Game Reviews: Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior II

Dragon Warrior (1986)

What a lovely time. I've already played the GameBoy Color version and other remakes, so I knew I loved classic Dragon Quest. It was just time to prove to myself I could enjoy it even in its oldest and most cantankerous form. And I did! Effortlessly!

I've played a number of classic western PC RPGs at this point, and an odd thing about them is how decentralized the "fight monsters → get money and XP to get stronger → fight stronger monsters to get money and XP faster" loop is. Ultima III has only a few equipment upgrades, and leveling up only increases your HP — you have to find a specific endgame area to increase your stats. Questron's main progression method is save-scumming the casino. Grinding is important in Wizardry, but it's hard to feel a strong connection with your characters' growth when they could get decapitated by a ninja at any moment.

None of that's innately bad. (I'm also not saying this represents the full swath of CRPGs of the era; I'm just talking about what I've played lately.) The focus of those games is more on exploring, resource management, and puzzles than on the "make number go up" loop. But it can make them feel more like oddly presented adventure games than "RPGs" in the sense that I understand them. Dragon Quest centralizes and codifies the grind loop, and it felt exceedingly comfy to me coming off its more demanding contemporaries.

The language is admittedly bare. Devs needed the added complexities of Dragon Quest II (many of them borrowed from western PC RPGs, of course) to turn "the console RPG" into something you can spin a million lovely stories out of. But I'm glad to have the first Dragon Quest as a foundational one-off to enjoy and build on.

It's just a nice chill game to veg out to. (I played it while jet-lagged to hell.) The puzzles are nicely telegraphed. The dungeons are mazey enough to keep you paying attention. The mood and art are lovely. The princess is cute. I finished the game with a smile plastered across my face.

The arc here is the churning engine of a genre I adore. It's executed with a bare minimum of moving parts. It feels good to start off weak and grow strong; it feels good to leave a little digital world a happier place than you found it. What more do you need?

Dragon Warrior II (1987)

Dragon Quest took me three days to clear. Dragon Quest II took me a month of on-and-off play. The first game is a fun console romp; the second is undeniably a full-scale RPG.

It's divided into three acts. The opening is linear and gentle. You're led from one location to another as you recruit your full party. The second starts when you get the boat. The whole world opens up to you, and you're left to your own devices to slowly piece together its mysteries. The last act is a grueling climactic dungeon gauntlet.

The second act is the beating heart of the game, and to me, of Dragon Quest in general. Exploring the world, taking notes, and gathering crests is so goddam fun. Famicom Final Fantasy doesn't have anything as open-ended. By the time you get the airship in the first Final Fantasy, you've already explored a huge chunk of the map, and you're constrained in the order you can take on the remaining dungeons. 2 and 3 are even more linear. The overworld is a much larger part of Dragon Quest 2's character than many of its peers and successors, and the game's vastly richer for it.

The climax is what gives Dragon Quest II its dungeon crawler grit. I think its evil is a little overstated, especially on the NES version (where the final save shrine resurrects dead characters for free, which wasn't true of the Famicom version). The hit rate on the much bemoaned instant-death enemies is very low, and I didn't see a single casting of Sacrifice from the Gold Batboons. The possibility of getting screwed by bad dice rolls isn't an unforgivable design sin. It's a fundamental component of the genre's history and identity. If you want something you can mathematically solve, play a puzzle game.

But the dice rolls on the final bosses are admittedly very mean. They each have full heal spells, and use them randomly. Winning depends on raising your damage as high as you can, then hoping for a lucky string of turns. On top of that, even an extremely attentive player is unlikely to find the hero's best sword. Missing that tilts the odds even less in your favor. I had a lot of fun slowly making my way through Dragon Quest II's finale. But if every RPG had this much bite in the endgame, I'd probably get worn out with the genre.

If you step outside the big players into the larger world of Famicom, Super Famicom, and PC-Engine RPGs, you'll see an ocean of games that straightforwardly copy the language of Dragon Quest II. RPGMaker 2000, a tool which helped birth thousands of lovely personal expressive games, is software specifically designed to help you make games like Dragon Quest II. The game synthesized dozens of lessons from its predecessor and its PC contemporaries and codified the language of the console RPG.

It's an important game, but it's also a joyful one. There's a certain warmth to it that's hard to put my finger on. This is my third time through, and every time Traveling with Friends first plays, I well up. The challenges here are far more frightening than in the first Dragon Quest. The world is vaster, its mysteries deeper, its caverns deadlier. But you don't have to face them alone this time. I think that's really nice.

