Dragon Slayer

 Okay, after finishing Panoramah Toh, I finally took a deep dive into Dragon Slayer.

First thing's first. Panoramah Toh is not actually an predecessor of this game, in my opinion, in any sense other than that it happened to have been written by the same person. Beyond that, there's almost nothing in common.

By all accounts, Dragon Slayer is the first real action RPG. It's a very rudimentary game (actually even more so than Panoramah Toh), but it has a certain addictive quality once you get the hang of it.

I'd like to get one thing out of the way. I'm not totally comfortable playing games via unofficial emulation, but have still done it in cases like Panorama Toh where there's no discernible hope if it ever being playable to me otherwise. I had started out with the same reasoning for Dragon Slayer, only to discover later, almost by accident, that I was quite wrong.

One page I was reading about Dragon Slayer casually mentioned something called Project Egg. After a little research, I discovered that it's a Japanese storefront, similar in principle to GOG.com, that offers an officially sanctioned way to play a plethora of old Japanese computer games, including most of the games that Nihon Falcom built its reputation on (though not Panorama Toh, in this case). There's a small catch; in addition to the purchase fee for the games there's a subscription fee for the site. But reportedly you can still play the games you've bought even if your subsciption lapses, though they won't offer support if you need it then.

Via this site, I was actually able to purchase the original Dragon Slayer. In fact, there were two major versions of the game and both are available, and I could play both of them. This also helped to resolve some ambiguity as to the nature of the ROM I had actually downloaded before (which seems to have been version 2.0 rather than 1.1, which is what I would have preferred to start with. It also resolved a question I had about whether my emulator was running the game too fast (it definitely was!). As a huge bonus, I could also download a PDF of the original game manual!

So, on to the game itself. I've mostly been playing the 1.1 version so far, and it's possible that some of what I say below might be exclusive to that version.

It's a very simple game overall, but there's a learning curve to it. If you had the manual and could read Japanese, that learning curve would undoubtedly be smaller.

The game world is one of the most basic structures I've ever seen in an RPG. There are no towns or castles or anything. There are no NPC's in this game besides the monsters you fight. The world is not super large; you can traverse the whole horizontal and vertical axes of the map in minutes. Covering everything will take longer, but even that isn't super long once you learn and develop your toolset. There are hard boundaries on the north and south of the map, but the east-west axis wraps around on itself. You can initially move in four directions, but once you gain enough EXP you can also move diagonally.

The locations of note are the house you start with, (which, importantly, can be moved), various gravestones from which monsters spawn, various portals that transport you between themselves in sequence, tons and tons of treasure chests, and most importantly, an eponymous three-headed dragon stationed somewhere on the map. The objective of the game is to slay this dragon and take the crowns he hoards back to your house. 

Once you do, you can repeat the process on a different map. Nothing carries over; it's effectively just replaying the game with different obstacles and treasures available. There are, apparently, 10 maps in the 1.1 version of the game, and 20 in the 2.0 version. I've only played the first two so far, without finishing the second yet. The second map has secondary "houses" whose effect is to teleport you to the location of your actual house.

But the dragon is to strong to fight until you grow your stats high enough. The basic gameplay loop is essentially a large grind until you are able to defeat the dragon. It's simple, sometimes very tedious-feeling, but also surprisingly addicting.

When you start the game, you are unarmed, and your first task is to find a sword. There's actually one visible on the starting screen, but it's behind a wall and you have to be creative to get it.

There are actually various swords scattered through the map. It's kind of up to the player to decide how to go about getting one. I found a quick, easy way to use a ring to get the one you see at the beginning, but I've seen various alternate recommendations online.

Collecting more than one sword has no additional effect.

Your house is incredibly important. Going there will refill your health, to either exactly 1,000 or to your current experience total, whichever is higher. If you have any coins, you also trade them in for health and if you have power stones, you can deposit them to increase your strength.

There are four other items scattered through the map that you will want to make use of. The most important are the power stones. These look kind of like little snowflakes. I couldn't figure out what these were for right off (although if I'd had the manual right off I'd have been able to figure it out). Grab these and bring them back to your house; each one increases your strength by, I think, 2500. This is the single most important part of the gameplay after picking up the sword at the beginning.

