Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line

Main series games Luminaries of the Legendary Line Developer(s) Chunsoft Publisher(s) Enix Designer(s) Yuji Horii Artist(s) Akira Toriyama Composer(s) Kōichi Sugiyama Series Dragon Quest Platform(s) NES/Famicom, GBC, Wii (hybrid cartridge), MSX, SFC, Cell phone, PlayStation 4, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Release date(s) Nintendo Entertainment System
^JP January 26, 1987
^NA December 1990
MSX
^JP February 6, 1988
MSX2
^JP May 27, 1988
Super Famicom
^JP December 18, 1993
Game Boy Color
^JP September 23, 1999
^NA September 27, 2000
Wii
^JP September 15, 2011
Android & iOS
^JP July 26, 2014
^NA October 9,2014
^EU October 9,2014
^AUS October 9,2014
Playstation 4 & 3DS
^JP August 10, 2017
Nintendo Switch
^JP September 27, 2019
^NA September 27, 2019
^EU September 27, 2019
Genre(s) Console role-playing game Mode(s) Single player Media 2-megabit NES cartridge
Floppy disk (MSX)
GBC/SFC cartridges

Dragon Quest II (ドラゴンクエストII 悪霊の神々, Doragon Kuesuto Tsū Akuryo no Kamigami, literally meaning; "Pantheon of Evil Spirits") is a role-playing game and sequel to the original Dragon Quest. It was initially released for the Famicom in Japan on January 26, 1987. It would later be released in North America in 1990 and has been remade several times on different platforms, most notably in the compilation package of Dragon Quest I & II.

Plot

Dragon Quest II is set 100 years after Dragon Quest. The offspring of the original game's Hero have migrated from Alefgard to the continent of Torland, and there established three kingdoms: Midenhall, Cannock and Moonbrooke. A century of peace in these three kingdoms is suddenly ended when the minions of the evil occultist Hargon destroys the castle of Moonbrooke. One lone guard, an injured survivor of the attack, makes his way towards the kingdom of Midenhall. There with his dying breath he informs the king of the dire circumstances. The King then commands his son, the Prince of Midenhall and a descendant of Erdrick, to gather his cousins and defeat Hargon before the mad priest can accomplish his goals. The three cousins are collectively referred to as the Luminaries, owing to their ancestry's legacy of bringing light to the world when it is turmoil.

Upon reaching Cannock, the Prince of Midenhall is informed by the King that his son has already left for the Wellspring of the Hero, a traditional place that is visited by warriors upon beginning their journeys. Inside the shrine there is a body of water said to bless pilgrims. Upon arriving, a sage explains that the player was too late, and the Prince has once again already left. The Prince continued to Midenhall to join the Hero, whom he doesn't know is also looking for him. Finally, the two meet at an inn located in Leftwyne, and the Prince joins the Hero's party on his quest.

Together the two cousins set out northwest towards Gwaelin's Gate they pass underground and head south for Moonahan. In this village they meet a dog that seems peculiar to them. Upon reaching the ruins that remain of Moonbrooke they are informed by the spirits of those that died (including the King himself) that the Princess has been turned into a dog by Hargon and the only way to reverse the curse is to use Ra's Mirror. The two warriors search for this mirror and they find it in a swamp from which four bridges can be seen at once. Upon their return to Moonahan they utilize the mirror in front of the curious dog they met, and much to the surprise of the heroes, they see a beautiful girl in the reflection of the mirror. The Princess is restored from her beastly appearance and joins her two cousins on their quest to defeat Hargon. After exploring the Pillar of Winds to obtain the Windbreaker, the Luminaries heads for a shrine west of Moonbrooke where they pass underground and then head northwest across fields, desert, and mountains to reach the Dragon's Horn: two tall towers, each fixated on one side of a river.

