There's a common misconception that the original Dragon Quest, as most early JPRGs, is a bit on the grindier side. That, of course, is not true. The game does not have periods of grinding taking you away from the progression. Instead, the core of the game, the one way to solve all problems and what defines the progression, is grinding.

Let me back up a bit. Released in 1986, originally on Famicom, DQ1 is one of the earliest attempts to translate the complicated and rather niche CPRGs of time to a simpler template and simultaneously lower the barrier to entry by releasing the game on a home console. As a result, the first Dragon Quest is a very simple game. You control a silent hero, named by the player, who happens to be a descendant of a legendary figure of ages past. The king of the land asks you to save his daughter and rid the kingdom of a powerful Dragonlord, whose minions are terrorizing the surrounding continents. A simple premise goes along with simple game design. There's no party to control, just your one protagonist. As a result of that, there's no separation of roles -- the hero is a warrior, a mage and a healer all at once. Stats exist (strength, vitality and speed) but have no real importance beyond showing your current power level. Thus, the core gameplay loop is laid down: follow a clue and investigate the world map -> encounter new enemies -> beat the enemies until you get your numbers up/save enough for new gear/feel comfortable doing random encounters -> go to the next region with stronger enemies to pursue the plot and repeat.

The combat does not offer many options. You are limited to:
- sword swings;
- fire spell;
- stronger fire spell;
- sleep spell;
- silence spell.
The thing about the damaging fire spells is that, since there's no stat governing magic damage, eventually (just in a couple levels even) your basic physical attack with outnumber the spell. Sleep barely works (at least on the SFC version I played) and is thus a waste of a turn. Silence is situationally useful as a counter to the enemies' Sleep spell, but usually it only saves you from one or two unnecessary hits. This lack of options means that all the fights in the game can be represented as a battle of resources, where the player's actions follow a simple algorithm: exhange hits with the enemy until your HP reaches x, then heal, repeat; if no more MP, use healing herbs; if no more herbs, go and grind until your numbers are high enough to not run out of resources in the fight. The only exceptions to this seem to be the first boss battle against a dragon, whom you can apparently put to sleep, if you're lucky enough, and the second boss battle against the Golem, whom you can also put to sleep by using a key item, which is the intended way to do that fight. For the rest of the game, grinding is your only solution.

The other design choice that you might notice is that a lot of parts in the system become outdated and replaced. The initial Fire spell is a good example, as it lasts exactly a couple levels until your physical attacks become as strong as the magic spell. But there are also various items that are at some point replaced by field magic. Torches are an important part of the early game. You absolutely need them to explore various pitch black caves on the map, so you need to have a couple torches in your inventory at all times (your limited inventory, mind you). But only until you learn a spell that functionally replaces torches for good. The same happens with teleport items and holy water, an item that turns off random encounters. It's all convenient and welcome, but it also feels less like an upgrade and more like the game presenting you with solutions to a problem it itself created.

Now, I realize the paragraphs above read exceptionally negative, but it's not my intent to bash a pioneering game for having outdated design philosophy. In fact, there are a lot of things DQ1 does right and that have formed (at least part of) the skeleton of the genre for years to come, from map design and random encounters to town layouts to multiphased boss fights. But what I think the game does best is the Quest part of its title. The adventure you set out on is actually quite simple as it leads you back and forth across the rather small-scale map of the kingdom. Every step makes logical sense and talking to NPCs in towns gives you clues about where to go next. They never feel particularly cryptic, and right away you're given several clear long and short term objectives. It's never "uhhhh I need to find a generic NPC in one of the towns and show him this new key item, because apparently that generic NPC is not so generic after all".
You also constantly keep looping back to the starting castle, which in the older versions of the game, is the only place where you can save. So you're actually slowly exploring the world outwards from the center, going in alternating directions, which works quite well for a world this small and densely packed (the final dungeon is literally visible from the starting point on the world map). The whole thing feels like a tabletop short story presented for a single player, which is the vibe the developers were aiming at here, I'm guessing.

