on cue, another Wolflord pops up exactly on the chest tile. We put the puppy to sleep, and then we put him to sleep.  NICE!   Yeah, yeah, I think so. We've just hit the inventory limit of 10 items. Herbs and Keys stack up to 6 in one slot, but everything else takes up one space each, even consumables like Fairy Water. For now we can just throw away the extra Torch we found topside.  Well would you look at that. It's about time we had a real win, isn't it? Our MP's still about half full, we've got a few Herbs left, and a few holes in our map. Maybe we can just clear the place out in one run! And at this rate we'll definitely be able to pick up that Full Plate. If not right as we leave, at least after a tolerably small amount of Wolf hunting. Ahhh, things are looking up!  We run into this bad customer on our way back through the third floor. Wraith Knights are a fair bit stronger than Wyverns in every way, with about a 1 in 3 chance of resisting SLEEP and a 75% chance to cast HEAL when wounded. They're making me a bit nervous, so I just cast SLEEP and run away. We definitely don't want King Lorik to find himself 790 gold richer if we can help it.  And here's what I suspect is the last new critter down here. Drollmagi are Wyvern-equivalent, with a 50% chance to cast STOPSPELL and insignificant resistances. Nothing much to worry about. Okay, the second and third floors are mapped, but there's still half the first one remaining, and our MP's dangerously low. I'm just going to leave, sleep in Garinham, then finish up and get back to you. ...  And that's the last room. If you come in here without a key to open the door in the south, these three chests are your only possible reward. They contain... 11 gold and a Herb. Wow.  (I didn't map the 4th floor, it's just two up staircases, you can't possibly get lost.) Welp, anyway, we're done here. Overall I'm quite pleased with the difficulty in this place, it felt pretty much just right for where we're at right now. The first two floors are kind of a cakewalk, but the bottom two are filled with critters that we'd best not underestimate even with our current gear. I could especially imagine runs cut short by just a couple Wraith Knight encounters going sour. If we had done just a little less grinding in Rimuldar I suspect it would still have been doable, just a lot more nerve-wracking. Okay then. We return to the surface, then restock on Herbs and rest at the Inn. The next region we'll explore is in the far southwest, but I want to go in Full Plate and with a full stock of keys. Besides, we've got a Harp to trade in, too. Speaking of the Silver Harp... Video: Playing the Silver HarpWhen the old man said the Harp attracts monsters, he wasn't kidding. Using the Harp anywhere on the overworld gets you in an instant random encounter. You'd think this would be useful for grinding, but unfortunately, it only ever summons Slimes, Red Slimes, Drakees, Ghosts, Magicians and Scorpions. It's absolutely not worth hanging on to. Oh, and, hmm. What the hey. Let's see... Video: Always accessorize!: Ugh. I don't know what I expected. At least I know my pants won't fall down.The Cursed Belt is all downsides. It'll randomly squeeze our body during combat, causing us to lose our turn. In addition...  The guards at the gates in Tantegel won't let us in anymore. We can't save. If you try to sell the Belt while wearing it...  (Don't mind the level discrepancy in that last image, I somehow lost the original pictures and had to retake a couple after the fact.) And this doesn't actually happen to us this time, but if you commit the unspeakable offense of dying while cursed...  : Leave at once!...the King teleports you out of the castle, alive but with 1 HP. Slight problem... but simple solution.    : I've never been so happy to get an old man to take off my belt.: Now, go. Aaaand it's gone, like it was never there. We can save again. The Cursed Belt is your basic piège-à-con booby-trap. Don't wear it, and if you wear it, don't forget about the old man in Brecconary who mentioned curses and will just take it from you for free. Otherwise, as long as it's not actually around your waist, you can sell it for 180 gold. That bit of foolishness done, let's head for the shrine west of Kol. We'll be using our last Fairy Water, there's not much to gain on the way but time.  : I robbed a dead guy for this, old man. You better deliver.  Aaand he just disappears. No stepping aside, no handing it to us, he's gone.   Just like the Stones of Sunlight, it does nothing. We'd need to take it to the "magic shrine" in the far south to combine their magic, but the guy running the place won't give us the time of day. It's a shame we're not the descendant of Erdrick, because we're doing a pretty decent job at it! We haven't gained a single level since we last fought the Green Dragon, so that's still off the table. But getting our Full Plate will be a trivial effort, and we're finally up to the task of seeing more of Alefgard, and maybe even find Hauksness, or Cantlin, where mighty weapons are made. You know the drill. See you on the other side of the grind, true believers! FrankZP fucked around with this message at 20:00 on May 19, 2018 |
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May 18, 2018 11:34
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Saying "trivial" might be my way to paint a happy face on "tolerable". 
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May 18, 2018 12:27
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Bregor posted:Garin’s Grave is a nice little dungeon, I wish DW1 had a few more of these beginner/intermediate places to dive into. And a few advanced ones as well. Oh dang yes. There are a few places in the game progression where near-obligatory grinding would be advantageously replaced by a moderately difficult dungeon with even a minor reward at the end. That would improve flow for sure. BrightWing posted:Thread got me to pick up my DQ3 file on my phone again. I like the way you've been showing the parts of the world map, helps follow along better. Ha, I figured that'd be worth the effort to put together. The overworld tileset looks great for the era but without context any given raw screenshot of travel is just decoration. With a game this minimalistic, it's crucial to convey a sense of scale and direction. Shitenshi posted:There's another "perk" of being cursed that I learned about recently but I don't know if FrankZP is planning on showing it later. Hmm! I've done all that came to mind with curses, so if there's stuff I didn't think of involving elements we've already seen, I'm keen on learnin'!
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May 19, 2018 18:34
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Before we start today, I'd like to go in detail on something that I haven't really mentioned yet: encounter rate and terrain types. Dragon Warrior rolls its encounter chance every step you take, depending on what kind of tile you're entering. This is very different than with certain other games, that set a random countdown (usually based on distance traveled) at the end of every battle and guarantee an encounter when that countdown reaches zero. As I mentioned a while back, the world map is divided into 64 square sections, and each section has a set of five enemy slots, each of which has a roughly equal chance of being picked when an encounter is triggered. (Many of these sections share sets.) These five slots aren't always filled with five different enemies, in order to weigh the odds; for example, the short dead end just southwest of Tantegel has two Slime slots, two Red Slime slots, and one Drakee slot. Individual dungeon floors also have a set of five enemies associated with them, just like overworld sections. In normal circumstances, every grassland or bridge tile has a 1 in 48 chance of triggering a random encounter. Swamps and forest have a 1 in 16 chance, while hills and deserts have a 1 in 8 chance. (Mountains and water are of course impassable.) In dungeons, standard brick tiles and 15HP trap tiles have a 1 in 16 chance, while stair and chest tiles have a 1 in 24 chance. The latter is really nice, as it reduces the chances that you'll reach the exit or goal of a dungeon and get ambushed for it before you can open your command menu. Overall I'm fairly happy with the encounter rate. Sometimes you get several in quick succession, sometimes you get to travel a surprisingly long distance between fights. It feels pretty good, and the difference between terrains is absolutely noticeable. It is worth taking detours through grasslands to travel far, and it is worth patrolling hills to grind. Speaking of grinding! The area far south of Rimuldar (but north of the magic temple island) has an enemy we hadn't met yet.  Wraiths are marginally stronger than Wolves. They have a 7/16 resistance to SLEEP, and a 25% chance to cast HEAL when below 25% of their Max HP. Level 12 earned us 8 Strength, 5 Agility, 1 HP, 7 MP, and a new spell.  OUTSIDE teleports you from the interior of a dungeon to its overworld entrance; it costs 6 MP. Fortunately Alefgard is entirely devoid of monsters that can drain your MP, so the only things that can keep you from being able to bail from a cave at any time are your own recklessness and inattention. (As long as you're not in the middle of a fight of course.) And finally...  