This review contains spoilers
The moment when JRPGs got good.
This is a five-star rating more as a legacy pick than me really rating it that way as an experience today (where I think it's probably more four to four and a half). I rate the original Legend of Zelda as a five and the only meaningful difference in the quality and archaism of both for me is that I grew up with Zelda and not this, and I don't want to be that unfair.
It's hard to overstate how much of a leap this is from Dragon Quest II, really Final Fantasy is the more appropriate comparison, and this game came out only two months after that one. There's only one idea in it that I can think of as having probably been influenced by Final Fantasy, riding the dragon for a brief period at the end of the overworld before the fake-out final boss.
Yuji Horii's idea of a meaty RPG really adapting, not just aping (again, looking at Final Fantasy there) the D&D-style experience for the Famicom, really comes to a head here. You can roll and re-roll characters however you want, you can re-class them and start them at level 1 with all of their old powers if you want, there's a prestige class in the Sage. The open world (for most of the game, anyway) is based off of the real world map and gives a great intuition for where stuff is.
And most of all, beyond all the mechanics, this is the oldest JRPG I've played that really exudes lots of charm, dumb sex jokes (some of which I'm surprised got past the Nintendo of America censors, even if the puff-puffs didn't), silly names for things, comedic characters. The game acknowledges its silliness while still allowing for serious moments and plot twists that are, if not shocking, at least enough to get a notice out of someone on a console known for its bare excuse plots.
JRPGs before Dragon Quest III were mildly interesting but grindy experiences that were mostly just the best way to get a lot of time out of limited NES cartridge space without making a game controller-throwingly hard. JRPGs after Dragon Quest III would go on a decade-long run, culminating in Final Fantasy VII, as the definitive way to tell stories in this medium.
This is a five-star rating more as a legacy pick than me really rating it that way as an experience today (where I think it's probably more four to four and a half). I rate the original Legend of Zelda as a five and the only meaningful difference in the quality and archaism of both for me is that I grew up with Zelda and not this, and I don't want to be that unfair.
It's hard to overstate how much of a leap this is from Dragon Quest II, really Final Fantasy is the more appropriate comparison, and this game came out only two months after that one. There's only one idea in it that I can think of as having probably been influenced by Final Fantasy, riding the dragon for a brief period at the end of the overworld before the fake-out final boss.
Yuji Horii's idea of a meaty RPG really adapting, not just aping (again, looking at Final Fantasy there) the D&D-style experience for the Famicom, really comes to a head here. You can roll and re-roll characters however you want, you can re-class them and start them at level 1 with all of their old powers if you want, there's a prestige class in the Sage. The open world (for most of the game, anyway) is based off of the real world map and gives a great intuition for where stuff is.
And most of all, beyond all the mechanics, this is the oldest JRPG I've played that really exudes lots of charm, dumb sex jokes (some of which I'm surprised got past the Nintendo of America censors, even if the puff-puffs didn't), silly names for things, comedic characters. The game acknowledges its silliness while still allowing for serious moments and plot twists that are, if not shocking, at least enough to get a notice out of someone on a console known for its bare excuse plots.
JRPGs before Dragon Quest III were mildly interesting but grindy experiences that were mostly just the best way to get a lot of time out of limited NES cartridge space without making a game controller-throwingly hard. JRPGs after Dragon Quest III would go on a decade-long run, culminating in Final Fantasy VII, as the definitive way to tell stories in this medium.