The other thing I admired about DQ1 is its character and presentation. The admittedly limited writing here manages to not only set up the general conflict and the backstory, but also not be as dry as some of the other titles of the era (looking at you, FF1). Talking to NPCs in towns often gives you little stories to go along with them instead of the generic greetings and information about the town/next dungeon. There's a couple in the castle who are deeply in love, there's a girl in the starting town who says that you're so handsome she's not gonna lose sight of you, and she then proceeds to follow you around town until you leave. Even the generic weapon shopkeeper is like "well, yes, why wouldn't you want to equip this fantastic gear you bought right away? it's only natural" every time you buy something. The protagonist is a blank slate with no standout features, except for the horned helmet. Yet I was delighted to see that, after you rescue the princess from the dungeon guarded by a dragon, the hero carries her in his arms and it's actually reflected in the spritework. The fact that you have to carry the princess back to the castle (suprising the NPCs on the way with good news) is also a neat bit of character to remember the game by.

In the end, DQ1 is more of a historical curiosity, offering insight into very early JRPG design. But its short runtime (6-7-ish hours for me) and colorful presentation counterbalance the chore of grinding, resulting in a surprisingly enjoyable experience for a game that is more than 35 years old at this point.

Hot take alert: the first ever NES JRPG is wildly obtuse and grindy! I used a guide, a map, and like 4000% speed and it made the game not awful. Granted, it was effectively a waste of like 10 hours, but it was far more bearable than the first couple Final Fantasies. Instead of backtracking all the time, you just kind of go all over the place. I'm not sure how much of the navigation issues were with the game itself and how many were with the order the guide was taking me in, but the game itself has no direction at all so it's probably the former. The grinding is awful, but unlike Final Fantasy it doesn't pretend that you can beat it without grinding your ass off. I think the honesty and humbleness of Dragon Quest 1 is what makes it better than the game it directly inspired. Still sucks tho lol

I was surprised by how much I liked this actually. Having one save point at the center of the map and basically forcing you to go explore to find various items needed to get to the end point which can be seen from the starting castle is honestly a very good setup especially for 1986. The music is all fun and charming. I love the monster designs, and really the only knock is that it is a bit too grindy, but really it was nice to have a game this open from this era that is also pretty playable without any guide.

I don't know why I expected a better game. Dragon Quest is known by many as the first jrpg. It is the standard that so many great games were built upon. And built is correct, for what is here is so barebones it is barely enjoyable.

You leave town, fight monsters, level up, get money, buy new equipment, move on. That's pretty much the whole game. And combat is mostly just hitting attack against the one monster on screen. There aren't enough options to have much in the way of strategy.

Play it for the history if you want, but there is nothing of substance here. This game could not be simpler and the formula has been greatly improved since.

My first DQ, and it's been a long, long time since I've gone into an adventure game this blind. I just let myself get immersed, talk to NPCs, and... I think I like RPGs after all? Oh no I'm downloading Octopath Traveler 2, oh noooo-

It's SUPER basic but I think that's just something you have to accept with a game from 1986. I kind of appreciated that. No party members, and your only damage spells are obsolete by like level 8. Just wail on that sword button until the numbers go up enough for you to win. A simpler time.

I don't think I could tell you ANY character or town names from this. One of the towns was Ken or something. The hero was called Ehrlich? Very generic (as in genre) all around, but I think that is also something you have to accept from a 1986 video game. I'll play the second one. I hope there are no recurring characters.

É um jogo imperfeito pra cacete, principalmente nos dias de hoje, mas a base dele é tão sólida que literalmente fundou a estrutura de jrpg que a gente usa atualmente.

A primeira metade do jogo eu acho particularmente fraca, essencialmente porque tendo um olhar geral das coisas, tudo o que você faz nessa parte do jogo é uma preparação pra segunda metade. O que não seria ruim (eu geralmente gosto de build up, quando eles não são chatos), se não fosse uma lista de tarefa sem graça e repetitiva que tu faz umas 15x num ciclo de 3 a 4 horas.

