This game aged surprisingly well. usually NES games are stupidly and annoyingly cryptic but Dragon Quest is pretty simple to follow as long as you're paying attention. The game is very short I think it only took me about 7-8 hours to beat it but for a NES game or the 3 dollar mobile port I got that's fine. I mostly played this game to kill time and it does that well. The problems are mostly ones that were with age and the genre not being perfected yet, every fight is a stat check, there's no real strategy, you either have the stats to win or you don't. The game is VERY backtracky, granted I think it's in favor for the game's design as the world's pretty small, you kinda wanna be fighting enemies to grind, and exploration with future items (mostly keys) gives you more items and hints for further progression. The only time I REALLY had to stop and grind was toward the end of the game for the best equipment and even then it was only like 40 minutes. Overall it's really solid for an NES rpg and I'd say if you're a fan of the genre it's worth a look for the novelty.