The Full Plate increases our Defense Power by an additional 8 points! We now ought to be able to travel further southwest without having to turn back at the first hint of a wolf with delusions of lordship.  This is the area of the continent that we have yet to explore. We know of two towns in that region, with Cantlin being east of Hauksness. We've been outright told to go to Cantlin with the Fairy Flute, and we might want to pick up some dragonslaying gear there, but if it turns out that Hauksness is closer, it'll still be good to have a safe place to rest. Besides, Erdrick's tablet mentioned three special items, and we have only two. Maybe we can pick up some info that we could pass along to the descendant if we ever meet them. Aight then, time to get a move on. The trip to get back to where we left off is largely uneventful.   We get into fights with Wolflords, Wraiths, Wyverns, Wraith Knights and the occasional Goldman, all dispatched with relative ease. The latter now deal around 5 damage per hit, and we can take them out in 3 to 4 turns. And the rewards, oh my!   Can't complain! Going further south...  Rogue Scorpions are about as strong as Wyverns, but with much higher defense power. Their HP is relatively low though, which should make them vulnerable to HURT, but that spell does such low damage by now that it's hardly worth the expense. (Never mind the level in this screenshot, I forgot to take one the first time around.)    Knights also make their first appearance as we travel further southwest. They're a fair bit stronger than Wraith Knights, with middling resistance to SLEEP and STOPSPELL, and the ability to cast STOPSPELL themselves. They hit us for over 20 per turn, and we can only answer with 5.  Oh dear. We lose about 400 to the royal tax, and spend another 100 to replenish our Herbs. That said, we don't currently have a money-related goal, so it's not a great tragedy. It'd be nice to scrape 7700 together for the Magic Armor, but it has the same defense value as Full Plate and would not have saved us from that Knight. There's little to it right now but to restock and try to make it further this time.   In fact we do make it to sign of civilization! Before we can get any closer, though...  Ouch. Demon Knights are a bit less durable than Knights, but they're highly resistant to all magic and have a whopping 15 in 64 dodge chance. We go through half our stock of Herbs trying to take it down. We can't be in that town soon enough!  Whew. Maybe they still have tomatoes here.  Music: Dungeon (third floor) ...okay then, no tomatoes.  We're almost immediately greeted by a God-Damned Werewolf(tm). They are just a slight touch weaker than Green Dragons. Can't nope out of here fast enough! They only have a 7 in 16 resistance to SLEEP, let's see...   Yeah we don't need to turn this town inside out to figure out what happened here. We were told folk weren't sure Hauksness still existed or not. Now we know.  We've still got some resources left. Maybe we can go east and reach Cantlin. I guess it depends on whether the Demon Knights and such are here because we're so close to Hauksness, or if it just gets tougher all the way to the next town. We're about to find out.  The desert is swarming with Knights and more Demon Knights, but we manage to escape from them all mostly unscathed to the relative safety of the forest. Good grief!  Magiwyverns are about as strong as Demon Knights, with a nasty habit of casting SLEEP, but without the ludicrous dodge stat. They have only weak resistance to SLEEP and no resistance to STOPSPELL whatsoever, so we can make good use of our disabling abilities.  Or... bad use of our disabling abilities, as the case may be. I landed a STOPSPELL, but it refused to waste any of its subsequent turns on magic. Cash-wise we end up about the same as last time, and I'm certainly glad we get to keep our experience. The next trip should turn out a least a little better, as we can avoid Hauksness and the thick of the desert. Once more, then.     This does not bode well.  Yeah, no. This time we end up upside down on the trip's expense. If we keep going at it like this, before long we won't even be able to afford Herbs. We can't buy combat stats anymore, so we have to gain a level or two. It's actually a new position we're put in. Money for equipment used to be the limiting factor, but now the only piece of kit we could upgrade to wouldn't help us survive the fights we need to win. Experience points are very dear in Dragon Warrior. Beating one Knight gives us up to 129 gold, but only 33 EXP. The King helpfully informs us that we need 978 more to level up once. I need to figure a good grinding spot that will get us there in a sensible amount of time, and ideally without leaving us destitute. Gimme a sec... Alright, let's try this.  To the southwest of the ruins of Hauksness, in the far, untamed reaches of Alefgard, dwells an elusive legend...  Metal Slimes are strange creatures. They have 4 HP, a 1 in 64 dodge chance, and 15 in 16 resistance to all magic. They have a 75% chance to cast HURT on their turn, and otherwise attack with their Strength of 10. They also have an Agility of 255, guaranteeing that your Attack Power is lower than their Defense Power, which means that your attacks either do 0 or 1 damage. (A successful HURT cast will one-shot them, but as it only works 1 in 16 times, that's a serious MP expense in the long run.) Their low Strength also gives them the typical 25% chance to run each turn.  We get to see a lot of that. Metal Slimes sound like a whole lot of trouble, and they are. But the suckers are worth 115 EXP apiece. Yeah. Only a handful of endgame monsters get close to that. That said, the other four slots in their encounter set are Wraith Knights, Knights, Magiwyverns and Demon Knights. We'll spend a bit of time trying our luck down here, but if we really can't hack it, I guess the next best spot would be either the lower floors of Garin's tomb, or the magic temple island south of Rimuldar. Or... hmm...  There's another bridge to the east of this area. Maybe another mad attempt to find Cantlin might work. Yeah, I'm giving it a shot.   OH poo poo OH poo poo OH poo poo NOPE NOPE NOPE RUN RUN RUN   Oi. Starwyverns are statistically as tough as Green Dragons, though they have much worse magic resistances. They have a 75% chance to cast HEALMORE when critically wounded, and will otherwise breathe fire or attack. Enemies casting HEALMORE recover 85-100 HP. (Most fire breath attacks in the game are functionally identical, I'll only detail the exception when we get to it.) Cantlin might just be beyond our reach for now. Seeing as the locals don't take our Metal Slime hunt very well, I'll be spending some more time in Garin's tomb after all. ...  ... Yeah, the Drollmagi, Druinlords, Specters and Wolflords are trivial by now, and we're making both cash and experience faster than were were around Hauksness, considering the time walking back to that remote area from Tantegel. Only the Wraith Knights are at all a threa- ...  ...right. Maybe the Goldmen, Wraiths, Wolflords and Wyverns south of Rimuldar will find me less susceptible to occasional miscalculation. ... I think I'll be queuing up a couple podcasts. Alright, whew, level 13. 4 Strength, 8 Agility, 7 HP, 5 MP, and a new spell.  RETURN duplicates the effect of Wings of the Wyvern, and costs an entire 8 MP to cast. Keeping 14 MP in your pocket so you can both bail out of a dungeon with OUTSIDE and then teleport to safety with RETURN is going to remain a good idea throughout the series, if maybe a good idea too often giving way to overconfidence. Just these extra stats won't be enough to take us to Cantlin. Gotta keep going. ... ... You know, I'm kidding, this is nuts, but... at some point, and this is funny, I think to myself, "at this rate I'll have enough money to buy the Magic Armor and I'll still be level 13". Haha, let's share a sensible chuckle together. ... ... ... I'm watching a LP while making a LP, this is neat. LPception! ... ... ... ... Welp.  Again, the Magic Armor offers zero Defense Power improvement over the Full Plate. It does offer two special benefits, though whether those are worth the cost is questionable. It reduces received HURT spell damage by one third, and regenerates 1 HP every four steps we take. The latter effect does increase long-term survivability by a small measure, but it does nothing to help us beat new tiers of enemies. It's also the best piece of body armor money can buy, so that's settled. Anyway, levels are still what we're most after, so I'll get right back to it. ... ... ... ... ... ...! Whew, level 14! 8 Strength, 7 Agility, 7 HP, and 6 MP. That's pretty substantial! Maybe we can viably grind in the far southwest by now. That's the life. I'm grinding so I can go to a better grinding spot. ... No. Wait. No. No. We're a Dragon Warrior. We War Dragons. This is the only thing that matters right now. If I have to kill another critter so I can kill a bigger critter that'll make me able to kill an even bigger critter, my skull will detonate. We're going to materially improve someone life's Right The Hell Now. Let's go. We doin' this. Video: Get pumped!
