As an immediate follow-up, this is kind of a mixed bag. It trades in the charming, small world map of the first game for a completely linear series of increasingly complex dungeons, with groups of NPCs positioned in between them every now and then. Much like before, you end up criss-crossing these mazes to solve fairly obtuse item-based puzzles, but because the name of the game for this sequel is "bigger" and "more" this ends up getting tiresome quickly, as the complexity and length of the overall quest have scaled way up. Also, there's a lot more leveling to do this time, but really all that amounts to is the unwelcome need to grind in a few spots. There's still a ton of detail in the graphics for each area and the music is, of course, phenomenal^, but much like everything gameplay-wise, the story does not benefit from going bigger and feels like it's overreaching a bit. This is something that I'm very excited to see improved in the remakes - looking forward to finally knowing wtf is going on!^^

Feels like I'm complaining a lot, but this is still really good-looking, -sounding, and -playing for a 1988 JRPG. Been a while since I've played original ZELDA, FINAL FANTASY, or DRAGON QUEST, but I honestly might prefer these two games to them.

^I played the Famicom version and I must say, I think some of the arrangements might be better than the original PC88 stuff!

^^This is not to disparage the work of the fan translation I played - it's quite good. The issues are more down to the very limited storytelling palette of an 8-bit RPG.