Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge and Wizardry VII: Crusaders of the Dark Savant

Wizardry VI marked a significant new turn for the series; not least of which because it was actually the first to use a new engine, departing from the one they'd had for five previous games and over seven years.  With it also came a whole new slew of playable races, from Dracons to Felpurrs to Mooks, as well as numerous new classes like Valkyries, Bards, Psionics and Alchemists.  Magic, rather than being simply divided into priest and mage spells, has been similarly overhauled, now comprising the domains of fire, water, air, earth, mental, and holy spells, restricted by class - only Psionics can use all of the Mental spells, for example, while Alchemists get a small handful from every sphere to simulate them brewing various potions and poisons.  There's a limited skill system in place too, with some being tied to a particular class (such as the Bard's music skill) while most others can be used by several classes or even any class; though obviously things like Legerdemain (pickpocketing) and Skullduggery (lockpicking) are best suited to specialized classes like the Thief.  The core gameplay remains quintessentially Wizardry, though - first person dungeon crawling with 90 degree angles, punishingly difficult battles and a whole lot of grinding - but you can at least do proper saves and reloads now rather than having to roll a whole new party each time you die.  There is also no hub town this time - you start off straight in the dungeon itself and make do with whatever you scavenge from treasure chests or battles, or whatever scattered NPCs you can barter with.  Something else relatively unique for the time is that each of the two games also have multiple endings - depending on how you complete the story, importing your party into the next game will start them in a different place in the next one and with slightly different surrounding story events, though the overall story and sequence of events remains largely unchanged.  Still quintessentially old-school, brutally tough, grindy and "primitive" in design even a decade after the series' origins, Wizardry 6 and 7 are for a very niche audience, but those who enjoy their specific school of design swear by them.

 

Developer: Sir-Tech

Publisher: Sir-Tech, ASCII Corporation, Sony Computer Entertainment, Nightdive Studios

Released: 1992, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2013

Platforms: PC, FM Towns, PC-98, PlayStation, Mac OS

I would also strongly recommend you play the DOS version of Wizardry 7 and not the Windows remake "Wizardry Gold"; Gold breaks several important skills and makes the game much more difficult to complete.

Star Control II: the Ur-Quan Masters

A followup to the moderately successful 2D space strategy sim, Star Control 2 takes things in a much different direction.  Drawing heavy inspiration from Starflight, there is now a much greater focus on storytelling, resource gathering and following a trail of clues to defeat a powerful enemy.  But does this blend of simplistic, arcadey combat and complex storytelling work out for the best, or does it get lost among the other stars of early '90s gaming?

The original Star Control was a modestly successful game in its time; with gameplay encompassing a blend of strategic board control and arcade action, it worked both as a single player experience and as a two player head-to-head combat game, earning a following both on computers and from a Sega Genesis port produced by Ballistic.  There was an overarching story about a war between two factions - the Alliance of Free Stars and the oppressive Ur-Quan Empire - though it was mostly told in text blurbs at the start of each campaign and had little bearing on the gameplay save for determining what types of ships each side utilized.  Combat was inspired by one of the very first video games ever made - 1962's Spacewar! - and featured one-on-one top-down duels between two ships, with varying specs and weapons depending on the type of ship.

Star Control 2 retains the top-down combat in both single and multiplayer mode (called "Super Melee!"), but the rest of the game is completely reworked into a narrative experience.  After the Alliance canonically loses the war in the first game, the people of Earth are permanently imprisoned by a "Slave Shield" that encircles the entire planet.  The player, captain of a skeletal ship from a long-lost alien race called the Precursors, was stranded during the final leg of the war and thus was not imprisoned with the rest of humanity.  Aided by the crew of a space station orbiting Earth, they begin a journey to seek out other alien races, build a resistance force to the Ur-Quan and eventually reclaim their freedom.

Building on that, you start off with just your skeletal Precursor ship (and should it be destroyed at any time, it's an immediate Game Over) and a single Earthling Cruiser.  However, you have the option to build more Cruisers at the space station, and as you interact with and befriend other alien races, more options become available.  From the cowardly Spathi (whose Eluders are weak, but relatively durable and extremely fast) to the Pkunk Fury (with a short-ranged minigun and random ability to resurrect from death) to Arilou Skiffs (which can teleport and move independently of inertia), there are numerous options.  Enemy ships are equally varied, of course, and picking the correct ship type to counter their strengths is invariably a good idea.  Each ship has up to two weapons and runs off a slowly-recharging energy supply to ensure that you pick your shots carefully rather than just firing wildly.  If you're severely outmatched you can also press Escape to flee from battle, though you are left vulnerable for several seconds while the escape drive activates, so it's best saved as a last resort.

As in earlier games like Starflight and Elite, you won't get too far on a basic ship and little backup, so you'll need to purchase a boatload of upgrades to give yourself a fighting chance.  Crewmen also effectively serve as your ships' hit points and (of course) do not regenerate on their own, so you'll have to purchase quite a few replacements over the course of the game.  This is primarily accomplished through exploration - visiting other star systems and planets in search of raw materials you can trade in for Resource Units (abbreviated as RUs), which in turn can be spent to buy upgrade modules.  Resources are color-coded by value, ranging from common (cyan) materials worth only 1 RU apiece all the way up to radioactives (orange) being worth 8.  Scarcer still are "Exotics", colored purple, which are worth a whopping 25 apiece, but are very hard to come by outside of rare Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald planets.  Planetary surfaces come with their own array of hazards - violent storms, earthquakes and waves of fire on particularly hot planets, as well as wildlife that can damage you on contact and potentially destroy your landers.  Stunning wildlife with your landers' beams allows you to collect data icons, which indirectly serve as a secondary resource - by trading it to another race called the Melnorme, you earn Credits to purchase useful clues for your journey and an array of useful upgrade modules for your ship and your landers.  From making your landers more resistant to planetary hazards to more efficient fuel tanks to stronger weapons, they all prove quite useful, though the order you get them in is fixed and they cost quite a few Credits apiece.  The Melnorme also pay highly for the location of "Rainbow Worlds", of which there are only a scant few in the entire game, so those are well worth seeking out once you have the means.  Finally, they're a much cheaper source of fuel than your starbase (1 Credit per unit as opposed to 20 RUs), so they're invaluable for refueling your ship, especially when you're far from Sol.

Of course, the meat of the game is finding and interacting with other alien races; not just to add more combat ships to your repertoire, but they'll often give vital clues in the form of planets with valuable deposits or point you in the direction of other helpful races.  Of course, help rarely comes for free - you'll often have to complete some quest or another to convince other races to aid you in the fight, and at times you'll even have to get creative - coercion is a perfectly valid tactic.  The dialog throughout all of these encounters is incredibly inspired and often downright hilarious, succeeding in bringing the universe of Star Control to life and getting you raveled in its lore while rarely regressing into stretches of empty exposition.  Even without the 3DO version's voice acting, they still manage to add some personality to each individual race by having them all speak in different fonts.  Solid proof that a well-written narrative does leagues more to keep you enthralled in a game than any amount of empty filler missions could.

