Dragon Quest II has a reputation as the one to skip if you want to experience the original games. The first Dragon Quest has its charms as the progenitor, and Dragon Quest III is remembered as a certified classic, but Dragon Quest II sits in an odd space between them. On its release it was notorious for difficulty spikes, including a penultimate dungeon that could trap you forever, and a final boss with the ability to fully heal itself at any time. If there was ever a poster child for grindfest JRPGs, it was Dragon Quest II. Except none of that is true anymore.
I played through the entirety of the iOS version of Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line, which also forms the basis of the latest Switch version. The touch controls are actually pretty great and intuitive for this kind of game, but it’s otherwise the same so play to your preference. The main reason to play this version is because it has been seriously rebalanced compared to the original, and the graphical changes make exploration clearer than the Game Boy Color version, which also has gameplay improvements but suffers from smaller screen real estate. The Cave to Rendarak dungeon is still a maze where you can get stuck in a loop, but it is much easier to navigate due to the graphics making each area look much more distinct than previous ports. You can orient yourself on a path more easily because you can actually tell where you are. The final boss has lost the ability to cast FullHeal, but now has seven times the HP as before. The battle is a tough fight for sure, but can now be strategized to victory rather than outleveled. These major endgame changes make it so the much feared difficulty cliff never really happens.
That’s before even mentioning the changes to the earlier parts of the game. Group spells do more damage, so large battles aren’t quite as dangerous, and enemies drop more gold now, so expensive equipment is more obtainable. The encounter rate is still too high in most areas, but the Zoom spell now allows you to travel to any previously visited town, rather than just the starting castle, so if you find yourself in trouble it is easier to navigate short distances. In other words, you don’t need to grind nearly as much as you’d think just to stay alive. You don’t need to level up against low enemies to stand a chance out in the field. If you move through the game and fight most of what you encounter, you’ll follow a steady enough curve that keeps the game challenging without being unfair.
All of this is an argument for why this is the best version of Dragon Quest II, but we need to talk about what the game is and why it’s worth playing at all. The story of the game follows several generations after the original, with you playing as the descendents of the hero from that game, who also happened to be a descendent of the legendary hero Erdrick. Just like before, you are tasked with defeating an evil wizard who is attempting to take over the world. While the original Dragon Quest gives you the basic set-up and then expects you to just figure it out, Dragon Quest II pushes you a bit more in the right direction to start. You are the Prince of Midenhall, and you need to join forces with your cousins, the Prince of Cannock, and the Princess of Moonbrooke, in order to have the necessary strength to take on the evil wizard, Hargon. As you journey through the world, you can find characters who give you little pieces of lore about the world that make it feel like a rich and lived in place. It’s an incredibly simple story, yes, but it’s one that still manages to keep you engaged and invested in the world.
You could almost divide the game into two halves, the first being a fairly linear questline leading you to the boat, and the second being a non-linear, open world explore-em-up. I complained that the original Dragon Quest tossed you into a similar open world with no direction, so I appreciate this time that the game gives you some solid direction before opening up. The quest to the boat isn’t always spelled out for you, but the clues for where to go next are clearer than the original game so the balance of mystery and discovery vs. directionless wandering is significantly improved. By the time you get to the open world, you should feel confident enough in your abilities that the idea of running around the world without a clue doesn’t scare you.
The whole game works for me mainly because of how much thought went into the party balance. You spend the first hour or so alone before you recruit your first companion, learning the battle system with just one character. Your first character, the Prince of Midenhall, is a completely offensive character who never learns magic and dishes out high damage. By the time you meet the Prince of Cannock, you know how to fight. Cannock is the more balanced party member, with a respectable amount of strength, but also magic. He starts with just Heal, so you can replace your herbs with a spell, before he learns Sizz, a spell that launches a fireball at a group of enemies. This teaches you how to manage magic. Finally you meet the Princess of Moonbrooke, who is a more traditional mage. She has very little attack power, but she comes into the party knowing a stronger healing spell, and quickly learns status effect spells that will allow you to strategize even more than before. By the time you have assembled this full party, you have a strong grasp on the battle system and what needs to be done to successfully survive each encounter, yet it is still early enough in the game that you have plenty of room to discover how new ability combinations will work. Dragon Quest II was the first JRPG to feature a party system, and the simplicity of it works incredibly well for a first outing.
Dragon Quest II is no longer a game to be feared. The latest version smooths over most of the rough edges of the original, so you don’t need to feel like you’re entering a grindy time sink. It is an absolute improvement over the original game. If you’re curious about the old days of a beloved JRPG series, or are just looking for a simpler take on the genre, this game is a must play.