YMMV / Dragon Quest II

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The second prince in Japan and overseas. As "Sumaltria" (Japan), he's said to be "a slacker, a drinker, and an overall really fun guy". "Cannock" (Overseas) is a "studious young man immersed in his studies" and "easy-going", "doesn't like to hurry", and "[makes] side-trips".
• Ascended Meme: The Princess of Moonbrooke's banter in Fortune Street includes her barking and descriptions of her acting like a dog sometimes, a reference to the fanarts depicting her with dog-like traits.
• Breather Level: In a strictly-design sense, the last dungeon is stupidly easy to navigate. Everything else about it though? Well...
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The final area of the game contains enemies called Gold Batboons (Bat Demons in the GBC version; Batmandrills in the mobile/Switch version) who could potentially wipe out your party in one turn with their Sacrifice/Kamikazee spell. Kamikazee, when used on you, results in a total party kill 100% of the time. The only other enemy in the whole series that can use this ability is the Rockbomb, but at least the Rockbomb waits until you've sufficiently provoked it before casting the spell. Gold Batboons can choose to do it on their very first turn if they're so inclined.
  • It is possible to encounter the Gold Batboon as soon as you exit the Cave to Rhone/Rendarak on your way to the shrine to save, meaning you have to do the hardest area in the game all over again. Pray that you didn't use all your MP in the cave for healing and pray that the RNG allows Stopspell/Fizzle to hit.
  • Just about anything in the second half of the Cave to Rendarak qualifies. Dragons have a breath attack that has the potential of critically wounding or killing two thirds of your party if you don't level grind. Flames usually come in a group of four and can cause a Total Party Wipe if they all use a breath attack that deals about 35-40 damage. There's a reason why Cave to Rendarak is That One Level and why the game's generally considered Nintendo Hard.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: While never addressed in canon or other games, quite a few fans are fond of the Princess of Cannock, making up little stories and fanart for her. She did get something of a role via an Expy in Kiefer's sister, Leeza, in Dragon Quest VII, but the personalities of these two are quite different.
• Fan Nickname: The area that allows you to reach Rendarak has no in-game name. NES fans tend to call it the Cave of/to Rhone while remake fans will call it the Road to Rendarak.
• Goddamned Boss: While Hargon isn't too hard, he has the penchant of casting Healall/Fullheal at the worst time possible, fully healing himself. This is especially annoying on the NES version, when he has about 200 HP and can fully heal himself, which essentially restarts the battle for him (and not for you). The remakes changed this to Healmore/Midheal, but gave him the ability to use breath instead.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The NES version had the cursed equipment glitch, used mainly for the Sword of Destruction/Ruin. If you equip a cursed item (such as the cursed Sword of Ruin, the Gremlin's Armor, or the Gremlin's Tail ) and get it removed via House of Healing/Worship, you keep its attack power or defense power without the drawback of constantly missing turns until you reenter your Equip screen or you level up. If you go to the Equip screen or you level up, the numbers reset to their proper values.
  • Hargon's Castle trick takes the cursed equipment glitch and supercharges it. If you equip something while in Hargon's Castle and then leave, the game will automatically reequip the item you had on before entering the castle. With this method, you can have the Prince of Midenhall equip the Falcon Sword before entering the castle, equip the Sword of Destruction in the castle, and then leave. The game will automatically reequip the Falcon Sword when you leave without you entering the Equip screen. Therefore, you now have the attack power of the Sword of Destruction and the ability to attack twice in one turn. This also helps make the Prince of Cannock more viable- have the Falcon Sword equipped, equip the Iron Spear, then leave. Now he has the +20 attack power of the Iron Spear and can attack twice in one turn. This also works with armor- you can have the defense power of cursed armor (Gremlin's Armor, Shield of Evil) with the benefits of a Water Flying Cloth (reduce damage from magic or breath attacks by 50%).
  • In Midenhall, you can fight a Mace Master/Wrecktor in a jail cell. Upon winning the battle, you will always receive a Staff of Thunder/Lightning Staff which you can sell. After selling the item, if you save and reset the game, the Wrecktor will respawn and will still drop the Lightning Staff. Constantly fighting, selling the Staff, saving the game and refighting the Wrecktor is a good way to farm gold.
  • It is possible to get a 2nd Water Flying Cloth in the NES version. The sequence is supposed to be: get Dew's Yarn, get Magic Loom, go to Don Mahone and give the items, save, reload save, and then collect the Cloth. However if you give the items to Mahone and then immediately go back to the Dragon's Horn and Zahan without saving, the Yarn and Loom will respawn, then you can save and reload the game. Mahone will give you the first Cloth and then accept the items for the second. It is important that you leave a couple of empty spots in the Princess of Moonbrooke's inventory- the Cloth is intended for her and if her inventory is full, then Mahone will not give you the Cloth.
  • If you name the Prince of Midenhall TUT it will freeze the RNG which causes no random encounters. However you can't get Lottery Tickets from buying items and all townspeople move downwards. It can become a Game-Breaking Bug when you get into the gremlin fight at Lianport- the game freezes. Saving the game at any point before Lianport causes the RNG to go back to normal.
• Harsher in Hindsight: As seen in the Distant Sequel Caravan Hearts (which takes place 200 years later), Moonbrooke lies in ruins. This either means that the Princess was unable to restore her castle; or she restored the castle and it was destroyed again. Though, oddly, Dragon Quest Builders 2 directly contradicts this, stating that the reconstruction of Moonbrooke is, as far as the Builder and Lulu knows, proceeding apace, which comes up concerning certain story beats in that game.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the NES version at least, you see a lone soldier escaping Moonbrooke which seems to have been built in the middle of a poisonous swamp. Now who in the world would think that building a castle in a swamp would be a good idea?
