tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post8587673658159091626..comments2024-03-18T21:14:09.798-04:00Comments on The CRPG Addict: Game 349: Dragon Warrior (1986)CRPG Addicthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comBlogger207125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-18060702297219631452023-07-14T06:14:58.491-04:002023-07-14T06:14:58.491-04:00Well this was a nice surprise! Not that I'm a ...Well this was a nice surprise! Not that I'm a particular fan of the DQ series, but it's interesting to see your perspective. Also nice to see that you've recently been playing Warriors of the Eternal Sun, which I've independently started to get nostalgic about revisiting (as disappointed as I was back in the day that it channelled U6's graphical style but not its complexity). <br /><br />Re the grind: I rolled credits on DQ11S a little while ago (I've not been able to face the 60+ hours of post-credit content yet). One thing that struck me was how much more enjoyable it was when I stopped grinding. While the game is still a bit staid in some ways, it felt progressive within its genre for respecting the player's time that way. <br />Romhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17424138564206888866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-23727653869815893842022-12-29T20:26:33.660-05:002022-12-29T20:26:33.660-05:00Also, as a note: This is the first time I've h...Also, as a note: This is the first time I've had to press a "load more comments" button on your blog, I didn't even know Blogger *did* that. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-36099884019525463962022-12-29T20:26:06.939-05:002022-12-29T20:26:06.939-05:00I've been hoping for this post for a very long...I've been hoping for this post for a very long time: This may be the only gave you play that I've actually *beaten* as I tend not to finish games. I beat the Game Boy (game boy colour?) version of this as a kid, and looking back on it, I think your review is pretty accurate and fair. <br /><br />I'm glad you've played this, as I think it will help your future reviews due to how widespread it was and how many people played it. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-86333082244100795242022-12-29T14:33:17.525-05:002022-12-29T14:33:17.525-05:00I beat the Gameboy Colour version of this game (On...I beat the Gameboy Colour version of this game (On the cart that had both Dragon Warrior I & II, and translated the names back to Loto sword and Loto Armour. When I first played through it, I didn't find the Loto sword before finding the end boss, and beat him with it. Then I reloaded to find what happened if I gave him my sword, and he said something like "you came to face me with this? hahaha" so I looked up a map in Nintendo Power and found the Loto Sword, and tried both endings with it. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-49193481698587826752022-12-29T14:20:03.563-05:002022-12-29T14:20:03.563-05:00Damn, that is a solid gold slate of games. You hav...Damn, that is a solid gold slate of games. You have the game that redefined the FPS genre, the definitive RTS that introduced the idea of professional play to computer games, my personal favourite RPG of all time, and a contender for the best of all time, and the game that defined the modern stealth-action genre. Canageekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03770924810559440307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-52883721789630708742022-12-22T01:24:00.425-05:002022-12-22T01:24:00.425-05:00This game was the first RPG made for home consoles...This game was the first RPG made for home consoles in Japan in 1986.<br />What that means is how can you get kids under 10 who have never played any RPG, including D&D (or even heard the name), to play an RPG without giving up on finishing it? It was a challenge.<br />Initially, the characters started outside like Ultima, but in test play, the children fought outside without going to the castle or the city, exhausted, and they got tired of it.<br />As a result, the game was changed so that at the start, the characters were locked in the king's room and had to find a key from a treasure chest to open the door to get out.<br />It can be rigid, linear, and overprotective.<br />But, to get children who had only played action games to play RPGs, it was necessary to make a series of such ingenuity.<br />This game does not allow for complicated character makeup, and no party formation.<br />But this game is for level 1 RPG players to become level 2.<br />Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16586765411499166108noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-86444764718428808542022-09-05T21:36:58.271-04:002022-09-05T21:36:58.271-04:00A few details!
