The Dragon Warrior series showed decent progress from I to II and that has only continued in Dragon Warrior III which takes almost every element of gameplay to the next level- the world is much bigger, there's more varieties in enemies and locations, the puzzles are more engaging. Still though, there are some holdovers that make this a very obviously old-school RPG, and thus not particularly fun by today's standards. Dragon Warrior III was released in 1988 and at that point story wasn't really important to RPGs yet- characters don't really 'develop' because they're completely created by the player, and can be swapped in and out for other create-a-characters at any point. DW III also came with a basic job system where you can pick what kind of abilities you want your guys to learn as they gain experience, but it's difficult to change classes, which left me with no dedicated healer until nearly the end of the game. This only exacerbated the grind-y nature of the game- for each enemy you kill you earn a decent amount of money, but experience is woefully underrepresented. Getting all of your characters to gain a level in Final Fantasy may take 10 minutes or so, but in Dragon Warrior III it's more like 20-30, even with relatively speedy battles. This isn't a game that will hold your attention and I needed to play through it while watching tv as well, but then again I've had decent fun with the first three Dragon Warrior's so far. Maybe it was just nice to bust out my Game Boy Color for one last run before it's likely retirement- there can't be any more Game Boy games I need to play, right?
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