The First Dragon Quest, A Great RPG

Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) was one of the first RPGs released for the NES. It is a fun but short game that is still fun to play today. When I went back to play this game for another project, I was surprised by how short it actually is.

I’ve only played this a few times, and it wasn’t until 2019 that I beat the game. This was one of the games I collected in high school, but I didn’t beat it then for some reason. At the time, I would buy a bunch of NES games, test them out, and then put them on a shelf for later.

When I started making YouTube videos, this was one of the first games I decided to review. That video is terrible, but I’m still proud of what I learned while making it. Let’s go over the game and see what it has to offer.

TLDR: A fun but archaic retro RPG.

Narrative

The game’s backstory is a bit more involved than the main story. This was a common thing for many video games back in the 1980s and 1990s. You’re given two plots right off the bat, and there is little deviation from them.

The first plot is the missing princess. The Dragonlord kidnapped her, and you quickly figure out where she is. There are clues to her location in several villages, but eventually you have to go to the cave she’s being held in. There is also a Green Dragon guarding her.

The main plot has you trying to defeat the Dragonlord. To do this, you need to collect three artifacts. You’re given the option to fight the Dragonlord or side with him. Depending on what version of the game you’re playing, you’ll get a different outcome if you side with the Dragonlord.

Once you beat the Dragon Lord, the hero returns to the castle. He turns down an offer to take over the kingdom so he can create his own. Then you take the princess and leave.

The story is perfectly fine. For a game like this, I think it works quite well. It is a basic story for an RPG, but that is what you should expect from a game released in 1986.

Gameplay

If you’ve played an RPG before, then you’ll know what to do. This game is straightforward and not too hard to figure out. I do like the game, but it has some problems.

This is a turn-based RPG where you have a party of one person. This system simplifies the gameplay by having the main character serve as your healer, mage, and knight all in one. It would set up Dragon Quest as a good starter RPG.

There are several outdated mechanics in this game. The first is the menu system, which requires the player to open a menu before selecting an option. Here is what I mean:

• Want to talk to someone? Open up a menu.
• Go up or down stairs? You need to open a menu.
• Even opening a door.
• Search the ground you’re standing on.
• Opening a chest or picking up an item off the ground.

In other games, such as Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star, you don’t have to do this as often.

You only fight one enemy at a time. This reduces the game’s difficulty and clarifies what you need to do. Most of the fights aren’t all that complicated.

If and when you die, then you’ll be transported back to the king. You’ll lose half of the gold that you’ve acquired from fighting. I actually like this system; it makes things a little easier than some of the other RPGs from this era.

There are plenty of walkthroughs on the internet. This isn’t a long game, and the world map is fairly small. Here is a link to the guide I referred to when I was unsure where I needed to go or how to find something (Link)

I like most of the gameplay in this game. It is a simplified RPG that dealt with the initial growing pains of the Famicom and NES. It was released in 1986 and brought to North America in 1989. While it is simple, it does do many things well enough for it to be decent today.

Visuals

Dragon Quest is a bright and colorful game. The battle screens stand out to me as being much better than some of the other early RPGs on the system. The towns and world screen don’t look all that great.

When you fight an enemy, the screen goes into a first-person view. You see the one enemy that you’re fighting, and you see that the enemy is being hit. What is disappointing is that you don’t see the spells.

The enemies look good. Everything was done by Akira Toriyama, the creator of Dragon Ball. You can tell as you play the game, because he has a distinct art style. It makes the game feel less serious, but gives it a unique feel.

On the world screen, things look fine. The graphics don’t look too different from the other RPGs on the system. This part of the game looks good for the most part.

The towns are a little strange. There are no roofs on the buildings, which grew on me throughout the game, and it would become a staple of the series. It is something that even continues in some of the spin-off games.

Overall, I think the game looks pretty good. It was released in 1986, but I think it looks as good as the other games on the NES. There is a charm to this game that I really enjoy, and the graphics play a big part in that.

Reviews at the Time

Looking at the reviews for Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior can be rather telling of the changing moods of retro games over the last few decades. The few that I saw from 1989 and 1990 were average for the time. Since that time, they have been on the two extremes of being horrible or amazing.

I looked at the reviews on MobyGames. The game has a 68/100 on the site, which isn’t too far off the mark. Some of the criticisms of the game are rather odd, much like the praise for it.

It is very close to how other retro games have been reviewed over the years. When it was released, it was an above average game. In the 2000s, it became “cool” to shit on older games, and in the 2010s, they would get reevaluations that were closer to reality.

You also had fans of the game or the series who would overly praise it. There isn’t anything wrong with these. For what I’m doing with this, I tend to discount the best and worst reviews, as well as those that were done decades after the game was released.  

7.5/10. This isn’t a bad game. It does have some archaic features in it that would slowly get phased out of the series and the genre as a whole. I like the game, but it can be hard to come back and play when you’ve become used to how modern RPGs work.  

Pros

• Good Graphics
• Familiar Story
• Easy

Cons

• Lots of Menus
• Archaic Gameplay

Conclusion

This can be a fun game to come back and play. If anything, it can let you see how far the genre has come. I like seeing the graphics, and I find grinding for levels to be relaxing.

The first Dragon Quest is still fairly new to me. I’ve only beaten it a handful of times since I started playing it in high school. I had no idea it existed until I first played Final Fantasy.

There is an easter egg in the North American version where you find the grave of the protagonist from Dragon Quest. This was totally lost on me until my brother’s friend told me, which means it was probably a lie. I still like to believe it, though, because I find it funny.

There have been a bunch of remasters and rereleases of this game over the years. It is much more accessible than other RPGs. The NES version is still fun to play.

If you liked this post, please check out my other posts about NES RPGs, such as Destiny of an Emperor or Dragon Quest vs Final Fantasy.