Scaling the southern tower to its peak, the Luminaries glides over the river below using the Windbreaker, and land safely across the body of water. They continue on to the port city of Rippleport, where they rescue a young girl from a pair of gremlins. Quite relieved upon her return, her grandfather, as a token of his gratitude, offers that the three heroes to use his ship to aid in their voyage. Hearing legends of a Sunken Treasure, the three set off into the northern sea, and find it glistening in the water. Upon returning it to Rippleport, a man desperate to get out of debt offers them the Echo Flute in exchange for it.

The trio then sails east and land on the archipelago of Alefgard. They reach Tantegel only to discover that the King has locked himself away for fear of Hargon. They explore the remains of Charlock Castle where they meet a descendant of the Dragonlord, who revels in his fore-bearer's infamy and considers Hargon to be an upstart needing to be dealt with. He reveals to the three young warriors that if they wish to defeat Hargon they must take five sigils to the Rubiss Shrine.

With this new information in hand the Luminaries sets sail south of Alefgard and discover a small island in the middle of the ocean on which a prominent lighthouse stands. As they explore the inside of the tower they witness a Gremlin vanish into a wall. Following it, they find a passage and are greeted by an old man who tells them to follow him. He guides them to a treasure chest and offers its contents to the Luminaries. However upon opening the chest they find it empty and the old man suddenly transforms into four gremlins that charge upon the unsuspecting trio. The cousins defeat the monsters and in doing so recover the Star Sigil, which one of the fiends was carrying.

The Luminaries travels to the island Kingdom of Dirkandor and wins the Moon Sigil fighting in the arena for the entertainment of the King.

The cousins also find the Sun Sigil hidden on the outskirts of the Fire Shrine.

The trio collect the Jailor's Key from southern city of Burrowell and with it are able to locate the thief Lagos hiding in his cell there. He gives them the Floodgate Key which allows them to finally access the Tower of the Moon where they acquire the Moonshard. The Moonshard grants access them access to the Sea Cave which contains the False Idol, necessary for revealing the path to Rendarak.

Along the way the Luminaries collects the Water Sigil from Moonahan by defeating two jailed Grimlins.

Taking the teleportal from Beran the Luminaries uses the False Idol to reveal the Cave to Rendarak. The bottom floor of the cave contains the 5th and final Soul Sigil. The Luminaries exits the cave and heads to the Rubiss Shrine where they receive the Eye of Rubiss. Returning to the Cave to Rendarak, the Luminaries endures a long and difficult struggle through the cave before emerging in snowy Rendarak. A lone shrine awaits them there where they make final preparations for their battle with Hargon.

Hall of Hargon is disguised as a copy of Midenhall but using the Eye of Rubiss shatters the illusion. Using the False Idol reveals the staircase to proceed up the castle. The Luminaries meet and face Hargon, finally defeating him. The celebration is cut short however, as before his defeat Hargon was able to successfully summon the God of Destruction Malroth. The Luminaries then ultimately defeats Malroth in the final battle, restoring peace to the world.

Characters

The three Luminaries.

Prince of Midenhall

See main article: Prince of Midenhall

The heir of the Kingdom of Midenhall is the classic warrior of the three Luminaries, with the most impressive physical stats. He can equip all weapons and armour in the game, though he has no magic ability (he is the only protagonist in the series to lack magical aptitude). This is the character the player starts out with in the castle of Midenhall, and his name is directly selected by the player.

Prince of Cannock

See main article: Prince of Cannock

The prince of Cannock is closer to his ancestor than the other Luminaries. He cannot use as wide a variety of weapons and armor as the prince of Midenhall but compensates for this with the ability with a unique assortment of spells. However, it should be noted that his magic is not as powerful as that wielded by the princess of Moonbrooke. Despite this, he can, like his cousin, equip the Erdrick's Sword. This character is hard to track down in the beginning of the game, but he will grow to be a great ally. In earlier releases, his name is generated at random based on the name of the prince of Midenhall, although there is a cheat code to alter his name. As of the Cell phone release, his name is offered initially via a random generator when the Hero departs from Midenhall, but the player can also decide to give the Prince of Cannock a name of their own choosing.

