As I mentioned in my review for the first Dragon Quest, I bought the mobile versions of the original Dragon Quest trilogy on a whim years ago. Last year I decided to finally finish the first game, and now I've chosen to finish its sequel this year. Dragon Quest II is a sequel that is surprisingly a vast improvement to its predecessor.

In terms of gameplay, its exactly the same as the first game, but considering that Dragon Quest is a series known for following tradition that is no surprise. This time however, you're not alone. You get two party members to assist you on your journey, the Prince of Cannock and the Princess of Moonbrooke. Having these party members is pretty much a necessity as the character you play as doesn't have magic this time and the latter parts of the game, especially the final boss would be much harder without them. The other noteble addition is the ability to sail across the land on your ship which has been included in every other game in the series onward. These additions come a long way in making the game feel fresh and interesting in comparison to the first game.

Dragon Quest II is a massive step forward, but there were some things I didn't like about it. My first issue is something that bothered me with the original as well, and that issue would be the random encounter rate. While I can understand why they were a thing in the RPGs of old, it gets really annoying getting spammed with encounters every two steps I make, especially when I'm lost or trying to traverse a new area. My other issue is that the game can be pretty cryptic at times when it comes to finding all the things you need to progress. I looked up guides significantly more this time than I did for DQ1 mostly just to find out where to go or where to find a certain item.

As for grinding in this game? Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad. Enemies drop reasonable amount of exp to where if you do need to grind, you won't need to for long. It's probably just an improvement they added in later versions they made, but considering that grinding seems to be a gripe that most people seem to have, I expected worse.

Dragon Quest II is in my opinion an underappreciated game that laid a lot of the groundwork for the rest of the series. It felt much more like an adventure in comparison to its predecessor. Considering how the original trilogy is on basically everything these days, I'd suggest either emulating or dropping a couple bucks on either the Switch or mobile versions. It may not be as good as the entries afterwards, but with the amount of improvements it makes its definitely worth a playthrough.

Another day, another One Piece game review from me. This time its the other 3ds game that never left Japan, One Piece Great Pirate Colosseum!

Between Unlimited World Red, Unlimited Cruise SP (the only 3ds OP game I haven't played), Super Grand Battle X, Romance Dawn, and lastly Great Pirate Colosseum, I'd say this one is definitely the most interesting out of Luffy's 3D outings. It's a traditional 2D fighting game which for One Piece is exceptionally rare and it crosses over with a game that plays exactly like it that was also developed by Arc Sys for the 3ds, Dragon Ball Extreme Butoden.

As far as gameplay goes, it plays like any other 2D fighting game. You have your punch & kick buttons and you can press them to create stylish combos, assist characters to summon that can lend you a hand in a variety of ways, a mid-air counter attack, and an ultimate move you can use to dish out big damage once your meter gets to a certain percent. There are plenty of gameplay mechanics to make it interesting and with how different each character's moveset is, it works.

Roster-wise, its nothing too special. Pretty much every playable character in this game is also playable in Burning Blood even if Gild & Lucci were DLC in that game. There are a lot of assist characters though, they consist of pretty much anybody you can think of including some of the characters in the Zou arc which took me by surprise considering how new that arc was at the time. The stages were probably what I found the most interesting. Sure it has the basic predictible ones like Alabasta, Corrida Colosseum, and Marineford, but a few I did not expect like the sea train from Water 7, the Gran Tesoro, and as previously mentioned Zou. Stack all of this on top of cross-play with DB Extreme Butoden and you have a stacked amount of content for a 3ds 2D fighter.

That being said, it definitely has its issues. It felt a bit sluggish and slow which gave the game a janky feeling. I watched footage of both DB Extreme Butoden & Great Pirate Colosseum and this game is definitely slower in comparison to Extreme Butoden. Also, the online mode is locked at the start of the game which is a really strange choice on the developers part.

The story mode was also slightly confusing but still perfectly manageable once I looked up what little info there is on it. Basically from what I gather is that you do some fights till you get to the end, but along the way you have to make choices that will make the characters in your crew happy. Consistent failure to do so will make them leave. This only happened to me once since I had zero understanding of what to do. After knowing how it works and randomly guessing on which answer to choose (I can't read Japanese), it wasn't too bad. Thankfully, the story mode is a lot shorter than Super Grand Battle X because that game's story got repetitive.

If you have Citra or/and a modded 3ds then I'd say its worth a download. Its far from perfect, but its still a fun fighter to mess around with that most likely gets insane when connected with the Dragon Ball game (I never bothered trying to, I don't even think I ended up unlocking the online either). On one final note, Arc Sys, MAKE ONE PIECE FIGHTERZ!!!!!!!!!