Despite being over thirty years old at this point, Star Control 2 remains a highly regarded game among fans of both science fiction and PC gaming.   There's little doubt to why after you play it for only a short while - with its relatively simple interface and combat but engrossing story, sharply written dialog, a massive universe to explore and countless secrets to uncover and mysteries to solve, a it's downright addictive experience.  It proved to be a big inspiration among industry names too, with developers on high profile titles like Fallout, Mass Effect and Stellaris citing it as a major influence.  Since it's also been made open-source and fan-ported to numerous platforms (with the title trimmed to just "The Ur-Quan Masters" owing to copyright concerns) and can be freely downloaded and played natively in Windows with the benefits of controller support and enhanced music from the 3DO port, there's little reason not to at least give it a chance.

Developer: Toys for Bob
Publisher: Accolade

Released: 1992

Platforms: MS-DOS, 3DO, PC

Recommended Version: As mentioned above the 3DO version of the game had its source code released in 2002, allowing for freely-available enhanced ports to numerous platforms under variants of the title "the Ur-Quan Masters".  These include HD graphics, native Xinput support and numerous gameplay extensions, as well as implementing the voice acting and enhanced music from the 3DO version.  Check out the vanilla version at this Sourceforge site, or the Ultronomicon Wiki for other versions of the Ur-Quan masters (including an HD remaster).

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: DragonStrike (NES)

DragonStrike on computers was a pretty novel idea - a D&D-licensed flight and aerial combat sim.  The NES did have a few such games like Top Gun and Airwolf, but they were all pretty primitive, held back by the limitations of the hardware.  So rather than trying to adapt the PC version of Dragonstrike, Westwood chose to make an entirely new game - in this case, a top-down free-roaming shooter.  Given a choice of three dragons to control with slightly differing stats, you fly around large maps, shooting down enemies with projectiles.  One can fly low to attack enemies on the ground by pressing the B button, then switch back to aerial combat to engage other flying enemies like beholders, dragons and wizards on flying carpets.  Every couple of stages you're pitted against a boss, ranging from a giant squid to a fortified castle to a heavily armed ship, and the final battle pits you against big-time D&D baddie Tiamat, the five-headed dragon queen.  The game does look quite nice on the NES, with detailed environments and little sprite flicker, and the music is provided by Westwood alumnus Frank Klepacki, who would become famous for composing the soundtrack to Command & Conquer only a few years later.  A decent if not amazing experience, though it is commendable that they decided to make an entirely new game rather than trying to adapt the computer version onto hardware it wasn't suited for; more than I can claim for some other NES games, for sure.

Developer: Westwood Associates
Publisher: Strategic Simulations
Released: 1990
Platforms: NES

Just Breed

A relatively late addition to the Famicom's RPG lineup, Just Breed is a surprisingly large one as well, with large-scale battles pitting dozens of characters against one another and some surprisingly advanced visuals and music for the platform.  But does it all add up to an overlooked gem for the system, or does it climb too high for its own good?

Developed by the obscure Japanese studio Random House (not to be confused with the similarly named book publisher), Just Breed is a game that famously spent over three years in development at a time when such things were rare, as a result saw a relatively late release on the Famicom in 1992.  As a result of that, as well as its surprising size (6 Mb!) and utilizing extra sound capabilities the Famicom supported but its western counterparts didn't, it was never released outside of Japan, making it a relatively obscure RPG the platform.

On a technical level, Just Breed was also a cut above most RPGs on the platform.  A tactical turn-based experience to rival games like Fire Emblem or Shining Force, Just Breed carved out its own niche by having detailed graphics with surprisingly little sprite flicker thanks to using the MMC5 chip.  The extra audio channel available on the Famicom is also put to good use, delivering a rich and quite beautiful soundtrack that only adds to the game's impressive presentation.

Just Breed's gameplay is a downright impressive in scale, based around sprawling battles with dozens of units duking it out on both sides.  Each of the main characters is accompanied by up to five units (a mage and varying combinations of fighters and archers), and each squad levels up as a group, so it definitely feels like you're commanding large army-versus-army battles and not just a small ragtag band of characters as in most JRPGs.  It has a few quirks, though - the main characters (who lead each unit) must take their action before any of their underlings can, all characters in a unit have to move before another unit can, and all units have to stay relatively close to their general (within the same screen), so traversing maps can be somewhat slow, which isn't helped by an abundance of narrow corridors and bridges you get to squeeze your entire squads through one at a time.  Not to mention a lot of side-paths and dead ends with enemy spawners you'll have to split off and close so you don't get flanked later.  In addition, if a general falls in battle all of the units under their command will retreat, so keeping tabs on them, limiting their exposure to monsters and healing as necessary is definitely important.

Another quirk is the unusual ranges of many of your weapons and spells.  For example, many bows and basic spells only shoot in a straight line, which can make it difficult to get your archers in position when they have to jockey for space with dozens of other units.  However, boomerangs can attack diagonally (or indeed, anywhere within their specified range), and some spells have frankly enormous ranges, with your basic healing spell able to heal anyone on the screen and an advanced spell that heals every unit on the screen.  Even some late game weapons get pretty silly, like a sword that hits all enemies in a one-space radius of its wielder, one that hits all enemies in a 3-space wide straight line to the edge of the screen, or even one that hits all enemies on the screen period.  A bit silly, but they all arrive at a time when you're commanding an army of 24 to 30 characters at the same time and battling even larger enemy forces, so they do help prevent battles from becoming too drawn-out.  Having a shortcut in the B button, which automatically moves the cursor to any units that haven't acted yet that turn, definitely helps as well.  Interestingly your inventory of items is also shared between your entire army without restrictions, so you can just pull out a potion at any time for some quick healing if necessary.

Battles in the game are already fairly long, but it gets especially noticeable in battles with monster dens - these are spaces that spawn enemies every turn (including some quite powerful ones like Skeletons) until you move a unit next to them and shut them down.  They get quite numerous on some maps and ignoring them for any length of time can quickly get you overwhelmed, and even better still, they're often placed in inconvenient out-of-the-way places.  Nevertheless, its often a good idea to shut them down as quickly as possible even if you have to split your forces.  They do continue to give XP as you kill monsters though, so they can be handy for leveling up/gold farming so long as you don't get overwhelmed (though I almost never had to actively grind in the game).

Just Breed is an ambitious, surprisingly large and fun strategy RPG that pushes the Famicom hardware to its limits, but that also comes with its own downsides in that its battles tend to get quite long and tedious, particularly toward the middle of the game.  But even with some pacing issues and clunky mechanics, it's a game that's well worth a look for fans of retro RPGs; give it a go if you have the means.

Developer: Random House
Publisher: Enix
Released: 1992
Platforms: Famicom

Recommended Version: N/A

Neutopia II

 Neutopia proved to be a moderately successful game on the PC Engine/TG16, so it ended up getting a sequel two years afterward, retaining largely the same style of gameplay as its predecessor, though with a considerably higher degree of polish.  A few new items are added - boomerangs that can be caught on the return arc and reused, a flail that has quite long range but costs 10 gold every time you swing it, and not one, but three types of magic staff - the fire, wind and lightning staves, all of which have slightly different effects depending on how much health you have left when you use them.  The story also picks up in a pretty clever way, having the hero of the last game (Jazeta) go missing and his son setting out on a new quest to find him.  It's another solid enough Zelda 1 copy for the TG16, though the fact that Link to the Past came out only two months after in Japan (and several months earlier in North America) kinda doomed it to be forgotten.  If you have the means, though, it's still worth playing.