Game Reviews: Meteos and Metroid Dread

Meteos (2005)

This game consumed my heart and mind and soul for a week... Cleared all modes, got all the unlocks and endings, including the True Meteos ending. Took about twenty hours, which is by far the most time I've ever sunk into a game like this.

It's just a perfect little jewel of an arcade falling block puzzler. Launching full screens of blocks feels amazing. Holding L to fast drop blocks constantly while using the generous lock delay to extend your combos feels amazing. The Mission mode tactfully teaches you advanced play through a series of seemingly impossible demands and subsequent epiphanies. It uses the touch screen to better effect than any other DS game I can think of.

Sakurai's a genius; I'm adding him to my list of 00s J-studio auteurs I'm legit a fan of alongside forces of nature like Kamiya and Mikami. I've never been THAT into Smash, but this and Kirby Air Ride have made so happy in the last year. (And of course, his 90s Kirby entries are all-time classics.)

My Multi Mode high score is 851,080. Do you have what it takes to beat me...?

Metroid Dread (2021)

This is my first replay since the game came out — I'm ready to get some thoughts down, finally.

The discourse on Dread has me pulled in a lot of directions. The story has a considered and exciting arc to it. I appreciate how the game pushes the fiction forward from the events of Fusion. You don't fight Ridley, you don't fight any metroids. The game makes a lot of choices that help it feel like a real world and story.

There are some choices I don't agree with. The last EMMI encounter is anti-climactic. I don't like how the resolution there is telegraphed like two rooms before the scene instead of way earlier in the game. But the actual climax is thrilling and well-done. I like Samus's Dante-isms in the cutscenes. They're obviously having some fun refuting Other M's characterization, but it wasn't so over-the-top that it felt cloying to me.

The action design is pretty good. The bosses in the back half especially have a lot of exciting and kinetic design. I like the twin soldiers, Z-57, and the final boss the most. I had a good time learning the new boss rush, although it did make me conscious of how the earlier bosses are a little more Zelda-y and uninteresting. Hollow Knight obviously goes much further in terms of "Mega Man Zero bosses in a metroidvania," but I was happy with Dread's bosses.

The art design and music made next to no impression on me. It's a very plain and functional game aesthetically. ZDR doesn't feel as defined in my head as Zebes or even the BSL, despite (or because of) its much larger size.

I despise the overabundance of power-up gate types. It feels unbelievably artificial to run around bumping my head against charge beam doors, wide beam doors, grapple beam doors, missile doors, super missile doors, etc. It's a lazy shortcut around doing actual level design, a grating distraction that intrudes on the naturally pleasant frisson of being tactfully guided around a game world.

I don't know. I love Metroid Fusion, so the criticisms of Dread I've seen that amount to "I hate Fusion and this is a lot like Fusion" irk me. The story is cool, but not so strong that it distracts me from the genre-isms getting on my nerves. It's the best Metroid game since 2004, but is that really saying much?

The worst parts of Dread are when it feels like a "metroidvania" in the most formulaic and tedious ways possible. The best parts are the original and exciting set-pieces that played-out structure exists in service of. The end result is a decently fun time. That's as much and as little as I can say for it.

Game Reviews: Breath of Fire and Sweetest Monster

Breath of Fire (1993)

Breath of Fire's so goddam fiddly. There's always some shit you're missing because you didn't note down all 817 locked doors you're supposed to come back to once you've unlocked one of the 39 different powerups/keys. There's so much layered-on Videogame Bullshit, all their attempts to complicate the (extremely basic) formula just get on my nerves.

It's very funny that your level doesn't matter. The whole game's about finding the right equipment and transformations (by backtracking to locked doors). I kept a full stock of repels (available cheaply in the very first town) and played like two thirds of the game with encounters turned off. I expected that to catch up with me at some point, but it never did.

It's long and slow and relentlessly obtuse; it's also lock-step linear with brainless, meaningless fighting. The big story beats whiff. I can see having a better time if you're not as annoyed by all the lock-and-key Zelda shit as I am, but this is not the kind of journey I personally want out of a console RPG.

Sweetest Monster (2017) and Sweetest Monster: Refrain (2022) (Itch.io, Steam)

Loved these stories to bits. The first game wears its meta-commentary on its sleeve — the slow-burn build-up is fun and funny and hot, then the payoff hits like a truck. The second game is more grounded and miserable, a slow-motion train-crash unpacking all the ramifications of the previous game's twisted conclusion.

