Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line is the second in the JRPG series that was originally for NES. This port to Android was based on the mobile remake, so it features updated graphics. The graphics looks great since it is more like SNES level rather than NES, with plenty of detail and vibrant colors. The game is set 100 years after the first Dragon Quest. You play as a descendent of the hero from the first game. You can still name the protagonist anything you want and the game begins on a grim note as demons surround and destroy one of the kingdoms. As the son of the king of another kingdom, you are tasked with recruiting your party to defeat the demon lord. The first part of the story has the hero travelling the kingdom in order to recruit his own party to aid in the quest. They’re all descendants of the hero from the first game as they are all royalty.
The battle system remains similar to the turn based system of the first game. The biggest difference is that your own party, and enemies you encounter, come in multiples. So you now need to determine which enemy to target first. It makes battles just that bit more interesting as you prioritize who to defeat first, or who to support first. The battle screen retains the same four options: attack, magic, use item and flee. While you cannot select the specific enemy you want to target, but only the enemy type, the game’s AI system is clever enough such that it prioritizes the enemies with the lower health. If your strike can one-shot kill a full-HP enemy, it will target that enemy despite another enemy having lower health.
As expected, there are random encounters and when you encounter an enemy, a battle screen pops up. Grinding and leveling up is highly encouraged since it’s a hallmark of the series. You gain new magic through leveling up, and even one or two levels can make a huge difference in the difficulty. The encounter rate can seem a bit too high at times, leading to an encounter every few steps which can be annoying.
Dungeons are much improved compared to the first game. No longer do you have to use an item to “light” up the dungeon and see your surroundings. On the flipside, the dungeon layout is much more expansive and there are more things to find. The risk and reward is high since you can only save at certain cities. Trekking too far into a new dungeon can mean your death and losing out on half your gold.
You can save at each city, which is a vast improvement over the first game. This mobile port allows you to create a quick save at any point which makes the game a lot easier, and doesn’t force you to play in long sessions. You also get access to a quick travel spell early on, and this feels completely revolutionary for the time. The dialogue from NPCs remains in the same old English style. While this may add to the tone and atmosphere of the game, it can make it a bit harder to understand. Like the original, Dragon Quest II lets you loose in the world and it is up to you to explore and find your own way through the story.
The world is huge, and once you get a means to travel the rest of the world, there’s a lot to do. While it would be lazy in most JRPGs, there are some nice callbacks to the first game’s areas and dungeons. The game never truly railroads you anywhere, although it’ll subtly warn you such as having high leveled monsters. The downside of all of this is that the game also doesn’t explicitly tell you where to go next and you can spend a lot of time just wandering aimlessly around. It can be confusing at times on where to go.
Unlike the first game, having enough money can be a pain. Equipment is very expensive. With three party members now to outfit, if you want to afford everything, you’ll have to grind a bit. As long as you don’t avoid enemies, and maybe take a bit of time here and there to grind, the game’s difficulty is balanced well. There is one massive exception to this though as mentioned later on.
The last few dungeons are really annoying and filled with all the things that would frustrate you. There are pitfalls that you cannot see that throw you back down to the floors below, dead ends, looping paths and hidden sections. This isn’t to mention that you are battling through powerful enemies with a high encounter rate all this time. It can lead you to be very very frustrated.
The final area is brutal thanks to extremely powerful enemies, the lack of save options, and the fact that you have to do the final dungeon within one session. This is even after the port has made things easier; it just feels like an extremely unfair spike in difficulty. Enemies will constantly cast party wide spells that causes massive damage, attack twice in one turn, repeatedly debuff you, likelier to do critical hits and will revive enemies. It’s frustrating and every encounter has a 50% chance of being your last. Up until this point, the game isn’t that bad, but this final area completely ruins the flow of the game and leaves a bad taste. There is no excuse; this is just bad game design. It makes it artificially hard for no reason and it is extremely disappointing that the developers thought that this was a good idea.
The game takes around 15-20 hours to complete although this will depend on how lost you get. You can breeze through sections quickly if you follow a walkthrough but you will always need to spend some time to grind. Overall, Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line has improved a lot compared to the first game but there are too many design issues. It was fun for most of the game, but the lack of direction as well as the trash final section, completely ruins the game and undoes all the fun. While it may still be worthwhile to experience the second installment in the iconic JRPG series, it is still a tough recommendation.
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