Princess of Moonbrooke

See main article: Princess of Moonbrooke

The princess of Moonbrooke is the archetypal sorceress of the three Luminaries. Her armour and weapon selections are slim, but are incredibly potent. She shares some of the Prince of Cannock's magic, but the bulk of her spells are exclusive to her. She is the first of the three main characters the player will see, shown being assaulted with her father in the game's cinematic intro. After this she will has been cursed and needs to be freed before she will be able to join her cousins. In earlier releases, her name is generated at random based on the name of the prince of Midenhall, although there is a cheat code to alter her name. As of the Cell phone release, her name is offered initially via a random generator when the Hero departs from Midenhall, but the player can also decide to give the Princess of Moonbrooke a name of their own choosing.

Hargon

See main article: Hargon

Hargon is the wicked occultist that attacked Moonbrooke, cursed its princess, and threatened to destroy the world by summoning the gods of evil. His defeat is the goal of the three heroes.

Series additions

Dragon Quest II offers a much wider array of spells and items, as well as a much larger world (256 by 256 tiles instead of 100 by 100) than its predecessor. After battle status ailments have been introduced as well, embodied in the new Bubble slime foe. Due to the limited size of the NES/Famicom's cartridge ROM space at the time, the detailed battle backgrounds from the first game were replaced with a black background to make room for the increased number of monster sprites.

Party system

Dragon Quest II is noted for greatly expanding the game play from the previous title, such as featuring multiple heroes and enemies during battle in what is now known as a party. Each Luminary has a well defined range of abilities and weaknesses that would codify later characters and vocations, and the menagerie of monster encounters would follow suit. Character dynamics, extended strategies, and shuffling through equipment to better suit specific encounters all began with II.

Augmentative and debilitating spells

Where as battle spells in the first game were limited to disabling foes and inflicting/restoring damage, the sequel introduced the concept of influencing a character or monster's stats through the use of Kabuff and Kasap. The theme of spending a turn buffing characters and weakening monsters would be greatly expanded upon in future titles, quickly becoming just as important as combating monsters directly.

Transportation

The humble Ship attained in Rippleport set the standard for expanding the reach of the player at the midway point of a game.

Teleportals were introduced to allow for faster traveling between areas, and to serve as early previews of distant lands to highlight the greater scope of the game compared to it's predecessor. They have become a staple of the series ever since, appearing in every title as both convenience features and as elements of the story.

Tombola

Gambling also made its first appearance in the series, with several towns featuring medieval slot machines called the Tombola for the player to utilize at the cost of a tombola ticket given by merchants. Breakable keys have been removed, replaced by the Silver Key, Golden Key, and Jailor's Key. Churches have now been given actual function rather than cosmetic purpose, with priests reviving fallen Luminaries and removing various ailments for a fee.

Multiple save locations

The game provides multiple locations for players to save their progress and also allows deletion and the moving of saved games. To save, find a king, minister, or wise man and talk to them to initiate the process--this save area will also be the Zoom location in most versions. As in the first game, the original Japanese version had a password system (or "Spell of Restoration") instead of a battery backup (or "Imperial Scrolls of Honor").

Development

Development of the second Dragon Quest began in April of 1986, shortly before the release of the original game later in May. The release date of December of 86 was decided by Kōichi Nakamura on a whim when approached by Yukinobu Chida about doing a sequel, something the young programmer would come to regret. The largest available cartridge size for Dragon Quest II was 1 megabit, which was double the size of the first game, but this extra space would quickly be eaten up by the project's grander scale and by the graphical improvements to character sprites. In addition to more detail being allotted to background tiles each character now has proper directional sprites used when walking, doing away with the infamous "crab walk" of the first quest.

The adoption of a fully-fledged party system was decided from the onset of development as Dragon Quest was designed to be an introduction to the RPG genre for Famicom players, it was only logical to introduce more sophisticated concepts in the sequel. In addition, the staff grew to consider the one-vs-one battle formula of the first game to become monotonous the more the game was played and concluded that a party of characters was needed to spice up the battle phases of the new title. Yuji Horii was initially worried that players might be confused when controlling so many characters at once, and as a precaution against information overload he wrote the scenario so that only a single Luminary is controlled by the player at the beginning of the game and his cousins must be recruited one by one, thus easing players into managing a party.

