i’ve just begun playing dragon warrior 2. it’s interesting that i never had dragon warrior 2, 3, or 4 when i was kid since i loved the first game so much. i think the reason for that is because nintendo power greatly dictated which games i knew about and which games i became interested in. there was only brief coverage of dragon warrior 2 & 3 in the 1991 issue (vol. 27). nothing like the previous coverage of dragon warrior 1. and during this same period, nintendo power was previewing the super nes which was soon to come out. knowing the younger me, the nes was probably dead to me at this point as i anticipated the snes debut. side note: looks like super nes games didn’t become the main focus for nintendo power until the first issue of 1993 (vol. 44). another side note: i believe the august 1993 issue (vol. 51) was the end of my subscription (approximately). this would be the time period were i ignored the snes and focused on playing PC games. i got back into the snes and nintendo power near the end of 1994/beginning of 1995 w/ vol. 67 and 68.

i’ve only briefly played dragon warrior 2 during the late 90’s and that was for probably an hour or so. i’m counting this play-through as my true first impression. dragon warrior 2 maintains a lot of the same style of the first game. menu actions have been simplified. there is no longer a separate option for stairs, when you walk on stairs it’s assumed that you want to use them. there is no longer a door option either. when you need to use a key you use it from the item menu. and finally the “take” functionality is now part of the search action. dragon warrior 2 introduces a party/group of playable characters. enemies can also appear in groups.

the 2nd playable character to join the party is the prince of cannock. he is the magic user of the group. thus far he’s proven to be fairly good at getting killed…but at least he can cast heal and antidote. dragon warrior 2 introduces enemies that can poison party members…always my favorite thing in an rpg :/.

my biggest complaint about the game so far is that the enemies are ridiculous. mostly nonsense cartoonish things that are incredibly ugly. the color palettes used for enemies in this game are vomit-inducing. i always viewed the enemies in dragon warrior 1 to be crude renditions of the awesome illustrations in the strategy guide. and some looked incredibly good such as the dragons. the point i’m trying to make is that i always thought the enemies of dragon warrior were meant to be serious (except perhaps for the slimes). so it’s disappointing to me that the rest of the series retained a very cartoonish look. it’s hard to immerse oneself in a fantasy game where you’re controlling a party of warriors, mages, what have you, and you have to go around fighting cartoons. i prefer the more serious depictions in the final fantasy series.

update 6/2/2013:
the game is pretty decent. i have all 3 characters in the party now. the prince of cannock actually isn’t that bad of a character. he’s kind of a warrior/mage hybrid and he can somewhat hold his own in physical combat. the last addition to the party is the princess of moonbrooke and she is solely a magic user. her physical combat skills are almost non-existent and she becomes the character most likely to die. in fact, she is a burden to have in the party for quite some time. the princess’ infernos spell is very useful for damaging large groups of enemies though.

having the victims of moonbrooke exist as ghostly flames was pretty cool, as was the princess being transformed into the form of a dog. i also liked the geography of alefgard from the first game existing in dragon warrior 2. i was surprised by there being a ship in a dragon warrior game, for some reason, i thought vehicles were exclusive to the FF series.

after visiting tantegal and charlock, it’s not really clear on where to proceed to next. i’m kind of just wandering around at the moment. right now the hero is level 18, prince is level 16, and the princess is level 12.

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