First, I'm actually not sure i...A few details!<br /><br />First, I'm actually not sure if you strictly NEED Erdrick's Sword to defeat the Dragonlord. It certainly HELPS, since it gives +12 higher Attack than the next strongest weapon (+40 compared to the Flame Sword's +28), but I don't know that the game actually runs any checks to make sure you have Erdrick's Sword equipped before letting you inflict damage on him.<br /><br />The Warrior's Ring is apparently SUPPOSED to boost your critical hit rate, but it's bugged and doesn't actually do anything. You do get some kinda funny dialogue if you talk to the warrior who recommends you find it while you have it equipped, though.<br /><br />Finally, Dragon Quest I actually DOES have character customization, sort of, although it's completely obscure and obtuse and the game never tells you about it. The first four letters of your character's name influence your stat spread. Stats are paired off into HP / Agility and MP / Strength, and, within each pair, one will be "strong" and one will be "weak". There's also a bonus from +0 to +3 that the game adds to the "weak" stats, which mean, with the right name choice, that it plays out a bit more like "two stats start weak but end up strong while the other two start strong but end up weak". People have, of course, reverse-engineered the formula the game uses to determine this, and I've included the URL for you to check it out for yourself if you like. Looks like the name you used, CHESTER (the formula IS case-sensitive!), results in a character with high Strength and Agility, but lower HP and MP, albeit with the maximum bonus of +3 to the weaker two stats.<br />https://guides.gamercorner.net/dw/name-stats/Topaz Lighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06932726490860542612noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-6721183645162124272021-05-09T20:47:07.802-04:002021-05-09T20:47:07.802-04:00Yes, Tristan is exactly right. To a large extent ...Yes, Tristan is exactly right. To a large extent it doesn't matter what came first, because an obscure game is less likely to be influential than a popular one. (Also Wikipedia has Faery Tale Adventure released in the US the same year as The Legend of Zelda.)<br /><br />We also don't know for sure that Star Wars had any influence on the abundance of outer space shooters in the arcades during the late 70s and early 80s (Space Invaders, Galaga, Asteroids, etc...). Perhaps these games were influenced by something else? However, given how popular Star Wars was at the time, it does seem reasonable to conclude that it had some influence on the existence of all of these outer space shooters. The popular movie or game or whatever is more likely to influential than something more obscure.The_Liquid_Lasernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-88832794463826677832021-05-09T07:57:35.280-04:002021-05-09T07:57:35.280-04:00I think it’s fair to call a piece of art ‘influent...I think it’s fair to call a piece of art ‘influential’ for popularising a technique without it having to be the first extant example of the technique.Tristan Gallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16769219573533545742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-76992680023482963232021-05-08T22:26:30.067-04:002021-05-08T22:26:30.067-04:00Faery Tale Adventure came out before Zelda 1 in En...Faery Tale Adventure came out before Zelda 1 in English did.<br /><br />It's sometimes fun to play the "game X did Y first so obviously it influenced all the games that used Y" thought experiment, but that quite often isn't how it works -- in many circumstances different elements happen independently.Jason Dyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03292199216981320170noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-24972780447045453972021-05-08T10:40:44.111-04:002021-05-08T10:40:44.111-04:00I realized a while after I posted this that I had ...I realized a while after I posted this that I had forgotten about Ultima 1 and 2. However, Zelda 1 is legitimately an influential game, but I was not explaining it quite right. Let me try again.<br /><br />1) Zelda 1 has a consistent scale. Games with a top-down perspective (like Ultima) often have an overworld, a different dungeon interface, (sometimes) a different battle screen, and when you step on a single town square in the overworld it transforms into a huge town. The experience of scale is all over the place. In Zelda 1 the dungeons have the same top-down perspective as the overworld. There are no towns, but instead you encounter lone NPCs in caves. This gives the feeling that scale has been more-or-less preserved (i.e. one square does not represent a huge town).<br />2) Zelda 1 is not a seamless game, but it is a key stepping stone toward a seamless experience. Early Ultimas are not seamless at all to the point that the overworld looks nothing like when you are in a dungeon. Eventually we get top-down games with few/no loading screens. Zelda 1 is an important stepping stone between these two styles.<br />3) Times of Lore and Dungeon Master were released after Zelda 1 released in the US and were not nearly as successful commercially. Hydlide was definitely an influential game on console RPGs including Zelda. Zelda is a lot more complex and fun than Hydlide is. It's a better experience. Zelda 1 is the game that directly influenced many games to come, but Hydlide is the game that influenced it. The_Liquid_Lasernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-62549803085163857912021-05-08T09:31:10.711-04:002021-05-08T09:31:10.711-04:00That said, Laser isn't wrong that Zelda was hu...That said, Laser isn't wrong that <i>Zelda</i> was hugely influential. He seems to be reading through my blog from the beginning; I shudder to think of the comment when he actually gets to my <i>Zelda</i> coverage.