Romancia: Dragon Slayer Jr., MSX

Romancia: Dragon Slayer Jr. is the third game in the Dragon Slayer series and was developed and published by Nihon Falcom in 1986. This game was designed to be “cute”, and more attractive to younger players (thus the “Jr.” suffix), and is therefore more simplistic than Xanadu, the previous Dragon Slayer game.

Personally, I didn’t like Romancia very much. In spite of me reading a guide, I wasn’t able to make much progress and grew bored with it quite quickly. The game is known for being extremely difficult, and for having very few clues as to what you’re supposed to do, leading to frustrating trial and error-based gameplay and lots of restarts. It’s certainly not a patch on Xanadu…

Graphically, Romancia is basic, with jerky, character-based scrolling, a tiny play window and small, indistinct sprites. The music – while somewhat memorable – is short and repetitive and becomes annoying quite quickly.

Romanica was released as different MSX and MSX2 versions. Both have different fan translation patches (see below for links). I’m showing the MSX2 version first here, and the MSX version (with the cyan and white borders and the simplified graphics) last. So you can easily compare both versions.

Romancia was also released for the Nintendo Famicom in 1987, and it’s much better than the MSX version. Romancia on the MSX is a step backwards for the Dragon Slayer series, IMHO.

Dragon Slayer series on The King of Grabs:
Dragon Slayer (MSX), Dragon Slayer (Game Boy), Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II (MSX), Faxanadu (NES/Famicom), Romancia: Dragon Slayer Jr. (MSX), Romancia: Dragon Slayer Jr. (NES/Famicom), Dragon Slayer IV: Draslay Family (MSX), Legacy of the Wizard (NES/Famicom), Sorcerian: Dragon Slayer V (PC), Sorcerian: Dragon Slayer V (MSX), Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes (PC Engine), Xanadu Next (PC).