The games never flinch, never soften the blow. They also don't lean so hard into the exploitation elements that they become comical and uninvolving. They're stories about a weak and cowardly man that refuses to make a real choice until it's too late. Violence comes in many forms. I think Bell is best understood as a metaphor, a devil on the shoulder for a husband and father who doesn't understand what he has until he's let it all slip away through his own pathetic inaction.

The story itself is obviously fantastical; the portrayal of sexual violence doesn't map to the real world in any way that makes sense. But men don't have be ensnared by a demon to hurt their families in devastating ways. And they can be wretchedly self-aware the whole time they're doing it.

2024-2025 Wrap-up

Episode Art by Sayara T.

It's been a while since the last proper wrap-up post! Let's do a little run-down of what I've been up to over the last few years.

• Rhete, Polly, and I restarted the Sockscast after a couple of years off. Between equipment updates and a much tighter episode run-time, I think we're making better radio than ever. The 2025 GOTY episodes are a great place to jump in!
• Launched a new website! Take a look around — I have links to my various web presences, lists of games I really like, and a whole mess of links to other cool sites. It feels good to have a home online that's mine again, instead of being wholly dependent on services like Itch or Blogger.
• Made five little games for Glorious Trainwrecks.
• Contributed to the 2024 Tunnels of Vextro and the 2025 Vextro Unplugged anthologies.
• Wrote a 45k word Twine, my largest prose work to date (published under a different label), plus a big post-release update a year later.
• Started writing games criticism again.
• Judged for the IGF twice, met some cool peers, played a bunch of very cool games. 
• Contributed to the first Unearthed Treasure Room games showcase.
• Was interviewed by Electric Airship on YouTube.
• Made a little Puzzlescript and then made a collab level pack with friends.
• Made a little Videotome horror short.
• Contributed a map to the Caves of ZZT Remix collab ZZT. 

There's nothing more reinforcing for an artist than having a community of brilliant, supportive peers. My friends in the Socks, Vextro, and Domino communities (plus friends that don't fit neatly into any of those boxes) have done more for my creative drive than anything else. 

This year's starting strong with the Cookie Cutter jam. We're getting an insane number of submissions! I made a whole one-hour micro-RPG in ten days! That's a very fast turn-around for me! After the jam, I'm hoping to polish off at least one of my two extant mega-projects, then slam out some more short-form works. Look forward to it!

Cookie Cutter RM2k3 Jam and Demon's Keep

pixie forest by peb

I still can't believe this one is happening. After being lightly bullied into it by some gamedev friends, I pulled the trigger on a game jam idea I've had in my back-pocket. I made a handful of maps in RPGMaker 2003, and challenged friends to make a complete game using only the maps I made. You can read the complete jam rules here.

The response has been insane! This is the first game jam I've run on Itch, and we've already gotten seventeen entries and counting. Over fifty people have joined the jam! I've played about half the entries so far, and I'm having a blast. The gamedev channel on the Socks discord has been popping off constantly since the jam started. The vibes have been warm and supportive and exactly what I'd want from an event like this.

Descent to the Underworld by onamint

RPGMaker 2003 is on sale on Steam for $2 until the 23rd. There are still nine days left on the jam — please feel free to jump in! Make a big epic project or a tiny shitpost or anything in-between, all are welcome.

I finished my entry, Demon's Keep, in about ten days. My aim was to make a Completely Normal RPG using the template maps, then balance and present it as tightly as I could with the RPGMaker skillset I've built up over the years. I think it turned out really good — give it a play, along with everyone else's submissions! I thought I'd be an early entry (and give friends a "normal game" baseline to bounce off and twist in wild directions), but instead a bunch of folks beat me to the punch. 

I couldn't be happier or more humbled by the response. I love to see a mix of gamedev vets and complete newcomers joining the jam. There are a lot of entries that are friends' very first uploads to itch! I hope to run (or help run) more events like this in the future. I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction from helping empower folks to make art.

Distant Times and Vextro Unplugged

I participated in my fourth Vextro anthology! The 2025 theme was "Vextro Unplugged," which everyone interpreted in different ways. This was a smaller one with just four entries, but I think they're all bangers. 

My entry was Distant Times. It's a collection of flash fiction I've written with my local writing group. At the time I got this together, I had about twenty pieces. I picked eight of them I particularly liked, polished them up, then figured out how to present them as a website, ePub, and PDF. (I also went back and updated Wayward to have proper web and ePub versions.) 

