Dragon Quest 1 HD-2D, Part 2 - Rescuing Gwaelin

 

When you think about it, this is pretty much the full-circle RPG. It was the first console JRPG in the West, bringing the playstyle of things like Wizardry off of the PC and onto the TV. Now here it is in a modern form. It's sort of like how the characters ingame are going full-circle with the events of their past.

We get a flashback to the kidnapping of Gwaelin. Turns out that the Dragonlord himself showed up to make sure the job got done. No wonder the guards didn't have a chance!

Even in human-ish form, the Dragonlord still can't get any respeck from this woman.

"Behold the King" he says. "The King of Kings."

The Tantegel groupie isn't going to the Inn with me anymore. Something about our hero moaning "Gwaelin" in his sleep really put her off.

This really is unexpected: The descendant of DQIII superstar Kandar is now a character in the first one. Will he be an oil-covered hentai enthusiast like his ancestor was?

No, he's pretty much just a normal run-of-the-mill treasure thief now. Hey, if it ain't bolted down. How did people secure their wealth in the era before banks? Buried things by a conspicuous tree, that's how. And they'd look over their shoulder the whole time for vagabonds like this guy.

New boss fight: Kandar IV and his goons. Some things haven't changed at all (Read: Most things) in the land of Alefgard.

This ability seems a lot better than it is. Only lasts several turns (buff duration is WAY too short for a game with one character) and I didn't notice any major uptick in dodges from it. Cop Out, on the other hand, is a much more effective defensive move. Basically makes you block/counter 75% of the time for that turn. Might only work on one attack per turn, not sure.

After thrashing him, Kandar IV tells the story of how Erdrick was once an employee at Kandar's Hentai Emporium, where he learned everything he knew about being a hero.

...well, that's a f****in' lie!

Further on, the real bad guy of the dungeon is this sorcerer, who might be the descendant of that guy who drops the really good staff in DQIII.

This fight is significantly tougher than Kandar, because any casters can F you up in this game. Status effects in particular are murder.

After all that, I get the first of the game's 3 keys. No more disposable keys like the NES original; in fact the game makes it a point to note that disposable keys were a moneymaking ploy by Big Keymaking. A commentary on corporate planned obsolescence is not what I expected out of this game.

It's almost like all of these characters are dancing to the whims of Yuji Horii!

With that, Robbin 'Ood turns face and becomes Erdrick IV's staunch ally.

The Thief Key, unfortunately, doesn't do that much. At least, most of the doors I found required the second key, the Magic Key.

Time for more exploring. The Green Dragon Cave is accessible from the get-go, but you can't fight the dragon or rescue the princess until you have the Magic Key. So I'm locked out of that by story. The dragon would obliterate me right now anyway.

What I can do is run south through the cave to get to the next continent, which contains...

...Rimuldar, which was always kind of mystical to me as a kid. It's this far-away town that is a real challenge to get to, and has some of the first really big upgrades to buy. I really liked grinding outside this town on the NES.

There it is, Rimuldar's island. It's gotta have a moat because of all the monsters in the area.

Note that this game, and DQII, don't have a day/night cycle like DQIII does. They hadn't developed it yet in the NES originals, so the in-universe explanation is that because Alefgard is the real world's underworld, it doesn't have days or nights. It's just always the same time of day.

Grinding here, as is tradition. Have an axe now. The skeletons are still just like what I remember, but what I really liked from this area are the Werewolves:

First time I ran into one of these on the NES it seemed like a big deal. They're a lot tougher than any of the overworld foes on the north continent.

Whoa! It's Ragnar and Healie's ancestors!

...and they're dead!

............well, I won't worry about it too much!

The Warlock of Doorlocks is the guy to talk to about the Magic Key. He's right about the Thief's Key being a useless loser of a key. All the good stuff is in Magic Key and Ultimate Key doors/chests.

Speaking of chests, I ran into this random Mimic that is completely overpowered and shits on everything else in this game outside of like, Dragonlord's Castle. It's right up there with the game's big bosses. What a lame thing to just drop into a midlevel dungeon.

Next, the game makes a commentary on how anything can be spun against (or for) you by partisan media outlets.

Say you've heard, and:

He's got nothing to say.

Say you haven't heard, and:

You need to listen better.

There's no way to win here, any answer is spun against you.

In the basement of the Dwarf Cave is this crystal, which is one of the ingredients used to create Crests (more on that in a bit). Yeah, the same Crests as Dragon Quest II. This is where they originated.

It's also worth coming back here with the Magic Key, because there's a very strong armor behind a Magic Key door: Tectonic Armor, which is even better than the expensive Magic Armor sold in Rimuldar. So that can save you a cool 7700 G.

The next new area to this version is the Faerie Village. These little winged bastards account for most of this game's new content.

The Faeries send you on lots of fetch quests, and are the original makers of the Crests. Find the pieces they need to construct Crests and you can use them to power up your character (no equipment slot required). The Crests also, in theory, can summon Rubiss if they're all completed and brought together.

Next step in my wandering: Going southwest instead of southeast leads to a lot more land area. First up is the Damdara Desert, another place that intrigued me as a kid.

Damdara is the infamous ruined town that was set ablaze by the Dragonlord and his goons. In DQIII you can see Damdara when it still stood.

The fights here are WAY too hard to deal with currently. There's also a fight with the Axe Knight (now Knight Aberrant) which is one of the big three "overworld bosses" the original game had outside of the final castle. Probably the strongest of the three. In some versions of the game you can 'sploit your way to a win early and claim the Erdrick's Armor. In this one I'll need to get back to it later. That or turn on Invincibility, which...yeah, not keen on destroying the game's equilibrium by cheating every time I face any adversity. Wish that wasn't even an option.

