Dragon Warrior I&II

"A solid one-two punch for the gameboy color"

Dragon Quest first released in japan in May 27, 1986 and its sequel Dragon Quest 2 are some of the most important games to ever be released for a console and helped make a new type of genre, the RPG popular on home consoles. Now these two classic games have been released on the Game Boy Color and have been improved. This is a solid buy for any RPG fan.

Dragon Warrior 1
Story: The story in dragon warrior 1 is very minimalistic. You essentially are the decedent of the legendary Loto who once brought peace to the land. When the game begins you will learn that the evil Dracolord stole a magic orb and naturally since you are the decedent of Loto the king forces you to go on a dangerous and perilous quest to save his kingdoms butt by defeating the Dracolord himself. The game is not NPC driven, but world driven and you will get most of information of the story from the world around you. For instance you will learn of powerful artifacts to defeat the Dracolord from the townspeople of various cities and will have very little guidance in were to go. Overall the story is fairly weak by todays standards – 5

Gameplay: The Gameplay in dragon warrior 1 is fun, but repetitive. Once the king tells you of your role to save the world, you essentially are thrown out in a huge fantasy world with little to no direction. You must ask the townspeople to find out were to go next. These hints from the townspeople usually progress into a full blown quest involving traveling on the over-world and entering some dungeon to retrieve a powerful artifact that will aid in destroying the Dracolord. On the over-world and in dungeons expect many random battles. There is very little strategy to battles, which only involves healing and attacking. The main strategy in the game is asking yourself when to heal or not to heal to best conserve your magic so you will not be caught unprepared in a dungeon. The game is very repetitive because you will often spend most of your time level grinding to level up and getting enough gold to buy new weapons, to survive the dungeons. The Game Boy Color has a quicker level up system though so this level grinding aspect is greatly reduced. There are some cool touches to the basic retrieve powerful artifact in dungeon formula, such as rescuing the princess from a dragon and trying to locate various stat boosting nuts which were added to the Game Boy version.-7

Sound/Graphics- The graphics are gorgeous in this game and easily one of the best on the Game Boy Color. The monsters which were designed by Akira Toriyama are very memorable. The backdrops in the random battles, which are exclusive to dragon warrior 1 are very beautiful and colorful. The dungeons are completely remade graphically from the NES version and now have more of a personality to them, but there are still have too many generic caves to explore. The sound is essentially the same to the NES version and works well for this game. -8

Overall- Solid, but may not have enough variety for some people- 7

Dragon Warrior 2
Story: The story in DW2 is very basic: a evil king named Hargon is bent on world domination and you must gather the two other descendent's of Loto to collect the 5 seals to enter Hargon's castle and defeat the big boss himself. The game is world driven like every DW game, meaning the townspeople tell the story and were to go next . A nice touch I enjoyed was the fact the Hargon can throw a curse on one of your party members if you are not careful and you will have to embark on a side quest to save him, which gives Hargon much more dept as a villain. Overall this game's plot is better than DW 1 but still weak -6

Gameplay: The Gameplay is a amazing improvement on the original and will hold more peoples attention. First improvement is that you now have two allies to help your main character. This is interesting because your character can not cast spells, meaning you will need your allies to assist him with healing, attack and defense spells. There are much more spells now and towards the end of the game you will have to balance stat lowering and upping spells as well as healing spells and attack spells to defeat the bosses. Spell casting in general is more useful now because your allies are weak physically and spells will often do more damage than attacking unlike DW 1 meaning you will have to worry about MP more. There are now more items now and you will have much more fun exploring dungeons for unique and powerful artifacts. Finally there are ships to explore the world and teleportation tiles ( Tiles that teleport you across the map) which improves on Dragon Warriors already intrinsic sense of adventure. The game is longer and the end game is epic to say the least, with tons of mini bosses to beat before the final battle. Dragon Warrior 2 is a impressive improvement on its' predecessor and a exciting game in its own right. The main problem is the repetitiveness and lack of direction which are intrinsic to the DW series.-8

Graphics/Sound: The graphics are more impressive than its prequel since there are more varied locations such as a volcanoes and snowy lands. This batch of Akira Toriyama's monsters is less memorable than DW 1 but there are more of them so there is less repetition. The sound is about the same as DW 1 so there is not much to comment on this. -9

Overall- A impressive improvement on the original Dragon Warrior. The exploration of the world has been expanded with ships and more varied locals. The game has more variety than DW 1 with a three person party and more spells, weapons and monsters. The game will be too repetitive for some but is solid and very fun to play for long stretches. - 8

Conclusion: Two solid games that will have you hooked for a long time. These games are solid dungeon romps and will be a staple of your handheld world for awhile if you choose to buy them. -8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/19/08

Game Release: Dragon Warrior I&II (US, 09/27/00)