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 01:03 on May 20, 2018 |
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May 19, 2018 18:57
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Patter Song posted:This LP is great. I admire your willingness to play the original when all the later versions tone down the tedium of levelling up significantly. Oh yeah absolutely. I'm still somehow enjoying this first one, the nostalgia tank isn't empty yet, even with all the grinding. But I'm also sustained by how I'll get to examine the subsequent evolution and be able to point at how legitimately impressive and ahead-of-its-time the series get. frankenfreak posted:That sprite is amazing! For my money, it's easily among the finest pieces of spritework of the era, and even for some fairly technical reasons that I'll get into next update. Shitenshi posted:Yikes, I forgot how hard this game can be. I can't believe I managed to beat the Green Dragon and still was unable to get all the plot coupons to finish this game. And holy poo poo at Gwaelin's sprite. After the screenshots that were posted earlier from the JP version, you know that was an unchanged holdover. The state of Gwaelin's in-dungeon sprite is due to a technical limitation brought on by the lighting system. I'll get into that too, but to give a short explanation, what we see before we pick her up isn't actually on the NES sprite layer, it's a background dungeon tile like brick floors, stairs and chests. Shitenshi posted:Put on a cursed item while you're with the king. After you pass the guards in the castle. ...! Man I should have thought of that, thanks for pointing it out. FrankZP fucked around with this message at 21:58 on May 19, 2018 |
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May 19, 2018 21:55
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Yeah, I've been trying to have a an update or two prepared in advance so I could guarantee a fairly regular schedule, something I couldn't do so much with my SMT LPs since that required a lot of audience voting. But there's a lot of the series to go through yet, I'm sure dear Gwaelin will have an opinion or two to offer along the way!
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May 21, 2018 18:13
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Just like that, we take Princess Gwaelin home. I know I said we got our final sprite when we bought our first shield, but this is something else, right?    Not only do we have two characters clearly depicted in a 16x16 sprite from four directions, but they are placed in a way that allows them to have their own color palette! The limitations of NES graphics make it so any given 8x8 block of pixels on a sprite has to use the same set of four colors, one of which is often a transparency that lets the background show through. But this princess-carryin' sprite is cleverly drawn so the character's palettes don't bleed into each other. The only flaw is in the north-facing one, where there's no helping the princess' hair turning blue. I'm sure you've also noticed a less impressive piece of spritework.  That one is pure compromise. The NES has only two layers on which it can draw: a background layer, and a sprite layer on top. Due to how the game is coded, Dragon Warrior's dark dungeon levels only ever have the player character's sprite on the sprite layer. I presume it's because they didn't figure out a way to have sprites interact correctly with the light radius system; either sprites would show up clearly on top of a background tile that should be dark, or they couldn't be made to transition smoothly from a dark tile to a lit tile. Remember: you can't just put a black square on top of a sprite that's meant to be in darkness, because there's no layer on top of the sprite layer. So the solution to make the princess appear in a place where you can't draw a sprite is to make her part of the background layer. And it so happens that the background layer in these dungeons has an extremely limited palette, probably due to memory constraints. If you'll notice, the princess shares the same red and greys as the brick tiles and stone walls surrounding her, and she's not animated at all. As far as the display system is concerned, she's the same as a chest or a staircase. Alright, that'll be enough digression, let's get back to our princess-rescuin' antics. If you don't care about saving your game ever again, you can technically complete the entire rest of the game with Gwaelin in your arms. It doesn't change much though, and practically nobody seems to notice her presence. That said, if you get yourself killed while carrying her, she'll be taken back to the tunnel between Kol and Rimuldar, and you have to go get her again. The Green Dragon stays dead, though. : So, six months, huh? : Indeed.: Did that dragon feed you?: Let's say I had to choke down a lot of charred goat meat.: Eesh.: I requested vegetables after the first week, and she started bringing in tomatoes by the cartload. I shudder to imagine where she got them from.: She? The dragon, you mean?: Yes. Somehow it felt like she hated being stuck in that tunnel almost as much as I did.: The Dragonlord made her guard you, did he? Do you think she would have let you go if he was out of the picture?: No, I'm certain she would have eaten me.: Right, dragon. I don't know what I was thinking.  : Alright, we're coming up on some serious bad terrain. Do you mind holding on to your hem? Better not get any of that crap on your clothes, it'll kill ya.: Art thou going be be fine?: Yeah, don't worry. I've recently discovered that I'm a powerful wizard for some reason. There's nothing this swamp can do to me that I can't fix.: I've read about this phenomenon! It must be the power of Erdrick's bloodline!: Well, I don't know about that. It would be nice if it was. : So. What are you going to do once this whole nonsense is over?: Going through the castle library in my youth, I found many tales of lands beyond the sea. I've always wanted to see them with my own eyes.: Ah, a traveler at heart then. There are worse ways to spend your time. : Before the Dragonlord appeared, my father was about to marry me to the son of the mayor of Cantlin. I will never travel.: Dang, right, that princess kinda crap. Do you at least like each other?: ...: Yikes, I get it. I could tell, your dad's a dick.: I- : Okay, hold that thought. : Right. Where were we?: My father being a dick. : Ooof, yeah. Bad scene. Wish there was something I could do.: That is not ne-: Heck, maybe I'll figure something out. I wouldn't mind setting you free a second time.: If thou defeats the Dragonlord, thou wilst have done far more than should ever be required of one person. I will be fine. : The arranged marriage thing, is it for money? Some kind of alliance?: It is for prestige. Cantlin is the largest city in my father's realm, after all.: Prestige, huh? : ...didst thou hear something?: Just harmless wildlife, no worries. Anyway, princess, how good is your acting?: What dost thou mean?: Your dad seems pretty convinced I'm the descendant of Erdrick. Do you think that'll be prestigious enough for him?: Perhaps!: If we can make him believe there's something going on between us long enough to get a ship built and sailing right out of here with you on it, it's beginning to look like a solution. Do you think he'd buy it?: Ooooh, he would love that whole "marrying thine savior" story! It would be child's play! : Alright then, we have a plan. Wanna go for a victory lap in Brecconary before you have to put your game face on?: Gladly! : You gotta admit the resemblance is uncanny, though. That's the guard who once told us that the quest to find the Princess had failed. He's still in terrible shape though, it would be bad form to rub our success in his face. Nobody else in town seems to react to the princess' visit.    : ...what? Screw you, buddy! : That's better. You're welcome.    : Now, Gwaelin, come to my side.  : Even when we two are parted by great distances, I shall be with thee. Farewell, ZedPower. : *wink* The save/continue dialog with the King continues as normal. If we speak with the Princess, we randomly get one of three responses.    