Formatting fiction for web is non-trivial. It took a while to figure out how to make the web page and ePubs look nice to me. There's a lot of overlap thankfully — behind the curtain, ePubs are just zipped up HTML/CSS files with some extra metadata. I generated the PDF with Pandoc. In the future, I'd like to build a pipeline with Pandoc that easily generates a web page, ePub, and PDF from a markdown file. I plan to release more prose fiction online in the future, so I want to make it as straightforward to maintain as possible.

I really like the eight pieces I picked. Many of them have the violent immediacy that I think characterizes a lot of my storytelling. A few go for something different though, in ways I think strengthen the overall collection. My favorite piece is probably A Wake (which I based the thumbnail image off of), but reader reactions have been pleasantly varied in terms of favorites. The total word count of all eight stories is a little under 10,000 words — give 'em a read if you're interested!

War in the Gut Biome by Sunday

Some quick rundowns of the other entries (plagiarizing my own itch comments since it's been a few weeks):

• it's easy and it gets easier by nilson. nilson is a champion at creating warm wet human texture in whatever medium he works in. This one is a short 3d walk-around game; like all his works it pulled me in and didn't let go, I felt something welling in my chest the whole time I played.
• War in the Gut Biome by vitasunday. PDF zine mixing RPGMaker assets and tropes with local LA food culture. Pure joy from start to finish, had a big grin on my face the whole time I read it.
• SIMROT by wasnotwhynot. Wuzzy writes stories that sit in my spine and spiral inward, tightening and tightening the more I read. This one shares some elements in common with Whole Numbers, another recent fave from their output. This one is meaty at 12k words, and I really enjoyed the journey it took me on.

I love my cool brilliant friends and I love participating in these jams. I can't wait to see what everyone makes next!

Sketch Gamedev and Glorious Trainwrecks

Since late 2024, I've shared five little games on Glorious Trainwrecks, a site I've adored for a long time. The intent was to embrace "sketch gamedev," to slam out tiny games in a few hours a-piece. I've enjoyed many games made in this mode by others. I thought posting on the site, which is all about this spirit of playful experimentation, would help me enter it myself. (Glorious Trainwrecks is also a creative crucible that helped forge many of my all-time favorite freeware devs. In my arrogance, I thought contributing to the site would help my own light shine similarly bright.)

I failed miserably at my goal. I did successfully slam out a couple games in a day or two each. Then the third one took a week. Then the fourth and fifth ones took multiple weeks spread out over several months each. Ah well. 

The first game was Broccoli, a tiny RPGMaker 2003 "horror" game. I made it the same way I've continued approaching flash fiction for our local writer's club. I generated ten random words on this site, picked two ("broccoli" and "horror"), then made a game. I got the bulk of it down in 2-3 hours, then polished it up and posted it the next day. I consider this a Success in terms of "embracing sketch dev," and if I'd continued with this approach I'd be writing a different blog post.

A little before Christmas last year, I released Action Sketches on itch. It collects the remaining four games I released on Glorious Trainwrecks, all action games made in Love2d. (My favorite is probably Danse Macabre, made in about a week, but I like all of them.) 

If I really wanted to make sketch games, I needed to use easy tools I'm comfy with like RPGMaker, Bitsy, or Twine. I'm still very much a newbie when it comes to coding games from scratch, and making even simple games in Love takes me a long time. I did learn a lot about how I like organizing and building games on the back-end, and I feel much better equipped to tackle other projects in the future. So, still a win ultimately, even if I didn't turn out a whole feast of games like I wanted.

There's one more "problem" that got in the way of me making sketch games. Every single one of these I put out, friends immediately jumped in, live-posted them, and said nice things to me. I have an intensely supportive peer group of artist friends; I want to reward their care and attention with competent, enriching art. That's an extra bit of self-imposed (and obviously optional!) pressure that makes it harder to just throw something together, to not worry endlessly about whether it "works" or not.

I want to keep experimenting with quicker modes of creation (in addition to longer form works, of course). I might try approaching it like I have my flash fiction, mostly keeping it to myself and a few close peers, then releasing a collection of works I particularly like all at once. Or maybe I'll get over myself and post a bunch of art on Glorious Trainwrecks (or elsewhere) again. My friend sraëka has been doing that on itch for the last few months and they're having a lovely time.

It was a good experiment. I've been at this in earnest for thirteen years; I think I'm finally figuring out what I want my art practice to look like, one teeny tiny step at a time.