Dragon Quest II

>>11791851 (OP)
Japan got the crappy beta version of this with a smaller ROM _really_ long password saves and bugs, the US version was much improved.

it still has poor game balance, after you get the ship the difficulty level dramatically spikes

>>11791860
>really_ long password saves
DQ 1 and 2 had passwords. DQ3 had saving.

>>11791860
>>11791878
Oh sorry this is a DQ2 thread. I don't have my glasses on

>>11791878
Yes. DQ2's passwords were almost 100 characters.

the passwords are 52 characters it's not that long lol. however they were extremely annoying to players and helped spur the development of battery backups on FC carts. the first battery game (Morita Shougi) appeared only 3 months after DQ2 came out.

>>11791913
>DQ2 was released January '87 and Morita Shougi was out in April
Man they were fast. Was that also the first MMC1 game? Nintendo must have really hauled it.

>>11791860
And Americans still didn't care about DQ
What was their fucking problem

>>11791918
Dragon Warrior 2 released after Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star 2 in America which really hurt the game's public perception. If Nintendo skipped Dragon Quest 1 (which wasn't even that popular in Japan) and released DQ2 in 1989 things might have been different.

>>11791918
I did. I played through it multiple times. Don't blame me. I found Torval of Zahan. I exploited the Staff of Thunder. Don't blame me.

>>11791925
the first game was not a blockbuster but it sold well enough for Enix to approve a sequel

>Famidaily whining aggh i hate RPGs they're too hard to review due to the length

>>11791930
Yeah it was successful enough, but Dragon Quest 2 was what started the JRPG craze. Square was smart enough to skip Final Fantasy 2 and 3 in America so they could really wow customers with FF4, Nintendo/ Enix could have had similar success if they had just released DQ2 (or even better 3) in 1989.

>>11791935
FF3 was being localized but they cancelled it before it got released.

>>11791913
They start at about 6 characters and keep growing from there. After DQ2 lengthy passwords in FC games became rare with Maniac Mansion (J) being one unfortunate exception.

>>11791915
The Family BASIC cartridge had a battery so they already had the tech for that.

>>11791936
Yeah because they decided to release FF4 in NA that year instead. It was the right move from a business perspective.

>>11791860
The US game is 2 megabits and the extra space was mostly used for the intro sequence.

>>11791860
>Japan got the crappy beta version of this with a smaller ROM
Almost totally filled up too, Chunsoft made sure to not waste a single byte of ROM space in games.

>>11791915
They were probably already working on the MMC1 for a while considering that there were no serious plans to release the Famicom Disk System in America and they wanted to release Zelda in the region.

>>11791851 (OP)

Despite the game's problems, it gets too much hate. It isn't a bad game like FF2.

>>11791957
it's not too hard to take some basic switching logic and put it on a chip die. that chip is not exactly complicated.

Third parties like Konami and Namco already had ASIC mappers in '86, Nintendo were lazy and waiting for them to do their homework for them.

I like DQ1 in its simplistic way and am glad we got the complete set of the 8-bit Dragon Quest games especially given that it was then 8 years before we saw another one.

>>11791957
Zelda could have been doable as UNROM since after all the US releases of Castlevania and Section Z used that but then it would probably have long-ass password saves.

the game world wrapping completely around makes you get totally lost and confused once you get the ship

DQ2 is a good game, but it also invented the DQ tradition of making the game very very long.

>>11791851 (OP)
I'm actually playing through this right now. About to start on Rhone. I'm debating if I should even bother. I've heard it's literal hell and grinding levels will take forever.

Plus I'm playing the Japanese version, which supposedly has a heal after Rhone, but not a revive. So if Prince 2 goes down, I have to walk back through Rhone in reverse to find a world leaf each time? I mean, fuck that...

>>11792040
like anon said the Jap version was 1 megabit and they used almost the entire ROM except for about 15 bytes. DQ4 was 4 megabits and they also made sure to use almost all of that with no wasted space.

the Mexican Runner took 4 long videos to beat DQ2. shit's quite a slog and the subsequent games will get even worse.

>>11792065
Every DQ after 2 is substantially easier. They get longer, but less percentage of them is grind.

