Dragon Warrior III

Dragon Warrior III is a role playing game, based on what is essentially a Dungeons & Dragons type of adventure. Play as the young hero of Aliahan, child of the great Ortega who disappeared on quest against Baramos the Demon. Ortega was last seen fighting on the rim of a volcano. Now king and country are depending on you to save the realm.

There is an interesting dream sequence at the beginning, which involves a simple personality test posed by a mysterious voice. This ends by assigning you a personality such as 'Lonesome' or 'Silly'. Your personality type will affect your character's development through the game.

Before setting out on quest, you need to pick companions from 8 different character classes, with various attributes and abilities - Warriors, Fighters, Mages, Clerics, Thieves, Dealers, Jesters, and Sages. It's good to bring along someone who can fight well (especially at the early levels), someone with healing abilities, and a magic user. Thieves are good at finding hidden treasure, and my sons liked having Jesters in the party just for fun. Keep an eye on your money and use it to buy offensive and defensive equipment for the group.

Your party heads off into the unknown, in single file on the screen. If anyone expires along the way, a coffin trails behind instead of a character icon (in my first attempt, I ended up leading 4 coffins). There are many places to explore, including towers, caves, towns, and dungeons. You will see cycles of day and night. There are monsters to defeat and they often show up unexpectedly. These include slime and ravens, a horned hare, a giant web-footed amphibian, and a creature that is half man and half bat. Fights do not show blood or gore; monsters simply disappear when defeated.

Defeating monsters can win Monster Medals with their pictures on them. Medals can be collected and traded using the Gameboy link cable. Your party also gains in experience points by defeating the bad guys, and over time this increases the levels of each character type, so that your group becomes more powerful and can go against bigger bosses. There are special items to be bought, won in battle or found, such as the Thief Key. Talking to people in towns can gather useful information to help the party, and the Temple is handy to revive your dead or remove curses (but don't forget to donate).

You can also take a break from saving the world to play Pachisi or bet on battling monsters in the Monster Stadiums (for rewards of course). I used to play a Dungeons & Dragons adventure called Realms on the Mac and found this one similar in its basics. As in all these games there is a definite learning curve on the character types and how to use their abilities in monster encounters, but gameplay is open-ended and addictive.

My kids have enjoyed Dragon Warrior III very much, though not perhaps quite as much as the Oracle titles which are their current favorites. They like to have a jester in their party and to go against the horned hares, which they called 'wascally wabbits'. Given that it is about fighting and is complex to master, I recommend the game for 12 year-olds up to adults like me who enjoy this kind of role playing adventure.