Legend of the Red Dragon II (1991)

Day #05

Out of the three games across two publications I’m (Aun Egg) currently playing, Legend of the Red Dragon II is definitely the one I’m enjoying the most. I’m curious how much of this is due to previous involvement in the game’s universe (I’ve played the original LORD off-and-on since 1993) versus it being a legitimately intriguing, well-crafted game. We’ll see how far I progress in this adventure before losing interest.

Instead of my typical article with a few pictures, I will tell today’s adventure through a series of screenshots. We’ll see how well this approach works out.

Goals for today:
- Level up once.
- Upgrade at least one of the following: weapon, armor.
- Explore at least one new area on the map.

A random find on the open world map. Is the Skystaff any good? No idea, but I did collect this piece (piece #2 of 4) and another later on (piece #4 of 4). Two more pieces to go — that will be one of tomorrow’s goals.

For being written by a teenager, the story is actually quite decent. If you insult these folk, you’ll enter a fight with them and they have 700 HP. No idea how tough of a fight they are other than the HP — didn’t feel like taking that risk.

Random encounters are one of the best parts of this game. Is our goal to defeat the Red Dragon again? Is it to restore Barak’s honor? I love the ambiguity and openness of LORD II versus the linear nature of LORD I.

Tomorrow’s goal list should include figuring out how to fish.

We followed the road north of Greentree and found PortTown after we leveled up and upgraded from a heavy axe to a crystal shard. All three goals met for the day! Let’s see what’s inside of this town….

Sea Hag’s hotel! I wonder if this is useful for avoiding PvP engagements while offline or what purpose the rooms serve exactly. We’ll find out tomorrow.

We leveled up to level 4, upgraded our weapon, and explored 3 new screens. If you are willing to deal with ANSI graphics and rather basic gameplay, this is quite a fun adventure thus far. I wonder if House ‘O Fish buys fish or sells fishing supplies? Travel lets you travel to other places on the map. You can purchase tickets for the ship (top of map). We’ll have to take the ship one of these days, but I have a feeling that we are still too under-leveled and under-geared for straying too far from our current location.

“boy” logged in and the server became laggy to the point of being essentially unplayable. We logged off afterwards. I’m curious whether that’s an issue with the game, the BBS software, some intermediary software, something else, or a combination of factors. We’ll have to bring Aun Meg along tomorrow to test how well the game works with two people playing on the same screen.