At first, I thought these were spawning randomly on the map, but that's not the case. There's a set number right from the get-go that doesn't change, but there's a ghost that flies around that randomly moves them to other locations. On my first almost-successful run through the game, I discovered that the limited number of power stones can actually make the map unwinnable if you have enough bad luck against a certain enemy--more on that later.

A very useful early-game item is the cross. If you carry it, you become invulnerable to monster attacks, although you can't attack back either. This can be very useful for searching out a sword at the beginning. The catch: you can get stuck between monsters in a way that leaves you alive but unable to move, effectively soft-locking you. Although, I found that if you drop the cross and pick it up again, it often causes the enemy to move away from you briefly, which can sometimes be used to avoid being trapped.

Another item that I realized the importance of belatedly is the ring. It lets you move walls, giving you access to treasure you might not otherwise be able to get to. That becomes less important as you eventually gain the abililty to destroy walls, but even then you can move them strategically to keep enemies away (you can even block off spawn points if you want to take the time).

But, even more important than all that is the ability to move your house. Since you only realize the effect of power stones from returning them there, you need to move your house to where the power stones are to keep the game from getting too tedious. This also helps keep you safe if you start running into monsters that are stronger than you.

There are various magic potions scattered around. Each one of these adds to your magic power by one. There are far, far more of these than you will ever need, but you will definitely want to collect a good number of these. I didn't experiment enough with the magic my first time through, because I didn't understand the system, but it's very useful. (Maybe most critically, you actually need magic power to save your game!)

The coins scattered throughout the map are useful early on, when you're still very weak, but their importance seems to drop off dramatically once you get some experience points behind you. You take the coins to your home to exchange them for HP. But even without coins, you will still gain enough HP to match your current EXP, so the coin effect becomes comparably small over time.

Lastly, there are keys. You want to find and keep one of these nearby at all times. You need to use them to open the chests you see laying around. Many of the power stones are in the chests, I don't think there's enough outside of chests to get you to victory (though that could vary by map, I suppose).

I guess there's one more thing: not an item per se, but a skeleton that attaches itself to you if you walk over or near it. It's a curse that keeps you from using any magic. You can get rid of it by walking into your house or a teleporter. I've also heard that walking over crosses destroys it, but I don't think that works in version 1.1.

Any item on the map, as well as any item you're carrying (except the sword) can be stolen and moved to a new location by a ghost).

So, then we get to the enemies. Combat involves walking into a space that is occupied by an enemy. You then damage them based on the difference between your strength and their defense. If your strength is lower than their defense, or if you don't have a sword yet, you do 10 damage (except, it seems, for the 3-headed dragon, which is invulnerable until your strength exceeds its defense).

The same is true in reverse, but your own defense is equivalent to your EXP total. The HP you gain from going to your house also increases with your EXP total. So your survivability directly ramps up as your EXP increases. 

Typically, each time you kill an enemy, a higher level enemy will spawn at the nearest grave. Although it's tempting to grind against the strongest enemies you can survive, this mechanic makes it advantageous to hunt for weaker enemies, at least until you can get enough power stones behind you to increase your strength.

Some enemies, instead of dealing damage, will actually lower your magic power, your experience, or worst of all, your strength.

That last one creates a bottleneck in the game play. There's an enemy, with red and black coloring, that looks like of like a cloaked vampire or something, that lowers your strength when you attack them. It's extremely advantageous not to let this enemy spawn until your strength is high enough to kill it in one hit. Since power stones are limited in number, enough hits from this enemy can make the map unwinnable.

But, even if you do happen to spawn more of them, they can still be dealt with safely using magic.

That brings me to the last major gameplay element. Once you have a potion and a certain amount of EXP, you can start casting spells. Each spell seems to unlock at a certain EXP threshold. Interestingly, saving your game is also a spell, and seems to be one of the last ones to unlock.

There are two ways to cast spells. You can press Return for a menu, which you cycle through with Space and select from with Return again. Or you can use a keyboard shortcut; the game's intro shows you a list.

Basically, the danger level in the early game drops off considerably once you learn some magic. The jump spell moves you randomly to another part of the map, so if you ever find yourself trapped and/or about to die you can quickly escape. The Return spell does even better by taking you directly to your house (was this an inspiration for the Dragon Quest spell?).

There's a spell to break walls, and anther to "kick" walls down the path, which negates the need for a ring to reach many treasure rooms. I think the former doesn't even actually take any magic power to use.