Well, that's a classic right there. If we say no...   ...she immediately asks again. She keeps asking as long as we keep saying no. And if we say yes...  We get to hear the same jingle as when we rescued her in the first place. By the way, back in the tunnel, when she asks if we'll take her home, she serves you the same dish if you say no. Oh, and, of course you'll notice that Gwaelin gets her real sprite once she's out of the dungeon. That's much better.  That felt alright... but it didn't earn us much of anything in terms of reward. We're no closer to the end of this crisis than we were before. Hmm. ... Wait, what the...   ...what?  : !!!: My hope is with thee. From where thou art now, my castle lies... 0 to the north and... 0 to the west. I love thee, ZedPower.: Uh... The King's over your shoulder, isn't he? I love you too, sweetie.So that is our gameplay reward for rescuing Princess Gwaelin. We can now hear how much experience we need to level up from anywhere in the world, and also our exact position relative to Tantegel. Convenient and neat. Fair enough. Anyway. Detonating skull or not, it's back to grinding! Just gimme... multiple moments. ...  And that's level 15. 8 Strength, 9 Agility, 7 HP, 1 MP, and a spell.  REPEL exactly mimics the effect of Fairy Water, at the cost of 2 MP. Considering how often we need to shlep through Tantegel to save, this is a decent quality of life improvement. Also, notice the money we've got in the above images. We may have crashed Alefgard's economy by flooding the market with Goldman corpses. It's 3000 to level 16. I'm gonna take a chance and see if we can grind someplace with mostly monsters that give about 30 instead of about 25. Woo! ... Ooooh, we now do more damage to Knights than they're dealing to us. The plan is to hunt Metal Slimes until we almost run out of MP, the RETURN to Tantegel, rest up, and go back. If we don't manage to take out any Slimes, it's about 400-500 EXP per trip. ...  We take out exactly two Slimes. ... Level 16 rolls around. 4 Strength, 6 Agility, 5 HP, and...  ...21 MP!? Alright, we'll take it. So. Let's look at our map again. This is what we know of the southwestern region so far.  There are two bridges leading to the east. The northern one, closest to Hauksness, seems pretty rough going, what with all the hills and deserts. We ran into the Starwyvern past the southern bridge, but forests have fewer random encounters and we might be able to go further with our improved stats anyway. Alright then, south it is.  We've only had to fight Knights on the way there, so it's looking good so far.  Past the bridge are more Knights, Magiwyverns and Demon Knights, which are beatable at some cost, and more Starwyverns, so strong as to not be worth attempting to fight; we take a few blasts of flame to the face trying to run away. Those 21 MP from last level disappear in a flash.  Another bridge... Things are already hard enough, let's stay on our path for now.  Gah. We put him to sleep and run. We better be getting somewhere soon.   !!!  Huh, look at that wall. They might still be alright in there. Video: Clay FighterGolem is tied for second highest Strength stat in the game, and he's highly resistant to all spells, but his Agility is lower than any of the dangerous critters' we've had to fight through to make it here. He's beatable without putting him to sleep with the Fairy Flute, but probably not at our level with our current gear. Alright then, let's check out this town.    : The last to have it was a fellow named Wynn. : Wait, what? You're real? Well, okay, don't worry, I won't! : I'm beginning to suspect the rumors of mighty weapons in Cantlin may have been embellished somewhat. That's small change by now.   : If you put it like that, I have to say I'm tempted to wait for the descendant of Erdrick to show up.: That is good. No one will say thou art afraid.: I've seen Hauksness on my way here though. I can't just sit here and do nothing.: Thou art truly brave.  Nothing in here. Huh.  : Not quite what I'm looking for. Sorry. Nothing of note at the item shop either.  : I... Uh... I appreciate the offer, but I got someone waiting for me back home. If you see the mayor's son, let him know, alright? No reason! : You and me both, lady. Hmm.  : Oh... Oh dang. Okay then. I'm as glad to have this information as I am terrified.  The large building in the center of town is a covered park, but of course you can't enter it if it means you'd be stepping on a water tile, so it may momentarily trick you.  : Huh! Well okay then, that's a lead. If I got my hands on that proof, it'd sure make my life both easier and more difficult.  : Aw heck. : You better have more than well wishes for me, old man.: May the light be thy strength!: Heard that one before, what else you got?: Thou may go and search. From Tantegel Castle travel 70 leagues to the south and 40 to the east.: Alright, that's oddly specific. I'll check it out.This would be the true gameplay use of Gwaelin's Love. You can technically work this out yourself by carefully counting steps as you travel all the way from Tantegel (or if you're familiar with the game and just outright remember where the spot is), but good grief just rescue the dang princess, will ya?  Another tiny empty building.  You can get Fairy Water from here without spending a key, but I can't imagine making it here before you're high enough level to know REPEL.  Hmm! We've heard that the Dragonlord's scales are hard as steel, so we're definitely going to have to track it down.  Not as crap an inventory as that other store's, but still no use to us.  So, Erdrick's armor is near a tree behind a shop in the east of Hauksness. We also definitely want that.  This is the last building here, so it better have something real good!  Eh, sure. Inflation is making our currency worthless anyway.  : Yyyyyyyyyyes! : Oooooh mama!These happen to be the best sword and shield money can buy. In addition, apparently Erdrick didn't carry a shield, because the Silver Shield is in fact also the best shield in the game.  It increases our Defense Power by an additional 10 points! That's massive. We're about 600 short for the Flame Sword though, so let's step outside for a bit and see if we can round up that much.   Hmm, it looks like whatever proof we might be looking for is in this large swamp to the south. We can't get to it directly from here, but that bridge we came across on the way here probably leads to that region. It'll be worth investigating on our way back.  Wizards are slightly weaker than Starwyverns, with high resistance to SLEEP and HURT, and 50% resistance to STOPSPELL. They have a 50% chance to cast HURTMORE on their turn, which is (of course) an upgraded version of HURT, dealing 30-45 damage. Fortunately, our Magic Armor also reduces that range by a third, so we only take 20-30 instead. It's definitely still worth trying a STOPSPELL. Aaaand a few Werewolves, Starwyverns and Wizards later...  The Flame Sword gives us an additional 8 Attack Power. It sounds fancy and magical but it's really just a stat upgrade, there are no special effects associated with it. And with that, large sums of money are now useless to us. I mean we'll buy Herbs and stuff because they're still useful but we're never going to be so poor that we can't make a couple hundred within 30 seconds and there's no longer anything more expensive than that. Alright then, let's hit the inn and see if we can reach the swamp.   Whoa! They sure turned into random encounters quick. They still hit hard enough that it's best to try to put them to sleep, though.    Le sigh.  Right... here!     : Wow. Either I really am the descendant of Erdrick and one of my ancestors tossed this thing in here, or the real descendant died in this swamp like a chump.
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 19:15 on May 21, 2018 |
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May 21, 2018 18:41
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:So this town surrounded by horrifyingly powerful monsters is guarded by thick walls, except for one narrow passage which was protected by the Golem. I... Uh... Ahhh, haha... Err. He... Um... He was coming right for us, I swear!
