Tag Archives: RPG

Not Skyrim but… Morrowind!

A few years ago I got Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on Steam for very little money on a sale, so I could play Elder Scrolls on a cheap laptop with a poor graphics card. I got Skyrim around the same time and spent most of my time on that.

Recently I’ve come back to Morrowind and it’s such a phenomenal, immersive, very otherworldly experience. I feel like Skyrim, while graphically superior, doesn’t have quite the originality of Morrowind. Both the creatures and the vegetation are just plain weird. I personally love exploring the dark elves’ Vivee location, a seemingly mazelike winding of corridors on multiple levels in giant constructions.

I’ll be playing more for sure… and after 9 hours I’m still level 1, as I’ve focused so much on exploring and conversing with characters rather than battle.

“Brave Dungeon” for 3DS

This cheap $5 hack and slash “RPG” provides plenty of fun if you just want to battle monsters and level up while advancing further through five different dungeons. Each floor of each dungeon has a boss to fight. The aesthetics are simple but pleasant, and the controls are very basic since it consists of turn-based battles only. There’s not much beyond that… while you can swap party members there’s really no reason to. There are some cool items that you collect while adventuring, and that’s the main upgrade path for the game. Worth $5 for sure!

Retro Game Review – “Dragon Warrior” for NES

Game Title: Dragon Warrior
Game System: NES

Rating
Graphics: 7 / 10
Gameplay: 8 / 10
Replay Value: 4 / 10
Difficulty: This game is more a time investment than a difficult challenge

I finally beat this game a week or two ago. It’s one of my absolute favorite old RPGs, and was a fairly early hack and slash RPG. The premise is you’re a warrior tasked with defeating the dragonlord to basically save the world. You’ll spend most of your time leveling up to face more and more difficult dungeons and roaming monsters over the course of maybe 20 hours. You wander around an overworld map facing enemies that appear at random intervals, wandering from town to town and speaking to locals for clues to the fairly simple puzzles/hidden items spread throughout the game.

Gold, to buy better weapons, armor and items, as well as room and board at inns to restore health and magic points, is difficult to amass early in the game but is absurdly plentiful later on. As you level up and have increased stats, you face enemies that both provide more XP and more gold, making it possible to buy increasingly expensive and powerful weapons and armor.

The best part of the game is the monster fighting sequences. Each monster has a brightly colored image that pops up when you encounter the enemy. Some monsters are just variations of color or minor detail built upon other monster art, but there are many unique designs overall.

The most dangerous part of the game is questing too long and letting your health get so low that you can’t make it back home – but the entire time I played I only died a few times.

Overall a classic RPG for the NES that’s a blast to play once, but not so much a second time.