Got DW3 remake for the GBC the other day. Thoughts:
- It was the third and last title in what is known as the "Erdrick Saga", which is a term given to the first three games, as they all concern the legendary hero Erdrick and his descendants and their battles against evil. Specifically, this title is a prequel to the other two, as it is about the hero who became Erdrick, and how. Theoretically, this makes DWIII chronologically the first game in the whole series (although, since most DQ games outside the Erdrick Saga are rather standalone, it's kinda hard to make a coherent timeline out of the games). The original game was released on the NES in 1988, and the GBC remake was released in 2001.
- It was the first Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest game to introduce both the ability to choose your hero's gender and create your party from scratch. The ability to create your own party from scratch wouldn't be done again until DQIX, in 2010 (the original DWIII came out in 1988).
- It's also responsible for introducing the whole "personality chart" thing to the world. That personality quiz at the beginning of Daggerfall or the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series? Totally came from DW3. However, it's pretty cool here. There a quiz at the beginning of the game, in the form of a dream the player has. The one giving the quiz is a gigantass waterfall claiming to represent all. Most of the questions are pretty standard "what would you do if...?" types, although the last question is awesome: The player is warped into a random situation, with the "question's" answer being determined by the players actions in the situation.
(I did the quiz two times: the first time, I got warped to an endless desert where there were two brothers, one of them collapsed from the heat. The collapsed bro is telling his other bro to go on to the nearest town without him because they only have a day's worth of a water left, and they can't both make it. The player comes in by talking to the other bro, who asks whether he should do as his bro says and leave him behind, or whether they should go on together, with the risk that they might both die. The other time I did the quiz, I got teleported to the top of a tower, where a line of people where queueing up to jump off the edge of the tower, and the option here was to either jump along with them, or head back down the stairs. I jumped, of course. Actually, I didn't mean to, but there it is.)
- My mage character has a sexy personality. I am not kidding.
-My computer is also saying that mage is not a word. Stupid internet spell-checking not being good at it's job.
- Fuck four-char lett limi!!
- If you choose a female hero, various NPC's will think you are male, then express surprise when they discover you're actually a dudette. (I assume this is because in the original NES version of the game, the hero sprite was the same regardless of the gender chosen).
- The music is pretty great, Kōichi Sugiyama's live orchestra pieces 8-bititized. It's groovy. Not as good as some of his work in DQIV or later titles, although the final boss's theme is pretty BOSS. Heh.
- Everyone in the whole goddamn world is an asshole. Seriously, every NPC is an asshat. Although, this is kinda true in most DQ games...
- The sprite work is surprisingly detailed despite being rather small.
- Canniboxes (mimics, basically) make their series debut in this game. They are also super annoying and rather strong, and are encountered fairly early, and low-level parties will get
OWNED. Gygax would be proud.
- Changing classes is rather borked, but I'm willing to give it some slack since it's the first game in the series to do so, and it was 1988 (or 2001 for the remake). Anyway, first off, the hero
cannot change classes. (This is reasonable, I suppose, since the hero is special and all. Also, changing classes changes sprites, and the hero always needs to look unique.) Party members
can, BUT! Only if they have reached level 20 in a given class. Changing classes resets the characters level to 1, and there stats go back as well. The class they are exiting it also reverted back to level 1, so you can't go back to being strong again. However, they can keep all learned spells and abilities, meaning, for instance, that you can have a warrior (which normally don't learn any spells) cast BlazeMore or something.
- Speaking of spells, since this was fairly early on in the series, the spells all had weird and ridiculous names. Blaze was a single target fireball attack, and BlazeMore was a stronger version of that (in DWI, it was known as Hurt and HurtMore. Far better I think). My personal favorite, however, is a spell called Panic
All... which, while it sounds like it would target a group, is in fact a
single-taget confusion spell.
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There's a hobbit in the game!
- All the classes tend to be useful in some way, shape or form, except for the Jester class... which is really just there for fun: their stats are shit, except for their Luck (which is MASSIVE, and used mainly for determining how often crits occur), you cannot always control their actions, as they will occasionally just do their own thing, will sometimes attack themselves instead of enemies,
they only learn one ability, and, aside from
female jesters looking like playboy bunnies, they are rather useless.
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OR ARE THEY?!?1! The sage class, which is pure concentrated awesome, can normally only be obtained by finding a
certain book, of which there are only one or two copies of, depending on the version of the game. HOWEVeR! Jesters can automatically unlock the sage class simply by becoming level 20. (Interestingly, there's an NPC who says he wants to change classes and become jester, before hurriedly and awkwardly amending his statement by saying he totally wants to become a great sage, which is a rather sly hint.)