This isn't even my final form!

I had only half remembered that the final boss did one of these transformations, where after you win the first battle, he takes on a new more challenging form. Back when this game first came out, this was a mind-blowing development, and it went on to become a trope of the genre.

Here's the Dragonlord - kind of looks like a wizard with Dracula hair.

The humanoid form got only a couple of whacks in before I beat him down. However, the dragon form used up almost all my magic points, having to heal after every couple of hits (HEALMORE uses 10 MP each time). He does a lot of damage every round.

The only Dragon in the game that can stand up!

Another thing I forgot is how no magic works on him at all, so you just have to keep whacking at him. And after being used to doing more than 20 points of damage per hit, it can be jarring to only do single digits of damage against this beast. However, it turns out he doesn't have all that many hit points.

I imagine this was another design choice that was intended to freak players out - giving you the impression you have no chance at whittling this guy down when he is blasting 40 hp off of you and your mp are going fast while you're barely scratching him.

Anyways, as you can see, I managed to beat him with only a couple more rounds of survival possible.

Skin of teeth...

The game isn't quite over when you do, but I'll save that for another post.