So far I like the first one best followed by 3 then 2. First one was short simple and rewarding. In 2, exploring the ocean with random encounters wasn't fun for me. 3 was a bit too long for my liking. Combined with the job system, you have the perfect repetitive game for a certain kind of autist. I liked them all though and look forward to the fourth one

>Jap version
>dead members of your party are represented as coffins
>this was changed to ghosts for the US version
did they decide the coffins were too scary for American kids?

>>11792105
iirc the coffins had crosses on them, which was deemed too religious

>>11792105
Nintendo went mad with power with the American release of the NES and banned anything remotely religious (except for Link's shield lmao).

>>11792105
>Haunted by your fallen comrades/relatives
That's somehow worse
>>11792109
Yeah that's the case. Would've it been too hard to just edit the crosses out?

DQ2 is not only one of my favourite DQ (alongside DQ8) but also one of my favourites JRPGs and what really started my whole for the genre. I feel like I totally understand the JRPG craze it started since it spurred the same love in me. I could probably write an hour long shitty youtube essay on what makes this game so great.

For instance people like to use that interview to claim the game is unbalanced. What they don't realize is that the interview was referring to the Japanese version of the game, and that the version most of the complainers played was the US version, which came out many years later and which did the balance changes the devs wanted to do. Guess what, those balance changes are close to nothing and really don't make such a difference.

>>11792047
It's not that bad as long as you make a map of that place with pits in the floor, and take notes for that maze.

>Plus I'm playing the Japanese version, which supposedly has a heal after Rhone, but not a revive. So if Prince 2 goes down, I have to walk back through Rhone in reverse to find a world leaf each time? I mean, fuck that...

It doesn't make such a difference because if your entire party dies, you restart at that priest in Rhone with your entire party and half your money, and money is useless at that point so it doesn't matter if you lose it. Furthermore, there is a teleporter at the priest in Rhone which takes you back to the nearest town, from there as long as you don't talk to another priest, you can do whatever you want and and using a wing of the wyvern will take you back to the priest in Rhone. Meaning that you can easily go get World Tree Leaf (using repel, you only get between 0 and 2 random encounters on the way) and then quickly warp back to Rhone, I've done it many times.

Also the password system of the JPN version has the benefit of being able to create cool passwords, sharing those passwords between friends, or being able to start the game with different parameters. There is even a secret password which gives you one of the devs' party, I think it was Toriyama's but correct me if I'm wrong.

>>11792118
Perceiving that US Christian parents are already mad with madness and carefully tiptoeing around them is not a sign of being mad with power. Not that I like censorship, but a lone Japanese company wasn't in a good position to be forcing a bunch of foreign fundamentalists to see reason.

>>11792230
The restrictions were overkill

three cousins in a column

>>11792230
Parents were going schizo over tabletop games where you killed demons back then, so I get Nintendo being overbearing
People got mad at arcade games(Death Race) having stick figures being run over ten years prior

>>11792032
Gee wait til you find out what we live on...

>>11792250
my favorite genre

>>11791851 (OP)
Best one.

>>11792065
hey if you have never played a game dont share your opinions on the internet, noone wants to hear them

>>11792230
I've never heard of a single documented case where Christians were outraged at Nintendo for included religious imagery, yet there are plenty of Bible games released on the system with crosses all over them.

>>11792229
That's so cool.

>>11792869
>there are plenty of Bible games released on the system with crosses all over them
...unlicensed bible games that nintendo had nothing to do with?

>>11792065
RPGs aren't really good games to watch unless you've played through them and want to see someone's experience. Also, stop watching YouTube.

>>11792849
I've played DQ2, only got about halfway through and never finished it.

>>11792884
It's like that time Arino played DQ1 and all the staff fell asleep.

>>11792065
TMR hates RPGs and strategy games, he was always doubled up in pain when he played one of those.

all speed runners hate RPGs

So yeah like anon said once you get the boat the difficulty level shoots way up and you're just wandering around the sea for hours fighting off endless waves of Man O'Wars.

Why do these threads always match Jeff G's NES ranking and why does OP never admit it. Don't lie, bitch.

>>11792890
There's a reason I pop on FF1 on an emulator when I go to bed.

