So, this is my "official" start into the Dragon Quest series. I initially had tried Dragon Quest IX as my first game, and it didn't go so well...I don't blame that entry for not catching my attention, after playing the first game, I realize this series has a different world building than most RPGs and shouldn't be treated as traditional.

Granted, I know I'm playing a remake of the original game, but even looking at this version, it still has that graphical charm of a rather old RPG. everything while stylized is very retro, but pretty at the same time. I always thought of Final Fantasy as the game most RPGs imitate, (which is somewhat true) but when most media is imitating real retro RPGs this is the game they are likely emulating.

The story is about as basic as you can get...the princess is missing, evil has run amok, you're destined to save the world...that's it, there's VERY little extra to any of that. While that does sound kinda simple...I kinda dig it, with other RPGs having you find a group and take down organizations and cults or gods or whatever...Dragon Quest has you be a one man army and just go on an adventure of your own and take things at whatever pace you want it. This is your adventure, GO!

And this leads into the gameplay and this is the part that threw me off of DQ IX, it's difficult walking into a world like Dragon Quest and not understanding what monsters do and what spells mean when a spell is called "Sizz". In this game, you basically do one-on-one battles all the time, so the strategy is always you learning about the monster types and how to defeat them without feeling cheated since you never have to deal with multiple types at once, so you feel like you're learning and focusing on what an enemy does and it's role and how to counteract what it does. It really added more to the combat than I thought, and I appreciated it for it's freshness. Aside from battle it's pretty much explore the lands and grind to improve your level and equipment, the standard stuff.

The music is really hard to judge for me. On one hand, I liked what I heard as far as the battle theme and I love the sound effects of spells and attacks. On the other hand, I can't say I really remember a lot of the games music, and this could be because it's orchestrated and that's not really my jam, but nothing stood out badly at all.

Since this game is pretty retro and was well done, it's hard to think of any negatives as side from the only real thing that was bugging me from start to finish.

- The writing of NPCs is annoying. I can't stand that "olde English" medieval fantasy type of talk...I can tolerate it when voiced, but can't stand to read it.

This was a really great experience, I couldn't really give it a perfect score, because while I had fun, I felt like the game needed more in spots such has job/classes or a bit more modern writing and I think this version would have benefited from a "retro mode" to it and used the games old music or similar graphic style to add flavor in spots, but as the game is now, I loved my adventure.

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

Old RPGs are what idle games wish they could be.
They place context and an explorable map around a simple loop of: 1. Grind 2. Get weapon 3. Use weapon to grind more.
The exploration is incredibly intuitive, I only resorted to GameFAQs on two occasions: Once to verify I was right (I was), and secondly because I was stupid and forgot to note down a hint (which you should do). The design of this game is so tight that if the philosophical idea of game design could be wrapped around a watermelon, said melon would explode.
Play dragon quest, you will enjoy it, if you don't, you just haven't gotten to a stage in your life yet where you will enjoy it.

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

SNES vers.

Weirdly enjoyed this more than V lol

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

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.