(snes version)
All but perfectly composed. The way the world folds out from your central location (the place you save), the magnificent numbers tuning where a 5 is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, the hum of combat stripped to its essentials and the light open-world design that encourages interacting with its residents...Dragon Quest basically one-and-done'd it all. About the only thing I have any desire to ding it for is that magic is largely useless outside of healing and traversal, half your arsenal profoundly unnecessary in a game otherwise so tightly formed.
But honestly who cares when faced with Dragon Quest's greatest strength: its tone. Despite the image DQ has accrued of being lovely and charming and nostalgic and warm, this game is a profoundly sad experience. The world is dead. Towns are in ruins. Poison litters the ground as naturally as water and there are more bloodthirsty, alien monsters than there are people anymore. And every person you talk to time and time again puts it all on you: you have to save us, you are the only one who can. There are no party members, it's a journey of solitude. No friends to make, no campfire stories or wacky hijinx to get into, just the one thing you were born to do. You have no choice; it's in your blood. You can't even die, fate and duty so strong that you are brought back again and again until you succeed. Every inch of this game is oozing a melancholic weight heavier than just about anything in gaming. It's no coincidence that Koichi Sugiyama's (god not rest his soul) overworld theme here, the song you are treated to the most, brings to mind the fog before a rain more than any idea of adventure.
Palpable stuff! Stuff that is astounding in its own right but which also builds to a transcendent release at the end, one of the great narrative moments in a game, when you finally accomplish your goal and the world explodes into flowers and all the monsters vanish and everyone celebrates and you, the hero, freed from the grip of responsibility and expectation, life now perfectly without purpose, wander off to new worlds. (something something about killing the dark fascist lord and then rejecting your noble monarchal position to live free from systems of power)
I repeat: all but perfectly composed.
All but perfectly composed. The way the world folds out from your central location (the place you save), the magnificent numbers tuning where a 5 is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, the hum of combat stripped to its essentials and the light open-world design that encourages interacting with its residents...Dragon Quest basically one-and-done'd it all. About the only thing I have any desire to ding it for is that magic is largely useless outside of healing and traversal, half your arsenal profoundly unnecessary in a game otherwise so tightly formed.
But honestly who cares when faced with Dragon Quest's greatest strength: its tone. Despite the image DQ has accrued of being lovely and charming and nostalgic and warm, this game is a profoundly sad experience. The world is dead. Towns are in ruins. Poison litters the ground as naturally as water and there are more bloodthirsty, alien monsters than there are people anymore. And every person you talk to time and time again puts it all on you: you have to save us, you are the only one who can. There are no party members, it's a journey of solitude. No friends to make, no campfire stories or wacky hijinx to get into, just the one thing you were born to do. You have no choice; it's in your blood. You can't even die, fate and duty so strong that you are brought back again and again until you succeed. Every inch of this game is oozing a melancholic weight heavier than just about anything in gaming. It's no coincidence that Koichi Sugiyama's (god not rest his soul) overworld theme here, the song you are treated to the most, brings to mind the fog before a rain more than any idea of adventure.
Palpable stuff! Stuff that is astounding in its own right but which also builds to a transcendent release at the end, one of the great narrative moments in a game, when you finally accomplish your goal and the world explodes into flowers and all the monsters vanish and everyone celebrates and you, the hero, freed from the grip of responsibility and expectation, life now perfectly without purpose, wander off to new worlds. (something something about killing the dark fascist lord and then rejecting your noble monarchal position to live free from systems of power)
I repeat: all but perfectly composed.