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May 23, 2018 04:44
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The tablet we found in the cave between Tantegel and Garinham mentioned that we'd need three items. Chances are, these are the Staff of Rain, the Stones of Sunlight, and Erdrick's Token. If that's the case, we're in business. It does raise something of a question. Erdrick built a rainbow bridge to the Isle of Dragons. Invoking rain and sunlight for this purpose makes perfect sense. Where does the token come in, though? Surely Erdrick did not have to prove he was related to himself, but the trinket was still necessary. What power does it hold? There must be more to this story than meets the eye. We have more urgent matters to settle at the moment, though. Maybe this should be the work of a scholar, in more peaceful times. Alright, what's left on our plate? -Delivering the three items to the magic temple south of Rimuldar, then assaulting Charlock. -Investigating Wynn's shop in Hauksness for Erdrick's armor. -Finding out where Erdrick's sword ended up. -Thoroughly exploring the rest of the Cantlin region. -Grinding up thousands upon thousands of experience points. Probably. It seems to be a theme. -Tracking down everyone who asked for proof of our ancestry and rubbing the token in their faces until they can read Erdrick's name in a mirror. Getting the armor first should make almost everything else easier, so back to Hauksness it is. Maybe we can sneak in and out without attracting too much attention. We won't be hiking there from Cantlin, though; things are going to be bad enough once we're inside the city, we don't want to have to fight through a gauntlet of dragons and demons on the way there. Instead, we RETURN to Tantegel first, and only have to wade through now-trivial monsters from that direction. We can one-shot Wolflords with our new blade! Dang but we've come a long way.   Okay then, let's keep our wits about ourselves. We're looking for a shop on the east side of town, but from the state of affairs here, it might not even be standing anymore.  Hmm, might be a shop, but this is definitely not the east side. Several Green Dragons, Starwyverns and Werewolves try to block our path, but we elude them so far.   A tree behind a shop. It better be the one, because it's the only one left.  An Axe Knight ambushes us as we reach the tree. These knaves are even stronger than Green Dragons and Starwyverns, and are highly resistant to SLEEP. They do have a 25% chance to cast SLEEP, but only have a 3/16 resistance to STOPSPELL, and we can't take the chance of having them wail on us in impunity for any length of time.   Okay, we're off to a good start. (Sorry about the doubled lines, I had to catch the window mid-scroll.)   : I. AM. MIGHTIER. THAN EVEN YOU! : HA!This Axe Knight is a guaranteed fight on this specific tile, one of the few boss-type encounters in the entire game.    Erdrick's Armor is only four points stronger than the Magic Armor (or Full Plate), but it comes with its own unique benefits. First off, not only does it reduce received spell damage by one third, it also reduces fire breath damage by the same amount. That's huge! In addition, it regenerates your HP by 1 every step (instead of every four steps), it makes you completely immune to enemy STOPSPELL casts, and it negates all damage from both swamp and trap tiles. It is incredibly good. Alright then. While we're sort of in the neighborhood, let's see if we can complete our exploration of the south-central region of Alefgard.      ...wait.  We've been here before.  Yeah, that's a big dumb loop around Cantlin. Once you've retrieved the Token from the swamp in the south, there's nothing else of interest.  That said, we've finally mapped out the entire realm of Alefgard, except for the Isle of Dragons. If we can't find someone who'll open up about Erdrick's sword after seeing the Token, we might have to do without. Speaking of which, it's time we start our grand "HOW DARE YOU QUESTION MY HERITAGE, YOU CRAVEN PEON" tour.    ...huh. Apparently nobody wants to believe that this trinket we dug out of a swamp indicates that we're related to an ancient hero. Well, they'll all come to rue the day that we save them from the Dragonlord and ensure they can live long and peaceful lives. Or... maybe they won't. Yeah they probably won't rue that day at all. Eh, fine. We do need to convince one recalcitrant man in particular though.    : HEY BUDDY. GUESS WHAT?   : Oh. Uh. Alright. Thanks man.: Thou hast no business here. Go away.: Okay, okay, sure. Light forbid we get to warm up to each other for even a second. Without further ceremony, we've inherited the legendary Rainbow Drop.   It does nothing here. Which... is fortunate. This isn't exactly the right spot.  This is. Video: The Rainbow BridgeThis isn't much of a rainbow, but it sure is a bridge!     Knights, Demon Knights, Werewolves, Starwyverns and Magiwyverns try to stop us, to no avail.  Even Charlock's poisonous moat parts before us. Here we are. Here we go.  Music: Dungeon (first floor) There are two staircases right off the bat, and a lot of now-harmless trap tiles. Let's try the right side first.  Locked doors. Of course. I don't know why I'm surprised.    This isn't a surprise though. This is the final dungeon, there will be darkness, and cartography. And monsters. We've met Green Dragons and Werewolves on the ground floor, and we can beat those at some expense to heal up afterward. For now, the limiting factor of any given run down here is our MP and Herb reserves. And the 10-17 HP we get from a single HEAL cast is beginning to feel inadequate. It certainly doesn't outpace the damage we typically take in a single round, and hasn't for a long time. The fact that we have no leads on Erdrick's sword is worrying, but maybe the forging and enchanting techniques of Cantlin's swordsmiths will have surpassed whatever was available in Erdrick's time. Not that this was the case for armor. Oof. Welp, there's no choice but to go forward and see where the Fates take us. Monsters on the first basement include Wizards, Axe Knights (!), and more Green Dragons, Starwyverns and Werewolves, all beatable but costly to fight. This cost will only diminish as we keep gaining levels, but even here those come slowly, and we have far to go. ... I have to call our initial foray after a narrow tussle with an Axe Knight putting us to sleep. We're down to 10 MP anyway, and I'd rather not have to walk all the way from Tantegel if it can be helped. We cast OUTSIDE and go rest in Rimuldar. This is what we know of Charlock so far:  A is the entrance from the eastern side of the ground floor, while the B and C staircases form a short, pointless loop. We'll definitely cover more ground on each subsequent trip as we eliminate known dead-ends and wastes of time, so this is actually pretty satisfying progress even if level-ups don't come quite as quickly as they perhaps should. Not having to worry too much about dying is also something of a stress relief. Worst case scenario, we end up in Tantegel, without half of our largely-useless money. Better hit Rimuldar if we can, though; it's much closer to walk. Alright, back to it. East side again.  Okay, that entire eastern section only has two branches that loop in on themselves. We're about out of gas, so I call the second run right there. Even our Herbs are low, so... uh... Right, no item shop in Rimuldar. Back to Tantegel it is. Herbs are an emergency resource, as they're still our only recourse to recover in one turn more than one turn's worth of enemy damage output. Alright, third trip.   This time, we try the west side.  Oh hey, we level off a Starwyvern pretty early on! We gain 8 Agility, 8 HP, and 5 MP. The lack of Strength increase is pretty bad, but it's more than compensated by our new spell!  We finally learn our own version of HEALMORE, which restores 85 to 100 HP at once, at the cost of 10 MP. This a lot more efficient per MP spent than the standard HEAL, and we never have to be in another situation where we scarf down three Herbs in a row just to keep a Dragon from finishing us off. We'll get our next level in 3000 more points. In other not-so-great news...   ...the western staircase (A) quickly leads to a dead-end. That's something of a problem. Let's get back up and see if we can find another staircase from the ground floor.   This must be the Dragonlord's throne. Is he just out for a stroll? There are no other visible exits from here. Hmm. ...  : Heheh. Ahhh, if only the Princess could see me now.: ...hmm!: Heyo.: ...eh?: It's me. Are you busy?: No... No... I was only... I am about to go to bed. Dost thou need something?: Oh, uh, no, nothing in particular. It's just... I'm pretty sure I'm sitting on the Dragonlord's throne and I thought that was surreal as heck.: What art thou doing on thither? Did he let you...?: Oh, no, no, he's not here. I just found his chair and thought of you.: ...: Yeah, that came out wrong, never mind. I apologize, I didn't mean to be a bother. I don't know what I was thinking.: No, don't worry, it's fine. I am certain thou art in a very stressful situation. Please feel free to reach out anytime.: You're too kind. Alright then, I'm surrounded by dragons and werewolves, I better get going. You have a good night, okay?: Fates willing. Take care!: ...: Well that was a bust. Anyway, what am I missing here? Hmm... : Wait a minute... : 'Tis also said that he entered the darkness from a hidden entrance in the room of the Dragonlord.Let's see...    Ah-ha! Let's keep going!  Just to the east is a staircase down leading to a small portion of the first basement that we can't seem to reach from here. Better keep an eye out below.   Finally a proper way to the second basement!  This small section in the east must lead to the area we're missing above; it must reach even deeper.  ...and what's this? A chest, and an up staircase? Presumably that's from that area on the first basement. Dang but this place doesn't make a lot of topographical sense.  Anyway, we nearly run out of juice a couple fights later, time to call it again. We're a third of the way to level 18 now, but with HEALMORE the next sortie will certainly be even more fruitful. ... ...we use up two thirds of our MP just making it to where we left off last time.  And we earn ourselves a new tier of monsters. Blue Dragons are slightly tougher than Axe Knights, with high SLEEP resistance and medium HURT resistance; they only have their 25% chance of fire breath instead of a SLEEP spell, but that means they don't waste turns trying to cast through a STOPSPELL. By this point though, fire breath hurts us a lot less than just getting our face gnawed on. And they drop a decent 60 EXP.  Whuh-oh, I forgot to save enough MP for OUTSIDE. Looks like Lorik's gonna make a mint off us this time.   Another new floor. Erdrick's Armor will only keep us alive so long, but there's also no reason to save Herbs; might as well go for broke, run from everything, and see how much more we can map out. Stairs up...   And back down. Eh, another loop.  That must be the right way further down. These floors are significantly smaller than the first basement, and I can't find it in myself to have a problem with that.  Okay, we're coming in from D. E is the only way back up from here, so it might lead to that chest.    Another straightforward path to a higher floor.  Yep, this is looking good.  This is definitely the first basement again. We still have our Herbs! If we can only make it a bit further...   If this is 10 gold, I'm gonna weep. An Axe Knight tries to stop us on top of the chest. Not today!   ... ...... !!! : Dragonlord, you absolute dumbass. Don't keep the one thing that can kill you in your house.
