The Dragon Quest Series Part 1: From Humble Beginnings

 Dragon Quest is one of those series whose influence is somehow both understated and yet overwhelming. The series has directly led to the creation of some of the most celebrated games ever made such as Final Fantasy and Mother/EarthBound and is still insanely popular in Japan, though it probably isn't as well-known as other popular JRPGs here in the States, especially when games like Persona and the aforementioned FF series have become juggernauts even in the West. And yet the series keeps on trucking, remaining a smash hit JRPG series in Japan and enjoying success among its rabid American fanbase. It's a series that had been in my periphery for a very long time. About a year ago, the first three games were released on Switch and I figured that with the re-release, now would be as good a time as any to dive into this venerated franchise.

  

It's important to note that the Switch remakes are based on the IOS and Android remakes, which a lot of fans take umbrage to because they believe it looks ugly. I myself don't think it looks too bad, but I also haven't had a lot of exposure to the series outside of Akira Toriyama's artwork so I'm pretty sure if I were in the hardcore fans' position I'd be saying the same thing.

 

I'll just let you be the judge. The first image is from the original NES release while the second is from the Switch remake. Make of it what you will.

 

 

 

The story of Dragon Quest is simple; you play as the descendant of the hero Erdrick (Loto in the original Japanese release), and you must go on a quest to stop the evil Dragonlord and save the Princess of Tantegel. There really isn't a lot of story to go off of, but this was also 1986 so having an in-game story at all was still a brand-new thing for console gaming. There isn't much in the way of actual plot progression either; you're given your tasks at the start and that's about it until you complete them. In fact, saving the Princess is totally optional. All you really need to do is stop the Dragonlord. You'll still want to save the Princess though if only because saving her requires you to fight a dragon and you'll want the experience points.

If there is one thing I can praise, it's the amount of NPCs in the game that give you genuinely helpful advice. Most of them speak of rumors and secrets that inform the player what to do and how to go about traveling the world. Granted, this is perhaps the most common aspect of RPGs in general, but for a game so light on story and being the first JRPG ever, I was impressed at how populated the world is and how much everyone has to say. Any game where the NPCs don't actively lie to you or talk in riddles like in Castlevania II is okay in my book.

Dragon Quest's core gameplay loop is equally simplistic. There is a heavy focus on grinding both for gold and for experience. A good 90% of the game consists of staying around a town battling enemies and buying stronger equipment until you're tough enough to head on over to the next town. Combat itself is simple as well; it is turn-based, which means that you select your action, watch it play out, the enemy responds in kind, and you rinse-repeat until the end of the battle. Furthermore, you only ever fight one enemy at a time, so fights don't get any more complex than smacking around skeletons in one-on-one fights.

One might reasonably argue that a game with such a simplistic and repetitive gameplay loop would get boring very quickly. And by rights, that should be correct, yet Dragon Quest's archaic nature retroactively made it far more interesting to play than it had any right to be.

For one thing, Dragon Quest only has one playable character. You get no additional party members at any point in the game. This means that your character has to do everything himself, so as he levels up he gains access to powerful spells while remaining physically capable enough to take down enemies all by himself. I've played quite a few JRPGs over the years with the typical warrior-mage-thief setup, so playing a game where you have one character having all the roles to himself was surprisingly refreshing. You never see JRPGs with one character, and Dragon Quest 1 made me realize how potent the concept is. As played out as every trope it invented is, that's the one aspect nobody has copied, and it makes the game all the more fascinating as a result.

Dragon Quest is also incredibly short. My first playthrough took me about 3 or 4 hours, which prevents the grinding from becoming an absolute chore. While most of that time was spent grinding, there was a strange comfort in it because the game isn't long enough to be tedious.