Developer: Hudson Soft
Publisher: Hudson Soft, Turbo Technologies
Platform: TurboGrafx-16, Wii Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console, PSN
Released: 1990, 2007, 2011, 2017

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

The fifth game in the Dragon Quest series marked its first entry on a 16-bit platform, and fittingly, it attempted to change things up both narratively and in terms of design.  But does it prove to be another engrossing entry in a legendary franchise, or does this prove to be an unworthy Quest? 

Dragon Quest is of course an extremely popular series in Japan, but didn't fare nearly as well in North America.  Despite its relative unpopularity overseas, though, it still attained enough of a following for Enix to localize all four entries on the Famicom, with the last coming as late as September 1992 - just over a year into the Super Nintendo's lifespan.  Dragon Quest V was the first not to be localized, reportedly due to programming issues that couldn't be resolved, and wouldn't be until many years later on the Nintendo DS; in the meantime, Enix mostly became known as a publisher of other company's games (mostly RPGs) until the early 2000s, when they would merge with Square to become the single biggest name in Japanese RPGs, Square Enix.

Dragon Quest V was one that intrigued me for a while; series creator Yuji Horii cited it as his favorite on at least one occasion, and it was said to turn a lot of the series' tropes upside-down in its story.  This is certainly evident right away as the story starts off with your main character as a young child, following his father around the world on a search for the Legendary Hero who will save the world.  The story is considerably more grounded and personal this time, centering on a lifelong trial for the protagonist and everyone who comes into his life - friendships and alliances are forged, he marries and has a child, learns the secrets of his family's past, and undergoes very personal hardships and tragedy before the game ends.  While not the first JRPG to introduce such a personal element to its storytelling, it certainly set a trend, seemingly inspiring some story beats and character building in later games like Final Fantasy VI and VII.  Having a multi-generational dynamic as part of its storytelling would also become a somewhat common trope in Japanese RPGs after this one, seen in games like Lunar, Suikoden, Harvest Moon and Fire Emblem, so Dragon Quest V seems to have been a pretty influential title in more ways than one.

Fitting its more personal and turbulent nature, the game's playable cast is also much larger than any prior game in the series.  Many allies join throughout the journey, coming and going as the story dictates.  As mentioned, your main character also marries during the game, and his wife becomes a playable character - all three choices (two in the original SFC version) have slightly different playstyles and equipment choices too, and you're locked out from recruiting the other two on that playthrough once you've made your choice.  In a new twist for the series, you can also recruit monsters to your side - after defeating them in battle, they have a chance to ask to join your party, at which point you can then add them to your wagon or drop them off at a "Monster Den" for potential later use.  This is a surprisingly full-featured addition, too - each monster has unique equipment choices, stats, learns unique sets of spells and even have widely varying max levels, though they may ignore your commands if their Wisdom is a very low amount (below 20).  Some prove to be rather gimmicky - the Goodybag monster is resistant to many elements and status effects and has quite high stats, though a low level limit of 7 and a capped Wisdom of 5 limit its long-term usefulness.  Slimes are another example; being the archetypal low-level mook enemy of the series, they have unimpressive stats and low growth per level, but surprisingly can equip some of strongest gear and, should one raise a Slime to level 99, they will learn one of the most powerful attack spells in the game.  Metal Slimes and their variants also make very powerful allies, though the odds of recruiting one are extremely low (1/1024 according to most guides), so it's highly unlikely you'll get one without copious amounts of farming.  They do still retain all of their usual resistances and weaknesses, too, so that can give you an edge or become a liability in certain scenarios.

So, there's a lot there in terms of storytelling, emotional impact and nitty-gritty party customization for the powergamers in the audience, but of course Dragon Quest V doesn't skimp on the side-content either.  The series mainstay of collecting Mini-Medals to trade for rare prizes persists in all versions, as does the casino where one can win medals to trade in for powerful items.  From the PS2 remake on, several more get added - a game-spanning quest called "The Knick-Knackatory" where you basically inherit a museum and put various artifacts from your adventures on display is probably the centerpiece there.  The Pachisi board game returns from Dragon Quest III as well, though under the name "Treasures n' Trapdoors", serving as both a means to acquire rare items as well as tweak your characters' stats with a hefty luck element involved.  A small bonus dungeon is added too, which ties the story back to Dragon Quest IV a bit and adds some powerful recruitable monsters to play with in the post-game.

So, having now played it, I can see why Dragon Quest V is considered a high point for the series.  While the core gameplay remains essentially unchanged from the 8-bit entries, it definitely upped the stakes in terms of storytelling and forging an emotional connection therein, giving the player character a very personal stake in the adventure and making its twists and turns that much more gripping.  Monster recruiting added an interesting if slightly underdeveloped new element, though it was relatively novel in RPGs of the time; though predated by Shin Megami Tensei and later taken to runaway success with Pokemon, it did also lay some of the groundwork for Dragon Quest Monsters, a game focused entirely on recruiting and training DQ's iconic critters which has become a fan-favorite franchise in its own right.  But beneath it all, Dragon Quest's high degree of polish, refinement and developer passion makes it shine, taking the player on an engrossing adventure that ranks among the best of its time period and a high standard which many other Japanese RPGs aspire to equal.  It's been criminally overlooked in the west for ages, but any serious fan of the genre should strongly consider giving it a playthrough.

Developer: Chunsoft, ArtePiazza, Matrix Software
Publisher: Enix, Square Enix
Platform: Super Famicom, Playstation 2, Nintendo DS, Android, iOS
Released: 1992, 2004, 2009, 2015
Recommended Version: The later versions add a number of tweaks over the Super Famicom version, including some extra content (mentioned above), having a party size of four rather than three, and some extra items and weapons to utilize.  The only version to be released physically in the west was the Nintendo DS port, though the later Android and iOS ports are based on this version as well, which make it the most affordable way to play the game in English.

Legend of the Ghost Lion

Dragon Quest was of course an extremely influential game in its time, instrumental in pulling Japanese RPGs from their crude beginnings and showing a high level of polish and imagination that set a high standard for future games and remains a hallmark of the series even today.  Even in its earliest days, though, there were plenty of games that drew heavy inspiration from it; some quite good (Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star), others hilariously awful (Hoshi wo Miru Hito), and still others just okay.  Ghost Lion falls into the last of these categories, though it does at least have some unique mechanics and an amusingly off-beat presentation to help it stand out.  Instead of levels, hit points and magic points, you get Hope, Courage and Dreams, and though there is only one central protagonist, you summon allies to aid you in battle through magical foci.  There are quite a few, too - you begin with a spear that summons the tribal warrior Moja, but by the end you'll be calling up giants, armored dwarves, giant frogs, wizards, gnomes and several others.  Each runs off a "Power" meter that both fuels their attacks and serves as their health, and once it hits zero, they vanish.  However, you can immediately summon them again at full power without penalty; in fact, you'll want to do that as having as many allies on the field as possible will draw enemy attacks away from Maria.  If she drops, you immediately lose the fight and go back to your last save point.  Combat tends to be pretty drawn-out and tedious for that reason, and between that and the frequent random encounters, the game's pacing definitely suffers for it.  It's also not a terribly appealing game on a presentation level - the graphics are just passable and the music, while fine in the overworld, gets quite repetitious and irritating in battle.  Combat also feels rather pointless overall, as you don't gain levels via the traditional method of earning experience points.  Instead, you find "shards of hope" in treasure chests that serve as level-ups, which also means you have to thoroughly explore each area and endure even more random encounters as a result.  All in all, just an okay NES RPG, though like all games that have unique ideas in the mix, it's worth a try for genre fans.

