Courageous Perseus

Courageous Perseus is an action role-playing game, released by Cosmos Computers for Japanese computers in September 1984, the same month as Dragon Slayer. Courageous Perseus was one of the first action RPGs, and the first fully-scaled on-foot open-world game.

Overview
It was released in Japan during the same month as Dragon Slayer, and before Hydlide. It was technically more advanced and ambitious than both Dragon Slayer and Hydlide. It featured more advanced graphics, a bigger inventory, larger open world, and survival gameplay, set on an island. It also featured exploration on a large desert island, raft transport for sea travel to smaller isles, and a wide variety of items and monsters. However, it was not as well-received, as it relied heavily on level grinding, and included a health-draining mechanic where the player lost one hit point every second.