Once it was agreed that Dragon Quest II would feature groups of heroes and monsters, Horii was adamant that all playable characters would be displayed on-screen while travelling and that every individual monster would be shown during the battle phase. While it was common for computer RPGs of the time to use a single sprite to display multiple monsters and for one character to represent the entire party in towns and so forth, he considered this practice to be unsuitable for the Famicom players. The cast of playable characters and the number of monsters they would face was decided by the hardware limitations of the Famicom: up four characters could be displayed side-by-side in towns or on the overworld without causing sprite flickering. The Luminaries would thus be a trio so that the whole party could be displayed simultaneously when speaking to an NPC, which also aided with keeping the length of passwords from growing too large. For example each Luminary has 24 bits dedicated to his or her experience points, another 24 bits for their four-character name, 48 bits for their inventory, and 16 bits is used for the party's gold. This brings the total of bits up to 112, roughly multiplied to 336 for each character, and the passwords would bloat to a cumbersome 56 characters. When factoring in programming flags such as story events and which items are equipped, the length of the passwords continues growing. Nakamura averted this issue by writing a compression program to limit the passwords to a reasonable level, aided slightly by the removal of the "stairs" action from the command menu to free up space.

With the matter of the Famicom's hardware limitations and the password system addressed, development of Dragon Quest II's scenario began in July of 1986. Meetings would be held to discuss what was possible within the aforementioned limitations, and those were passed on to Nakamura and his team of five men to program. The rough outline of the scenario was handled by Horii and his assistant Hiroshi Miyaoka as in the original game, which was fleshed out as Akira Toriyama turned in the finalized versions of the monster concepts the developers passed on to him. With the finalized art in hand, Horii considered the nature of the monsters and began drawing a map of the world based on them, placing castles, towns, dungeons, and so forth where they felt natural and expanded the rough scenario to match this world.

Development would continue until November of 1986, when the team decided that the title was in an unsatisfactory state and could not be sold as-is despite the looming December deadline. As such, it was agreed to delay the game until January of 1987 to give the developers more time to ease the steep difficulty curve and create a more enjoyable experience. The main issue was the disparity between the power of the Luminaries and those of the monsters in a given area, which came about due to a flaw in the testing process: Nakamura had developed a simulation program that allowed Horii to play-test the battle phases for each region of the game, but these tests were done in isolated incidents and did not reflect the continuous battles players would face in a normal playthrough. Furthermore, each monster was tested on an individual basis instead of in groups, which meant that early game encounters were considerably more difficult than they should have been. To address this the code was altered so that the maximum number of monsters that could appear in battle on the Midenhall continent was limited to three. Despite this improvement the beginning of the game was deemed to still be too difficult as the Prince of Midenhall was a swordsman who would never learn to cast Heal and was forced to use medicinal herbs or walk back to an inn when injured. As such the recruitment of his cousin was expedited by moving Cannock Castle closer to the town of Leftwyne, with the bonus of the player being naturally guided northwest towards the castle by the topography of the continent. The original location of the castle would become the Lake Cave, and beta screenshots showing the castle on the lake were printed on the back of the LP of the game's soundtrack, but altering the overworld like this lead to the monster data becoming imbalanced and readjustments for their strength and the strength of the equipment available up to that point were necessary.

Playtesting would expand to include the entire development team within the one month window, with feedback such as equipment being too expensive, levelling up taking too many experience points, and the introduction sequence taking too long being common. These critiques were sent directly to Horii who would judge whether the changes were merited or not. The changes that were deemed necessary were faxed to the programmers at Chunsoft and altered beta cartridges would be distributed amongst the staff for further assessment. This back and forth process began as a four to five day cycle, but as the January deadline loomed the process was hastened to take place within a single day. The development would be finished in the middle of December, with the latter results of this extended fine-tuning being the reduction of the fees for church services, changing the order in which spells were learned to be more useful quicker, and moving Ra's mirror from the Pillar of Winds to the swamp next to the ruined castle. In an interview with Famitsu magazine, Horii would muse that while the game was not 100% complete, it was still over 90% of what he wanted out of the project and he could not force children to wait any longer to play the title .

