Wow, they made a game based on grinding?

Man I wish this game aged well, I respect it for being a cultural impact, and the base for all upcoming JRPG but sometimes you just have to face things head-on and realize 90% of this game is just grinding, especially from level 15 to 20 when you've done everything the game has to offer and all you want to do is kill the final boss but your level isn't high enough so you just walk up and down until you get enough XP and I don't have to tell you all about grinding we all had to suffer through RPG grinding at some point in our life.

Even though the score is low it doesn't mean it's bad but it would be unfair to put it next to an actually good game like Final Fantasy 5, right?
Nostalgia and historical value are important for sure but I think a good game has to still be good in modern games.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk, that was my rant about biased nostalgia opinions and historical value.

Perfect on iOS. More of these tiny, old RPG titles need to be put in portrait mode and ported to smartphones. So many of them, because they were made for the NES, were designed to be these little games you can pick up and play a little of at a time, which is perfect for mobile since sometimes you just need to twiddle your thumbs. I much prefer playing an actual game with a narrative rather than completing daily tasks in some free-to-play time-sink so these little ports that Square Enix, especially, are putting out are perfect. Dragon Quest is so primo, too. There’s a lot of simplicity in this first one but that just makes it perfect for portability because it just doesn’t need thought put into it; you grind against monsters for levels and gold and the map is small enough to keep track of. You just work toward the next best items and explore all the dungeons for better stuff and then kill the guy! It’s so satisfying fighting monsters that you had trouble with a few levels ago and decimating them with the strength and weapon you grinded for. chef’s kiss mwah!

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.

Eu não tenho uma relação tão boa com o primeiro console da Nintendo. O NES apesar de ter sido extremamente importante e revolucionário, hoje em dia eu acabo vendo ele só como uma plataforma cheia de designs arcaicos e jogos que envelheceram terrivelmente, diferente do Super Nintendo que ostenta vários títulos que até hoje são perfeitamente jogáveis e extremamente cativantes. Então, eu acabo regressando para os jogos deste console só por fins de estudo ou curiosidade como é o caso aqui.

É interessante observar o quão ambiciosos foram os desenvolvedores em tentar fazer este mundo parecer vivo, com cada cidade tendo suas próprias partes importantes e serem esteticamente diferentes umas das outras. Para acrescentar ainda mais a isso, a maneira como o texto dos NPCs são proficientemente uma mistura de diálogos inúteis - mas muitas vezes engraçados - ao mesmo tempo em que alguns fornecem informações vitais, para os padrões de hoje em dia isso é bizarro de expositivo mas para época até que era uma sacada bem legal.

O papel do primeiro Dragon Quest foi estabelecer o padrão dos jogos JRPG, como o conceito básico de batalhas por turnos, a exploração de masmorras, os sistemas de menu, detalhes do mundo e cidades com itens/equipamentos para serem adquiridos.. elementos estes que seriam replicados e melhorados posteriormente dentro e fora da franquia. Aqui tudo é executado da maneiras mais simplória e como já dito, envelheceu super mal, o combate é pífio e repetitivo, a seleção de feitiços é muito óbvia e nada variada, o sistema de compra e venda de armas é super clichê - bem naquele estilo de "compra o mais forte, vende o mais fraco, repete" sem status ou algo que torne mais interessante o gerenciamento de equipamentos - as masmorras são desinteressantes, a curva de upgrade é super maçante basicamente forçando o jogador a passar horas grindando, péssimas condições de qualidade de vida..

O jogo não é de todo mal, a maneira que a história brinca com o clichê de "o herói que salva a princesa" permitindo que o jogador ao invés disso tome outra decisão que até acarreta em um final alternativo é genial para um jogo de 1986, outro ponto forte é o design dos monstros criados por Akira Toriyama que continuam excelentes e fazem os primeiros jogos dessa franquia serem muito mais atraentes esteticamente pra mim do que os de Final Fantasy, por exemplo. Aliás, ótimos designs de monstros e personagens é algo extremamente recorrente na série Dragon Quest.

Na época que esse jogo saiu já existia Wizardry e Ultima, e eu acho super interessante observar o quanto eles envelheceram muito melhor do que os JRPGs no geral.

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

I've always loved RPGs, but I've never played a lot of the original games that many people have fallen in love with.

My first RPG was Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64, and much what that series did sculpted my tastes and expectations for the genre. I tried other games like Final Fantasy 7 and the original Persona when I was older, but I ended up despising both of them. Very deeply.