Strangely enough it's also a tie-in to a film, though the plot of the game and movie bear only the faintest resemblance to one another...

Developer: Kemco

Publisher: Kemco
Released:1992
Platform: NES

Wonder Boy in Monster World

The fifth Wonder Boy game overall and the third in the Monster World subseries, and like its two predecessors, it's a side-scrolling open world platformer with some RPG elements, not unlike Zelda II on the NES.  This game also marked Monster World's debut on the Genesis, and as one would expect, it definitely takes advantage of the hardware with large sprites, popping colors and some fluid animation for Shion as well as his enemies.  Gameplay-wise it's quite similar to its predecessors - exploring a big 2D world, discovering secrets, battling the odd boss - but it adds a couple of twists.  Spells are now found and purchased, but are no longer limited-use items, and the various types of boots you collect give you advantages on different types of terrain, letting you climb, walk or jump higher, as well as granting special properties like faster swimming or being able to walk on ice without slipping.  Some annoyances do crop up, though, like unclear plot flags (I got stuck in the castle of Purapril until I figured out I had to talk to the first servant, then the princess, before leaving the screen.  One or the other doesn't cut it), or the puzzles with the Ocarina; there don't seem to be any clues to the songs you have to play, so you just have to puzzle them out through trial and error.  (And yes, ironically it was Wonder Boy, not Zelda, that made ocarina-playing into a major puzzle element first.)  Not quite as groundbreaking as Dragon's Trap nor as well-polished as Monster World IV, Wonder Boy in Monster World is nevertheless another adventure worth taking.  

Developer: Westone Bit Entertainment, Hudson Soft
Publisher: Sega
Released: 1992, 1993, 1994

Platforms: Sega Genesis*, Sega Master System, Turbografx-CD**

*This version is also on several digital platforms and compilations.  In addition, the Genesis and SMS versions were released as part of the Sega Ages 2500: Monster World Complete Collection for Playstation 2, and the Genesis verson will be part of the upcoming Wonder Boy Collection for Playstation 4 and Switch.

**A remake titled "The Dynastic Hero".  This version was also available on Wii Virtual Console.

Rings of Power

Open-ended immersive sim style RPGs a la Ultima were very rare on consoles in the '90s, and for good reason - the sheer scope and depth of their design simply couldn't be reproduced on the limited storage medium of cartridges while keeping their cost reasonable.  Rings of Power is probably the only one of its type on the Sega Genesis, and it's easy to see why - the game was worked on for nearly three years and had a (for the time) quite high development cost of about $150,000.  Sadly, it also proves that while a game can have a tremendous amount of work and passion behind it during development, that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be something fun to play.  The scale of the game's world and the detail therein is certainly impressive, but it's no fun to traverse thanks to the mind-numbingly slow, choppy movement the game presents.  Using an isometric tile-based world similar in aesthetic to the PC game "Populous", your characters very slowly move from tile to tile, with only the barest minimum of animation as you do - probably necessitated by much of the ROM space having to be allocated to the world layout and NPC interaction, but still a pretty jarring sight on a console known for games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Gunstar Heroes, which had some of the smoothest animation and fastest gameplay of their time.  Because of the choppy movement and atrocious framerate, it's also difficult to stop where you want to, let alone catch up to a moving NPC and speak to them, and the small viewpoint makes the world quite difficult to navigate through, so it's just not very fun to explore and interact - a deal-breaker for almost any game, but especially so in an RPG.  The tiles and sprites you get to see are nicely detailed, but the clumsy gameplay is made even less bearable by the music, which consists entirely of loud, harsh and seemingly random notes.  The Genesis did have a notoriously twangy sound chip, but it was also capable of making some beautiful and brilliantly composed songs in the right hands; Streets of Rage, Ecco and (again) Sonic were all perfect examples of that.  Combat fares no better, with the player setting actions for each of their characters and battles mostly playing out automatically, with whichever side can spam spells more efficiently almost always being the winner.  So, while undeniably ambitious for the time it was made and especially the hardware it was released on, Rings of Power just isn't much fun to experience.  It's notable for being Naughty Dog's first release on a console (as well as containing an actual nude code that somehow didn't get censored), but with outings like this in their early days, it's a small miracle they went on to become the huge name in gaming they are today.

Developer: Naughty Dog
Publisher: Electronic Arts

Released: 1992

Platforms: Sega Genesis

GayBlade

 An obscure and long-lost title which, as its name and tagline imply, is intended as a criticism of homophobia and a celebration of queer lifestyles, handled with all the subtlety you'd expect of a 90's game tackling such subjects.  Essentially, it's a Might and Magic or Wizardry styled dungeon crawl with a lot of class names and equipment replaced with 'gayer' equivalents - Queers, Drag Queens, Lesbians and Guppies are your classes and equipment includes condoms, press-on nails, blowdryers and purses.  Enemies include homophobic cops, TV preachers, rednecks and neo-nazis, all with their own (perhaps intentionally) low-quality renders and distorted voice clips containing all manner of slurs.  It also unfortunately carries on the design tropes of many early dungeon crawlers in this vein - there is little attempt to balance encounters to the player's level at all, so one fight can be dead easy while the next completely destroys your party.  The interface is also clunky (no keyboard control option - every single action is mouse driven) and there's no minimap or online help file.  Only a partial manual has been found and scanned online as well, so you have little choice but to puzzle things out on your own.  Being one of the first LGBTQ-centered games ever made makes GayBlade worth a look as a historical curiosity, but it's only amusing to a point.

Developer: RJ Best Inc.
Publisher: RJ Best Inc.
Released: 1992
Platforms: Mac, Windows 3.1

Darklands

Microprose is a name commonly associated with in-depth simulation games that have a surprising touch of realism without sacrificing playability.  Darklands takes that philosophy and applies it to a low-fantasy RPG set in a meticulous recreation of medieval Germany in the 15th century.  But does their keen eye for detail and realism pay off in the realm of role-playing games, or is Darklands a game crushed by its own ambition? 

Microprose is another company name well-known to computer gaming enthusiasts - it was the original development house of one Sid Meier, who would bring us beloved games like Pirates! and of course the Civilization series, which were highly regarded in their time and continue to be hugely popular even today.  But even without factoring him into the equation, they gave quite a few other beloved franchises life - from business management/tactical alien combat game X-COM: UFO Defense to publishing the 4X classics Master of Orion and Master of Magic.  All hugely influential games in their time whose legacy lasts to present day.

