Smile Slime PART FIVE

Part Five: Loto and His... err... Her? Merry Men
Started: October 20, 2010

Considered by many a fan to be the finest hour in the entire Dragon Warrior saga, the third game details the story of Loto, the first Dragon Warrior, as he conquered over the Demon Lord Baramos and started a lineage of heroes that would continue saving the world, as detailed in DWI and II. Of course, by now, I've heard quite a bit about this Loto. When I found out that Loto was the hero of III and would start the entire story that I'd been experiencing thus far in my Dragon Warrior venture, I was excited. Here I was going to meet the hero who started a great legacy...

Booting up my Visualboy Advance, the game presents a nice intro about the hero Ortega having to leave to defeat the Demon Lord right after the birth of his baby. Poor kid. Poor Mama, too. Anyway, Ortega is given a special horned helmet, then the King's men give him a great send off, and he ventures into a volcano where it seems he had cornered the Big Bad after all. In an over-the-top battle, Ortega manages to take him down - but falls into the mouth of the volcano with his nemesis.

On the eve of the hero's sixteenth birthday, he is treated to a strange dream where a voice is asking him a series of questions to figure out what kind of person he's talking to. Here is where the player takes over. You play as Loto him... or herself. Yep. You could come all this way and learn that Loto was a girl, should you decide to play as a girl. The way that I see it in my head, yeah, Loto could very well have been female, but legends of great warriors that pass down generations turned her male in the imaginations of all the descendants. And, as we all know, I'm female myself - so my experience is that way. Excuse me. But the mysterious voice asks you several questions to figure out who you are, and all of the questions lead to a different scenario, depending on how you answered. Once the man in the sky tells you what kind of personality you have, then you find yourself waking up to your sixteenth birthday.

For your awesome sweet sixteen, you get to go meet the king and tell him that you want to finish the job your father Ortega started. The King says that's an awesome idea, hands you some gold pieces (referred from now on as G), some weapons and some basic armor - telling you to go to Rudia's Tavern and find some companions. So just a hop, skip, and a jump away, the hero goes to the tavern and can make his own friends upstairs. I don't know if that guy up there is God himself, but if you give him specs on a party member you want, he'll just write them down for you, and then you can go to Rudia and have them summoned to join your party. Those are some cool scrolls! There are a nice number of classes you can make your members into, and you can choose male or female for any of the classes available. Once you distribute the stat seeds to a character, God will give them a personality also. I decided to go with a fun combination: myself, a warrior, a dealer, and a cleric. After creating friends out of nothing, the player can go out into the world!!

Dragon Warrior III doesn't seem very linear, as you can take the game at your pace, but things do have to be done in certain orders before other things open up. For example, your first task is to get the Thief's Key from Najimi Tower. Without it, you cannot get the Magic Bomb which will open the Traveler's Gate which will take you to Romaly. Why do you want to go there? That's the direction Ortega went, and our hero is trying to find Papa's nemesis, that's why.

After getting to Romaly, a whole new continent opens up to you, but you have to be wary of where you walk at all times. If you cross a bridge, the enemies will get significantly harder than on the side you were on before. That tends to be a Dragon Warrior staple as a warning for players to keep an eye on their levels. There's a host of problems over here to solve. The crown of the King was stolen by bandits, there's an entire town cursed to sleep forever, the elven princess seems to have vanished... and it's up to you to solve each of these smaller problems of the world to get experience in battle and artifacts which will further your main purpose.

Eventually, our hero and his... her party will find the Demon Lord Baramos and defeat him, but... wait a minute. There's more shit to do. Looks like Daddy wasn't after the true enemy. Zoma has stepped up to the plate causing a ruckus, and since you're still the appointed hero, guess what?

While the story may seem cliched and overdone, the GBC Dragon Warrior III is a joy to play if you don't mind it. The character creation system makes the game more than replayable, as every player gets to have their own experiences while playing it. When I talk to my friends who play this game about how the game went for them, they tell me of their unique cast of characters and their ways of having to defeat the enemies which differ from my own. Unlike a lot of other JRPGs out there, both good and bad, the only character set in stone for this game is your hero, and using the personality system, even that could be very different. Once I played where the hero was a better spellcaster than a swordswoman, and I've got a friend who's hero is the strongest person in their party overall. There are lot of games, such as Final Fantasy IV, where the party at any given time is always set in stone. At the end of FF4, you always have Cecil, Rosa, Kain, Edge, and Rydia. That's all. Cecil attacks, Rosa heals, Kain jumps, Edge throws crap, and Rydia summons. No matter what version of FF4 you play, Rydia will always learn Meteo at level 68. This isn't the case with DWIII, and I love it for that. My hero can be whatever I built her to be, my partners are what I made them. Yes, each class will learn spells at set levels, however, using them may be a different story based on the personality types that your characters will have throughout the game. Yeah, that Cleric has healing spells, but what if her INT isn't high enough to heal as well as the hero, for example? What if the Cleric has more Vitality than anyone else in the group, and can act as a tank better than a Warrior? It's achievable here! While your story is set, your characters are not, and this is more than wonderful.

What really gets me is how your created characters will also have a great impact on the story. Your dealer will leave to start his or her own town. A member of your group will willingly give up their life to help the hero's party when stuck in a trap. Who will it be? Who knows?

Sadly, Dragon Warrior III was the last chapter set in this world I'd grown to love. Loto's saga is now at rest. When we look at the many chapters of DW4 next time, the new Zenithian Saga will begin.

Thanks for reading.
Much love,
Suzuri