In a 2007 interview with Nintendo Power magazine for the 221st issue, Yuji Horii would describe the development cycle of Dragon Quest II as being very rushed due to tight deadlines and the more ambitious nature of the project compared to the simpler original game. The period was so nerve-wracking that Horii admitted that he developed ulcers from the sheer stress and was literal inches away from having a permanent hole in his stomach. The experience was so bad that he had since learned to look at deadlines as more of a suggestion than a strict guideline.

Cut content

Content that was unable to be included in the game were cutscenes for important events, such as there being a view of the Plateau of Rendarak visible from the Lighthouse south of Alefgard, but there was simply no memory left in the cartridge. The only vestige of this idea is a blurry scan found in the game's instruction manual which depicts the dying Moonbrooke guard informing the King and Prince of Midenhall of Hargon's plan. A cutscene depicting the sacking of Moonbrooke Castle was included with the North American version of the game in 1990, which was reincorporated into every other version of the game beginning with Dragon Quest I & II in 1993.

Features intended for the game that could not be implemented due to the memory limitations were saved for Dragon Quest III, such scandalous swimsuit being available for purchase and changing the sprite for the Princess of Moonbrooke when equipped and the scenario of Olivia's Promontory. The scenario of the Prince of Cannock being cursed by Hargon and the two remaining Luminaries curing him with a Yggdrasil leaf was meant to be included in the game, but the memory limitations forced this to be postponed until the Super Famicom remake.

One scenario that would not appear in any future games involved the murder of the Prince of Midenhall by the Princess of Cannock: in an alternate ending sequence the Prince of Cannock would sacrifice himself to destroy Malroth and during the closing cutscene at Midenhall Castle his sister would confront the Prince of Midenhall with a short sword in her hand. She would blame the Prince for her brother's death and plunge the sword in his chest, and his body would slump to the ground as the credits began to roll. Horii would deem this ending to be too sad and cut it even before memory limitations affected the rest of the development cycle.

Version Differences

See: Dragon Quest I & II for more detailed changes and improvements.

A version of the game was released for the MSX home computer on February 6 1988 with the MSX2 getting a version on May 27 of the same year. These versions are infamous for including the scandalous swimsuit cut from the Famicom version as armour for the Princess of Moonbrooke, which matches the mink mantle in defence and has a 1/8th chance to stun enemies each turn. There is also a special scene that plays when the Luminaries inspect the King of Alefgard's room and discover an adult magazine which depicts the Princess of Moonbrook wearing the scandalous swimsuit in a centerfold. The objectively poor quality of the image has lead to the scene becoming a meme amongst Japanese fans.

A version for the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in December of 1990, which included the scrapped opening cutscene. When the game begins, a lengthy cutscene detailing the siege of castle Moonbrooke is shown to the player, along with the last surviving guard making his way to castle Midenhall to warn its King.

Since its original release on the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System four remakes have appeared, with the first being on the compliation title Dragon Quest I & II that was released on the Super Famicom in 1993. The second was a portable version of the same, released the on Game Boy Color, the third was for Cell phones in Japan, and the most current being an iOS/Android release in the Japanese app store on June 26th, 2014 before being internationally released in the same year. All the remakes feature updated graphics and music as well as a few other new features, such as quick-saving on the world map, animated battles, and the automatic redirecting of attacks that target defeated monsters. Starting with the cell phone version, all three descendants of Erdrick are capable of attaining level 50, with the two magic user's stat growth and exp requirements being adjusted accordingly. Additionally, the Zoom spell was made consistent with later games by letting the player choose a select list of destinations to rather than the last place saved.