One of their titles that slipped by relatively unnoticed was Darklands, which was a little surprising considering what it promised - an immersive, open-ended role-playing experience set in a relatively realistic facsimile of medieval Germany whilst it was part of the Holy Roman Empire.  Its world map was surprisingly period-accurate, having numerous real-life towns and landmarks in place, and it goes to great lengths to use era-appropriate German terms like "schulz" (town leader) and "fraubritter" (robber baron).  The game exhumed an arbitrary "levels and experience points" system in favor of having to actually train up your skills through use - something pretty uncommon at the time.  It even touted its surprising approach to realism in its tagline - "in medieval Germany, reality is more horrifying than fantasy".  But what led it to being overlooked by so many RPG enthusiasts?  Well, that's a bit of a complex topic. 

The first thing to note is that despite the tag line, Darklands is not totally realistic - some fantastic elements show themselves pretty quickly.  This is most prominent in the alchemy system, wherein you brew up potions that have similar effects to "spells" in other RPGs - usually inflicting detrimental effects on your enemies, but they do have beneficial uses too, boosting weapon damage/accuracy, temporarily improving stealth or purifying tombs full of undead, letting you claim their treasures unmolested, to name a few.  A holy magic equivalent comes in the form of praying for miracles to various saints, of which there are over 100 in the game, with equally varied effects - bolstering stats temporarily, driving enemies away, or even granting the ability to walk on water or temporarily removing the need to breathe (avoiding the effect of noxious potions and the like). All of these are activated by spending "Divine Favor", which can only be regained by doing virtuous deeds around the land, and having a greater Religion skill will make your prayers more likely to be heard.  Darklands' setting is also a fair bit more progressive than the real Holy Roman empire - female characters still can't reach the upper ranks of the clergy, but they can take on almost any other profession the game has to offer and do it just as well as any male character. (Some saints will also only bestow help upon you if you have at least one female character in your party, so it's worth diversifying for that reason as well.)  Bandits and mercenaries are common foes, as are knights and even townsfolk if you run afoul of the law, but a lot of supernatural enemies are present too - from demons to witches to kobolds - so there's just as much enemy variety as any good fantasy RPG. 

To deal with the many challenges you face, you'll need skills and experience.  Darklands definitely does not skimp on this front; in fact, its character creator is probably the most in-depth and ingenious one I've seen in any game to date.  You generate characters by walking them step-by-step through their life, beginning with their social caste at birth (from noble to trader to country-born peasant) and from there, you select a career path in steps of five years.  So, you can be born a noble, take up a career as a Monk-in-training, work your way up to a Monk proper, then become a friar or a bishop before your adventuring career begins.  Or one could begin as a city commoner, join the military, become a soldier, work their way up to become a seasoned veteran, and retire to become a hunter.  Each step of this process comes with unique boosts to your core stats,  a new pool of skill points to spend freely, as well as shaping what you can spend them on - naturally, a militia-raised character will have more points to spend on things like weapons skills and riding, but few to none to put into things like learning Latin or "Artifice" (disarming locks and traps).  Similarly, becoming a hermit for a time will give you little chance to develop your language skills and none to develop your Streetwise stat, but can give you a substantial boost to Woodwise, Religion and Virtue.  You can repeat taking five-year career steps multiple times before beginning the game proper, even into old age if you wish.  This does come with some drawbacks, though - characters will start to get substantial stat penalties as they age (they can and will die from old age as well), but they will also begin with more stat points, money and may even have better starting gear than younger, less-trained characters.  On the other end of the scale, starting too young will put you at a severe disadvantage with low stats and virtually nothing of value to your name, making it extremely difficult to survive, though if you do get a foothold you can become very powerful over a long adventuring career.  In effect, this serves as a difficulty setting, character generator and even a touch of a storytelling/roleplaying mechanic all rolled into one.  Really good stuff, and a lot more fun than having rigid classes and naked dice rolls for arbitrarily-numbered stats.

If Darklands' gameplay were half as brilliantly realized as its character editor, it would be an instant classic; hell, maybe even a gold standard for the genre as a whole. Sadly, that isn't quite the case despite having some interesting ideas of its own.  The game is pretty open-ended for the most part, allowing you plenty of options for interactions in almost every scenario you come across.  This is evident even right from the first town - you can seek out quests from shopkeepers and guilds, hang around the slums looking for robbers to fight (or just a cheap place to stay, though it does your reputation no favors), sneak around the marketplace at night to try and rob stores, and entering and leaving town also offers a number of options - smooth-talking your way past the guards, slipping by unnoticed with stealth or alchemy, or climbing over the walls or entering through the sewers (the latter two being handy options if you're wanted by the law) .  Encounters with enemies don't always have to end in fights - sometimes you can drive enemies off with divine intervention, an alchemical potion or even just a Streetwise or Woodwise check.  All of these depend on your character's stats and skills to varying degrees, and even botched attempts have a chance to raise them, so there's little reason not to at least try when given the chance. 

A significant downside to this style of design, however, is that many of your skills are very situational and chances to use (and raise) them relatively rare.  Usually they're only seen in scripted cutscenes encountered during quests, and even then they're not always consistent in how they're applied.  Artifice is a good example of this - you may encounter a trap or a blocked door in a cutscene, but if you fail the roll you can't retry it without leaving and returning some time later; a lock, on the other hand, can be retried repeatedly as long as your skill is relatively close to the required level for it (you'll get a message saying it's "beyond your skill" if it isn't), giving you a chance to raise your skill each time you attempt to open it. Other skills have very little function; Latin only comes in handy during specific interactions with clergymen, and read/write only really benefits you when visiting a Koster to learn about new saints - it does not factor at all into the Dwarven puzzles that appear in some mines. Riding is of dubious value too - one would think you would need a horse and therefore riding skill for each member of the party, but in practice one decent horse and rider can carry the entire party, no matter how they're armed or armored. For a game that touts its realism, several skills in Darklands seem surprisingly underutilized or just not implemented very well.  

Darklands has a relatively unique combat engine for its time as well, operating on a similar "pauseable real-time strategy" principle to later games like Baldur's Gate and Syndicate. Pressing a number key selects one of your four characters, whom you can then issue a command to before the action automatically resumes. So you can do things like order your Alchemist to toss a potion at a group of enemies to debilitate them, then quickly move in for the kill once the cloud clears. Or target enemies appropriate for the weapon type you're using, which is also handled with a surprising degree of realism - short swords are very fast and effective against lightly-armored bandits but virtually useless against a knight in plate mail (for whom a war hammer, giant cudgel or longbow works much better).  Firearms, as one would expect in the 15th century, are very powerful and pierce armor quite well but reload very slowly, making their use in large-scale fights impractical.  However, some weapon types are all but useless, whether due to low speed and penetration (Polearms) or just bugs (War Flails, which have an upper strength threshold of 99, meaning you'll never get bonus damage with them).  Pathfinding in combat is rather questionable too - not too much of an issue outdoors in wide-open fields and forests, but when you're wandering through narrow alleys, mines and crypts that are laden with traps it can definitely be problematic.

