Dragoon X Omega- Gold Edition is a complete overhaul of Dragon Warrior, turning it from a generic fantasy adventure to something more futuristic. You play as a psychic soldier who is one of the last of a failed rebellion. You’re given a choice: Die, or save the people you were rebelling against from an even bigger threat.

The main positive here: This is an almost complete hack of Dragon Warrior. Particularly for its release date, it’s very technically impressive. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a commercially released RPG on the NES if you didn’t know in advance it was a hack of Dragon Warrior.

Which brings me to my two main complaints about the game. First, if you *do* know it’s a hack of Dragon Warrior–which you do, if you’re reading this–you can see the Dragon Warrior peeking through at pretty much every turn, from shop selection, to enemy sprites and abilities. Which brings me to my second main complaint.

The original Dragon Warrior is a hugely important game historically, basically inventing the JRPG as we know it today. It is also an absolute slog to play through, being mostly level grinding. The changes made in this hack make it even *more* of a slog, to the point where you’re likely to quit before getting much of anywhere. Given the amount of changes elsewhere, that experience and gold yields weren’t rebalanced to reduce the percentage of playtime spent is mystifying to me–the author clearly knew how to do it and just didn’t.

It’s still an impressive hack and worth checking out, but I’d recommend either going with the Amnethen Apocalypse and applying some of the patches there, or (If you know enough about ROM hacking yourself) editing the enemy yields to be closer to the later remakes of Dragon Warrior/Quest.