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chuckroA hack of the original US NES version of the game that reduces the cost of (almost) all items and the XP needed to reach each level by a factor of ten. It’s a clever idea, because that also reduces the total playtime of the game about tenfold to around two hours if you don’t get lost. Dragon Warrior, which I got free with a subscription to Nintendo Power in 4th grade, occupies a special place in my heart and my imagination; but especially if you have the guide book and maps (which I still do), it’s mostly just grinding.
Noteworthy things from this run: I skipped the Mountain Cave entirely because I didn’t need to grind and I know the Fighter’s Ring is bugged in this version. (It’s supposed to raise your strength and/or make weak enemies flee. Due to a programming error, it actually lowers your strength slightly.) Inns and Magic Keys remain at their normal prices (as does Fairy Water in Cantlin), but raising the money for them is significantly easier when the weapons and armor are so cheap. (I did my only real grinding in ten minutes of fighting Wolves so I could buy Magic Armor, which I generally skipped in previous playthroughs.) The guide suggests that you can beat the Green Dragon and rescue Gwaelin at level 12, before going to Cantlin. I died twice attempting that at level 14 and eventually just did it at level 17 with Healmore. (Before that, it’s really dependent on whether you land a Sleep spell and it lasts long enough for you to win the damage race.)
I don’t think I ever knew that Metal Slimes were in this version of the game when I was a kid (they don’t appear in the guides) but I met and beat two of them (both south of Haukness) in this play-through. It actually took me three tries to get to Cantlin, because I couldn’t get the Golem to stay asleep on the first run and a random Magiwyvern put me to sleep on the second. (Honestly, I think the RNG on the X2 is different from the original NES and was producing some weird situations.) When I did finally get there, I just bought the Flame Sword and Silver Shield outright.
With those and Healmore, the rest of the game breezed by: I actually did a single run to get the Rainbow Drop, retrieve Erdrick’s Sword and beat the Dragonlord. And because I fought almost everything on that run, I was level 25 when I beat the game. Another thing from when I was a kid: I didn’t fully understand the value of Stopspell. It works something like 90% of the time and it’s really, really helpful for Starwyverns, Magiwyverns and Axe Knights. Wizards, too, but by the time you’re meeting them you can usually kill them in two hits and they primarily just use Hurtmore. Stopspell is the second-best spell after Healmore.
The X2 was a perfectly cromulent way to play this: It kept my saves without issue and gave me a “big-screen” feel, though it was mildly stretched. The sound was good, the buttons are a little “mushy” at times and I wasn’t sure how much was the game and how much was the system. This also served as a good test for adding my own roms to the X2, a task that was amusingly complicated by the fact that the filenames for the roms pre-installed on it are almost all in Chinese.
Overall: This was a clever idea, particularly for this game. (Most other older rpgs can get away with 2x or 4x XP/gold to bring the grind down to modern standards.) It was fun to pull out the old feelies and play the original version again.
Noteworthy things from this run: I skipped the Mountain Cave entirely because I didn’t need to grind and I know the Fighter’s Ring is bugged in this version. (It’s supposed to raise your strength and/or make weak enemies flee. Due to a programming error, it actually lowers your strength slightly.) Inns and Magic Keys remain at their normal prices (as does Fairy Water in Cantlin), but raising the money for them is significantly easier when the weapons and armor are so cheap. (I did my only real grinding in ten minutes of fighting Wolves so I could buy Magic Armor, which I generally skipped in previous playthroughs.) The guide suggests that you can beat the Green Dragon and rescue Gwaelin at level 12, before going to Cantlin. I died twice attempting that at level 14 and eventually just did it at level 17 with Healmore. (Before that, it’s really dependent on whether you land a Sleep spell and it lasts long enough for you to win the damage race.)
I don’t think I ever knew that Metal Slimes were in this version of the game when I was a kid (they don’t appear in the guides) but I met and beat two of them (both south of Haukness) in this play-through. It actually took me three tries to get to Cantlin, because I couldn’t get the Golem to stay asleep on the first run and a random Magiwyvern put me to sleep on the second. (Honestly, I think the RNG on the X2 is different from the original NES and was producing some weird situations.) When I did finally get there, I just bought the Flame Sword and Silver Shield outright.
With those and Healmore, the rest of the game breezed by: I actually did a single run to get the Rainbow Drop, retrieve Erdrick’s Sword and beat the Dragonlord. And because I fought almost everything on that run, I was level 25 when I beat the game. Another thing from when I was a kid: I didn’t fully understand the value of Stopspell. It works something like 90% of the time and it’s really, really helpful for Starwyverns, Magiwyverns and Axe Knights. Wizards, too, but by the time you’re meeting them you can usually kill them in two hits and they primarily just use Hurtmore. Stopspell is the second-best spell after Healmore.
The X2 was a perfectly cromulent way to play this: It kept my saves without issue and gave me a “big-screen” feel, though it was mildly stretched. The sound was good, the buttons are a little “mushy” at times and I wasn’t sure how much was the game and how much was the system. This also served as a good test for adding my own roms to the X2, a task that was amusingly complicated by the fact that the filenames for the roms pre-installed on it are almost all in Chinese.
Overall: This was a clever idea, particularly for this game. (Most other older rpgs can get away with 2x or 4x XP/gold to bring the grind down to modern standards.) It was fun to pull out the old feelies and play the original version again.
