I don't think there's a rating I could give this rating that would really convey what I think about it. If I was to rate it based on how much fun I've had with my overall personal experience with both of these games, I would say 3.5/5 would be accurate.
But that might not be saying much about the actual game itself, since I made heavy use of save states and fast forwarding and had a walkthrough on me at all times. These games can definitely be beat without those, but it'd take exponentially more time and investment that I personally can't afford to spend. It's definitely a game made for the era of game manuals, magazine hints, and sharing info and rumors with friends. There were a handful of pretty arbitrary "inspect this specific tile to get the item" moments that the NPC hints don't help with very much, and other design choices that would be very obtuse to get through even if you were playing in the right cultural landscape (can 4 tiles of poison really be considered a whole swamp?).
Dragon Quest I was the roughest for me. I've seen some variation of "a one hour game with X hours of grinding" floating around in relation to it and I definitely think its true. And while I didn't like grinding in theory, I can appreciate it in a narrative level. This is essentially a power fantasy, a lone warrior who has the blood of the hero in them and sets forth to gather all the ancient artifacts necessary to save the world, growing in power along the way until they can perform the same heroic feats as Erdrick himself. Leveling up truly feels like an accomplishment, you can immediately feel how much stronger you have become and even get a new spell if you're lucky.
Speaking of, I found it very interesting that most of your spells are essentially replacements for items you'd otherwise need to find or purchase (Radiant for torches, Return for wyvern wings). You only really have 3 main actions in battle - physical attack, magic attack, heal - and so with tougher enemies it can feel like trial and error until you find the right order to perform them in.
Trial and error is also how you find your next destination most of the time, as NPCs at most hint at a general direction you should be walking to. The map isn't awfully big, but your walking speed is very slow and the encounter rate is very high.
I was very impressed with Dragon Quest II right off the bat. I was not expecting an opening cutscene, and I wasn't aware this was the game that introduced groups of enemies. The difficult felt steeper at first, but it all makes sense once you find out that there's multiple party members now. The little fetch quest to recruit the Prince was pretty nice, wasn't expecting a scripted (as much as they could) sequence that went on for that many steps. The puzzle to recruit the Princess was nice as well, even if less elaborate. The party members don't quite have archetypes just yet (single vs multi target focus is the most I can call them), but they still feel somehow distinct from each other. The main character being the most unique since they don't have any spells. The multiple party members and multi enemy encounters really increase the scale and tension of the battles, I'd say it's on par with something like SMT when it comes to teaching you to use status effects by making your life miserable if you don't.
The first continent feels like a very polished experience. The environment was shaped in a way where you don't have as many choices at once and so don't feel as overwhelmed as DQ1. That said, that all goes away when you unlock the boat and I'd say it gets worse than the first one in terms of finding where to go. The NPCs that give you hints are now spaced hundreds of tiles and encounters apart. One of the five crests was found not by interacting with anything inside a building, but with one of the trees right outside it (stuff that involved finding non-exit tiles really weren't my favorite). There is an item that helps you find them, but it is literally hidden on an arbitrary point in the sea (literally) of similar looking tiles.
Aside from some particularly frustrating grinding and pathfinding moments, I've had fun with these games and understand better why they became a foundation for the whole genre. I can also understand some more references in Dragon Quest Builders 2, which was admittedly my main motivation for playing this.
But that might not be saying much about the actual game itself, since I made heavy use of save states and fast forwarding and had a walkthrough on me at all times. These games can definitely be beat without those, but it'd take exponentially more time and investment that I personally can't afford to spend. It's definitely a game made for the era of game manuals, magazine hints, and sharing info and rumors with friends. There were a handful of pretty arbitrary "inspect this specific tile to get the item" moments that the NPC hints don't help with very much, and other design choices that would be very obtuse to get through even if you were playing in the right cultural landscape (can 4 tiles of poison really be considered a whole swamp?).
Dragon Quest I was the roughest for me. I've seen some variation of "a one hour game with X hours of grinding" floating around in relation to it and I definitely think its true. And while I didn't like grinding in theory, I can appreciate it in a narrative level. This is essentially a power fantasy, a lone warrior who has the blood of the hero in them and sets forth to gather all the ancient artifacts necessary to save the world, growing in power along the way until they can perform the same heroic feats as Erdrick himself. Leveling up truly feels like an accomplishment, you can immediately feel how much stronger you have become and even get a new spell if you're lucky.
Speaking of, I found it very interesting that most of your spells are essentially replacements for items you'd otherwise need to find or purchase (Radiant for torches, Return for wyvern wings). You only really have 3 main actions in battle - physical attack, magic attack, heal - and so with tougher enemies it can feel like trial and error until you find the right order to perform them in.
Trial and error is also how you find your next destination most of the time, as NPCs at most hint at a general direction you should be walking to. The map isn't awfully big, but your walking speed is very slow and the encounter rate is very high.
I was very impressed with Dragon Quest II right off the bat. I was not expecting an opening cutscene, and I wasn't aware this was the game that introduced groups of enemies. The difficult felt steeper at first, but it all makes sense once you find out that there's multiple party members now. The little fetch quest to recruit the Prince was pretty nice, wasn't expecting a scripted (as much as they could) sequence that went on for that many steps. The puzzle to recruit the Princess was nice as well, even if less elaborate. The party members don't quite have archetypes just yet (single vs multi target focus is the most I can call them), but they still feel somehow distinct from each other. The main character being the most unique since they don't have any spells. The multiple party members and multi enemy encounters really increase the scale and tension of the battles, I'd say it's on par with something like SMT when it comes to teaching you to use status effects by making your life miserable if you don't.
The first continent feels like a very polished experience. The environment was shaped in a way where you don't have as many choices at once and so don't feel as overwhelmed as DQ1. That said, that all goes away when you unlock the boat and I'd say it gets worse than the first one in terms of finding where to go. The NPCs that give you hints are now spaced hundreds of tiles and encounters apart. One of the five crests was found not by interacting with anything inside a building, but with one of the trees right outside it (stuff that involved finding non-exit tiles really weren't my favorite). There is an item that helps you find them, but it is literally hidden on an arbitrary point in the sea (literally) of similar looking tiles.
Aside from some particularly frustrating grinding and pathfinding moments, I've had fun with these games and understand better why they became a foundation for the whole genre. I can also understand some more references in Dragon Quest Builders 2, which was admittedly my main motivation for playing this.