It mostly came down to my own biases — I played the original Final Fantasy 7 back when I thought things like anime were the embodiment of "cringe" and the breeding ground for piss-poor story-telling. I had played Persona 1 after realizing I was wrong about that. When I played those games though, they set up a lot of expectations for what JRPGs used to be like. An unbearable amount of boring grinding, random encounters that crop up way too often, maze-like levels that were hard or confusing to navigate, a world map you ran around on that didn't exactly make you feel like you were on an adventure, and a general disdain for medieval settings. Those aspects have been present in a lot of JRPGs, but for the most part, as long as the game has only maybe one or two of them, I was able to still have an enjoyable time with it, but I'd have a lot of trouble stomaching all those aspects at once.

With all that being said, you'd be a little confused why I ended up enjoying the original Dragon Quest whole heartedly. I'm honestly a little confused as well! Part of the reason is that, I've grown older, and I've come to appreciate games even if they don't play directly into my preferences. But I think it mostly has to come down to execution.

Grinding in this game takes a bit of time in Dragon Quest — you mash the A button a ton. But a lot of the mechanics here, as basic as they are from today's standards, are still fun. It's actually kind of refreshing just how simple it is. In fact, everything about Dragon Quest is deceptively simple. The dungeons are mazes, but they're designed in a way where you'd have trouble getting too lost. There's grinding involved in the game, but the game is so short that it doesn't really over stay it's welcome, since the enemy variety and difficulty are quite well balanced. It can actually be quite nice to grind for a bit. They also give you options to lessen grinding with spells like Holy Protection, which is genuinely really smart. While you're battling, you're essentially fighting to keep your health from going too under, and having things like a better sword or defense to work your way up towards helps drive the game. The items are actually very effective for how simple they are, and obtaining each one feels like a great little progression marker, given that they also act as gates for having the player lessen the difficulty of the world around them, and helping them by letting them have immunity to things like poison beds, or health regeneration. For a game from 1986, and being the first of it's kind, it's genuinely surprising how fundamentally solid the game was.

There were parts that had me scratching my head as to why they were designed to be so secretive, but most of these situations were like fun little puzzles. I'm still not sure how I was supposed to find the entrance to the Grave to get the harp, but finding out for myself that I had to skirt the edge of the map screen to find the magic key shop had me pleasantly happy with myself. It helps too to have townsfolk point you in the right direction, but never quite tell you exactly what it is. It's little things like that that I really appreciated about the game.

I had a positive take away from not being able to find the grave too; it made me realize that you could approach the game in a non-linear order! And that made me really appreciate the game even more! So in part, those open world maps weren't the reason why it never quite felt like you were going on an adventure — it was because the adventure maps in games like FF7 and Persona were often very linear in how you progress through the game.

If there's anything I've learned from Dragon Quest, it's that execution is the key to getting a player to like anything. If your game is fundamentally solid, the preferences that I have for games can go straight out the window. Do I still not like it when RPGs have those types of elements? Sure. But it all comes down to how they're designed, and it is no wonder that Dragon Quest took the world by storm like it did. It makes me genuinely curious how games like Final Fantasy started off, and if their design was as fundementally solid.

Older JRPGs have always peaked my interest. I've dabbled with the earlier Final Fantasy games, but would never call myself a true fan of the genre. Most times they are laid back games that I can just grind my way through while sitting in bed, not requiring a full investment of my mental capacity. Dragon Quest was exactly what I was looking for in that regard, being a quick game that was light on story, and I could get the satisfaction of watching my character slowly gain more power of the quest.

What surprised me was how little story there actually was to the game. The very beginning of the game gives you a splurge of information on what has happened in the world, and that's it. You are sent off to the nearby town to grab some gear and then it is up to you to find out what to do. This is done through villagers giving you cryptic clues on what to do next, but often times you can stumble upon quest items without having a clue what to do with them. However, villagers dialogue will not change after retrieving an item, so I was left wondering if I had missed something.

Combat works well enough, but the systems are pretty rudimentary. Your best option is to continually attack, and then heal when needed. All other spells have minimal impact, and you are better saving MP for healing.

Grinding will take up the majority of your play time, as areas that you will need to progress to will be impossible to traverse without higher stats achieved through leveling. For the time, this was a clever to steer a character in the right direction, as the map is wide open. This also became frustrating towards the end when I knew what my objective was and simply had to run in circles fighting the same enemies so I could level up and continue the quest.