Another new area: The Medal King, recurring DQ character, is now in the original. There are 40 Mini Medals total in this game, and he's got a long list of rewards for turning them in. This place also has an inn/church and is in a good spot for helping with exploration of the southwest part of the world. Also, there are a bunch of key chests here with various solid rewards once you have the right keys for them.

There's a shop here that goes off the traditional DQ1 chain of equipment. Dragonbane Claws and Dragon Mail weren't in previous versions of this game and are pretty much a stopgap between the Rimuldar tier of equipment and the Cantlin tier of equipment. Alas, this gear is wildly overpriced and I'm nowhere near being able to get either of them.

Metal Slimes show up a lot in this part of the world, but it's tough to take them down with just one character and no real Metal-slaying abilities. There's a much better way to farm Metal Babbles much later on. At this midpoint, slowly/surely grinding out around Rimuldar is probably the better option.

I find more Crest ingredients, which I'll soon be able to turn into powerups.

Unfortunately, at this point, the game throws an extremely difficult story fight in that grinds things to a halt:

This fight is BRUTAL and completely crushes me at level 13. It takes two shots of Undead Undoer to take out each of the skeleton minions, so that's eight rounds before you even get to the actual boss. Meanwhile you have all of these guys stomping you into the ground every turn. I was lucky if I took down one skeleton before I got overrun.

Went and grinded alllllll the way from level 13 to level 22. Tried a few times along the way to win the fight and just got crushed the same way every time.

Once over 20, I was finally able to one-shot the skeletons with Undead Undoer. Between that and now having Midheal, I was able to win... and it was STILL a challenge. Did they really have to throw this right in the middle of the story? It completely stalls out the game's momentum, for a throwaway fight that could have really been anything. The knight by himself one-on-one would have been fine.

There's a minor subplot with how one of Gwaelin's bodyguards doesn't like or trust Erdrick IV, but eventually she realizes he means well and stops suspecting him of having bad intentions.

After all that, the Magic Key is finally acquired, meaning I can rescue Gwaelin any time now...provided I can get past the Green Dragon. It's pretty clear that the Dragonbane Claws are intended to help with that fight, but I still can't get anywhere near affording them even after having to stop and grind nine levels.

Note: One should make SURE they go back to the Dwarf Cave and get the Tectonic Mail at this point. Big upgrade and a necessary one.

One of the cool things about Erdrick (and his descendant here) is the way he went around rallying allies to join his big tent. The heroes of these games never do everything alone (though the various kingdoms should still invest in some actual militaries)

At this point I get the first Crest: Soul Sigil (Yeah, they're called Sigils now). This is an interesting powerup and gives you an innate ability to strengthen spells and abilities by holding Y (Square on PS5, I'm on Switch) when selecting them. It's very situational though, mostly only triggering when you're under 50% HP. This will mostly come into play in the lategame when you've got a lot of HP and can spare a move once under 50%.

All of the Sigils are innate passive effects besides the Soul Sigil which is triggered.

What Sigils Do

Soul Sigil - Lets you power up spells/abilities by holding Y under the right circumstances.

Water Sigil - Makes items more effective in battle, particularly healing items. Affects equipment-using as well, in theory.

Sun Sigil - Increases critical hit chance of weapons and abilities.

Moon Sigil - Randomly causes spells to critical in battle (this is going to save me late in the game...well, you'll see).

Star Sigil - Recovers MP when defending.

They aren't quite as amazing as the 7th Saga runes, but they're pretty cool nonetheless. At first I thought all of this Sigil stuff was a bit much to be adding to the normally-simple DQ1 but I think they were a good addition now.

Yeah, a party of adventurers sounds great, and would have been really great against that Gank Squad of a boss fight a little while ago that seemed tuned for a full party. Can I at least get Gwaelin as a second party member, since they're changing party/enemy counts?

Before I go after the Green Dragon, there's one very important errand to run: Picking up the Sun Stone from under the gazebo in Tantegel. Once the Princess is rescued, you can't really come back to Tantegel until the end (if you want to keep her with you, that is, which alters the game quite a bit in this version).

There, got it. One of the items needed to get to Zoma's Castle Charlock. Now I can safely ignore Tantegel for a while, despite the game's attempts to steer me back there.

Past another Magic Key door is Gwaelin, and the Green Dragon. This is pretty much the big halfway-point boss of DQ1, and hopefully all those levels I had to grind to get past that Gank Squad will serve me well here.

...they don't, he completely obliterates me. His fire breath attacks aren't bad because I've got fire mitigation, but I get shredded by his physical attacks. If he gets a critical hit, the fight is over. If he goes twice and does two physical attacks and I'm not healed up, the fight is over. If he goes last in one turn and first in the next turn and does physical attacks on both and I'm not healed up, the fight is over.

I tried boosting defense with the Faerie Foil to make his physical attacks more manageable, but with one character and buffs inexplicably only lasting 3 turns it really didn't make much of a difference.

This would have been a great time for the game to add Gwaelin as a playable character to back you up, since they're changing the count of party members and enemies already. Instead it's another huge level-up grind hurdle, like the Gank Squad only even tougher. I'll need to do another big grind sesh to get past this one.

I'll say this, the level of grinding this game is bringing to the fore (and it's more than the NES version had, even) is going to be a shock to the system (tm Billy Idol) for modern gamers who aren't used to this sort of grind. Us old-school folks know all about it, at least.

For now...