Oh Dragon Warrior 3, where do I even begin? This is one of the biggest and most amazing games that I’ve ever put inside my NES. I can’t believe that they were able to make a game so massive and detailed on such and old system. This is back in the days when RPGs usually lasted around 10 hours and only had one or two characters. I would estimate that this game took me at least 30 hours to complete, but it was probably even longer. This game also drove me absolutely crazy more times than I can count. There were times when I wanted to retire from gaming altogether and start writing a novel. The only problem was that I could only think about dragons and medieval knights. No, I had to get through it if I was ever going to regain my dignity.
First of all, I love these old RPGs where your characters start out so weak that you can hardly take two steps out of town. I love to play a game for at least an hour before I stop walking in a circle around the first village. Dragon Warrior 3 not only does that, but allows a person to do that as many times as they want to. Other than the main character all the party members are created by the player. That means endless possibilites as long as you don’t mind only having a few character classes to choose from. I of course love this because it allows me to bypass the prototypical wizard. I really hate black wizards in these old games. They are always so stingy with the MP that wizards are only useful when fighting bosses. I hate to waste MP on any of the regular monsters because I’ll need enough for the boss. Why can’t they have MP restoring items anyway? Instead I went with a soldier, pilgrim, and merchant until I’m able to turn the merchant into a sage.
So that’s what you can think about before you even start playing. The gameplay is that familiar old Dragon Quest style. If you’ve played any of the newer games in the series than this one wont’ be too surprising. Actually it almost feels like the first game in a whole new series because most of the innovations in it later became series standards. Basically you go from town to town slowly getting stronger and slowly going through elaborate dungeons with plenty of tricks and secrets. Did you notice that I said slowly twice in there? There is a reason for that.
This game is slow! It’s one of the slowest paced games that I’ve ever played. You walk slow. That boat is damn slow. The phoenix is even slower. It takes a ridiculously long time to save up enough money to buy equipment for everybody. Not to mention the high level you have to obtain to fight that final boss. If this was any other game than I would call this a deal breaker, but for a Dragon Warrior game it’s all part of the experience. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was better because it moved so slow. This allows you to be fully immersed in the world. Because it goes by so slow you are able to appreciate everything the developers spent so much time putting in there. This might be why I’ve played through this game but never made it through Phantasy Star 4. That game just flies by to where I hardly even feel like I’m playing it. Of course my girlfriend will probably chuckle at this paragraph a little bit because she had to spend two months listening to me complaining about the game’s slow pace from the other room. I guess you appreciate things more when they’re over.
This game did take me about two months to complete. I would play it for an hour or two after work almost every day. I can’t imagine how long it would take without the internet to help me. Although the game came with detailed guides in the box so I guess they knew this one was gonna be trouble. This game is also one of the earliest I can think of that had a genuine fake ending. I seriously thought that I was fighting the final boss only to find out that I had another dozen hours or so of gameplay left. If you like random encounters than you’ll love the underworld. You’ll get into a fight almost every third step. Also, it looks a little familiar down there. Where have I seen that overworld layout before?
So I better stop this one before it runs on too long. Dragon Warrior 3 truly is a remarkable game. I got it at a time when I thought I had played through all the great NES games. It completely took over my life for a couple of months there, and I wasn’t really sure that video games could do that to me anymore. It was truly a worthwhile experience, and I’ll never forget how I felt when I finally beat it. I guess now I need to play through Dragon Warrior 2, but I might put that one on hold for a while. I just can’t take those trees that have that instant death magic. I guess that’s another story for another entry. Maybe I’ll go easy on myself and my next game will be a simple action side scroller. (Don’t worry, it’s not.)
Dragon Warrior! I read all about this game in an issue of Nintendo Power that covered both DW2 and DW3. I still have never played it, but the mini-walkthrough made it seem so magical. Although they did spoil the fact that the REAL boss lives in the underworld. Thanks, Nintendo Power. 20 years later and I still remember that spoiler.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that all of Alefgard exists beneath another world. Do they not have a sky? Or is it a different dimension? This is a complex world for a NES era game.
And Dragon Warrior 2 gets so tough. The entire sequence at the end where you're just trying to walk to the boss and every other enemy can OHKO you.. brutal.