The game that started the JRPG genre

A review of Dragon Quest

As a lifelong fan of JRPGs, I’d certainly heard about the Dragon Quest series. However after hearing all about Dragon Quest VII for years, it never came out in Australia and was only released in Japan and North America. It wouldn’t be until Dragon Quest XI that I finally gave the series a chance and I hated the game. I tried to play it a couple of years later and while I got further in it, I wasn’t enjoying it. This was a game rooted in nostalgia with many callbacks throughout the game, but I had none of the context the game expected.

I was really disappointed and I kept wanting to come back to the series. In Japan this was a big JRPG series and from what I can see, this is widely considered to be the very first JRPG. So given playing the latest entry in the series didn’t land for me, I decided to go back to the very first game and see whether I enjoyed that more.

Dragon Quest

Original Release: 1986 (NES); Played Release: 2019 (Switch)
Time Played: 10 hours; Time in Backlog: N/A

First released for the NES under the title of Dragon Warrior in America, I decided to play the Switch port as it was the most convenient way to play it and it was on special for less than a cup of coffee. I named my hero Solo and found myself in Tantagel Castle speaking with the King whom tells me that recently a terrible enemy known as the Dragonlord has risen to power and beset the land with monsters. As a descendant of the fabled hero, Erdrick, I’m asked if I can go defeat the Dragonlord and restore light to the land once more.

The plotline is obviously quite basic by modern standards, but the inspirations for it in western CRPGs of this time, such as Ultima and Wizardry, is very clear. In fact, the original save function in the game requires you to go back to the King and speak with him, which very much reminds me of Akalabeth where the King is also central to the game as the sole quest giver.

Knowing that games of this era relied heavily upon the manual I quickly found a copy online and read through the whole thing. In the manual it recommends you grind a few levels around the castle and even goes so far as to suggest what level you should be when you start venturing further away from the starting location. As the very first JRPG the developers were obviously quite cognisant of where players would have potential pitfalls and worked to provide them with the information they needed to avoid them, rather than just making the game easier. I appreciate that and feel we’ve lost something by manuals no longer being included in games.

Combat in this game is pretty simplistic and yet short enough to not become boring or cumbersome. You only ever control one character (hence the name of Solo) and it switches to a first person view. I was surprised by the overhead view on the overworld and then the first person view for combat and how it somewhat mirrors how Akalabeth worked. As you level up you gain access to spells which helps the fights finish quicker and extend how far you can go between rests.

I think the thing that surprised me the most was the game actually has NPCs who give you quests as you go through the game. They aren’t as obvious as the overall objective of the game. Instead you have to just speak with various NPCs and I made notes to help make sure I didn’t miss any of the information and completed everything. I’m not 100% certain if any of these quests were optional, but I suspect one or two may have been. Overall I was quite impressed with how Dragon Quest handled the quests in the game.

The soundtrack in this port is absolutely amazing. The music gives the most mundane fights an epic feel to it. I often mute games when I play them, but this one I listened to the music throughout the whole thing. Unfortunately the graphics do let the game down a bit. While the graphics are fine, the mismatch between the sprite work and the background gives it a mobile phone game quality to it (which makes sense as I believe this is a port of the mobile phone version of the game).

Playing the Switch port I got to enjoy a number of quality of life features. My favourite feature was definitely the Quick Save feature. Unlike the “memo” saves Square-Enix used in the PS1 era for it’s NES ports, the Quick Save doesn’t instantly close the game or disappear when you turn off the game. This meant I could do some grinding and then save just before a boss fight and reload my Quick Save if I failed to defeat the boss. This saved a lot of backtracking that would have otherwise been required.

A couple of other QOL updates I very much appreciated were the overworld map with an icon to indicate where I was on it. I have a terrible sense of direction and this was very helpful. The game also replicates much of the content in the manual in game as a menu item. While the content wasn’t an exact much or as in depth as the manual, I still appreciated that they included as much as they did.

One area in which the game really shows it’s age is with it’s inventory system. It’s extremely limited, as was customary for games of it’s era, it’s also inconsistent as to which items it groups up and how many items it will group up together. This meant inventory management was an ongoing affair throughout the whole game as a consequence I just stopped carrying healing items after a while to remove the issue.

Keys are in this game to unlock various doors, much like the Legend of Zelda which came out a few months prior. I expected this to be another pain point, but it was actually completely fine. They provide sufficient sources of keys within the game to stop it from getting annoying and money eventually stops being an issue as you progress through the game so the fact they’re consumable isn’t a big deal.

Overall I really enjoyed my time with Dragon Quest. I’m really glad I came back to the start of the series and gave it a chance. I can definitely see myself giving Dragon Quest II and Dragon Quest III a chance sometime in the future.

Final Verdict: 8/10 (Good)

One game I’ve been playing on and off throughout the year is Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair. After playing it for the past few months I think I’m finally ready to move on so next time I’ll be reviewing that.