>>11792924
Based RPGs.

>>11792954
No idea what a Jeff G is but I assume it's an e-celeb in which case get out.

>>11792947
The game comes with the map, and NPCs always point in the next logical direction when you get the boat. Besides once you get the boat, the first logical destination is the closest one.

>>11792979
nta but I was playing it on emulator in the 2000s and using GameFAQs map but even so you could get so sucked into the game that you get lost anyway

>>11792346
You ever went to the north pole and then popped out at the south?

>>11792216
Okay, if I can teleport out and back to heal that's ok. I just got my first of three power shields, and need to finish the lava cave, then I'll start Rhone.

>>11793081
Yes it should work as long as you talk to the priest in the small shrine in Rhone, and then don't talk to another priest when you warp back to town.

>>11792896
I don't know how he did it, beat the entire licensed US NES library because I sure wouldn't have that kind of patience/masochism.

>>11793086
I gave up playing the GBC version DQ2 since the last castle is literally a "slap your head against the wall until you don't die" stretch and I really wanted to start DQ3 already. I loved DQ2 up until that point, after getting the ship, the game becomes very amazing for being so huge for the time and exploring was fun; I did use a guide for the crests, but still. That said, DQ3 is also VERY fun and I just am confused about that to upgrade my people to, as I have a Dealer, Thief and Priest.

Speaking of DQ3, what is the best personality to have for everyone as my Dealer and Priest are "Genius" my Hero is "Smart". However, my Hero is a retard and has the lowest INT out of everyone even after feeding him INTseeds. Also the Whip weapons are very fun to use.

>>11792964
Jeff Gerstmann, one of the oldest vidya related ecelebs in a sense.
If I recall he's the man behind 8.8.

>>11793094
I've turned a Dealer (Merchant) into a Sage before using the book and it worked out great because it alleviates the Sage's greatest weakness: low HP. Out of those three I'd say it'd be the best pick for Sage.

>>11793094
>Speaking of DQ3, what is the best personality to have for everyone as my Dealer and Priest are "Genius" my Hero is "Smart". However, my Hero is a retard and has the lowest INT out of everyone even after feeding him INTseeds. Also the Whip weapons are very fun to use.
It feels great when you've played a game and have no fucking idea what someone is talking about due to remakes. Really cool.

>>11791918
dragon ball (also toriyama) didn't even blow up in the US till after the series died in japan

>>11793094
>the last castle is literally a "slap your head against the wall until you don't die" stretch
I played through it as a kid on the NES. I kept getting filtered by one of the bosses prior to the big bad guy. Then I finally reached him and got vaporized on the first turn. Finally got a decent run in, and took him on at as close to full power as I could get. Just barely pulled off a win. On my way out, then the game revealed the real final boss, who promptly vaporized me on the first turn. Had to do the entire thing all over again.
It was less brutal on my last playthrough, but now I know about the bullshit so I don't get surprised. First time through playing blind, DW2/DQ2 is a brutal nightmare towards the end.

>>11793106
The SNES/GBC versions added personalities which affects stats. They're like Natures in gen 3 Pokémon. I never cared for it, in the grand scheme of things I felt like it barely mattered.

DQ2 is considered one of the best Famicom games in Japan. For obvious reasons, it increased the size and scope of 1, and became the model for all other JRPGs. It's only in the West where people have to insist (for some reason) that it's a poor sequel. It's objectively a fantastic sequel.

>>11793126
i think it'd have been better received had it not been 3 years old when it came out here and we already had FF1 and newer RPGs

>>11793102
I did get the sage book, so I guess I'll use it on the Dealer since I believe I have all of his spells like the "Yell Help" one that summons a shop or hotel from anywhere. Thanks for the feedback!

>>11793106
>>11793123
The remake got rid of personalities? That seems foolish since it is a fun mechanic that allows for more character stat tuning.

>>11793136
>The remake got rid of personalities? That seems foolish since it is a fun mechanic that allows for more character stat tuning.

No it didn't, though I haven't played it, I was just saying to the other anon who only played the NES version that personalities were added in the SNES version onwards

>>11793008
One time as a kid I dug a hole and came out in China.