If you are curious about JRPGs roots, give this a go, but I would recommend many others first if you are a newcomer to the genre.

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.

Respeito muito esse jogo.
Queria escrever algo sobre ele mas nossa meu cérebro tá caindo da cabeça esse jogo cansa demais apesar de simples, a estrutura livre e aberta onde abre possibilidade de diversos caminhos e escolhas pra um jogo de nes e pra época isso é um clássico e é um clássico hoje em dia apesar de um sistema de XP que envelheceu mal mesmo no remake que aumenta bastante o xp ainda é meio desbalanceado.
Enfim eu respeito MUITO esse jogo ele é incrível pra época e olhando pra trás penso até como eles conseguiram fazer isso.

I thought I'd work my way through the mainline Dragon Quest games, so I booted this up on the Switch. It's intriguing how much of what's to come is in this game: items, enemies, the levelling system - some of which are unchanged even in the latest DQ11.

I enjoyed my time with it overall. The grind was real. But also hypnotic. I disliked the long spiel the King gave you every time you booted up your Save. Listen, by the time you've finished telling me how much EXP I need for the next level, your daughter will be dead, old man!

interesting to play such a primitive jrpg, but it doesn't really result in gameplay that's all too deep or interesting from what i can tell. fair warning, this will be a bit of a rambly review.

i've heard the small inventory space praised as a novel feature but frankly to me it was more cumbersome than anything - "inventory management" only became a priority in the late game when i had so many key items that there was no space left in my inventory, and even then it was just a matter of guessing which ones i was least likely to need and putting them away in storage.

combat here is obviously incredibly basic and for my money the encounter rate is far, far too high for what a boring waste of time it is to sit through. and this maybe goes without saying, but the randomized damage that you and your enemies deal largely eliminates any sort of strategy or skillful play when it comes to the encounters. mostly it becomes about levelling appropriately beforehand, and i guess knowing when to start fleeing if the battle starts going badly (though even that is randomized). but at least the sfc/gbc version is a considerably brisker experience than the absolutely tortuous grindfest that is the nes/fds version.

exploration is initially fairly fun. the progression order is mostly linear but there is a lot of freedom offered in how you go about your journey, and that's rarely a bad thing. inching your way across the world and testing which foes you're strong enough to survive against reliably enough to explore in the vicinity of is a pretty good time. grinding even becomes kind of fun because it's relegated to an option at your disposal instead of a necessity (like it was in the original nes/fds version). the way MP is handled here is one of the few examples in this game of a limitation that actually leads to deeper and more engaging gameplay than if it were more streamlined; the lack of MP recovery items means that you have to manage the resource very carefully in the early game since the spells play such a big part in your damage and healing output. health recovery items are included, though, which makes for an interesting choice on whether you want to spend MP in exchange for a "free" heal (since you can always fully recover it back at the castle), or your much-coveted gold for a backup healing resource.

however, the fun starts to dissipate as you level up and explore more of the world. it's not long into the game before you'll have enough gold to max out on healing items for a miniscule percentage of your money. MP also gradually becomes less useful the more of it you have and the higher damage you do with your basic weapons, and since you're always traveling from town to town you're never too far away from an inn where you can fully recover your health and MP (much like with healing items, the prices are so low in the mid to late game that it becomes trivial to just sleep every time you come across an inn). exploration goes from exciting to a terrible drag as trekking your way across such a large area, constantly interrupted by 2 second combat encounters, becomes an almost herculean task in the late game. the only form of fast travel you're offered is an instant teleport item which sends you back to the castle in the middle of the map. it's useful, but since it only goes one way it's not nearly enough to eliminate the absolute slog that is late game traversal. a relatively easy way to fix this issue would've been offering the ability to travel between towns via the teleport spell that you unlock late into the game. as it stands, the breeziest way to travel is to use a spell (or an item) that stops most lower level monsters from entering into combat with you, which, again, is useful but doesn't eliminate the issue (and also honestly shouldn't have been a spell or an item in the first place, this should kind of just be on by default past a certain point).

i do want to end this review on a positive note though and say that in spite of its issues, the game is very charming. it's sincere but also doesn't take itself too seriously, and well presented across the board, with cute sprite work and cool designs. it's not hard to see why it was so influential, because it really does impart on you the sense that you're on a grand adventure.