Dito isso, a segunda metade do jogo é bem melhor. Acho que o game design aproveita o fato de você ter setado todas as peças chave da história nas primeiras 4 horas, então o resto do jogo corre de um jeito beeeem melhor e mais suave. O senso de exploração e aventura é muito gostoso, principalmente prum jogo idealizado no nintendinho (joguei o remastake de SNES).

Acho que é isso. O grind me incomodou em 2 momentos específicos, mas a progressão no geral foi bem ok, esperava ser muito pior pelo que as pessoas falam. Recomendo esse jogo pra qualquer fã mais hardcore de rpg, ou qualquer pessoa que queira começar Dragon Quest e não tenha problema de ir pela ordem cronológica. Tenho muitas expectativas pro futuro da série, Dragon Quest II parece ser bem meia-boca, mas acho que depois daí a série deslancha legal.

Thoroughly charmed by Akira Toriyama’s designs, and the clean simplicity of the quest laid out in front of you. It’s essentially “get the relics and beat the bad guy,” and so you do just that — battling a variety of monsters, sleeping at various inns in towns across the map and steadily improving your gear along the way. It’s a bit of a linear experience, but that feels refreshing in 2023 where every game needs to be a 50+ hour time sink.

I enjoyed playing this in short bursts on my phone, grinding levels right before bed, or poking around a dungeon on my commute. The vertical / portrait mode presentation is also pretty striking. I just wish it was possible to remove the obnoxious d-pad graphic from the screen. Love and appreciate the quick save option, though.

One of the most important and influential games of all time, it's a marvel of game design. Despite the limited memory, it managed to create a world with just enough towns and NPCs to feel lived-in and immersive. The lonely quest of the sole hero has its own charm. The game is designed around one mission: make the hero feel heroic. This is accomplished by multiple small little things that were put in the game, that, together, make for a great game. The hero carrying the princess back to the caslte in his arms, the hero getting now direction from anyone and having to figure out the locations of where to go on his own, discovering old legends and heroes that guide you on your way, areas being gatekept by levels and making you feel accomplished for each new area reached. Dragon Quest is a massive achievement - and a testament to the talent of its creator, Yuji Horii.

The first adventure

Dragon Quest released on the NES back in 1986 and considered to be the grandfather of the JRPG genre. Despite the game being 35 years old and consider one of the earliest JRPGs, the game manages to hold up really well in a simple and extremely open format that let people create some unique experiences within the game albeit with a very simple premise.

This game does something a bit different that I didn't expect after playing a bunch of JRPGs was that it's very open and flexible which lets you really do what you want and at the pace you want, the game be fairly challenging at times despite the combat being 1v1 considering it's just you in the party but the random fights here really fast. The music is decent and the art here for the monsters (at least for the switch version) looked really nice and clean meanwhile the character art is a give or take thing but I didn't mind it that much. The game gives you the simple goal of "save the princess and defeat the evil lord" some items and you're essentially off. The world is small enough that it doesn't feel overwhelming than I thought it'd be and nails a good balance with exploring and progression. Surprisingly enough I didn't have much need to grind and instead you can actually just come back when you're strong enough compared to other JRPGs where it railroads you into a boss with no way to progress until you beat it. With that said, I didn't have to do grinding at all until the end where it was extremely hard to properly do the final boss at a point.

The game gives you tools eventually to curb enemy encounters but it can be a bit much depending on where you end up. I want to say the game might be a bit too simple even though the game gives you appropriate tools but I found the spells in battle lacking except for healing so I mostly just ended up attacking for like 99% of the game.

This game is short, simple and sweet. It's not really a hard game to grasp in terms of the way the systems are and the game does a good job of telling you where to go. They don't really make games where you can literally go anywhere on the world map at the start of a map and despite the simple gameplay, it did the job it was suppose to do which is "become the hero, save the princess, defeat the evil lord" and sometimes that's all you really need.

The template laid down by Dragon Quest remains undefeated in the genre of Japanese RPGs. There is a remarkable level of care that has gone into making sure that there is an appropriate level of friction between the adventure of the player and the objective of the game.