No, the game is bullshit
>enter dungeon with 80 MP
>dancing puppets take you down to 0 MP in the first turn
>no way to restore MP unlike FF, a good game which gives you ethers
>have to walk all the way back to town to heal after first battle
>repeat 100 times

>>11793201
Skill issue. If you spent less time sucking cock and more time getting good and this wouldn't be a problem.

If you were a fan of JRPGs, Dragon Warrior 2 landed right in the middle of a good batch of 8 and 16 bit games and we saw a mix of first person dungeon crawls, action rpgs and topdown turn based types. Those two years were amazing and very busy ones for the genre.

Phantasy Star Nov 1988 (MS)
DQ1 August 1989(NES)
Faxanadu. August 1989(NES)
Dungeon Explorer Nov 1989 (TG16)
Willow. Dec 1989(NES)
Phantasy Star 2 March 1990(Genesis)
Ys book 1&2. May 1990(TG16)
Final fantasy July 1990(NES)
Crystalis. July 1990(NES)
Destiny of an Emperor. July 1990(NES)
DQ2 Sept 1990(NES)
Shining in Darkness June 1991(Genesis)
Bards Tale mid 1991 (NES)
Final Fantasy IV Nov 1991(SNES)

I played virtually all of these on their western release dates except the first phatasy star as I never owned a master system. 1989-1991 I was just starting high school and hung out with a group of people I played D&D with in elementary school and we embraced console RPGs so went after anything and everything. Stuff like magic of shaherazad was a quick weekend rental but most of the above RPGs were a great experience. DQ2 had great longevity and was too long to beat on a normal rental, but we knew even then it felt old. Not hydlide old, but dated.

>>11793431
Based. Did you play the translated Famicom version of Bard's Tales too? Pic related, basically everything in those screenshots doesn't appear as such (or at all) in the US version.

>>11791851 (OP)
Dragon Warrior before the slapshod localization that came with Quest 8 was 'earthier' and closer to the original language. It actually made it better imo.

>DQ2
too much water tbqh

>>11794154
Nothing famicom back then no. Just the FCI release for NES.
Playing pen and paper D&D the bards tale felt the most like a real D&D adventure, as did the first final fantasy, surprisingly.
Wizardry landed on NES at some point in the early 90s but like hydlide it felt dated on arrival.

>>11794327
Yes the FC verison was only translated recently. You should check it out if you liked the original game, it's like rediscovering the game really. Tons of enemies that were originally cut and lot's of other cool stuff like a LOT more choice on what monster companions you can have.

>>11794548
The Famicom game was 2 megabits and FCI in their infinite wisdom decided to cut the US release down to 1 megabit to save about $5 which lost a large chunk of the game.

i mean Bard's Tale on C64 was 3 disk sides so you figure they needed at least 256k to fit all the content from that onto the NES

there was also Bard's Tale 2 on FC and we never got that one

>>11793201
Why did you let them drain you in the first place? You could have saved MP by casting spells to defeat them quickly. Let me guess, you were trying to conserve MP by only attacking.

>>11792879
>oi you got a loicense for that game?
Checkmate, gaythiest.

>>11793108
I find it funny that the RPG that did get hugely popular among kids in the west ten years later also had a Toriyama inspired art style
By then everyone knew Dragon Ball so the aesthetic probably did help

>>11793431
>I was just starting high school and hung out with a group of people I played D&D with in elementary school and we embraced console RPGs so went after anything and everything.
I always wondered how tabletop RPG guys felt about console RPG's at the time.
Did they think they were watered down compared to computer RPG's? Or found them perfectly serviceable for the hardware they were on?

>>11795048
We had no idea the dragon quest even had manga influenced art until dragon the playstation era (DQ7). The official art for the earlier games was all heavily westernized and the in game art leaves much to the imagination.

The game came with a color manual with many illustrstions of the party and the monsters.

>>11795054
I am the guy you quoted and I didnt have a decent gaming PC until late 1992 when I finally got into them it was late in the SSI goldbox era. My cousin had a decent PC as far back as 1987 but we mostly played sierra quest games on it back then. He wasnt into d&d style rpgs and that is why I was first exposed to bards tale and wizardly on late NES era.

