Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line

About Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line

Dragon Quest II (1987), first released in North America as Dragon Warrior II, is Chunsoft and Enix's sequel set a century after the original, adding a party, group battles and a ship, and one of the series' hardest games.

Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line in Depth

A hundred years after the first game, the evil wizard Hargon destroys Moonbrooke Castle, and the prince of Midenhall is ordered to stop him, joined by his cousins, the prince of Cannock and the princess of Moonbrooke. It expands on the original with a larger party, more places to explore, several heroes and enemies in each battle, and a sailing ship. Dragon Quest III follows the main characters' ancestor, the legendary hero Erdrick, and the three games are known as the Erdrick Trilogy.

It was the first Dragon Quest in which the player controls more than one character, each with their own traits, and it introduced a party system in which, instead of starting with a full party as was common in earlier computer RPGs, the player begins alone and recruits companions along the way. Characters search treasure chests, talk and trade with villagers, equip weapons and armour and cast spells, and wandering fields, towers, caves, seas and dungeons brings random encounters with groups of monsters rather than the original's one-on-one battles. Critics praised it for improving on almost every aspect of the first game, but it is known as one of the most difficult Dragon Quest games, especially late on, a reputation that survived even more forgiving ports.

Making Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line

Chunsoft developed it and Enix published it for the Famicom in 1987, with Enix's US subsidiary releasing Dragon Warrior II for the NES in 1990. A key goal was a more exciting combat system. Balance problems, fully fixed only in the early sections, and a staff including students unfamiliar with coding and debugging delayed it by a month, and many ideas were dropped because of the Famicom's limits, some later appearing in remakes and in Dragon Quest III. It shipped over 2.4 million copies in Japan, and the Super Famicom and Game Boy Color remakes sold over 1.92 million more.