Speaking of the grind, I mentioned Dragon Quest consisted of grinding for a huge chunk of the game, but I found it to be engaging. Grinding is a divisive topic for a lot of people, especially with how grind-heavy early JRPGs are, but Dragon Quest hits that sweet spot where you feel as though you're actually getting somewhere with every level you gain and every new piece of equipment you buy. It feels satisfying to get strong enough to make the journey to the next town, and with how linear the game is you actively feel as though you are getting stronger. It's a delicate balance few games get right, and yet DQ succeeds. It's a bit hard to explain honestly why Dragon Quest's grinding works. I suppose it's addicting to actually level up and get stronger in a specific way not many games are and that's what puts the grinding in this game above something like Mother, where grinding can get extremely tedious.

To put the grinding into perspective, I spent a good while grinding outside the Dragonlord's castle. I wasn't sure how difficult the fight would be, and this being an old JRPG, even a remake of one, I was expecting the worst. I found out quickly that I over-leveled if anything; I beat the Dragonlord inside of 2 minutes without dying or having to worry about dying. I don't regret overleveling because just the process of getting there felt satisfying, doubly so when I easily slew the Dragonlord.

That being said, there a couple of aged aspects I didn't care for. One of them was the limited inventory space. I'm a total pack rat when it comes to RPGs, Western and Japanese, so limited inventory always chafes me. It's not totally bad in the remakes though because you get a vault for storing items, which is good for storage hounds like me. Tying into the inventory is the use of Magic Keys. Throughout the world of Dragon Quest, there are doors that can only be opened with the use of Magic Keys, but these Magic Keys can only be bought in specific locations such as Rimuldar. Not only that, but if you leave an area and come back, the doors will shut themselves and force you to use another key to open it again. It's just plain clunky and forces you to horde keys just so you don't get shut out.

Another thing I don't care for is the save system. In order to save, you have to travel back to Tantegel and talk to the king, who proceeds to tell you how much more experience you need to level up before allowing you to save. In effect, you can only save in this one specific location. This is mitigated by the fact that you gain a fast travel spell to quickly return to the castle, but all the same having just one location to save in feels unnecessarily restrictive. At the same time, the game world is really small so you're never too far away to where traveling back would take too long.

 

However, this does lead to one of the most satisfying endings ever put in an JRPG. After you defeat the Dragonlord, you journey back to the castle. The evil has been purged from the land so enemies won't attack you and the poisonous spot on the overworld are gone. If you want, you can even stop at the towns you visited and hear the citizens praise you for saving the world, but the game truly ends once you get back to Tantegel and talk to the king one last time. The process of going back to the first castle once the world has been rid of evil feels so insanely gratifying because you get to see firsthand the good you have done. Most games end with a few cutscenes and you're told everything is fine again, but Dragon Quest goes a step further and shows you that you have indeed saved the world. It feels so good, even moreso when the king encourages you and the princess to go out into the world and forge your own kingdom. While we don't see that in this game, this does lead to Dragon Quest II where we get to play as the hero's descendants.

Playing Dragon Quest 1 started to make the other JRPGs I've played make more sense. When I played Mother 1, I was amused by the fact you had to call your father in order to save and see how much more experience you need to get to the next level. Dragon Quest suddenly put the Mother series into perspective for me; the mechanics in Mother serve to emulate and parody those found in Dragon Quest which honestly makes the Mother games more brilliant in my eyes. The earlier Final Fantasies were also recontextualized; those games serve as an interesting contrast from DQ, such as the move away from first-person battles to an overall view of the fight. Not to mention, as we go further through the Dragon Quest series, Final Fantasy focused more on epic overarching stories while DQ prefers small scale adventures while on the road of a larger story.

While I enjoyed my time with Dragon Quest 1, I'm a bit hesitant to recommend it. It's got its charm to be sure, but it certainly isn't for everyone. While I found its archaic nature fascinating, others will certainly find it boring and I don't see the average non-JRPG fan playing it through to the end, no matter how short it is. If you're a JRPG fan and you're interested in how the genre started though, then I highly recommend it. It's a comfy game to play through on a quiet afternoon. It's not expensive either, especially on Switch. I can't say for certain how different the Switch version is from other versions (though I hear the Gameboy Color versions are good too) but at $5 it's certainly worth the price.