When the grind was good

JRPGs, where do we start?

A lot of us start with the popular Dragon Quest series, the first few of which had the title Dragon Warrior.

I remember playing Dragon Warrior 1 & 2 on the gameboy color as a kid, and becoming way too frustrated and playing a much simpler game. (Pokemon)

Growing up though, my family didn't exactly have the money to buy all the new games, so replaying old games, or revisiting games became something I quickly got used to.

Since then, I've played through most (not 10 because I'm not Japanese) of the dragon quest games. (Also not 11, I'm working on it).

Dragon Warrior 1 set the stage for JRPGs to really take off, and it's hard to not mention it when you talk about the birth of the genre. First introduced on the Super Famicon in 1986 it would see it's first North American release in August 1989.

I never played that version, but I've heard good things.

I have however played through Dragon Warrior 1 a few times on the gameboy color, and what a game it is. Let's talk about it:

Music:

Koichi Sugiyama is responsible for most (if not all) the dragon quest music for the series, and it blows other composers work out of the water. It's light and melodic and reproduced on the gameboy color it comes across in a way one would not expect for an 8bit game. The overworld themes still get stuck in my head sometimes - and they definitely get stuck in my head if I've recently played through the game.

There's also a decent array of music. Aside from the popular overworld theme, there's a few dungeon themes, unique battle themes, and a few other pieces of unique writing depending on what you accomplish in the game.

Sound effects are that of an 8bit gameboy color game.

Music: 5/5

Animation:

The famous Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball Z) is responsible for animation in the entire series. His art style at this point is iconic, but back in the day, each monster having unique art and sequences is phenomenal. From box art to in game graphics, for an 8bit game, Dragon Warrior far surpasses it's times. It's not playstation graphics or anything crazy like that, but it definitely holds its own with other games of that era: Megaman 2, the TMNT title for NES, etc.

It's hard to beat out hand drawn art for every monster, complete with a few background images and excellent openworld designs.

Animation: 5/5

Plot:

Okay. I'll give you that it's simple. But, there were few game that at the time weren't. Go to this town to get this thing, and repeat. While it was a little monotonous at times, there was enough intrigue and mystery to keep things going. Throw in a few legendary pieces of armor, a missing princess, a dragon, and a floating castle in the sky and you've got yourself, if not a decent plot to an old videogame, a pretty good light novella in today's YA crowd.

Plot: 3.5/5

Gameplay:

This is probably one of the more important parts to any review, and the Dragon quest series, has followed a very strict formula. Turn based. If turn based combat is not your thing, please never pick up or review this game. You'll hate it. I don't mind turn based though, so here we are.

The first game can get a bit grindy when you're talking about later levels, but again a lot of RPGs, especially JRGPs do get grindy late game anyway. In some ways it's part of the fun, it makes the payoff of completely wrecking that final boss all the better. I'm not going to harp to hardly on the grinding process here because there are far worse examples (looking at you Dragon Warrior 2).

The game is simple enough with the direction pads controlling your overworld trajectory and the A and B buttons used to input simple commands, everything works out pretty smoothly. The fun part is honestly figuring out which spells work best and which ones will have you running out of MP too often.

The basic style of play is this: Beat monsters, get coins, upgrade armor, repeat. Throw in the fact that you'll probably die a few times getting the amount of fights you can get into correct and you've nailed the formula. It's simple, it's efficient, and as the series has seen, there's not a lot of reason to hate on it, or change it up too much.

Once again, for it's time, it's an excellent display of turn based strategy.

Gameplay: 4/5 (took off a point for grindyness)

Overall: 4.5/5 - Excellent piece of gaming history and still playable

Disclaimer: I honestly never beat the GBC versions, but I have subsequently played the emulated version on my phone and beat them there. Much easier when you're a 20 something than a 5 year old kid who doesn't know what grinding is.