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-38070469814149236042021-05-08T08:43:13.530-04:002021-05-08T08:43:13.530-04:00Even Ultima and Ultima II had "continuous wor...Even Ultima and Ultima II had "continuous worlds" that weren't interrupted by separate battle screens.Ahabhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04131989140638867919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-3225271475607665542021-05-07T23:48:47.329-04:002021-05-07T23:48:47.329-04:00Hogwash. The Legend of Zelda had absolutely nothin...Hogwash. The Legend of Zelda had absolutely nothing to do with the introduction of a continuous world. <br /><br />Not only was that independently introduced by games such as Times Of Lore and Dungeon Master before the original Zelda made it to the US, Zelda didn't even introduce the concept in Japan. Hydlide had it two years earlier.<br /><br />Meanwhile "growing in power without experience points" in the form of collecting items is one of the most basic gameplay mechanics ever.Gnomanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13920812227941556716noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-47859662527420630252021-05-07T21:50:11.753-04:002021-05-07T21:50:11.753-04:00Dragon Warrior (Quest) is the "most influenti...Dragon Warrior (Quest) is the "most influential game" if you look at what influenced other console RPGs. However if you are looking for an NES game that influenced all RPGs (including CRPGs), then it's actually The Legend of Zelda.<br /><br />People debate whether or not to count Zelda 1 as an RPG or not, but it doesn't really matter if you are looking for influence. Before Zelda, games like Ultima would have an overworld screen and a separate battle screen. It wasn't one continuous world. Zelda was a continuous world. Also, your character grew in power without acquiring experience points.<br /><br />I believe Zelda was the first commercially successful game to do either of these things. It's the influential NES game that you are probably looking for.The_Liquid_Lasernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-32480431119479952522020-06-02T23:10:05.254-04:002020-06-02T23:10:05.254-04:00"I just suspect that if you held up any game ..."I just suspect that if you held up any game world to this level of analysis, you would find an equal number of impressive items." <br /><br />I *have* held up many game worlds to close analysis. Off the top of my head, only Ultimas III and IV and Pool of Radiance approach this level of thoughtfulness, in this era of gaming. And of course, they're much richer and denser maps, because their engines allowed for many more options. Wizardry is great, but its level design is often thoughtless and haphazard. Final Fantasy is grand, but it quickly becomes apparent that the care is unevenly distributed. (For instance, it has a legendary number of bugs that would have been easily discovered with systematic testing, but nobody dared to question Nasir. If you forgot who Nasir is, look up Ultimate Play the Game on The Digital Antiquarian.)<br /><br />All the above examples are less elegant, because their constraints are looser (though still very tight). If you know much about programming and game design, you'll be amazed by how constrained and, frankly, behind the times the NES was. For instance, it had an 8-bit processor, and at the time of Dragon Warrior IV computing was transitioning to 32 bits. Dragon Warrior is even more constrained than most NES games: its cart uses the literal minimum amount of ROM that can be supplied in an NES cart. Dragon Warrior IV, meanwhile, has the largest ROM ever seen on the NES in the United States, an astounding two hundred and fifty six kilobytes! I won't supply the details, but when I studied Dragon Warrior's systems for my speedrun I was amazed by the programming talent they indicated. It was using optimization techniques that had already become obsolete in the eighties, stuff that recent its highest development in the minicomputer era! Ultimately, Dragon Warrior's elegance is the reason why speedrunners have managed to push its world record down to 25 minutes. A thirty-minute Dragon Warrior run was demonstrated live at AGDQ (a speedrunning charity marathon) a few years ago.<br /><br />I guess I'm allowed to brag. My speedrun is on Speed Demos Archive, easily found. Its record stood for about two years. Technically it's still the no-RNG-manipulation world record, but no-one plays segmented speedruns anymore, so the comparison to single-segment ones is misleading.