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).