Dragon Warrior Narrative Analysis: Come grind with me
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- Опубліковано 6 чер 2024
- A Princess's Love is the Finest GPS. Consider subscribing to the channel. / @michaelcoorlim
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Dragon Warrior name stats math: guides.gamercorner.net/dw/nam...
This is an analytical playthrough of Dragon Warrior, the US localization of the seminal work in Japan's console RPG industry, providing an example of the genre in its most approachable form and introducing many of the tropes that would be associated with jrpgs through the late 80s and 90s.
Played with a 2x EXP and Gold Romhack:
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
5:52 Game Start
10:27 Stats
11:36 World Map
12:00 Brecconary
14:55 Dragon Quest Comparison
15:15 Combat
16:30 Grinding
17:21 Level 2 and gearing up
19:12 The Role of Magic
20:01 More Grinding
22:10 Erdrick's Cave
23:28 Computer vs Console RPG
25:08 To Garingham
25:33 Difficulty Scaling
27:26 Yet More Grinding
29:26 Kol
31:10 Grind grind grind
33:07 Fighter's Ring and Bugs
34:56 The Dragon in Darkness
35:45 Rimuldar
38:20 Grinding Goldmen
41:00 Howard & Nester
42:21 Backtracking with Keys
48:20 Guess what
49:05 Saving the Princess
52:39 Grave of Garin
54:10 Grinding Garin's Grave
55:55 To Cantlin (and Golem)
1:00:03 Erdrick's Armor
1:01:58 Grinding Metal Slimes
1:04:00 To the DragonLord
1:07:00 The DragonLord
1:09:20 Victory March
1:10:25 Conclusion
Michael Coorlim is a science fiction author and game developer.
You can find my work here: www.mcoorlim.com
If you appreciated the video and want to buy me a coffee: ko-fi.com/mcoorlim
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/ @michaelcoorlim - Ігри
Dragon Warrior was my very first RPG, and I was one of the ones who got it for free by subscribing to Nintendo Power.
As a kid, I worked for weeks down the road at my neighbor’s home business, packing party supplies, to get money to buy this game when it came out.
I got mine free with a Nintendo Power subscription, but I was waiting by the mailbox every day until it arrived.
@@MichaelCoorlim Wish I and known that as a kid. I had a subscription to NP since the first issue, when there was not a giveaway.
@@MichaelCoorlim I think my copy came from a yard sale, but that was when the NES was still a current gen console. I did check the mailbox every day for the free copy of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 I sent away for when I got my Sega Genesis and to their credit it actually arrived pretty quickly.
Don’t think we didn’t catch the slight hint of a chuckle when you dramatically read “balls of light.”
hue hue hue hue you got me
35:53 The tomato girl is actually the Puff Puff girl in the Japanese version 😉
I was considering whether or not to go into that little bit of localization difference. :D
When I was a kid, I maxed out my character to level 30 and had the maximum 65535 gold which seemed kind of arbitrary at the time, but I didn't give it much thought. Some years later on when I was in college taking a computer programming course, I learned that 65535 is the maximum value of an unsigned 16-bit integer. It was kinda cool to have that minor mystery finally solved.
I remember "256" being the maximum in a lot of early games for similar computer reasons.
The first time I played through this game, I was literally marching up the desert to the Dragonlord's castle when my brother, jumping on the couch, fell onto the table the NES was on and caused it to reset, wiping my game. I was furious, but my parents couldn't understand why I was upset. I had to start completely over, but I did, and the second time I succeeded.
I mean, it's not like you could fail to succeed as long as you kept going, unlike most games. One of the best things about classic crpgs- they were based on patience, a thing I had plenty of, rather than skill, something I still don't have =P
I find it slightly amusing how careful you are grinding your level up before tackling various enemies and dungeons. I used to do stuff like rescue the princess, kill the golem or get Erdrick’s armor or get the harp much earlier than you do here. Oh and when you know the game well enough, you can navigate many of the caves in the dark by listening to the audio cues of running into walls, especially the princess cave and swamp cave. Farming the swamp cave without even using a torch repeatedly is pretty decent gold/hr.