The game is fairly small and "spherical". By that I mean that there is a centerpoint that is Radatome Castle, and then there is the rest of the map that is equally long in both directions, east and west. This allows the game to justify (a poor word to choose considering they had legitimate technical limitations, but it gets the point across) making saving exclusive in Radatome Castle, at King Lars's. No distance then is great enough to be too tedious to traverse. Planning your travels is easy as well, considering you can purchase Wings of the Chimera early in the game to teleport back to Radatome Castle, and later on you can access the Return spell to use in place of the Wings. It also bears reminding that death doesn't bring any particular penalty other than interrupting your exploration and bringing you back to the centerpoint, which is farily forgiving given what was said for distances. The game is also crystal clear. The combination of the game box manual along with the initial indications from King Lars give all the tools you need to understand and clear the game. People in towns rarely gives you cryptic messages.

Ultimately, the game is lenient and fair with its player. And this lenient structure allows the game maker to be more thoughtful of the points where is wants to increase friction, rather than just make the game all friction. There are of course parts of the experience that suffer because of this. Battles become a matter of simple attacking arithmetic with no further complexity involved whatsoever, besides the Sleep spell that can come in handy in certain parts of the game where the dps race does not particularly work in the player's favour. This already highlights how random battles have been a particular point of strain in the genre since the beginning, which few have ever really dealt with correctly. Moreover the inherent small size of the world makes for a short experience, alothough for sure not unpleasant (I think it is fair to remember I have played the SNES remake which has some quality of life improvements that might have shaved off almost an hour of game time). And in particular the endgame feels a little anti-climactic, mostly because of its lack of active narrative and letting the player decide for themself the moment of ending the game.

In the end, this game embodies a level of playfulness that is perfectly encapsulated by Akira Toriyama's artistic design for the series at this particular moment in the author's artistic development. Simple, rotund, clear, uncomplicated.

the first JRPG is interesting to examine after 35 years of JRPGs. to get it out of the way the translation is bad, everything that is in this game has even developed in 1000 different directions, yes, BUT what's incredible about dragon quest is that, compared to its many lengthy successors, it doesn't feel lacking (to me). under the right light, dragon quest is a microcosm of every game that followed it. it's world map is easy to remember, the adventure is around 8 hours, it's one on one fights. at times it's mindless, sure, it's for kids, whatever.

anyways, a wonderful game to play on your phone at work. great time killer

Dragon Quest is a game that is almost forty years old. I played a version of it that came out more than two decades ago. And while today it resembles more an ideal first project for a young kid given RPG Maker, Dragon Quest became one of the most pleasant gaming experience I had this year.

The game gives you a simple objective – slay the dragon lord – and then drops you into the world and lets you figure it out. And for how simple the premise is, for how simple fighting monsters is, for how simple exploring is, it all works in favor of the game itself. There was a joy in taking my knight as far as I possibly could into uncharted territory, to find a new town to visit or a section of the world with tougher monsters, sometimes both. And then to either come back to a nearby town with my findings, or push too far and be forced to recall back to the castle, or simply die and revive back to the King with half my gold gone – it helps to wander when the only penalty for screwing up is having to travel a bit more and/or losing resources that are easily replenished. In town, the goal was to upgrade my equipment the best I could and query the population for gossip: a girl in a cave, a secret buried beneath a tree, what golems are weak to. Taking notes, then venturing outward with this knowledge. Repeat until the dragon lord is defeated, with a few detours along the way to get to him.

Once again, it is a very simple game. But even multiple console generations later, it works because the simplicity of it all and the general lack of consequences let my curiosity take over to piece the entire quest together. Even if I am not a Japanese salary-man in the 80s, I can easily see how such a game could enchant a country this well, even decades after the fact. The enchantment still had its effect on me after all.

I recommend you play this game.

