Dragon Knight II

Gameplay

Dragon Knight II is available only in Japanese. Its gameplay system has not changed much since the first Dragon Knight game, as it is still a standard dungeon crawler with first-person view perspective and 2D graphics. The player spends most of the time navigating mazes and fighting enemies. As progress is made, the mazes will become more complicated, but as in the first game there is an aid for the player in the form of a of minimap with grid coordinates. The player can also visit shops and converse with non-hostile NPCs.

The game starts with just one player character, Takeru, but two other characters join up later on. The game's battle system has also undergone minor changes. It still features turn-based battles that are mostly randomly generated, but the fights are better balanced than in the first game. The player can attack, defend, and use spells and items to deal with various types of female enemies (such as berserker, banshee, catgirl, centaur, elf, harpy, ninja, mummy, werewolf, and so on), who are being fought only one at a time. These enemies are actually girls who have been transformed into monsters, and whenever player character fights off one of them, the subdued enemy loses her clothing. Later, when the enemies revert to their normal self, in their grattitude they offer themselves to have sex with the protagonist in a cutscene. There is also only one boss to beat.

Story

The vagabond young of the first Dragon Knight, Takeru Yamato, wanders into a small town of Phoenix and finds it terrorized. Phoenix had been once ruled by a group of powerful wicked witches until they were defeated in a fierce battle that almost destroyed the town. Three years before the events of the game, a woman known as Mesaanya had arrived in Phoenix. At first she has appeared very friendly and gained the villagers' trust, but then she revealed her true colors as she took over the Witch Tower and forbade the love between men and women. Soon after Takeru's arrival, a young maiden named Kate is about to enagage with her fiancé Pierrot, but Mesaanya steals the set of seven evil-sealing holy scriptures that Takeru delivered, possesses Kate, and also kidnaps twenty-eight other village girls and turns them into minions to guard the Witch Tower. Reluctantly, Takeru decides to enter the tower and collect the scriptures to break the curse.

The ultimate goal of Takeru is to defeat the witch, who is supposed to wait at the top of the tower, but he also needs to rescue the girls one by one. During the course of the game, Takeru is joined by a burly merchant named Baan, who has originally sent him to Phoenix, and a mysterious spell-casting priestess named Sophia. Eventually, the bewitched girls are saved, as is Pierrot who went first to rescue Kate but soon was badly injured. However, Mesaanya's throne room in her lair is found empty and Kate herself is also not found. Looking for them, Takeru learns that the witches have been defeated with the help of the special-metal Falcon Sword and the Genji Armor capable of resisting magic. Searching of these artifacts, the party descends into a hidden dungeon where Baan reveals it was his ancestor who has once fought the witches and killed their queen, Mesaanya's mother. In a twist ending, Sophia's true identity is revealed having been really a disguised Mesaanya all along. Her magic blast gravely wounds Baan and then a final duel ensues between her and Takeru. After Mesaanya is slain, Kate is finally freed from her spell the peace is restored to the village. With his quest completed, Takeru then spends a night with Kate, before leaving for his further adventures.

Characters

Other characters include: Weaponsmith (Yukitoshi Hori), Apothecary (Isamu Tanonaka), Taverner (Totani Koji), Witch (Hiroyuki Sato), Rem (Lisa Hatayama), Mei (Noriko Namiki), Messiah (Natsuko Yamada), Merumo (Mayumi Horikawa), Cherry (Akiko Sato), Orchid (Azusa Nakao), Mami (Kaori Ohara), Hamy (Minako Takenouchi), Rika (Tomomi Uesaka), Monami (Masami Suzuki), Mischa (Mihoko Fujiwara), Tanya (Yasuko Kajimura), Nadia (Yuki Kato), Bunny (Junko Shimakata), Mimi (Yoko Asada), Paula (Naomi Matamura), Betty (Yumiko Sakita), Marie (Mayumi Seto), Lina (Mayumi Shigeno), Eve (Megumi Kanba), Nina (Naoko Nakamura), and Lara (Yasuko Hirayama). The game was narrated by Kaneto Shiozawa.

Release

The game was originally released in 1990-1991 for the MSX2, NEC PC-8801, NEC PC-9801 and X68000 computer systems. An enhanced PC Engine port that removed sexually explicit content but added voice acting and new graphics was developed by TamTam and released by NEC Avenue in 1992 among controversies as the first erotic game officially published for a video game console. Two soundtracks were released in Japan by NEC Avenue: Dragon Knight II Fantastic Remix! (ドラゴンナイト II ファンタスティック・リミックス!) in October 1991 and Dragon Knight II PC Engine World (ドラゴンナイト II ～ＰＣエンジンワールド) in 1992, distributed by Nippon Columbia.

Reception

Just like its predecessor, Dragon Knight II was a commercial success. The game placed third on MSX Magazine{{}}s "MSX Soft Top 30" best-selling chart in May 1991, and even one year later has remained there at 28th place. The PC Engine version was fifth on PC Engine Fan chart in August 1992. The magazine's review gave it a highly positive score of 90%.

Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) reported that Dragon Knight II "became a sleeper hit with Japanese role-playing fans. What made it popular is the fact that it was noticeably different from other RPGs because the game opted for lots of women instead of beasts, with some slight characteristics of monsters," predicting that "with more action and more scantily clad women to attack," its sequel "should really entice the Japanese market!" EGM also included the game's "tons of interesting people to meet" in their 1993 ranking of "Top Ten Hottest Video Game Babes" at second place. PC Engine Fan featured Mesaanya among the most sexy female characters on the PC Engine.

Sequel

Takeru (renamed Desmond in the West) returns as the hero of the 1991 sequel Dragon Knight III, which is titled Knights of Xentar in its Western-localized versions. Phoenix, where the former Witch Tower which has been renamed as the Tower of Takeru (Desmond), is revisited in the game. The recovered Baan (renamed Rolf in the West) rejoins Takeru to fight demons and the now-married Kate is also met (and laid) again.