Remember when I said Dragon Quest 1 aged surprisingly well and didn't have too much cryptic NES bullshit? Well apparently DQ 2 wanted to regress in game design, because this game has a LOT of cryptic NES bullshit after the first quarter, and it's somehow MORE grindy. This game is double to triple the length of DQ 1 but instead of having anything interesting it's just a bunch of McGuffin hunting. I didn't have a guide for almost all of DQ1 (the pacing thing kinda confused me I looked up that bit but only to know which directions I should be going), but for DQ2 once you get to the boat the game doesn't direct you AT ALL, the game goes from feeling freeing to aimless and I had a guide on me for pretty much the rest of the game. Shit like a very crucial key item being on some random ass dog, having to backtrack CONSTANTLY (somehow more than the first) to other towns once you get new keys. I think this game does take some right steps in the direction for the series, party members, bigger world, slight more emphasis on story, etc, but it's CLEAR they really didn't know how to handle a good chunk of these concepts yet, which I hope are cleared out in DQ 4 (since I'm skipping 3 in wait for the HD remake supposedly coming out).

Was in a Pikmin mood and decided to replay Pikmin 1, this game is so fun and replayable, trying to go faster and faster on replay is so appealing for a game like this. I think generally this game's just really well designed, the way the game incetavises multitasking without being TOO punishing, fun secret bosses that didn't really need to be there but are welcome. The story is really charming being told exclusivley through the daily jorunal logs is really fun and charms you to Olimar as a character which incentivises you to play faster. Of any Pikmin games it's why I think this is my favorite structure wise, it's so satisfying putting the ship together because you see that tangible progress. One thing I miss about this game compared to future installments is how fucking brutal bosses were, one bad move and you could lose like half your squad, I have some small grips with the Pikmin AI, they go off on their own a bit too much for my liking and it was VERY common for them to just get stuck on walls. But those are mostly just nitpicks to an otherwise really solid first entry.

This game aged surprisingly well. usually NES games are stupidly and annoyingly cryptic but Dragon Quest is pretty simple to follow as long as you're paying attention. The game is very short I think it only took me about 7-8 hours to beat it but for a NES game or the 3 dollar mobile port I got that's fine. I mostly played this game to kill time and it does that well. The problems are mostly ones that were with age and the genre not being perfected yet, every fight is a stat check, there's no real strategy, you either have the stats to win or you don't. The game is VERY backtracky, granted I think it's in favor for the game's design as the world's pretty small, you kinda wanna be fighting enemies to grind, and exploration with future items (mostly keys) gives you more items and hints for further progression. The only time I REALLY had to stop and grind was toward the end of the game for the best equipment and even then it was only like 40 minutes. Overall it's really solid for an NES rpg and I'd say if you're a fan of the genre it's worth a look for the novelty.