The overall design of Darklands has some very prominent issues too.  Being an early open-world game, nearly all of its quests are randomly-generated, usually in the form of "go to location X, get item Y and return it to Z for a reward"; while fun for a bit, you do start to see the same handful of quest types after a while, and they quickly become repetitious. It can get especially annoying when you're given vague directions like going to "the Pagan Altar south of Magdeburg", but with no visible icons on the map to speak of, you're basically just forced to wander around randomly (encountering random events that cost money and/or endanger your party the whole time) until you stumble across it.  Building on the frustration, the only way to start the game's main storyline is to randomly stumble across a particular event telling you where to go, then get to the place specified in time (not always easy to do) and go from there - if you miss the date, you have to try again at another randomly-placed later occurrence.  There is no quest log built into the game and no reminders of upcoming deadlines, either, so you'll either want to write down any quests you get and where you get them, or use a third-party tool to keep track of them.  Other elements are randomly placed each game too, with a prominent example being the various saints - any given Koster will have only one or two of them you can learn about (at hefty cost), and some may not appear at all that game.  Which leads to another infamous problem involving the Wild Hunt encounter - once you're marked by the Wild Hunt, you can only lift it by praying to a particular saint (randomly chosen each game); this can entail weeks or even months of scouring all the Kosters in the game and hoping it's not one that was excluded entirely.  If it is, well, you'd best get used to fleeing or fighting badass monsters on a constant basis for the rest of your days or be prepared to use a save editor.

Technical issues plagued Darklands as well, which certainly did its reception at the time no favors.  In addition to the generally plain/ugly aesthetic (compare to Ultima VII or Might and Magic IV from the same year), the constant copy protection popups after you do basically anything of note quickly got tiresome; particularly as one wrong answer would cause the game to close and erase a big chunk of your progress.  A problem that was further exacerbated by the game's clunky save feature - while you can save as many times as you want (and at almost any time), the menu shows only the first eight files you'd made in a seemingly random order.  Subsequent saves would begin to push other files off the bottom of the menu, necessitating that you exit to DOS and delete older files to have access to your most recent saves again.  There's no option to just overwrite existing save files, either, which could quickly fill up an early '90s hard drive and leave you high-and-dry at a very bad moment.  It was buggy in multi-stage battles too - saving between fights and reloading would sometimes put you back at the first fight of the sequence, but with all the damage you took from it and subsequent battles retained.  Early versions of the game had a plethora of other issues too, from being trapped in dungeons with no exits to being unable to hire healers for training no matter how much money you actually had.  A series of patches were developed to address most of the game-breaking ones, but as Darklands was released before the internet was a common household fixture, relatively few customers were able to take advantage of them. 

Darklands was a game ahead of its time in many ways, with an innovative character creation system, a vast, detailed historic setting to explore and even some fresh gameplay elements like semi-real-time tactical combat.  However, that also came with disadvantages; the technology just wasn't there yet to realize a fully-fledged world of this scale and scope, necessitating that its interactions be largely reduced to sequences of generic pre-generated events.  That, in addition to a plethora of annoying bugs, some generally clunky design, an awful lot of grinding and underwhelming aesthetics all contributed to the game getting a muted reception and caused a planned follow-up to be scrapped due to underperforming sales.  Still, its innovative design elements helped it to amass a small but dedicated fanbase, and even with all its faults it's served as a major inspiration to later games like Elder Scrolls and Wartales.  So for RPG history buffs or just die-hard DOS gamers, it's one that's at least worth a look.

 

Developer: MPS Labs 

Publisher: Microprose

Platform: MS-DOS

Released: 1992

Recommend Version: N/A

I would also recommend grabbing the fan-made external programs, including the savegame manager and quest log.

Might and Magic IV/V: World of Xeen

Might and Magic III redefined the series into the format it's best-known for - a more fast-paced, arcadey style of dungeon crawler that loses none of the genre's usual depth.  The fourth and fifth entries - Clouds of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen - continued in that tradition, taking advantage of CD technology and some clever programming that would allow them both to be combined into one massive game - World of Xeen.  But does it prove to be a worthy continuation of the franchise, or does the format just begin to lose its luster with this entry?

Might and Magic as a franchise, like many CRPGs (and early JRPGs) started off as a fairly standard Dungeons and Dragons-like, but slowly branched out and acquired its own identity through subsequent sequels.  In its case, that meant a generally faster pace and a focus on humor, with exaggerated monster designs and animations and no shortage of silly references.  There was a running story throughout the games, but it was fairly minimal overall, putting more emphasis on its open-ended design and being more of a large, complex puzzle to solve than a plot-driven experience.  It was also one of these earliest games I'm aware of to put heavy emphasis on "power-gaming", letting the player reach absurdly high levels and stats if they wished.  Though it was by no means required to complete the game, it was fun to see if they could overcome challenges that were otherwise designed to be insurmountable; not unlike the uber-boss challenges that would later become famous in games like Final Fantasy VII.

The Xeen games don't change up too much from Might and Magic III, but they don't really need to - the game was a satisfying, fast-paced dungeon crawler experience with a lot to see, and any challenge that couldn't be overcome on the first attempt could usually be done after venturing elsewhere to find some treasure and gold and gain some levels, so it never got too frustrating or "save-scum" reliant.  As mentioned above, the game initially shipped in two parts, each depicting half of the world (The "Light" and "Dark" sides of Xeen), but combining both together allows the player to freely switch between both sides, as well as experience a new line of quests at the end that gives the storyline started in 1 a more satisfying conclusion.  Being originally built as two separate games, though, the Darkside is naturally much more dangerous and intended for a higher-leveled party, so venturing there before you've explored a good portion of the Light side is generally a bad idea (although clever players can jump ahead to certain points and gain large amounts of money or experience much earlier than normal).

A few improvements have been made to the core game, though.  There is now a difficulty select at the start, letting the player pick between "adventurer" and "warrior", with the only difference being that the latter makes the enemies considerably tougher to defeat.  The inventory system has been overhauled too, with different pages in each character's inventory for weapons, armor, accessories and Miscellaneous items (generally spell-casting whistles, coins, etc), which also makes space much less of a concern.  There is  a separate page for quest-related items, making it impossible to accidentally sell or drop them and have to acquire them again (or reload a save).   A quest log is added as well, making it easier to keep track of your current objectives and important coordinates.

A few other changes are apparent right away for fans of the older games.  Towns and dungeons are fewer in number but much larger and more complex, breaking the series' usual 16x16 format at every turn.  The game puts less emphasis on puzzles this time - there are still some, but they're generally a lot easier to decipher and rarely span more than a single dungeon or questline.  Being the first games in the series to utilize CD technology, Xeen also puts focus on cutscenes, high-quality character portraits and voiced dialog, which, per era standards, is very cheesy (though that makes it fun).

The third, fourth and fifth Might and Magic games would be released on a yearly basis, and it would be another five years before the next entry, which would utilize a new engine and, with it, the gameplay and art style would be significantly reworked.  Fittingly, while the Xeen games aren't a huge leap over the third game in terms of technology or presentation, they retain what made it fun while making a few tweaks to what wasn't, becoming the most fun and polished games the franchise had seen to that point.  The gimmick of being able to combine both games into one was a relatively novel concept at the time (and is rarely repeated even in modern games), and while it wasn't the series' most highly-regarded entry, it was popular enough to spawn a fan-made expansion that even got included in later compilations as a bonus.  Another worthy Might and Magic title.

Developer: New World Computing

Publisher: New World Computing
Platform: MS-DOS, Mac, FM Towns, NEC PC-9801
Released: 1992/1993
Recommended Version: I have only played the DOS versions, but all of them seem to be more or less identical.

Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra

Three years after the second game and five years after the first, Might and Magic III was released and featured significant overhauls in almost every element of design.  But does it prove to be another worthwhile dungeon crawling adventure, or is this a step back for the series?

The first Might and Magic was a good D&D-like set in an open world, which allowed for a tremendous amount of player freedom but also quite a bit of frustration as they could easily wander into places where enemies far outranked them and die.  The sequel was very similar overall in that regard, though the player could also bolster their stats and experience gains to insane levels to offset that, making the game challenging at the start but comically easy once they'd figured out ways to quickly gain levels and gold.

When Might and Magic III came around, though, it saw a significant revamping in almost every element of its design.  While still a first-person, turn-based dungeon crawler, the gameplay was greatly streamlined, with no separate "combat screen" or unseen random encounters - you can in fact see enemies as they approach you, giving you a chance to evade them before they engage or even take pot-shots at them from afar with ranged weapons or spells (though some can do the same to you as well).  Having to input repetitive sequences of keys to cast spells (particularly for healing after a fight) is greatly simplified, having each character equip an "active spell", which is automatically selected each time they press the C button to cast, though they can change it as the situation warrants.  Some relatively redundant abilities have also been condensed into a single spell; the Elemental Arrow spell can function as a lightning, fire, cold or acid attack rather than having separate spells for each, to name one.   Enemies also now largely stay dead when a player leaves an area, rather than respawning each time they leave and return, which cuts down on a lot of redundant battles.

Other facets of gameplay have seen significant upgrades as well.  One that I found very welcome was the fact that cash and gems are stored in a party-wide pool now; much preferred to the clunky and ultimately pointless "automatically divided among everyone in the party" system in the previous two games.  More skills are added and there is no upper limit on how many any given character can have (though some are only useful to specific classes).  Having to constantly disarm trapped chests after each enemy encounter is a thing of the past, with the player now simply being awarded gold, gems and items automatically after a victory.  Notably, this was also the first time that the player could freely save and reload whenever they wished, not just when visiting an inn in town, which helped to cut down on frustrating game overs and restarts.  Going even further, the player could now summon "Mr. Wizard" with a button command, who would teleport them to safety at the cost of some of their experience points and all of the gems they were carrying; useful in a desperate situation, but not something they'd want to do if they could avoid it.  Mapping and navigation functions are now tied to skills and not spells, making them much more convenient too.  Equipment is also generally much less restricted by alignment/class, though it can be broken by repeated combat and traps, so carrying a spare in more dangerous areas isn't a bad idea.

Another big changeup is that Might and Magic III actually has a relatively linear narrative and story to follow.  The first two games, while they did have a few threads of plot throughout, were more based on exploration, deciphering clues and ultimately being more of a big, complex puzzle than a proper "quest".  M&M3, on the other hand, has a button on the HUD that will remind the player of their current objective as well as give a touch of lore on the current area they're in, and it will update each time they complete an objective there.  However, the game is far from completely linear - one is still afforded plenty of opportunity to explore, and after completing the first major quest in the game, the fountains in the first town will give clues to a number of sidequests they can explore at their leisure.

The game's HUD is significantly revamped too, and definitely for the better.  Each of your six characters is displayed at the bottom of the screen via a unique portrait, and a gem beneath shows the general state of their health; green indicates they are unharmed, yellow means they've taken damage, red means their health is low, and blue means they're unconscious.  They'll also make a weird face if they're under some kind of status effect, and upon death, their portrait is replaced by a gravestone.  Other portions of the HUD come into play too, like the bat at the top of the screen flapping its wings to show that an enemy is nearby, the gargoyle on the right side moving its arm to denote a hidden passage or secret, and the gems at the four corners of the view window indicating positive spell effects the party is under.  It takes a bit of getting used to after playing the first two games with their largely text-based UIs, but once you've adapted, you'll realize that it's cleverly done and quickly conveys necessary information while also letting the game's art design shine through.

But of course, no sequel is complete without some expanded gameplay beneath everything else, and Might and Magic certainly doesn't disappoint there.  Character races are now made more distinct, with some more resistant to specific spell types, starting with certain skills or gaining more HP or SP at the expense of the other.  Two new classes are added (Ranger and Druid) and a third type of magic is introduced as well - Natural magic, largely putting emphasis on elemental spells and a handful of buffs, generally functioning as a midpoint between Cleric (support) and Arcane (offensive) spells.  Money and gems can be stashed at a bank in town, which can prevent you losing large sums of them to some traps later in the game (and yes, both will gain interest over time).  Loot one finds now has a keyword system, adding benefits or penalties to the item they're attached to (which would later be used in many other action-driven RPGs like Diablo).  Stats and experience, while still able to grow to enormous levels, grow more organically too - secrets and items the player finds will grant permanent stat boosts, effectively rewarding the player for exploration and opening even potentially trapped chests and containers they find.

What it all comes down to is that Might and Magic III is a triumphant third entry in the series, keeping what made the franchise great to begin with while stepping up its game with a greatly overhauled UI, presentation and streamlined design that was engineered for fun rather than frustration.  It was easier than ever to pick up and play a Might and Magic game and genuinely enjoy it, with a good story to follow and no shortage of side-content and hidden secrets in each area they visited.  Honestly, I really can't find too many glaring faults with it at all; it's a great dungeon-crawler not just in its time, but still one of the finest examples of the genre I've seen to date.

Developer: New World Computing
Publisher: New World Computing, FCI
Platform: MS-DOS, Amiga, Mac OS, FM Towns, NEC PC-9801, Sega CD, Turbografx-CD, SNES
Released: 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995
Recommended Version: I've only played the DOS and SNES versions, but all of them are surprisingly comparable in quality.

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen

The fourth game in the Dragon Quest franchise and the last to be released on the NES/Famicom changed up the format once again, going for a chpater-based approach that would later be copied in games like Wild Arms.  But does Dragon Quest IV prove to be another worthwhile entry to the classic franchise, or does it just fizzle out compared to other games from the era?

Dragon Quest continued on with no sign of stopping throughout the 80s and 90s, getting four entries in as many years on the Famicom and NES alike.  This would be the last one localized for a good while, though, as Enix passed on bringing over 5 and 6 from the Famicom and 7 would see release on the Playstation, while an advertised remake of 4 for the platform would go unreleased due to the company set to localize it going out of business.

The fourth game is also one of the rarer games on the NES platform; little surprise as it saw release in 1992, when the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis rivalry was reaching new heights.  Even RPG fans tended to overlook it, as games like Phantasy Star II and III and Final Fantasy II (actually IV) were coming out on those platforms.  But of course, those who only had an NES to play found a surprisingly good game if they picked up Dragon Warrior IV.

The first three Dragon Quest games all were set in the same world, but this was not the case for the fourth entry, which is set in an entirely new one (albeit retaining many of the series' iconic monsters).  Still, while the core gameplay and overall presentation remain much the same as previous Dragon Quest games, the fourth entry definitely changes up the format in an interesting way.  Rather than just having one story to experience, Dragon Quest IV has five.  The first four are short stories each featuring a different protagonist pursuing their goals, while the fifth and sixth star the game's protagonist and have him allying with the protagonists of the other stories throughout the game.  Later remakes add another chapter to the game as well, serving as an alternate ending and having the heroes ally with the game's final boss to defeat the true antagonist behind all of the game's events (a concept that many of the Final Fantasy remakes would also utilize).  Interestingly, one of these characters in particular (Torneko) would later become something of a face for the series, even getting his own spinoff on the Playstation called "Torneko: The Last Hope" that utilized the engine from the Mystery Dungeon franchise.