I'll be honest, the way I play the game for these videos is nothing like the way I'd play them for fun. Analysis is a different kind of activity.
Truth- if you're willing to try a bossfight or dungeon over and over until the RNG goes your way, you can get away with a lot of shenanigans. Still true in most modern RPGs, too.
@@NevTheDeranged The world record speedrun of the game that uses RNG manipulation has some insane shenanigans.
A great little game in 1989. Not a patch on Phantasy Star or a good computer rpg but still legit.
Nice video. I originally played the Game Boy Color version (Dragon Warrior I•II) and it had some improvements (contextual interaction button, the golem and the dragon having map sprites, a cutscene showing the princess kidnapping, slightly lower xp requirements, enemies drop extra gold) but the experience was not that different. Grinding on battery power was annoying (I did lose progress a couple times because I didn't pay attention and forgot to save before the batteries died on me) but at the same time the freedom of doing it anywhere in an age before multi-task capable portal devices made it very much worth it.
Oh yeah, for fun I'd probably go for the GBC port
This is the first RPG I ever played and I still like to play it today, even the NES version. It is pretty easy to find so I ended up with 4 copies. I just finished up a playthrough a few weeks ago. It went more smoothly than I am used to because I tried using a more powerful name that I usually did. I didn't think it would matter that much!
Amazing how big a deal it is in a game that doesn't offer any other significant character building choice.
I got this game free with a subscription to Nintendo Power and I loved it so much. I never knew about the name thing. I remember spending an absurd amount of time grinding the bottom row of foothills south of the castle before I ever left the starting area.
It's a good spot for it.
The algorithm has given me every update on your sisyphean Quest to actually make this video, looking forward to watching.
Hope it turns out to be worth it.
One must imagine sisyphus happy.
I got my copy of DW through that Nintendo Power promo!
Same and the same month my mom got me the subscription the strategy guide for Final Fantasy 1 was sent out but since I didn't have the game I would just lay in bed and read it. I think I have beaten both DQ1 and FF1 like a dozen times each.
Same here. I think for my copy, I had to sign up five friends to Nintendo Power but I could be confusing two separate promotions. I did finish the original but I think I needed help because I was (and still am) quite dense and couldn’t figure out what to do.
That's how I got my copy, too. Nintendo Power was a great resource in the days before gamefaqs.
I was playing this recently on the switch, but yeah the grinding got me bored. I really enjoy your analysis, they are very unique
The wild thing is, I enjoy endless grinding in old skool games like this, but hate it in modern MMOs and first/third person RPGs. Like to the point that I think it should just be abolished as a practice. But put me in front of DW or FF, and I'll happily grind up for a couple days before even starting on the initial questline, just so I can start ahead of the curve a bit and mow through the first few bosses.
I first played this game by renting it, and you can well guess that I didn't finish it that way. I've only ever finished it once because I actually enjoy the grind. Maybe that makes me weird, I don't know, but that's kind of what I do with a lot of RPG's. I've been meaning to go back and play DW 1-4 again, so this might be the push I need.
I owned both Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy on the NES... I always felt as if Dragon Warrior was a cheap clone of Final Fantasy. But I am glad that Dragon Warrior progressed and did better as the years went on.
Babe wake up, new Michael Coorlim video dropped.
Nice game analysis. The bad ending must've gave nightmares to a lot of kids back in the day. It's worse than a Game over/you became evil screen. That's what I call a bad ending ☠️
Eagerly waiting the final fantasy video ! It's the most influential game I heard about and I would like to know what made it more important than any of its predecessor.
YES it's OUT!
From what I remember, the dragon's scale is +2 def but it's also equipable. I didn't think just having it in inventory worked. In fact, discussion boards say that you have to equip it to get the +2 def, but then you can just sell it to regain the inventory slot, and you'll keep the def boost.
It's equipped but just sits there in your inventory, not taking up your armor/shield/weapon slots. Not sure if selling it from inventory works; will try that some time.
Final Fantasy looks so much more derivative, being released a year and a half after this.
I'll be going over those influences and how it builds on them in the next video.
I guess I was a tech-savvy nerd kid :)
Same! Though I always got EMS and XMS confused. Still do.