Due to spacial constraints of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color's screen, the English release of Dragon Warrior I & II in 2000 reverted the localized names of Erdrick, Gwaelin, and others to a closer approximation of their Japanese counterparts. These changes would be undone by Plus Alpha in 2010 with their localization of Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, which elected to retain the NES names as a surprise for older fans. As of the 2014 iOS/Android re-release, while several of the names of characters and locations have retained their NES designations (or very slight edits of such, like Midenhall instead of Middenhall), other characters and locations have been given new translations that are closer to the meanings and puns of the original Japanese version. In addition, monsters, spells, and items have been updated to their modern naming conventions.

Legacy

Dragon Quest II was the first game to introduce the concept of a party to Japanese players, Ultima 3: Exodus being the first popular RPG to do so before in the US and Europe.

Dragon Quest II is widely recognized for improving upon the shortcomings of its predecessor, increasing the depth of battle and exploration considerably. Series director Yuji Horii's writing is also seen as improving during the development of the game, no longer relying solely on fairy-tale archetypes to constitute the setting and characters.

Credits

Original Famicom version

Role	Staff
Scenario writer	Yuji Horii
Character designer	Akira Toriyama
Music composer	Koichi Sugiyama
Scenario assistant	Hiroshi Miyaoka
Chief programmer	Koichi Nakamura
Programmers	Yutaka Gyotoku
	Togo Narita
	Kiyotaka Kono
	Masaaki Okano
	Koji Yoshida
Sound programmer	Takenori Yamamori
CG design	Takashi Yasuno
Assistant	Rika Suzuki
	Hirohide Yoshida
Director	Koichi Nakamura
Producer	Yukinobu Chida
Publisher	Yasuhiro Fukushima

Trivia

• Dragon Quest II was the first game in the series to feature pits and tower balconies from which the Luminaries can fall. (As always, they take no damage from this.)
• The scandalous swimsuit scene in the MSX version was referenced in the 2005 PC title La-Mulana, which was made to pay tribute to the MSX and its library of games. The main character, Lemeza Kosugi, receives the "Provocative Bathing Suit" from the NPC Dracuets at the end of the game's bonus dungeon, the Hell Temple, with a graphic of him in the Bathing Suit flashing on screen. The reference was maintained in the 2011 remake.
• The MSX2 version of the game was the final Dragon Quest title released in the Showa era of Japan.

Soundtrack

Kōichi Sugiyama composed the music and directed all the associated spin-offs. Dragon Quest II's symphonic suite was bundled with Dragon Quest I's symphonic suite and a disc of original compositions as Dragon Quest in Concert. Here is the track listing of the Dragon Quest II portion of that release:

1. Dragon Quest March (ドラゴンクエストマーチ/Dragon Quest March) (1:39)
2. Only Lonely Boy (Love Song 探して/Looking for the Love Song) (2:42)
3. Pastoral ~ Catastrophe (3:21)
4. Château (王城/Royal Castle) (3:03)
5. Town (街の賑わい/Bustle of the Town) (3:30)
6. Fright in Dungeon ~ Devil's Town (恐怖の地下洞～魔の塔/Fear Dungeon ~ Devil's Town) (4:02)
7. Requiem (レクイエム/Requiem) (2:09)
8. Endless World (遥かなる旅路～広野を行く～果てしなき世界/Distant Journey ~ Going in Plain ~ Endless World) (5:43)
9. Beyond the Waves (海原を行く/Going on the Sea) (2:13)
10. Deathfight ~ Dead or Alive (戦い～死を賭して/Fighting ~ Risking Death) (3:56)
11. My Road, My Journey (この道わが旅/My journey is This Road) (4:10)

Gallery

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  Famicom box art

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  The scrapped cutscene shown in the Famicom instruction manual, printed in black & white

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  NES box art

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  Famicom guide

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  Novelization

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  CD Theater

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  The Gods of Evil novel part one

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  The Gods of Evil novel part two

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  4koma comics

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  4koma comics

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  Splash art of the cast for the Super Famicom remake

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  iOS/Android

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  Famitsu magazine article covering the game's development, published April 17 1987

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  Vagabondia Chronicles, a fictional video game from Amphibia S2 Episode 6, made to resemble the Famicom box art to DQ II