LogFAQs > #974995309

4: Dragon Quest II

So first of all, DQII is a lot more of a tedious pain in the ass to begin with. The story is fine, I like that they go for the big cutscene even in the NES version, but when it came to finding the prince of Moonbrooke it's easy to fuck up and get lost. Then there's growing pains all the way through to recruiting the princess and through a bunch of missions. Personally, I think the moment you get the boat is when the game reaches its full potential and gets really fun.

I never got that far playing the NES version. It was too jank, and I really disliked that the battle screen went into this black void and had a cluster of different enemy groups. That combined with the tedium involved with finding the Prince of Moonbrooke is what turned me off the game.

Once again, the Switch port is a presentational disgrace that makes the gameplay a little more bearable. I found it easier to find my bearings and follow a walkthrough, though granted I last played DQ about five years before I got the Switch version. The game also introduces an annoying sidequest where one of your characters gets poisoned, but in hindsight it lets you grind up the princess character so whatever.

I think a lot of people write off DQ2 as being worse than the first game. On the NES version, I don't blame people for having reservations - I quit before the point where I later thought the game got good. But I think actually playing through and finishing DQ2 is a different story, especially when you consider the circumstances behind it.

Dragon Quest II launched like a year before Final Fantasy 1. The party system, the boat, all that shit was Dragon Quest II. The first half of the game is a slog, I totally agree, but it ended up blazing the trail that Final Fantasy would tread in competition with DQ.

I still prefer the original Dragon Quest over the sequel, but the Switch ports are both unappealing as sin on the presentation front. When push comes to shove, I came to really enjoy DQ2's mechanical improvements over what was, unfortunately, just a little bit of a lesser experience in DQ1's case. The magic is in party management imo.

I'm always gonna appreciate the NES version of 1 over the NES version of 2, but honestly, removing all that and making boh of the games ugly helps you appreciate DQ2 on its own merits. It's a good game, and I like the shitty mobile port of it better than DQ1's shitty mobile port.