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May 23, 2018 04:45
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I can see the notion of keeping the sword in your most heavily-defended stronghold. But if I was the Dragonlord, and I had under my direct command various demons, dragons and magical constructs, I'd put together a squad of half a dozen Stonemen, tell one to carry the sword to the bottom of the lake southeast of the Isle and stay there, and then tell the others to trade places with him in turns every couple days. No human would know where it is, and even if they found out, there are no boats in Alefgard. If Stonemen need to breathe, well, the sword's in the grasp of a statue at the bottom of a lake. Problem solved!  EDIT: Whoops we haven't met Stonemen yet. Way to spoil your own LP, Frank. Gloomy Rube posted:Are you gonna post the music for the deeper levels? I wanna know -how- slow the music will get by the bottom if this keeps going. There are 8 variations on the dungeon theme, and I figured each one is so minutely different from the preceding and following ones that posting them all as we encountered them would be disrespectful of everyone's time. But I am definitely going to put up the one for the bottom floor once we get there. Come to think of it though, I might also put together an edited compilation to show the music's progression all in one place. Each loop is only about 13 seconds, after all. Pieuvre posted:Don't worry, Descendant of Erdrick, I too know the pain of a girlfriend not thinking my jokes are funny : I'll count myself lucky I didn't actually wake her up.FELD1 posted:It makes sense that the same kind of person who would call themselves "Dragonlord" would love keeping rad poo poo at their house. Flavius Belisarius posted:Yeah OP, search the walls for klingon weapons and katanas. : It turns out the Dragonlord is more the type to have a big underground fortress for the sake of having a big underground fortress, only to realize he doesn't have nearly enough stuff to fill up the empty space. I saw like one poster on a corridor wall in the second basement, but it was a blurry watermarked picture of a tree with some lorem ipsum underneath.BrightWing posted:I don't know where else to share this but: I progressed enough in DQ 3 to find out one of my favorite songs from DQ 8 is a straight refrence and it made me super happy I ain't gonna lie, hearing that song in 8 made a small amount of water come out of my eyes for some reason. I guess someone in my house was slicing onions at the time. "Nostalgia critically hits for massive damage, as it often does." Bregor posted:Also like how you’ve outlined how Sleep and Stopspell can really help during the entire game. When I was an idiot kid I just mashed attack all the time and used MP to heal after fights. Yeah, mashing attack will work if you've got the levels for it, but despite how there may not be much tactical depth to the combat system, judicious use of disabling magic will absolutely save a heck of a lot of grinding. Hirayuki posted:There's a lovely song in DQ7 that references a tune in DQ, too! It drove me nuts until I made the connection. Oh dang, well spotted! I didn't even catch that one! FrankZP fucked around with this message at 08:11 on May 24, 2018 |
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May 23, 2018 22:15
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loving love Fiona Apple posted:Now that we're in the final strech, I just wanted to say that I really enjoy the small amounts of characterization you add. It really adds more life to a relatively dry game. FisheyStix posted:Reading another FrankZP letsplay is like drinking a cool glass of water on a cool day. Man, that's refreshing! I genuinely appreciate the kind words many of you had for the way I do things. I'm always a bit nervous injecting some juice in there, but really, as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the experience, especially for these older games. There is the story that the game tells you, and there is the space that the game reserves for you to tell your own. And I feel I would be remiss in not showcasing both sides of that coin. Also, even as a kid, the whole "Gwaelin immediately falls in love with you at full throttle" seemed kinda weird, heh. DGM_2 posted:I wonder if we're even the first "descendant of Erdrick" he's pulled this crap on. He's probably used similar stories on other suckers. : But for thee I wish success, ZedPower.This guy knows the score, but he also knows it's not healthy to say too much!
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May 24, 2018 20:13
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 Erdrick's Sword is worth a whopping 40 Attack Power, which is 12 more than the Flame Sword. Considering that the strongest enemies we've seen so far, Blue Dragons, have 53 to 70 HP, this is huge. Other than that, the Sword has no special powers, it's just Really Freaking Strong. It's not even actually required to hurt the Dragonlord, despite how we've been led to believe it would be. At any rate, let's see if it'll allow us to claw our way back out of Charlock in one piece.  We run into our first Stoneman on the way back. They're a slight bit stronger than Blue Dragons and have half their Agility, but over twice the HP. Their SLEEP resistance is very low, but without MP this doesn't exactly help us right now.  Our light completely runs out on the first basement. Fortunately we manage to keep going thanks to our map and, indeed, the THUD sound we make when we hit a wall. Hardly ideal, but workable.   Whew, this sword is something else! We can end fights against Werewolves and Green Dragons in 2 to 3 turns now. We reach Rimuldar without further difficulty, and spend the night there. Gwaelin informs us that we have less than 500 experience to go for level 18 though, so we go back to the Isle of Dragons for a bit of grinding before returning to Tantegel to restock and save.  Holy crap, we're getting 13 Strength and 6 Agility. That's an even bigger increase in Attack Power than the one Erdrick's Sword gave us! We also earn ourselves a respectable 13 HP and 7 MP. Wow. Levels are real slow to come but this one packs a punch; none of that dinky "+0.7% damage" MMORPG nonsense for sure. Reaching level 19 will takes another 3000 experience. Back in Brecconary, we purchase a load of Herbs, and just in case, a Torch. We're ready for another delve, but we'll be taking a detour through Kol first.  : Hey, old man! Get a load of these beauties! If we needed any more confirmation, this means we're all set with our endgame gear. We stay one more night in Rimuldar to restore the juice we spent on REPEL, then head back into the darkness.  Oh, REPEL even keeps us from harm on the surface of the Isle of Dragons by now! Talk about 2 MP well spent.  Alright, once more from the top. Staircase A leads to behind the throne, and E is the start of the path back up towards the vault that used to contain Erdrick's Sword.  We make our way down to the 4th basement again with 75 MP left. It's looking good! Let's try this staircase here, marked F.  We start our first visit to the fifth basement.  It's another very small floor, but we can only access the inner portion from here.  Onward to floor 6!  Well this looks important.  Red Dragons are the second strongest monsters in the entire game, and, discounting Metal Slimes, also the second most agile. They're about 50% resistant to STOPSPELL, and practically immune to other magic. If that wasn't spooky enough, they have a 25% chance to cast SLEEP! If they don't do so, they get another 25% chance to breathe fire instead of attacking. As we currently are, it's very much a good idea to stop them from casting as soon as possible. If one of them takes us by surprise and gets the first move, it can put us to sleep immediately and then chunk us down to 0 before we get a move. On the plus side, Red Dragons are worth a whopping 100 experience points! That's only 15 less than Metal Slimes. If we can regularly survive these fights without too much expense, Charlock's lower levels become a much better grinding spot than the hills southwest of Hauksness. We're not exactly there yet though, we've had to blow a HEALMORE cast to beat this one.  Hmm, this was just a straight line east, easy enough.   Armored Knights are a bit weaker than Red Dragons, but still not to be underestimated. They're also highly resistant to SLEEP and somewhat vulnerable to STOPSPELL, but very weak to HURT. They have a 75% chance to cast HEALMORE when under a quarter of their max HP, making STOPSPELL mandatory at the moment, but they also otherwise have a 25% chance to cast HURTMORE as Wizards do. And with that, we've seen every standard monster in the game. Armored Knights, Stonemen and Red Dragons are as hard as they get!  Wait a minute.  This floor seems to keep repeating. In fact, it's a subtle tell, but the dungeon theme does not get slower and lower as we take these staircases, as it did every time we reached a new floor. The eastern staircase doesn't actually take us down, it just returns us to the western staircase. This branch of the dungeon is effectively an infinite loop. : Man, and I thought this place didn't make sense before. Going back up even once brings us back to the real floor above regardless of how "deep" we may have reached. We retrace our steps and take the G stairs.  This leads us to the eastern side of the outer portion of floor 5, which is a straight shot to the staircase on the west side.    