Dragon Warrior III: An Old Friend

I’m replaying Dragon Warrior III right now (aka Dragon Quest III). Just the other day I got to catch up with an old friend: the Orochi. The Orochi and I go way back, over a decade in fact. I don’t think I’ll ever forget how our great friendship began.

I was but a lad when I played DW3 for the first time. The Orochi, a five-headed wingless dragon, had recently been dumped and in its depression it started hanging out with the bad crowd. The local gang leader, a dude that called himself Archfiend Baramos, got into the Orochi’s head. After that, the Orochi set up shop near the town of Jipang and began to harass the town. It demanded a sacrifice of one maiden every so often or else it would destroy the whole town.

At the time, I was pretty much addicted to walkthroughs. I would hardly go anywhere in a game without consulting a guide to make sure I did everything correctly. And the guide had some helpful hints on DW3. Among them were two pieces of advice that I would go on to ignore.

One: at a certain point you can change one of your characters into a sage which is a combination of the game’s healer and artillery classes with the strengths of both. The game said to change the healer into a sage, giving him/her attack and buffing magic. I chose the mage so I could have another healer.

Two: At level 21, the mage learns a spell called Bikill. This spell is crucial in any DW/DQ game it appears in because it doubles the attack power of the target. A very useful buffing spell. The guide recommended using this spell against the Orochi. However, I changed my mage to a sage at level 20, sending her back to level 1. She would eventually still get Bikill but sages level up the slowest of all the classes. And I had little patience for level grinding back then.

And so the stage was set. I changed my mage to a sage and didn’t have the patience to get Bikill. How bad could it be? I stepped forward to challenge the Orochi. The Orochi is the game’s first challenging boss because it gets two turns and has a party-wide flame breath attack. And it can and will spam that breath weapon to do a lot of damage to the whole party.

Nevertheless, I challenged the vicious Orochi. And I lost. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m a sore loser in video games and very prone to rage quitting. But it was summer and there was no school so soon enough I challenged the beast again. And I lost. I did a bit of leveling up. Not enough to get Bikill but to get a few levels. More confident, I challenged the Orochi. And I lost.

My frustration grew and grew. This had become personal. I was liking this game but now I was at a dead end until I could beat this thing. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t beat it. With no access to party-wide healing at that point, the Orochi’s flaming breath would eventually overwhelm my party. Over and over did I fight it, over the course of a month, and not once did I win.

So I went to the internet. I didn’t know about GameFAQs at the time (it may have been before GameFAQs was made, I don’t know) but there were DW fan sites and guides out there. The information was fragmented and difficult to find (did Google exist back then? If it did, I wasn’t using it). But I did find an imporant piece of information: the Orochi had 300 HP. With new determination, I challenged it yet again. And this time, I tried to keep a running tally of how much damage I was doing. Not an exact count but accurate enough.

By my calculations I was doing well over 300 HP to the thing. If I remember correctly, I counted myself as doing almost 500 before dying.

Now I didn’t ever swear back in those days but I’m pretty sure if that happened these days I’d be letting out some curses that would be loud and terrible to behold. Hell, I’m pretty sure I made the most of my anger without being able to swear.

I tried my experiment again. And again I angrily concluded that I should’ve killed it. For there was something that I did not know; I don’t think I learned of this until a year or two after this story.

The Orochi, and several other powerful enemies in the game, had hidden regeneration. I don’t know how much the Orochi regains every turn but it is significant I know. Thus, if you don’t do enough damage you could actually be losing ground. And I often had to have three of my characters healing to survive its onslaught, with the last character unable to overcome the Orochi’s regeneration.

And that is why Bikill was so important. Doubling your characters’ attack power allows them to clear the Orochi’s regeneration. One strong character could erase its regneration and then some and an additional attack would pile on the pain. Further more, killing it quicker means less exposure to its flame breath. Sometimes the best defense really is a good offense.

Eventually, I had to level my sage to 21 and use Bikill to beat it. And the battle didn’t last long; my experience with NES RPG bosses is that the battles are quick. You either kick ass or get your ass kicked.

Many enemies have given me trouble in all my time of gaming. Some of them significant. But none of them like the Orochi. Over a month and many, many deaths it was before I beat it. And so every time I play through DW3 and get to the Orochi I fondly look back on my first time playing the game and the trouble this thing gave me. Of course, I always make sure to have Bikill when I fight it.

So here’s to you, Orochi, my old friend.