Slime Smile - PART 2

PART 2: The Starry Night Tournament
Started October 1, 2010

You guys may have noticed while reading my inner thoughts here that I have said both “Dragon Quest” and “Dragon Warrior” in passing. Most video game fans know about how the original Japanese name is Dragon Quest, but due to name issues in the United States release the first game was called Dragon Warrior and it stuck for a while. Now that the name for Dragon Quest also belongs to Square Enix, all of the games now released are called Dragon Quest. Japanese purists and those who got into the series in the later days call the series Dragon Quest. Those of us who have been into it since before the change still call it Dragon Warrior with fondness. It’s hard to refuse those nostalgic feelings, y’know. Anyway, my venture into the Traveler’s Gate has yet to end. Not by far.

After spending a long while with Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara’s Adventure, I became curious - a friend of mine on Facebook kept mentioning his love for the first Dragon Quest Monsters game so much that to this day, he still owns his old Gameboy and DWM even after the rest of the world has surpassed the GBA and moved straight on to the awesomeness that is the DS. I had to see exactly what it was that kept fans coming back, even with newer monster games running rampant these days.

I once again booted up my Visualboy Advance to find out.

In Dragon Warrior Monsters, you play as a little boy who lives with his big sister, Maya Lou. One night after Maya Lou falls asleep, you sneak out of bed and go to the living room, when all of a sudden, monsters pop out of the drawers in the corner! One comes up to you and asks if you're Maya Lou, and they figure out that you aren't, then dash to the bedroom to kidnap your sister into the drawers! In a moment of shock, another monster comes up to you asking who you are and when it finds out that it's too late to save Maya Lou, it asks you to follow it. The drawers take you to a place in the Starry Night Temple, where
the Master Monster Tamer tells you that if you compete in the Starry Night Tournament held here in GreatTree, then you'll be granted a wish. Thus begins your quest to climb the ranks of the Battle Arena to qualify to compete in the Tournament. The king gives you a single slime named Slib and sends you into a
randomly generated dungeon through a Traveler's Gate, where your first quest is to find his pet Healer and take it home.

Of course, going against a Healer with just a level 1 old ass slime by himself really isn’t going to cut it. I mean, the thing’s got HP and healing spells (considering the name) up the ass for its level, so the player has to find himself a few new friends on the way. Using the treasures picked up as the journey goes along, you can try to get some monsters to join you by offering them food, like in the sequel game. Monsters sure do like their meats, and they tend to be picky about them. Don’t expect for every monster in the game to go gaga over a single piece of Beef Jerky, my friends. Sometimes, a monster will come up to you after battle to ask if it can join your team without being bribed. It’s a low chance, but if you’re so broke you can’t afford some treats, which you will be when the story first gets started, then you can’t really refuse. When on the way to find the Healer, personally I got myself a Dracky and a Slug to accompany my slime, and we were about level 5 when we got to him. Afterward, Hale the Healer joined my team instead of going back to the King, and I booted the Slug out of my party, as he was doing nothing but soaking up hits anyway.

That party lasted me a long time. I didn’t breed them until they were at least in their upper 30s because I liked them. Slib, Flap (my Dracky), and Ring (what I named the Healer). I saw so many monsters that reminded me of my quests in the normal Dragon Warrior games. The plot didn’t feel so forced once I really picked up the dungeon exploring pace. Eventually, I had recruited so many monsters that I was running out of places to put them, and I would go back to breed at random to save space and keep the eggs tucked away so I could get more. As much as I liked my team, Slib, Flap, and Ring were starting to get obsolete after the first five boss battles - as I had never made any compound monsters with them. They are very common monsters that are well known mascots of the entire Dragon Warrior franchise. Who can say no to a team of smiling cuties like them? People who want to move on to new dungeons, that’s who.

Sadly, Dragon Warrior Monsters forces one to make new monsters if the player wants to keep up at the game’s pace. This is not the case with just the first game, but all of the Dragon Warrior Monsters games out there from the first to Joker.  Depending on the monster’s parents, the new babies can level up more and learn more skills than a monster you just catch in the wild. I suppose you could say that their skills are in their DNA or something like that, but whatever the case is, it’s possible for my favorite monster in all of the entire series of Dragon Warrior called the HaloSlime (later renamed as the Angel Slime) who’s description explains that only the slimes with the purest of hearts can become one - can learn a very powerful dark based Evil Slash - because one of the possible ways to get one is by marrying a Slime of high intellect with a zombie that learns Evil Slash naturally. HaloSlimes are supposed to be the epitome of purity. This doesn’t make much sense. It’s like you had to kill a slime to get a slime’s soul… Creepy.

Well, there’s not much else to talk about the first DWM game. The huge amount of monsters, the creative if somewhat nonsensical style of breeding, the randomly generated treasures and dungeons, and the excuse plot are all nice things. For a Gameboy game, the graphics are very nice. The best part of the graphics are the monster images themselves - for your status menu and in battle. They are nicely detailed. My favorite thing, besides the wonderful game play and potential for multiplayer action, about all of the DWM series is the music. This stands for all Dragon Warrior games from the classic start on the NES to the recent ninth installment for the DS and all of those in-between. Koichi Sugiyama is considered the Grandfather of Video Game Music, and that title is well deserved. The music doesn’t sound like a sloppy last-minute phoned-in soundtrack provided for a spin-off. (I’m looking at you, Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology!)  The unique pieces are great, but there are also lovely remixes of old themes from the main series, too.

It didn’t take long for me to want to jump games again before completing one. I’ll admit, I haven’t really beaten many of the Dragon Warrior series myself. I didn’t have the NES games. My first DW title was Dragon Warrior VII on the PSX, which was given to me by my father when I was around 16 or so. Later, about a month or two after that, I picked up DW 1 and 2 together for Gameboy Color. It’s not a series I grew up with, like Legend of Zelda or Final Fantasy. However, at this point in my life, I find myself closer to Dragon Warrior than I do with either Zelda or FF. Am I missing something here?

I felt my heart opening more and more to this world, with much more to be discovered. In fact, it was in a dungeon in DWM that I started to think about all of my DW experiences thus far. What tipped me off was getting to the end of one of the dungeons to find a princess standing next to a sleeping Dragon. Not just any Dragon, but that green, kneeling, wingless Dragon that served as a boss in the original Dragon Warrior guarding Princess Lora. I talked to the Princess, who asked if I would carry her home. Of course, the boy that serves as the player avatar for this game is about eleven years old, and wasn’t able to pick her up. So she just said she’d wait for a stronger man. Oh, come on, lady, Princess Zelda didn’t demand that I CARRY her when I saved her, y’know, she actually walked on her own two feet behind me, but whatever. Just then, the dragon stirred in his slumber and my monsters had to step in and save my little hind end. After beating the dragon to a pulp,  when I talked to the Princess again, she said she liked me because I was strong, but that I wasn’t the youth she’s waiting for. I wish I could have told her, “Hey, I killed the Dragon. You don’t have to stay here in this dungeon anymore.” After going back while leveling up, she’s still there, waiting for a particular youth. Yep, same princess. Hell, even the dungeon room was shaped the same as the original’s. It was a great way to have an allusion to the Ur Example of the JRPG.

Which brings me to my next point. Dragon Warrior Monsters would not be without Dragon Warrior. Just for fun, I think I’ll hop a traveler’s gate and see what I can find around the town of Tantagel.

Thanks for reading.
Much love,
-Suzuri