Great videos. Thanks.
great video
IMO, Dragon Quest doesn't really get good until 3.
I hope we see the rest of this series from you.
I'm planning to cover them, too, but I have a lot of others to get to as well. Final Fantasy, Zelda II, Wasteland, Mother, Crystalis, Shining in the Darkness, SaGa, Mystic Quest, etc.
Hi, love your channel. Sorry but can you get a better mic? I watch youtube at night and when i watch your channel i have to turn the volume up. Wakes people in my house.
cool
Anybody else here play the pen and paper RPG based on Dragon Warrior in Nintendo Power??
I vaguely remember it. Wasn't it a "go to passage XX if you do Y" deal?
I remember playing a port of this on my mom's iPad as a kid, though I think I got stuck trying to fight the dragon to early. This is also one of the few NES games I have a cartridge of, and I don't know how to feel about that, lol
I really liked that little talk about emergent experience coming from a player's own theorys on a broken item. One could probably run miles with that idea in a game like Fear & Hunger 1, with how many bugs that game can have. I'm surprised I haven't really heard much about this sort of thing, with my love of game design discussion, and something to keep in mind for potential projects
Also regarding the recording, would you be able to record future videos using integer scaling? It doesn't detract from the video or anything, but he slight size difference in pixels is a tad annoying
It's an okay game at best. People hype it up to be better than it actually is. When Coorlim says it's a Grindfest, he isn't lying. You spend all your time playing this game by grinding and never advancing the story. It's not a good game by any stretch of the imagination.
@@JavaBum It's a perfectly serviceable game; I grew up playing it, and the grind does actually make up part of the story. You start as a nobody from nowhere, notable exclusively for being descended from the guy who beat this villain last time, and you work to be worthy (by fighting the beasts that plague the realm) before charging into the darkness.
But then again, back in the day, RPGs weren't about frenetic action where you sat on a custom chair for hours at a time. You played the game in between having a life, rather than having a life in between playing games.
You're entitled to your opinion, but just because your imagination doesn't stretch far enough to find the fun in this, it doesn't mean EVERYONE didn't have fun.
@@juliebartlett4222I played these games as they launched, so I'm not under this belief that grind wasn't a part of the gameplay. I think that Final Fantasy was a better RPG overall than any DW game on the NES. When going to the SNES we saw more titles for that than FF and they had their own flair.
Like stated, they weren't bad games, but they weren't good games either. The grind was so heavy in DW and the story was so muted that even just playing the game was about A to B and never about the actual story. I think you're plugging in what SHOULD have happened versus what did actually happen in the game.
The slog was the worst part of DW. You literally had to level two to the three times per dungeon, and if you went too quickly, you were outclassed and outmatched immediately. In my opinion, the game wasn't worth it, even with using an emulator and cheats now, and back then it was a time sink with nothing to show for it.
Like you said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and mine is not favorable to this game.
I give DW some leeway just because it was first in its lineage of console RPGs. They had to experiment to get that balance of grind to gameplay down just right. I won't make excuses for it, but I understand why it is the way it is.
48:41
Dost thou love me?
But thou must!
I think that too many people are riding everyone's jock instead of actually liking games. Specifically, DW3 is not as good as people say, and neither is, say, FF7. These are overrated and nowhere near as good as people think. FF4 or FF6 are better than 7, hands down, and Crystalis is better than all of those, just on story alone. FFA is better than most games, but that was for the GameBoy and not even an FF game to begin with. But, for the NES, Cystalis and FF3 were fucking amazing as far as mechanics and story. They beat every other game ever on that console.
DW3 wasn't BAD, but it wasn't the BEST entry in the series. And I loved Crystalis, but it's a little apples-to-oranges in terms of comparing it to other games, not least of which was it being action and others turn-based.
That's my opinion, and I'm not riding anything by having it.
@juliebartlett4222 I was referring to gameplay mechanics and story, thus the comparison. The fact the others were turn-based had no impact on my choices.
I was replaying Crystalis a few years ago and it had way more grinding than I remembered. I do plan on covering it for this series at some point, it's still one of my faves.