• Inferred Holocaust: All the towns on the continent of Alefgard from Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest III are gone except Tantegel Castle and Brecconary/Town of Tantagel (which have merged into one location). Of course, this is because the designers wouldn't or couldn't add all those locations and it's possible you're meant to imagine that the towns still exist but you can't access them (like how in early console Role Playing Games the player is usually expected to imagine that the game world is much more populated than it appears), but assuming that all of Alefgard (the places occupied by humans, anyway) has been wiped out except for one town which was forced to move behind castle walls is definitely a valid interpretation.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Moyomoto, a name for the Prince of Midenhall that, thanks to a Good Bad Bug in the Famicom version, causes him to begin the game at level 48 (out of 50) with three of the Plot Coupons already in hand and no equipment, allowing him to tear through the early and mid game with his bare hands. Fan art depicting him as a Kenshiro-like One-Man Army runs abound.
  • The Prince of Midenhall in general is often viewed as this due to being the only protagonist in the series to not be some form of Magic Knight, which has caused many to declare him to be a Badass Normal man among men who can take down vicious monsters with pure muscle.
• Memetic Loser: The Prince of Cannock tends to be characterized as The Load in fan works due to his low damage output compared to the other two (never mind that his primary function in battle is for support), tendency to die quickly, and limited equipment options. In Japan, mentioning that "the Prince of Sumaltria's strongest weapon is the Iron Spear" is often used to reference this. It reaches a point where Tonnura, a particularly lame-sounding one of his randomly-generated names in the Japanese version, has become shorthand for describing useless and incompetent people across all Japanese media.
• Memetic Mutation: In a somewhat literal sense, fan art of the Princess of Moonbrooke sometimes gives her dog-like traits or a tail and ears, due to her transformation.
• Nightmare Fuel: The desolate ruins of Moonbrooke, littered with toxic pools, broken walls, monsters, and lost souls forced to wander accursed, sightless and helpless, through the halls. One of them is the Princess's own father.
• Nintendo Hard: Whoever said this game is easy is either a liar or very, very good at RPGs.
  • You will need to level grind INTENSELY this time out, and even when you do, it isn't enough. This is because the game was made on such as short time span (development started in April '86 and ended in December '86), they just didn't have enough time to playtest the late game. Yuji Horii said nothing was playtested past the Sea Cave due to time constraints.
  • Can go beyond Nintendo Hard to plain unfair. The Batmandrills will randomly cast Kamikazee when they're at about a third of their health, wiping themselves out and taking your whole party with them. There's no way to prevent this. Yes, that's right. You can get a Game Over through no fault of your own. And they can do this in the very first round before you even have a chance to do anything if so inclined. At least the Rockbombs in Dragon Quest III and beyond would wait until you pounded them to near-death.
  • Adding to this, in the NES version, the run option wouldn't always be effective in Rendarak Plateau (even if all characters are maxed out in levels).
  • There is only ONE MP restoring item (Wizard's Ring/Prayer Ring). However it could break at any time and could only be won via the Lottery/Tombola.
  • The remakes are easier, mostly thanks to extra stuff/boosts, but Rendarak Plateau remains pretty hard regardless.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The remake expands the Prince of Cannock's equipment pool and slightly buffs his stats to make him less fragile and generally more formidable as a Magic Knight.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Hoo boy. While this game is already harder than the first, neither area of DQI is as tough -and arguably unfair- as the Road to Rendarak.
• That One Attack: Sacrifice/Kamikazee. When used by the enemy, it results in a Total Party Kill 100% of the time. Thankfully, only a few things have it.
• That One Boss:
  • In a series of relatively tough to just plain hard bosses, Malroth is just plain cheap. He's the ONLY Dragon Quest final boss to have Fullheal, but only in the NES version. Malroth, for example can appear with anywhere from 189 to 250 HP. That difference can make the fight with him a lot easier or more difficult depending on RNG. The SFC remake onward removed Fullheal from his movepool, but significantly increased his HP pool and gave him Kabuff and Kasap to compensate for these changes.
  • Pazuzu and Belial can potentially also spam Healall/Fullheal if you're incredibly unlucky. Atlas is the only one of the five final bosses who doesn't have Healall/Fullheal, and Hargon is the only one of the five that you can silence with Stopspell/Fizzle (you can put Pazuzu to sleep).
  • Pazuzu is even worse, being a Palette Swapped King Mook version of a Batmandrill with jacked-up to stats and FULLHEAL. Every turn spent against it is a chance for the RNG to decide to Total Party Kill you no questions asked, and every cast of FULLHEAL is an extension to the already difficult battle. I hope you like dying!
• That One Level: The road to the Rendarak Plateau is full of pitfalls, tough monsters that will decimate your party if you come in at a low level, and a section at the end where it will loop if you go the wrong way. This stands out among of a handful of reasons this game has a reputation of Nintendo Hard.
• Woolseyism: Laurasia was called "Midenhall" in the original NES port, perhaps to better jibe with the vaguely Saxon/Nordic names used in the first game. Ditto "Sulmatria" to "Cannock". The odd one is actually Moonbrooke, which is consistent across both languages (though the Japanese sources are often a bit inconsistent about whether the final "e" is included).

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