To some, the thought of an
intensely long commute through the pan-handle of Idaho would thrill, or even make a soul
sick with happiness, but for the poor wretches like myself, who troll from apartment to
car to road, the only idle relief we have is the thought of an in-transit beer or
Enixs Dragon Warrior IIII had no beer, just batteries. DWIII
pits you as the young son of the hero Ortega who fell in his quest to defeat the Demon
Lord Baramos. Due to your determination, the King of Aliahan has bestowed this quest upon
you. You are to lead a team of adventurers against the Demon Lord and succeed where your
father failed: defeat the enemy of the land. Sounds likes a classic DW plot, eh? It is,
and its so cool.
One neat feature of the game is the ability at the start to create your
characters personality, if only in a primitive sense, by answering a series of
questions and then going on a quasi-mini-quest. It took me a few tries to get the right
mix for my character personality. Along the way, youll find various articles in
dungeons or shops that you can purchase to modify your personality type. I still
havent gotten the hang of this yet, but, nevertheless, its a cool idea. You
can also choose to play as either a male or female character. Once you have done this
its off to the Ruidas Tavern to create your party. Here you can create
characters with the following classes: warrior, fighter, mage, cleric, thief, dealer,
jester, sage, leaving you, that is your character, alone in his class, the hero, which
mixes the best of most of the other classes together. You can pretty much kick-ass through
the game, but this isnt a one man show, so the other character classes are pretty
important, too. Some mentionable ones would be the sage, who is kind of mixture between
the cleric and the mage, and the fighter, a more refined version of the warrior. I found
that you need to balance your partys powers out, but always, and I mean, always,
have someone, maybe two, who can heal. No worries if you become unhappy with the class you
select for your teammates, youll get a chance midway through the game to change
classes.
The bulk of the game is rambling from cave to dungeon to tower through the
sprawling game-world. Along the way youll fight a plentitude of monsters, some of
which can really beat you down if youre not careful. It brought back memories to die
so many times in the game. Like its predecessors it steeply challenges you, starting out
easy and tossing maybe a few blobs at you or some slimes, but then you get into the wolfs
and crabs and knights, etc., who seem to possess some intense armor and even more intense
strength. Its probably a good idea to plan out points in the game where youll
circle a base town and build up enough HP and money to proceed without
problems further in the game. In terms of skill-set, you acquire spells pretty quickly and
your levels rise relative to your quests, meaning as you wander through a dungeon, and if
you have enough healing herbs to last you, youll find that youll rise a few
levels before getting to the boss character.
Commuting
is done on foot through the first third of the game until you acquire the ship, which
allows you to, obviously, explore the world in its entirety. For me an RPG doesnt
become really cool until this point; however, DWIII has some perks with speed and
how quickly you move across the game-screen. As for efficiency, that is getting from
dialogue and plot back into quest / battle-mode, you wont be disappointed. Its
like the programmers took all that was annoying in RPGs and removed it. I guess that comes
with the territory of producing one of the coolest and longest running RPG series, coming
in alongside other epics like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star. I remember playing this
game on the Nintendo, and truthfully I spent more time with it than Final Fantasy.
Sure, this game makes it easy to slip into a death-rut in which you find
yourself being the only one resurrected, left to fend for yourself until youve built
up enough capital to recall your friends from the dead, but it wouldnt be a true
Dragon Warrior game, or RPG for that, if this didnt happen once in a moon. Another
cool aspect of the cart is the ability to save your quest at any point; however, while you
can pull up your adventure log it only allows you to restart from it, but dont
worry, pretty much every castle you find on your journey allows you to save a permanent
record.
Probably the only annoying thing about the game was the music;
most of the time I was forced to play it in silence or while I listened to something else,
but still the game is rock solid when it comes to pure RPG. Now, while the graphics are
nothing to write home about, they are pretty decent for something on the GBC. I had the
luck of playing the whole thing on my GBA, so the "widen-the-screen" feature
really came in handy and increased my enjoyment of the cart.
There is one last reason to buy a game for the GBC, and that reason is Dragon
Warrior III. It makes commutes from city X to city Y more enjoyable and quicker. DWIII is
definitely a zone-out game, and a classic RPG. Enhanced from the original, this is a
must-play title whether you have fond memories of the NES version, or if you want to play
what is simply the best RPG so far for a handheld system.