There's a spell that lets you see a larger view of the map. I think it covers the entire east-west distance, but not the north-south, and it's a great way to zero in on treasure troves or the likely location of the 3-headed dragon.

There's also a Fly spell, last to be unlocked if I recall, that lets you fly around unimpeded by walls and monsters for a limited time, which is great for finding pretty much anything you might be looking for, such as a stolen key, a loose power stone, the dragon, or a crown. It's also an option, along with Return, for quickly getting to power stones far from your house.

Then, there are two spells for dealing with enemies. One is a freeze spell, which permanently freezes the target. This is fantastic if you accidentally spawn the strength-draining enemy too early. It also lets you safely kill enemies with high strength relative to your exp.

The other is the flash spell, which freezes everything on the screen for a short time, letting you get out of a tight spot if you get nearly surrounded by strong enemies.

Lastly is the save/reload feature. This is interesting, and different than anything I've seen. You can't save until you get enough experience points. And even then, when you actually load the save, there is actually an EXP penalty! I'm not sure if it's a percentage or a set amount; I've read both online, but it's there. It's not too big a deal as, once your strength is high enough, EXP comes pretty easily. But it's there.

But it's strange that Restoring also costs MP. That one doesn't require EXP, but if you close out the program and reload, you have to find a potion before you can restore your previous game!

Well, that's about it. The dragon appears invulnerable until you have 350,000 strength. But once you exceed that, it only takes one hit for each of his three heads. You have to attack the heads; the tail will knock you back to your house. You might get burned if you attack the head, and you might lose a lot of health depending on your EXP. But, as near as I can tell, this game actually has some programming that keeps anything from killing you in one hit from full health. So you should be able to beat each head regardless of your current EXP.

It's not over yet once you beat him. Once he's dead, the four crowns he's hoarding get scattered  randomly across the map, and you have to find them and return them to your house (the Fly spell is great for this). But your house also gets moved back to its original location and four graves spawn immediately around it, spawning swarms of enemies rapidly.

Also, magic (at least not Return) doesn't seem to work while holding a crown, so you have to cut your way through these swarms of enemies to return the crown. If your EXP was low when you beat the dragon, this part might be very hard. You might have to drop the crown and use your magic to safely restore your health at your house. But your EXP should go up quickly now as you have all these enemies at hand.

There's at least one enemy that takes more strength to significantly damage than even the dragon. It's a warrior with a shield, who looks surprisingly like Link from the NES game Zelda II. I didn't face him on the first map, but I read elsewhere that there may not be enough power stones on the entire first map to pass his defense (but there's enough on the second map for sure). He also has very high strength, so if he spawns here you might need magic to get past him. There aren't any enemies stronger than him; if you beat him a skeleton spawns to start the cycle over.

I discovered yesterday that strength can't go past around 650,000, and if you try it will actually, catastrophically, wrap around back to around 1,000. I read elsewhere that the same thing happens with experience. So there's not really any reason to prolong the game once you can beat the strongest monsters (and that's not even a necessity by any means).

So, that's pretty much it. The game is a combination of exploring and grinding, where the treasure you find from exploring is actually the more important part of the grind. It's simple, more rudimentary than I'd expected. But it's also surprisingly addictive. I could see a clone or port of this game being well-suited for casual play on a modern smartphone.

I want to dive into version 2.0 a little bit more. There doesn't seem to be a good "version difference" reference online. Some that I've read and/or experienced:

-Starting stats are different, as are experience totals from beating enemies. I believe some enemies have different stats.

-In 2.0, crosses on the ground act as barriers for enemies, and also reportedly destroy the skeleton curse that keeps you from using magic.

-Instead of four graves around your house, monsters spawn directly from your house after beating the dragon.

I'm sure there are more. If I find them, I'll write them here.

I've also read, apparently incorrectly, that the graphics were changed for version 2.0. This doesn't seem to be true, but there was another version of this game after 2.0 that changed the main character graphics and added some maps. I think this was called the "Login" version or something like that.

The last thing I'll type here is that I tried out the first parts of Xanadu, which by all accounts is the sequel to this game (although the game itself and its documentation seem strangely devoid of any reference to that). Based on first impressions, it looks like a completely different type of game from Dragon Slayer, rather than an evolution it. It also looks a lot more advanced. It may well be the true jumping-off point for future action RPG's.