<br /><br />The core reason why the Dragon Quest series rarely receives its due in the US is that critics here are completely unequipped to analyze shonen games, which is to say, games designed for teenagers. Most US game critics won't even give children's games their due, must less those meant for adolescents. Meanwhile, Dragon Warrior has the double sin of being a shonen game aided at newcomers to RPGs. In its time, its target demographic (teenagers new to RPGs) was every poor child/teenager in the US, since we sure as hell wouldn't have seen a computer. So overt was this targeting that the game was given away with a Nintendo Power magazine subscription. It's strange: the first Dragon Warrior one of the cheapest NES carts to find nowadays, Dragon Warrior IV one of the hardest. This year, despite my lack of income, I gave myself permission to buy myself a lovely gift: Dragon Warrior IV, costing around $130. I had dreamed of owning it as a child, but could only afford to rent it through Blockbuster, and until this year I have been too mature to spend the money. ;)<br /><br />Right now my mental health is too poor for physics, so I'm devoting intellectual effort to literary criticism instead, mainly games but also books and comics. This has been a lovely opportunity to add new raw material to the essay I'm compiling. :)Lhexahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17964132955838014919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-71337447632992066612020-06-01T15:22:29.124-04:002020-06-01T15:22:29.124-04:00I certainly wouldn't chide someone for putting...I certainly wouldn't chide someone for putting a lot of effort into a comment when I put a lot of effort into the original reviews. I mean, we could both chide ourselves for spending so much mental energy on ephemera, but it would be hypocritical to do it to each other.<br /><br />I appreciate the way that your regard the game. I just suspect that if you held up any game world to this level of analysis, you would find an equal number of impressive items. I'm happy that there are such dedicated fans for just about every game, no matter how I feel about those games, because they offer comments like yours and highlight things I might have missed or under-emphasized in my single run.CRPG Addicthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01238237377918550322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-10817524843988771532020-05-31T14:45:08.876-04:002020-05-31T14:45:08.876-04:00Here's more. The map of the first Dragon Warri...Here's more. The map of the first Dragon Warrior is the second most thoughtful one I know of its size and format, the most thoughtful being Ultima IV's. Here's a list of some of its thoughtful touches.<br /><br />*** Southwest of the start is a strip of land belonging to higher-difficulty monsters. This is intentional: if you look at the area across the mountains, that zone is of a far <i>lower</i> difficulty than the others by it. It's a little grinding spot near the start, discoverable by chance.<br />*** The Rimuldar tunnel cannot be seen from the edge of the swamp you must use to traverse it. As a child, I did not know it existed until I explored the eastern coast, and saw the tunnel across the mountains.<br />*** Throughout the map, zones four or more steps higher (in monster difficulty) are visible from across mountain ranges or water tiles. Often there are intriguing features visible, like the Mountain Cave (west of the start) or the canyon maze.<br />*** As a child, the canyon maze dismayed me in its pointlessness. Now, I know its purpose. Cantlin (the final, fortress town) has two approaches. The hard one goes through the canyon maze, and teases you by making you loop around Cantlin. The easy one starts at the far southwest region of the map. However, the hard one is also the natural one to attempt first. Thus, the easy path is a reward for those who explore for the sake of exploration, rather than trying to beeline to the next place.<br />*** Both deserts have oases. The ruins of Hauksness were built over one (as revealed in a later game), and a later game cutely posits that the northeastern desert's oasis shelters a small bandit town.<br />*** The resemblance to Britannia is a deliberate homage. Horii always names the Wizardry and Ultima series as the first game's biggest influences, strange though that appears given DW's simplicity.<br />*** The starting areas provide you with curving grassland paths between the first few cities; these tiles have the lowest encounter rate. Indeed, patches of another grassland path extend to Hauksness. This is an elegant way to suggest roads, without investing in the large number of tiles you'd need to make them look decent on an overworld map.<br />*** The concealed, wooded northern canyon, a simple and obvious trick to an adult, delighted me as a child.<br />*** The settings characterize the towns before you even enter them. Garinham (northwest) is a mercantile port town, Kol (northeast) a woodland haven, Rimuldar a nigh-Arthurian magical city on the lake, Cantlin a forest concealed deep in the mountains... and you can intuit these things before even entering them.<br />*** Your first look at the overland map shows you its three most important locations.<br />*** The exploration and advancement is terribly paced for a player of any sophistication, but it is perfect for a newcomer to RPGs. It was my first RPG (remember, too poor for anything better), and I maxed my level before reaching the Dragonlord's castle. If you do so, the king tells you, "Shouldn't you have defeated the Dragonlord by now?"<br /><br />In my book, Dragon Warrior is the single most elegant RPG there is (though nowhere near the best), because my idea of "elegance" is measured by how much you can do within tight constraints. That's why I put myself through the ordeal of a speedrun.