Some new elements are added to the gameplay too.  One prominent change (at least in the original NES/Famicom release) is that the player can only control the main character in the latter two chapters; the rest are simply commanded by the AI, though the player can give them general commands to heal, cast spells or simply attack, et cetera.  While this does speed up the game a bit by cutting down on the amount of time you spend inputting commands, the option to assume manual control would be nice; indeed, most of the remakes do allow this, so it seems even the developers heard a lot of fan complaints about it.  The player can now search bookshelves, jars, and so forth to find items, in particular the series staple of "Hero Medals" that can be traded for rare items.  A casino appears that allows the player to gamble and earn some extra cash and prizes.  Finally, the player is given a "Wagon" for use on the overworld, which allows them to swap party members on the fly, rather than having to return to town to do so.

Being a game of the era, though, it does fall prey to a few of the same pitfalls.  The game is still a long and grindy one, with frequent encounters that give only a pittance of XP, requiring you to stop at several points and farm experience and gold for a good while before you stand a chance against a particular boss (which really got me at the end for the final boss; I had to gain at least five levels before I stood a chance, and with battles only giving about 100 experience a pop, that took almost a full day to do).  Limited inventory space is also an issue, particularly as you can only carry a small handful of healing items at a time and have to rely on magic for the rest, so dungeons are a test of your level and endurance than anything else.  Save points are also relatively few and far between in the original release, though some later versions do add a quick save feature that let you save progress from almost anywhere (but erase your save on load).

Even with a few shortcomings, though, Dragon Quest remains one of the standout RPGs of its time period.  With a narrative unlike anything else seen on the NES and quite a lot of content to explore, it was a fine last hurrah for big-name RPGs on the system.  Later remakes only did it more favors, adding in a few modern conveniences, cutting down on the grinding element and even expanding its story, and its legacy was enough to get the hero included in the new Super Smash Bros. game as a downloadable character.  Definitely worth a look.

Developer: Chunsoft (NES), Heartbeat/ArtePiazza (Playstation), Cattle Call (Nintendo DS)
Publisher: Enix
Platform: Famicom/NES, Playstaiton, Nintendo DS, Android/iOS
Released: 1990, 1992, 2001, 2007, 2014
Recommended Version: I've only played the NES version personally, though I am aware that most later ports make significant improvements to the game's presentation and gameplay style, as well as allowing you manual control over your allies.  The iOS and Android ports are currently the cheapest ones available and the most fully-featured.

Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation

The third of the Dragon Warrior games and one that's held in regard as a classic by series fans.  But does Dragon Quest III still prove a worthwhile adventure today, or is this just another one for the history books and little else?

Dragon Quest was huge in Japan and still is today, continuing to get numerous spinoffs and sequels and having surprisingly few changes to its core gameplay despite leaps in technology.  It was not nearly as big in the west, though that didn't stop Enix from localizing three more games on the 8-bit systems alone, and while they may not have been hugely popular (particularly compared to the likes of Zelda), they nevertheless attracted a sizable following.

Dragon Quest III is regarded as one of the best RPGs on the NES platform by many, though, and it isn't hard to see why.  Taking the polished design of the previous two Dragon Quest games and incorporating some elements of the Final Fantasy series into the mix, it managed to introduce some replay value to its format on top of the lengthy adventure it already provided.  It even had a pretty clever twist at the end to tie it into its two predecessor games, though I won't give that away here.

The most significant addition to Dragon Quest III was that it contained a Final Fantasy styled class system.  While the main character themself has a fixed "hero" class, they could visit the guild hall and recruit up to three allies of any class they chose, letting them customize their party for the adventure ahead.  Several of these have direct equivalents to Final Fantasy classes - Soldier is basically equivalent to the Fighter, for example, wielding heavy weapons and armor but being unable to cast spells, while the Pilgrim casts healing spells, similar to the White Mage.  A few are unique, though, like the Merchant class; in addition to being decent fighters, they cause enemies to drop extra items and gold after a party victory, and in the remakes, even get some useful supportive skills like being able to call shops in the field and dig to find random items or money.  A class of dubious value in itself is the "Goof-off" or "Jester", which is a weak class that can randomly decide to take no actions during battle, making them unreliable and not particularly useful; however, they do have high Luck and are the only class that can upgrade to the powerful Sage class without requiring a special item, so keeping one around can be very beneficial in the long run.  Later ports of the game also add the Thief class, who again serves a powerful supportive role, letting the party steal items from enemies as well as temporarily disable encounters and find hidden treasures.

Later ports of the game also add much in the way of new content.  Not only are visual and music greatly overhauled, but much more is added to the gameplay, too.  More than 80 pieces of equipment are added, many of which are tied to finding hidden medals throughout the game world.  Bonus dungeons are added with many new monsters to battle and treasures to find, and the player can now search bookshelves, pots, barrels and the like to find hidden goodies.  Probably the most significant change, though, is that each character now has a "personality" based on a starting quiz which affects their stats, raising some and lowering others by a small percentage.  Some items and accessories found throughout the game can temporarily or permanently alter a character's personality as well, letting the player tweak the party to get more mileage out of their innate abilities.

The core gameplay of Dragon Quest remains essentially the same despite these changes, though - simplistic, turn-based action is the order of the day here.  It also thankfully is not nearly as grindy as its predecessors, though I still found myself hitting a brick wall boss at times and having to break away and level up for a few hours before I could beat them.  This got particularly frustrating toward the end, as I had to spend almost a full day of time farming Metal Slimes to get experience and levels so that I could stand a chance against the final boss.  This may have been addressed in some of the later ports as well (I mostly played the NES version), but I still found it to be a frustrating ordeal.

Despite that, though, I can't deny that this is probably the best of all the Dragon Quest games I've played.  It added some new twists on the format and lets the player customize their party to their liking, giving it an edge over most other RPGs of the era and some pretty good replayability.  The overall length of the journey, plus the amount of grinding and frequent encounter rate, make it one I wasn't overly keen on revisiting, though I imagine this situation is better in the remakes with some of the improvements made to them there.   Regardless, Dragon Quest III is a solid 80's RPG and worth a look for any serious genre fan.

Developer: Chunsoft, Heartbeat, TOSE, Matrix Software
Publisher: Enix
Platform: NES, Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Mobile, Android, iOS, Switch
Released: 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2009, 2014, 2017, 2019
Recommended Version:  The remakes all have a lot more to offer in terms of content and game balance, though there isn't really a clear consensus on which is the best as they all offer some exclusive content of their own.  The Super Famicom and Game Boy Color versions do seem to have the best value for your dollar though, in the form of a new minigame ("Pachisi") that can affect your characters' stats, animations for monsters and some extra music tracks.  However, the GBC version is the only one of the two that is (officially) available in English; this version also adds a new playable class (the Thief) and some exclusive side content in the form of the Medal Album and a new optional dungeon and boss.