Most of the official licensed d&d games we had access to on consoles were dogshit. Early first edition ad&d modules had very little roleplay and some were devoid of NPCs and were mostly just dungeon crawls for loot (against the giants, white plume mountain etc). D&D at this point often was often still rooted in tabletop wargaming than the larper shit of the 90s onwards. That 80s style of D&D adapted perfectly into video games. I loved the goldbox games, and the later baldurs gate 1&2 especially.

>>11795105
Miss me with that Western slop. No wonder the series failed to catch on in America.

>>11793201
>>no way to restore MP unlike FF, a good game which gives you ethers
>MP
>in Final Fantasy

The most fucked up part about DQ2 is even if you survive the Rhone cave you're still 10 levels too low to attempt Hargon's castle and every random battle feels like a boss, making the grind take 10x as long.

>>11795292
at least play the series before you try shittalking

>>11791851 (OP)
It was fun to learn that they actually had cutscenes planned beyond just text boxes for so early in the JRPG lifespan, but things had to be cut for time and constraints- and then they slipped a little would-be art into the manual anyway.

>>11795420
Would've loved to see Toriyama art at that scale

>>11795420
The US version had enough ROM space for the cutscenes but they ended up only really adding an improved intro and not taking advantage of the space they had.

I agree with some other anons that the sailing wasn't good. Even using the map in the manual, it's easy to b-line to your destination and still end up somewhere else because of how tiny some of the islands are. I don't remember the encounters being hard though, just boring. Like they'd put your party to sleep and slow the combat and shit. I ended up sailing using the evasion spell 100% of the time. Also the final area was something else. I'd say that's when the difficulty actually spikes. Just getting to Hargon's castle was bullshit with all the insta-kills. The blizzards casting Zaraki (I played the Japanese version, I don't know the English spell names), the giants dropping someone at full health on a crit, and the silver devils putting someone to sleep and spamming begirama (when they don't just cast that spell that insta-kills the whole party). The castle wasn't much better. Pic related is a screenshot I took the first moment I got a chance to act in a random encounter there. My party's health was 190/130/74 going into it. It felt like the finale was just trying to waste your time. The cave leading up to it with all the pitfalls was especially tedious. All in all though, I'd say it's a good game, despite the bullshit. I especially liked seeing the wandering spirits in Moonbrooke Castle and finding out the dog in the town was the princess. And having people around the world congratulate you after defeating Hargon was pretty cool.

>>11796025
IIRC the Silver Devils only cast Begirama if their HP is below 40%

>I don't remember the encounters being hard though, just boring.

They initially had planned for many more monsters on the sea, but they made the cut presumably due to the lack of space. Pic related: out of 9 cut enemies (not pictured is the spider), 6 were sea enemies.

>>11795376
I thought you were comparing DQ2 to another RPG from the same year, how in the fuck was I supposed to know you were talking about the series as a whole

>>11796049
>IIRC the Silver Devils only cast Begirama if their HP is below 40%
I think it doesn't matter. i was grinding some yesterday and I swear sometimes they'd start round 1 with it, which pissed me off because I didn't pre-select the heal shields.

>>11796517
You might be thinking of Pazuzu (the boss version of those), who can cast that spell anytime, but the Silver Devil definitely are only able to do at below 40% HP. I checked the game code myself to confirm this in a previous thread.
The Cyclops in Rhone can also cast an OHKO attack but it's the individual targetting one, not the party wide

>>11791851 (OP)
I was too busy playing Times Of Lore at that time. JRPGs always seemed so infantile until maybe Tactics Ogre.

>>11797097
I never heard many good things about the NES port of Times of Lore.

>>11797098
C64 had the best version of that game, it's not even funny how much better it is than any other platform.

>>11794201
I agree 100%, it was very jarring going from Monsters 1 & 2, and the GBC ports of DW1-3, to then playing DQ8. I thought it was a joke

>>11797098
it was a quick cheapo port they put on an UNROM cartridge

>>11796529
You sure you're not thinking of megante, the party wipe spell? I remember they'd pull that out later in the encounter so I'm sure there's a restriction, but I think begirama they'd cast on turn one. I don't remember too well though.