<br /><br />This elegance carries to the Japanese (not English) text; Horii later showed himself adept at providing distinct characterization with minimal text. It also appears in the game design, tedious though it is to an experienced player. Level 2 can barely be reached before your first inn visit, Level 3 before your second, Level 4 before your third.<br /><br />I know you're disinclined to play further in the series, and that's fine. But if you're curious about the games' cumulative effect, I recently came up with a theory, written down in another venue. I'll send you the link if you're curious. And before you chide me again for putting lots of effort into comments, I'm saving them for use in a later essay. :PLhexahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17964132955838014919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-90906866548549055172020-05-31T04:56:53.064-04:002020-05-31T04:56:53.064-04:00Thinking back on this post... for that era of gami...Thinking back on this post... for that era of gaming, the proper comparison is not console RPGs versus computer RPGs. In that comparison, of <i>course</i> console RPGs come out worse. Instead, the proper comparison is console gaming versus arcade gaming, with console RPGs representing the upper reaches of how long a game a console could offer at the time. Let's be generous with my skill level and say that a quarter could buy me a minute of playtime at an arcade. This would have made me a prodigious player considering that some games had already started to charge two quarters, and all arcade games were designed to consume more quarters at later levels. With such skill, $60 could buy me four hours of gaming... or I could buy Dragon Warrior IV, and have forty hours, encompassed by an epic story with a memorable cast and satisfying progression.<br /><br />As a child in the NES era, the choice of console versus computer games was one I simply did not face. I was too poor for a computer and never stopped being so, and would have never experienced Ultima VI, my single most important childhood game, if my aunt had not procured a near-obsolete PC that her company was upgrading out of. Instead, the choice was always whether to spend money on the instant gratification of an arcade, or to save it for the reliable investment of a console game, where even a dud could supply a day's entertainment.<br /><br />One more thing. Dragon Warrior IV taught me the concept of tragedy. I knew the word, but the game provided my first example of a good person reduced to evil deeds by suffering.Lhexahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17964132955838014919noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-83393986252977960732020-04-08T02:37:09.586-04:002020-04-08T02:37:09.586-04:00Kinda late to reply, but that's exactly how I ...Kinda late to reply, but that's exactly how I remember the SNES fan translated version. I have fond memories of it beeing an inoffensive, funny and quick little jrpg, which mystified me while reading Chet's experiences. Maybe they really changed the pacing as soon as the first remake. fireballhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01094871771537115267noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-39762136105216007802019-12-27T21:55:13.827-05:002019-12-27T21:55:13.827-05:00Pretty sure I only used Fight Fight Fight Parry Pa...Pretty sure I only used Fight Fight Fight Parry Parry Parry on Murphy's Ghost, and isn't that the majority of the fights? ;PZenic Reveriehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16441583549326102945noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-84184225416510980712019-12-24T11:59:19.031-05:002019-12-24T11:59:19.031-05:00This is how you get Chet to not play any console R...This is how you get Chet to not play any console RPGs ever again :pJarlFrankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08139422412722665286noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-63515899112100868502019-12-23T20:15:10.148-05:002019-12-23T20:15:10.148-05:00LOL you are right that this isn't a democracy ...LOL you are right that this isn't a democracy Chet. We are saying that you will play more console RPGs and so you will be playing more console RPGs. You have no say in the matter.Ryannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-20332369987325583192019-12-12T13:05:52.264-05:002019-12-12T13:05:52.264-05:00Very interesting read. This was the game that got ...Very interesting read. This was the game that got me into RPGs, actually. I'll admit, however, that it hasn't aged all that well. As others have mentioned, Dragon Quest II significantly improves on the formula, and Dragon Quest III elevates the series to what it is today. In my opinion, it and Dragon Quest IV are the best JRPGs of the 8-bit era.Sargehttp://hardcoreretrogaming.boards.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6162314467762792782.post-46595890736797384552019-12-11T04:42:19.045-05:002019-12-11T04:42:19.045-05:00It doesn't add too much, but some people like ...It doesn't add too much, but some people like variation.<br /><br />In the second game, on the other hand, the names of the other two characters is random, based on your first character's name.<br /><br />A lot of what you see in the early video games is experimenting. Some things worked and others didn't. Plus, some things were from trying to imitate pen-and-paper games.Drawdenoreply@blogger.com