Honestly, very short and sweet. The story was simple and I think it does a good job of leading you through the world with a clear mission.
As long as you have a world map pulled up on any version where you don't have access to one, you should be okay.
Random encounters are never fun, but what can you do, it's an 80s jrpg. I had fun though, the atmosphere and music were great and the npcs were funny. There's something so baller about being the one guy with sick ass armour, on a mission to get the ball of light and save the princess. Like it sounds so generic, but it created THE blueprint and it's the ONE to do it right.

É muito interessante ver onde onde o JRPG nasceu. Embora seja um remake de um remake, lançado em 2014, ele ainda tem a essência do jogo original lançado em 1986. Para os padrões atuais, é um jogo com mecânicas bastante simples, com uma história ainda mais simples, mas certamente foi revolucionário. Ainda tem algumas das burocracias típicas de JRPG antigos e a necessidade de fazer um pouco de grinding, mas as melhorias de qualidade de vida desse remake o tornam a versão definitiva e recomendável de se jogar hoje.

One of my most fascinating gaming experiences, and I never would've expected to like this as much as I did. Incredibly simple, and yet fun and smooth to play. Discovering the secrets of the world and progressing isn't as cryptic as other NES games (like the original TLoZ), and actually feels incredibly rewarding and satisfying, and overall aside from maybe the Erdrick Mark thing near the end (which is handled kind of poorly and had to look up if I was right [I was]) the game is in my opinion completely beatable without a guide.
It's also simply fascinating to see where a whole genre started, and the game isn't even as grindy as I expected it to be (I only did it twice in my whole playtrough).

My only complaint is how out of place character sprites look in the port, they just don't look quite right. On the other hand, the orchestral soundtrack and battle artworks for enemy are both beautiful.
I think for the price (5€, often on sale) this is an awesome little experience that everyone who likes JRPGs will enjoy.

I have a feeling in a couple of months I will have played this even more times than the Dark Souls games.

There is something so special about Dragon Quest aside from it being the origin of JRPGs. I've played so many inventive, unique, creative and strange JRPGs before I played Dragon Quest, yet this game managed to capture my heart. It accomplished this by being so incredibly simple, and while that is a really cliche thing to say about the game, I think there's so much more merit to the "simple" description than meets the eye. That is to say, by being so simple, the game takes advantage of what I consider the most important thing to any RPG, imagination.

From the days of Dungeons & Dragons, imagination played a key role in making an RPG fun. And when the genre made their jump to computers and consoles, this remained true for some of the earliest iterations. Games like Wizardry, Ultima and Akalabeth had such rudimentary graphics and stories that it left room for the player to fill in the blanks and make these worlds feel alive. And sometimes, the player's imagination can do some real heavy lifting.

I can attest. I was the kind of kid that grew up as a fan of Earthbound and would strike poses, holding my hands out at the TV screen acting like I was Ness casting PK Rockin at the opponent. This was in 2008, when console graphics were progressively getting better and better. While the visual fidelity of the PS3 and Xbox 360 were capable of telling stories with amazing graphics, for some reason I always preferred that dusty, old obscure SNES game before anything else simply because my imagination, with the game being the foundation, took me on an adventure I still hold onto so dearly as a core memory.

I had played Dragon Quest around that time as well, but I was so Earthbound-crazy that it didn't really capture my attention for too long. I decided to return to the game with a fresh mind recently. Going into it, I was no longer that kid excited for Earthbound. I was an adult, who had gone through so many things. I didn't become cynical or anything, I just wasn't so easily excitable about games like back then.

Yet, when I played Dragon Quest, something happened. The game had various moments that activated my imagination and began to reel me in. The first one happens the moment you leave the first town. When you set foot into the overworld you are able see the final area of the game. It's far out of your reach but well in sight. That suddenly made the world feel big to me. I was some shlump with basic equipment, struggling to fight slimes, but with the final castle in my view, I knew a greater potential for me was possible. It was just a matter of how to achieve it; maybe I could grind enemies, chart out the world, get better equipment, go into a cave that was beyond my level but get a lucky critical hit to conquer it. These all are simple things in RPGs now but in DQ, it made the world feel open and it all started with the game dropping you into the world, showing you your final objective and just let's you go from there.

The second moment was as I was exploring the overworld, I came across a town that was completely destroyed. There was no inhabitants left to explain anything, hardly anything to interact with. Yet because there was very little information, I was left wondering "What happened here? Why is this town the only one destroyed?" It's such a simple thing, with an obvious explanation but I think the reason it caught me by surprise was because the game gets you in a loop of exploring, conquering a challenge and then resting in a new town for bit, repeat. This destroyed town was probably a choice to break up the pace. But it goes a long way to suddenly making you feel uncomfortable, in danger and curious.

The final moment was when you defeat the Green Dragon to save the princess. She asks if you can take her back to her castle and you agree. I was expecting her sprite to follow you, or something simple but no. The game displays an entirely new set of sprites of you carrying the princess. THIS IS THE MOST CLICHE FANTASY RPG TROPE EVER! And yet when I saw that they made this moment, they went through the trouble of making a whole new sprite set for this scene, it gave me this feeling of "Hell yeah! I SAVED THE PRINCESS."

Writing all of this out makes me sound like a bit of a man-child getting hyped about such a silly generic RPG such as Dragon Quest, but you know what, having that kind of imagination and excitement for a game is fun. Having that kind of excitement tells me that there's still so much more to life. That even in the smallest things, something amazing can be found. And I just gotta go out there with an open mind to find it.

Dragon Quest would go on to refine the formula they established here and would consistently up the quality with each new game. Every DQ game is so wonderful and it all began with the very deliberate design choices the developers made here. They clearly wanted the player to feel like they're on an adventure and for someone like me, they passed with flying colors.

This is why, in spite of being a 37 year old game, with so many other games having done the JRPG formula better, Dragon Quest being simple shows why and how RPGs are fun, even in their most pure, fundamental form. And that is why I am going to love this series for the rest of my life.

thea spell that teleports you outside a dungeon is straight-up named
"OUTSIDE"

the spell that hurts enemies is named
"HURT"

and the upgraded version of it is called
"HURT MORE"

10/10

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.

SNES vers.

Weirdly enjoyed this more than V lol

Probs cause of the pure simplicity allowing the charm of the JRPG to shine thru