Dragon Wars on the Commodore 64 is a party-based first-person RPG in the Bard’s Tale mold, where your four- to seven-character group starts out imprisoned and stripped of gear in the harsh city of Purgatory and must claw its way up to challenge the tyrant-king Namtar. You explore a large world in grid-based 3D, switching to top-down tactical text windows for turn-based combat that emphasizes limited-use powers and careful positioning, while a flexible skill and magic system lets you build characters around abilities like swimming, climbing, lockpicking, and multiple schools of sorcery instead of rigid classes. Non-combat options—using skills, spells, or simply clever exploration—often let you bypass fights or open alternate routes, giving this late-era 8-bit RPG a reputation as a more open, reactive, and narrative-rich evolution of the classic dungeon crawl.