Dragon Warrior II (NES) Playthrough [1 of 2]

A playthrough of Enix's 1990 role-playing game for the NES, Dragon Warrior II.

This is part one of a two-part playthrough, showing up to the party's arrival in the town of Beran. Part two can be found at https://youtu.be/mPV7xFCzmQ0

The playthrough shows the entire game, including grinding for gold and experience. As was the case with my original playthrough of Dragon Warrior, there were those that didn't like that I had cut the grinding from my original DW2 video, so this brand new playthrough includes it all.

Having overcome the Dragonlord, finding [not quite true] love, and saving the kingdom of Alefgard from certain doom, the hero from Dragon Warrior and his young wife, Princess Gwaelin, move to a distant land and establish the kingdom of Torland. Settling into a peaceful existence, the couple have three children. These three children grow up to become the leaders of three major cities within Torland – the first-born prince leads the Midenhall territory, the second-born is granted Cannock, and the princess is given the land of Moonbrooke. A hundred years pass peacefully, and the people prosper under the guidance of Erdrick’s descendants.

An evil sorcerer, Hargon, suddenly rises to power with a desire to control the world and invokes the power of the evil gods to take Moonbrooke Castle. The king falls, and a lone guard, mortally wounded, escapes and stumbles toward Middenhall. Before collapsing from his injuries, the man warns the castle guards of the impending danger. The aging king calls on his son, a warrior in the line of the legendary Erdrick, and tells him that destiny awaits. He must take up sword, find his two cousins who share Erdrick’s bloodline, and ride against Hargon.

Dragon Warrior II plays similarly to Dragon Warrior (https://youtu.be/J392i9NKvvo ), though some drastic changes have been made. You still play the hero, visiting cities, exploring dungeons, and slaying any agents of darkness along the way, but the combat has a lot more depth to it now that you control a party of three, and you'll need to take advantage of all of the available options since you'll usually be facing several enemies at once.

Each character fulfills a archetypal RPG role: there's warrior hero that can’t use magic, the balanced character with some proficiency in both arms and magic, and the physically weak mage who commands a wide range of powerful spells.

The world is significantly larger than the one featured in Dragon Warrior, as is made clear by the presence of a scaled-down version of Alefgard (the continent that the first game took place on) in the sequel’s world, complete with a reprise of DW‘s overworld theme. Accommodating the size of this expanded world are new forms of transportation: rather than hoofing it everywhere, the party can use teleportation doors that will warp them instantly to other locations, as well as a ship to explore with, opening up the world and providing the player with an unprecedented amount of freedom for a console RPG of its time.

The graphics are also a big step up from the original game, though you might be hard pressed to noticed if you never played the Japanese version of DW1. Nintendo's 1989 overhaul of that game for its English release brought the game's visuals roughly in line with DW2's.

The lengthy quest, more complex plot, and the added depth of the battle system makes Dragon Warrior II a worthy sequel to the original classic. The formula hadn't quite been perfected yet - the game requires an enormous amount of grinding and the difficulty really needed to be balanced more carefully (the end game beginning at the Cave of Rhone, argh!) - but the second entry in the beloved Erdrick trilogy cemented the popularity of the fledgling series, and if you can look past the excessive grinding, it's still fun to play now.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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