I'm traveling and have no access to my games, so I was searching for some short thing to play on my phone. I settled on the Android version of the original DQ (which is the same as the version on Switch, fyi), which I beat in 5 hours. I initially regretted a bit not playing an emulated version of the game for speed up and stuff, but HLTB puts DQ1 at 8-10 hours, so this port is considerably faster

It's missing two pretty essential QoLs though: dungeon maps, and a fast-forward feature. If it had that, you'd probably be able to finish this game in about 3 hours, possibly less.

As for the game itself, it's a JRPG in the most literal sense of the word. It is the very first one, and the gameplay loop consists entirely of grinding exp and gold to be able to survive the trip to the next town.

Looking back, it is crazy that Final Fantasy came out a mere year later, and already feels much richer and denser than DQ1. Probably wouldn't have played this in another context, but am still glad I did since it's an interesting piece of history

I still wish it had a speed up feature though

my favorite thing about playing these 8 bit era titles is seeing how little game design has advanced in the ~35 years since. the formula for turn based rpgs, and console rpgs in general sort of, was pretty well established here - in its simplest, crudest, purest form - and really hasn’t been altered too drastically in the intervening years. in some ways these games have actually become less sophisticated over time, from a design standpoint; mostly in the name of user friendliness. i played this alongside ff16 where every destination is simply given to you and marked plainly on the map so there is literally no opportunity for the player to find themselves lost or confused. and while i’m having quite a lot of fun with that game, it’s a far less rigorous experience that this, where your path has to be sussed out for yourself through thorough investigation/exploration, never holding your hand at any point. their loops do impart a similar feeling, tho; clearly coming out of the same lineage despite the technical/mechanical gulf between them. getting some new weapon/item, grinding it on your way to the next town/cave/shrine/whatever where you get another new item that opens up another destination and so on. basically what it all boils down to is powering up your character so you have an easier time killing guys; ff16 may be a sophisticated modern action game and here all you’re doing is waiting your turn to hit the attack button, but the core experience was remarkably similar to me. there are ways in which the game shows its age obviously - random encounters are about 2x too frequent (altho i do think this is crucial to the game feeling as big as it does tbh, i took a jaunt around the map once i finished it and the enemies had been extinguished and it took me a couple of minutes maybe) and i wish the offensive options were more varied; after a certain point your best bet is to just spam the attack command in every single encounter until they’re dead - but for the most part i was struck at how not-antiquated it felt in spite of its aged trappings. i’ll admit the narrative and aesthetic are relatively generic tolkien-esque fantasy stuff and probably won’t make much of an impression on modern audiences, outside of toriyama’s enemy designs which are beautiful and lively from end to end, but that’s true of most games in the genre if we’re being real. anyone who’s semi-seriously interested in rpgs and can put up with a few age-related annoyances should consider trying this out at least just to see the genre bursting through in a nearly-fully actualized way

played this on ios which i can’t recommend enough. as an idle game, it absolutely washes any of the free to play garbage the app store is flooded with these days. ofc it’s well suited to a more active and engaged style of play but the rudimentary battle system is great for zoning out while you grind for five minutes at a time, too. and with the quick save feature you don’t have to worry about losing your progress if you can’t make it back to the castle. the touchscreen joystick and menus, while a bit unpolished looking maybe, are smooth and intuitive and the fact that you can play it in portrait with one hand is a game changer for me. just a real joy to play on your phone; don’t imagine i would have stuck with it on another platform honestly

After binging on six classic final fantasy games, I thought it’d be a good idea to also play the games that started it all, Dragon Quest. Everyone around me told me it was going to be a grindfest and that honestly scared me in preparing for the worst. Turns out, the game is alright. The most vanilla of RPG tropes and gameplay is there and that’s fine but what’s most interesting is how the game guides you in what direction to go next with the difficulty of monsters depending on the area. After a while though I found it incredibly tedious so I ended up using a guide instead but I would still praise that design choice for its time. The bosses in the late game were the worst though, as it forced me to grind from level 15 all the way to level 25 to actually be able to properly defeat most of them which did sour my overall thoughts of the game. This game is tedious and outdated, but to experience it as a historical artifact of that era, I can respect it. 4/10, I’d rather be playing Final Fantasy.