Pretty straightforward, but given the last branch we explored, that's a little worrying. And doubly so considering that if this one doesn't pan out, we're out of options.   Music: Dungeon theme (final floor) Oh. Oooooooh. I think we found the right path.    Hmm! We have 17 MP left so we're sadly just about ready to bail out, but at least we can rob the Dragonlord blind before we go.   Maybe an Herb? Our stock is full.  Oh, come on. If you put that thing on down here, you deserve whatever you get.  Eh, we can spend our RETURN MP before we leave, I guess.  That'd be pretty nice if money still had any value.  ...  Wow. Okay then. Well, it may not be important that we got our hands on this stuff, but the Dragonlord doesn't have it anymore, and that's what really matters. To time to hit the escape button and try again, but without the detours. Or... hmm. We're halfway through our next level; I'll take a bit of time to grind and get back to you. Just for reference though, right now we're at 18, and the maximum level is 30. Yeah. Ouch. That's a lot of grinding. Fortunately I don't think we'll need to get anywhere close to that. Anyway, gimme a moment then. ...  Aw man what.  Welp, that's kind of a crummy set of stat increases, but our final spell is here.  Our version of HURTMORE causes 58 to 65 points of defense-ignoring damage, at the low low price of 5 MP. It's resisted by the exact same enemy stat as the regular HURT. We usually hit endgame monsters for between 20 to 30 damage with our standard attacks, so it can be worth it to nuke down our tougher foes. It gets expensive in the long run but the idea is to see if sometimes a 5 MP HURTMORE is going to save us a 10 MP HEALMORE. Still, given the resistances of the creatures we're up against now, the increase in efficiency is fairly minor. Armored Knights are probably the only monsters it's truly worth using it on, but if you don't have Erdrick's Sword by the time you reach this level, it can be helpful against the likes of Werewolves, Starwyverns, Axe Knights and Green Dragons. I want to try and push this sortie all the way through and see what happens, especially since every subsequent level from now on requires 4000 experience. Let's head back in.  ...whoops. Here's to STOPSPELL failing to land three times in a row and King Lorik having to build an extension to the royal treasury. Let's try again.   Whew, we do better on the way this time, with 72 MP left for the last floor.    Oof. I think I'll go for another level. We need about 1800 EXP, so I'll see you in a bit. ... Actually, while the grind happens, let's take a moment to talk about the endgame. Dragon Warrior doesn't have a lot of typical dungeons, and even fewer mandatory ones. In terms of difficulty, Garin's Grave is midgame material, but the next one is Charlock. That's quite the step up, isn't it? If you're strong enough to find the Silver Harp, but not so strong that it's absurdly easy to do so, it'll be a long, long time before you get to delve beneath the surface again. That said, I think that the march to Cantlin is effectively equivalent to a dungeon, and the discovery of Hauksness on the way mechanically and thematically signals the beginning of the end. By the time you can explore the southwest of Alefgard, and can take out Wolflords and Wyverns, you know you should expect two more towns. That means two more inns, two more areas with reliable grinding spots and gear upgrades. Except that you find Hauksness surrounded by extremely difficult Knights, Demon Knights and Rogue Scorpions, and town is effing gone. Heck, it's worse than gone, it's filled with monsters that we now know also show up in Charlock, and it is completely a mess. This is the first time that the game shows us the threat and power of the Dragonlord, instead of just having some villager tell us about it. The place isn't just deserted, it has been destroyed and tainted, its dwellings shattered and its ground poisoned. You were expecting succor, you were expecting an inn and a couple stores and maybe some clues, but find no help whatsoever. The true scope of what you're up against has materialized, and it literally makes the game flow skip a beat. Your next goal is then immediately Cantlin. Except that there are three ways to the east, and two of them loop into each other through hills and deserts. The region isn't strictly a dungeon of course, but it plays the same resource-attrition game as one. I think that in a perhaps primitive fashion, the game is brilliant in its use of the overworld as much more than a way to go from one place to another, especially here. Your travels culminate in a boss battle, and the city that is your reward is packed with essential information and great equipment. And once you're done with following the leads you get in Cantlin? You're moments away from the final dungeon, with (almost) no new overworld region to cover, and chances are you've earned your final set of buyable gear by beating the same monsters that populate the first few floors there and you can immediately dive right in. Of course, the trade-off for this structure is that between the Grave and Cantlin, the difficulty regularly increases much faster than your statistical ability to deal with it. That means grinding, and a lot of it. Speaking of which: level 20! 5 Strength, 2 Agility, 7 HP, 12 MP. Could be gimpier, but still pretty gimpy. Let's see where it takes us.         We've got 61 MP left. That ought to be enough, right? There's only one more thing to do before we step forward.  : Hello sweetikin pumpkin mumpkin!: Hi love. Aren't you laying it on a bit thick?: We're having dinner, he's right here.: Say hi for me.: Perhaps later. What's going on? I can't tell where thou art at all.: I think I'm at the bottom of Charlock and there's a weird guy with a dorky haircut in here. Do you think that's the Dragonlord?: I wouldn't know... I've never met him. It certainly doesn't sound like him. Would dragons really bow to one not of their kind?: Yeah, I kinda thought he would be a dragon too.: Doth he look like a villain?: A fashion villain maybe. But there's a bunch of dragons running around in here and clearly they haven't torn him to pieces. Maybe he's the real deal.: He must be some sort of magic-user! Doth he look like one?: I'm a magic-user and we look nothing alike. I guess he's sort of wizardy. Eh, I'm out of options anyway, I'm going to talk to him.: Please, be careful. I'm not saying this just for me, either. Everyone is counting on you.: I know. Don't worry, I won't forget it. Just... Whatever it is you're eating, make sure your dad doesn't get the last piece, alright?: That's a promise. Come back safe, my love.: Doing my best to, darling.: Tempt not the Faaaaaaaaates!: Father! Please get thineself off the li-Welp. Here we go.   : Ah, alright then. I was wondering. Thanks for clearing that up. : I have been waiting long for one such as thee. I give thee now a chance to share this world and to rule half of it if thou will now stand beside me. : Wait, what? Half the world? That would instantly solve most of my problems! Can we get that in writing? Come on man, get a quill, I can't agree to this fast enough. Do I have to sign in blood? : Did I stutter? Hop to it, I don't have all day!   As the screen turns black and red, we lose all of our money, all of our experience, and our sprite reverts to the unarmed version, implying that our equipment is also gone. I'm not sure what the significance of the "If thou dies..." line is. In the Japanese version, the Dragonlord actually gives you your password (that version had passwords instead of a battery-backed save), but here he definitely doesn't save for you so I don't know what the deal is. Anyway, just like that, the descendant of Erdrick succumbs to the temptation of darkness, and we get the only true "game over" Dragon Warrior has to offer. The game remains frozen on this screen, looping the deepest dungeon theme over and over again, until you turn the console off. Good grief, even today this still creeps me out. ...but we all know this isn't actually what happens to our hero, right? Let's take it again from the top. Video: The DragonlordYikes. The Dragonlord's human form has a Strength of 90 and an Agility of 75, putting him about on par with a Green Dragon. He is highly resistant, but not completely immune, to all magic. He'll cast STOPSPELL 25% of the time, and otherwise will cast HURTMORE 75% of the time or attack. The STOPSPELL cast is basically there to make sure you have immunity to it from Erdrick's Armor, because there's no going through this entire fight without HEALMORE unless you're grossly overleveled. All in all, he's not too scary. Until you give him enough damage, that is; 76 to 100 points' worth. The Dragonlord's true form does not mess around. He gets a Strength of 140 and an Agility of 200, the latter of which is second only to Metal Slimes. He also keeps his resistances. His dodge stat is a big zero, but you never get to roll excellent blows against him, so you have to chip away at his 130 HP the old fashioned way. Every turn he either attacks or uses a unique improved fire breath that does a base 65 to 72 damage, reduced to 42 to 48 by our armor. Unfortunately, the Dragonlord is a stat check. There's no strategy to him, and random chance barely even has an effect (no crits, no dodge). You hit him as long as your HP is high enough not to get one-shot on the next turn, and then you cast HEALMORE for as long as your MP holds up. You can technically two- or three-shot him with HURTMORE, but that 15/16 resistance is no joke. Well... I say random chance barely has an effect... In a way, Charlock itself is as much the final boss as the Dragonlord is. The outcome of the battle is very much influenced by how many HEALMORE casts we have in our pocket when we reach the end, and the more efficiently we can fight our way down, the better our chances are. Even then though, gaining levels is the largest part of the solution.  : Did I not tell you to avoid tempting the Fates?: He was right there! What was I supposed to do, Your Royal Dadness? Turn around and walk back out because he looked spooky?: I... Ah... Point conceded.: Besides, I knew you had my back. We're all working hard together on this, aren't we?: That we are! I am working very hard indeed!: Bravo, my lord. : Anyway, we were right, honey. The Dragonlord actually is a giant dragon.: What of the strange man?: He's... the Dragonlord's chump costume, I suppose. I don't get it either. Anyway, I better give it another shot. All my love, sweetheart.: See thee in better spirits then, bravy-wavy-baby!: *approval intensifies*So. Here's the plan. I'm gonna farm up another level, and try again. If I can't beat him then, I'll get another one, and so on and so forth. Oooo-wheee. See ya in a bit! ... Oh hey, while we got a minute or forty, I put together a compilation of the dungeon music variations, all eight of them, each more terrifying than the last. In case you're interested! Aaaaaaand level 21, let's see... 3 Strength, 2 Agility, 10 HP, 6 MP. Ick. Well, I meant what I said, let's make an attempt.  This time we ran away from anything tougher than a Wizard and only used Herbs to heal, so we're starting the fight with 120 MP! Whew. Okay. Get pumped. Video: The Dragonlord (redux)!!! Well that was some decent Dragon Warriorin'!   I know I said there were no item drops from combat in this game, but... gotta keep some suprises for the end!   We are immediately teleported outside, with all our HP and MP restored.  The Ball of Light isn't in our inventory, for some reason.  : By the light, you did it!: Well hey, news travel fast.: We could see the radiance from here, it was wonderful!: The deed is done, then. Sit tight, sweetheart. I'm coming home, and I got your ticket out right here. Just a matter of time now.: It can't possibly be soon enough. I'll be waiting!   It is no longer possible to get into a random encounter. Every monster in Alefgard was instantly vaporized the moment we got our hands on the Ball.  Let's see what the good folk of Rimuldar have to say about this, shall we?     As far as I know, everyone in the world says one of these two lines at random.  Even this old fart is coming around!  Oh dang, the wounded guard in Brecconary still isn't doing any better.   The guards will actually let you in even if you're wearing the Cursed Belt. It's only polite, really.  Everyone else in the castle also only says that King Lorik awaits.  Whew. We're almost done here. One more rescue.  Video: Rescuing Princess GwaelinIf you refuse to take Gwaelin along... well, you guessed it: "But thou must!" But it's not like we'd do to that to her, right? If you haven't actually rescued Gwaelin, the ending proceeds the same way, but she just doesn't show up and nobody makes any mention of her. Harsh! If you've brought Gwaelin to the Dragonlord fight, most easily accomplished by only rescuing her once you're ready to beat the game, the ending also largely proceeds the same way, with the same dialog from all parties. The only difference is of course that she doesn't come down from the throne room, since she's already in your arms. With that, history is made. Dragon Warrior is not a perfect game by any means, but its ideas and the execution of these ideas set the foundation for an entire genre, its myriad successors either iterating and building on its systems and adding notions of their own, or sometimes merely being cargo-cult imitators with only the most superficial understanding of its strengths. And it all started with a king, a hero with a stick, a villain in a castle, a quest, and a continent. Before I sign off, I have to give props to Toshiko Watson and the rest of the translation team. There is a hell of a lot of text in this game for its era, and they managed to make it elegant and flavorful in a way to puts to shame decades' worth of subsequent gaming history. Alright then. Thanks for following along, dear readers. Good grief, did I miss this nonsense or what? It's been a pleasure. Of course, as the ending credits say, there are many roads yet to travel, and I look forward to traveling them in your company. Erdrick's bloodline still has a lot of work to do, after all. But for the moment...  : I'd say that went alright.: I can hardly believe I'm finally free!: So, where to next? Was there ever a shipyard in Alefgard?: Not exactly, no. But Kol has good lumber for sure, and it's close to the sea.: Kol, eh? I'm sure I can afford to pay someone there to lash a few planks together.: I am still the Princess, and thou art a hero. It would not be unreasonable to set thine expectations a touch higher.: Ha, whatever you say, Your Highness. Anyway, we're out of sight of Tantegel by now. Do you want to use your own feet for a spell?: Oh! I... In fact, I... would not mind being carried a bit further. If that is fine by thee.: Well, you've been through enough, I don't mind spoiling you some more.
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 12:14 on May 28, 2018 |
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May 24, 2018 22:36
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I am absolutely champing at the bit to get started on DW2 and it takes all I got not to fire it up right away, but I'll be having a short break because I know I have to pace myself at least a little if I want to make it as far as I'd like into the series. I'm thinking probably a week, mmmmmaybe two at most, just enough for a breather and a fresh start with a rested mind.Shitenshi posted:Don't ever make a deal with the devil. The Dragonlord promised you half of the world's darkness while keeping all the good stuff to himself. If he'd have done to his share what he did to Hauksness, by comparison we might have ended up with the better half!
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May 25, 2018 00:33
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Patter Song posted:Dragon Quest/Warrior II is...a much harder undertaking. There's a lot of value in that game and I look forward to commenting on your playthrough of it, but I vowed long ago to never, ever, ever actually play it again (even though I'm regularly tempted to go through the old Dragon Quests). Dragon Quest II might be the worst game in the series, but it was gloriously innovative and a massive step forward technically and in terms of the plot and structure. I admire a lot about it...but better you than me. Heh, I did LP the first Shin Megami Tensei, so I know all about the whole notion of "this game is historically significant but man talk about taking one for the team". I wouldn't touch DW2 again with a bamboo pole if I was just replaying it on my own for myself, but I'm 98% sure getting to vent about its moments of outright sadism will be worth it. Well, 97% sure. loving love Fiona Apple posted:Will you be making a sperate thread for DW2 or will you keep it all here? It'll be a separate thread, it'll make for cleaner archiving in the end. I'll announce it both here and in the new LP thread when the time comes though. RickVoid posted:Great work on DW I! The extra dialogue was great, looking forward to seeing your take on DW II, if you do go ahead and do it. I've never actually played DW II, all I recall of the last LP I tried to read was the protagonist naming his new staff St Pimp-Stick III. So... nowhere to go but up! Ooof yeah that's... that'll be a low bar to clear for sure. But it's the LPer's curse from time immemorial, you always gotta be on your guard because the moment your concentration slips for even a second, references to prostitution just slide right in there from out of the blue! It is our cross to bear. YggiDee posted:I love the victory lap at the end of these games Yeah, that's a pretty elaborate way to end things for the time. It could have been done in a deeper way but even getting to walk around without monsters feels really good, and it's satisfying to experience first-hand the result of your actions. FoolyCharged posted:Hang on a minute. That's not a fountain in the kings town! That's a torture pit of damage tiles whose victim is walled in by water! More evidence of his nefarious ways! All the more reason to get the princess outta there. Nutrition aside, she was probably safer with the dragon.
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May 25, 2018 22:08
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I kind of enjoyed how open DW2 is , and I do expect I'll have a good enough time for maybe 90% of the playthrough. I mean, if the game was just overall garbage we probably wouldn't be looking at DQ11 coming out soon. But yeah the endgame is pretty brutal and I'm not surprised it soured a lot of people's opinions.
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 04:37 on May 26, 2018 |
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May 26, 2018 01:33
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If for some reason anyone here wants more of this juice... Dragon Warrior II: Warrior Hardier! It has begun!
FrankZP fucked around with this message at 08:56 on May 31, 2018 |
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May 31, 2018 08:50
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