Review: Dragon Quest (a.k.a. Dragon Warrior)

(For my fellow players, here is a link to the most helpful guide I found on this game).

I thought it might be helpful to go back and play some classic RPGs for inspiration. And in light of my recent decision to scale back the complexity of my game (at least from the start), the first Dragon Quest (known in North America as Dragon Warrior) seemed like the perfect place to start. It actually preceded the first Final Fantasy by about a year or so, and is at least an order of magnitude simpler.

I find the simplicity very appealing as a novice (and solo) developer, and I'm tempted to try building a bare bones proto-RPG as a practice exercise - to sort of teach myself the basics before I try putting together something more complicated, with multiple playable characters and such. Except, I'm not sure how confident I feel about diverting that time and effort from the game I really want to be working on (Dragonfaith).

But about Dragon Quest. I never actually played any of the Dragon Quest games until my friend gave me his NES cartridge not that many years ago, despite growing up on the Final Fantasy series (which seems to have attracted more popularity in America). But I've just finished playing through it for the second time ever, and I jotted down some of my (more or less scattered) thoughts while I was playing it:

* I knew the gameplay was going to be basic for a game this old, but wow - you have to select commands from a menu to do simple things like talk to people and use stairs!

* Combat utilizes a front-facing battle screen, where the monsters are drawn to face the player as he sits in front of the screen, and the hero is not drawn on the screen at all. This is interesting, because this is the default battle system in RPG Maker VX Ace, and it's not the one I'm used to - which is the side-facing battle screen of Final Fantasy.

* Very basic combat. Party includes only a single hero (as opposed to the first Final Fantasy's four-hero party), and you only fight a single monster at a time. This means that all the physical and magic skills are combined into one character. I like that, from a simplistic development perspective.

* I like the spells in this game. They're very basic, but functional, and there's a good mix of spells designed for combat (Heal, Hurt, Sleep, Stopspell), and spells that are useful outside of combat (Radiant, Outside, Return, Repel). No spell feels useless. Well, except Hurtmore, since by the time I learned it, I didn't really need it for anything except the final boss, and every time I tried to use it on the final boss, it failed, so I just gave up trying. But it's not like Final Fantasy where you have a ton of spells that do the same thing (Fire, Ice, Lit - although I do like the concept of elements), and a million different status ailments or enhancements, many of which work so rarely that you never bother using them.

* Stats begin in the single digits. I think this really makes a lot of sense. The default stats on RPG Maker VX Ace are totally out of whack, and have level 1 actors dealing hundreds of damage right from out of the gate. I don't like that. In Dragon Quest, you start with single digit stats. The first enemies are slimes that do 1 or 2 damage, and only have a few HP. You're evenly matched at first, until you begin to level up and then eventually the slimes are dust you brush off your shoulder. That's the way it should be. Your growth is gradual and starts from a reasonable point. By the end of the game, you're probably not more than level 20, and dealing a hundred damage at once is unthinkable (as opposed to Final Fantasy's 9999 damage cap at level 99). Again, we're dealing with a simpler system here.

* Here's something that I find very interesting. Unlike Final Fantasy, which uses a gated system (which I am admittedly fond of) whereby parts of the game world are opened up to the player gradually as they unlock certain obstacles (chronicled here), when you start Dragon Quest, the whole world (apart from the final dungeon alone) is theoretically open to you, and the only thing keeping you from going anywhere you want is that the monsters get stronger and you need to build up your stats first, if you don't want your ass handed to you on a platter. I actually think this is very clever.

* On the other hand, the downside of this is that the gameplay in Dragon Quest relies heavily on "grinding" - where you're fighting the same monsters over and over again just to level up - which isn't very fun. Later, more advanced RPGs have enough story content to keep you moving through the game, whereas here it feels like you're frequently getting stuck and you can't advance in the game without a whole lot of fighting the same monsters over and over again. It gives you more time to grow with the game, but it does it in a way that feels cheap, like filler.

* Dragon Quest features a very basic fantasy setting with conventional elements (e.g., a knight trying to save a princess from a dragon). While this is a very simplified approach and eliminates any concern for developing complicated story elements, it also greatly reduces the player's incentive to finish the game and find out what happens next, as they are probably not that invested in the characters or the plot (unlike the more advanced RPGs I know of).

* The dungeons are dark, and require a torch (or other light source) to be properly explored. This wasn't the case in Final Fantasy games, but I think it's a neat gameplay element. Although, the dungeons themselves are all very samey, and suffer from a lack of graphical variation (which is something that Final Fantasy, at least, succeeded on).

* There is, mostly, a logical progression in the weapons/armor you use. While I am fond of the Final Fantasy system of having tons of equipment with an at times arbitrary hierarchy of attack/defense power, I am also attracted to a simpler, more intuitive system where, instead of getting a new sword and set of armor in every town, you progress naturally through stronger weapons and armor (like from a bamboo pole to a club to a copper sword to a hand axe to a broad sword, or from clothes to leather armor to chain mail to a half plate to a full plate). This suits my RPG better in a conceptual sense, in that part of its genesis was inspired by a desire to introduce some level of realism to typical RPG cliches (explained here), but I have yet to come to a final decision about how I'm going to handle equipment in my own game.

* Considering the difficulty of getting magic keys - their high price and the difficulty in originally getting to the town that sells them - the reward is rarely worthwhile. Though there are some parts of the game that require having the keys to advance, a lot of the treasure chests and areas unlocked by them are bogus. It doesn't have the same feeling of accomplishment as getting the Mystic Key in Final Fantasy, for example.

* The only place you can save your game is at the king in the first castle. This is an interesting choice, conceptually, since it has to do with recording your deeds on the "Imperial Scroll of Honor", but I don't think I like it, from a more practical perspective. Gameplay is inevitably centralized around the first castle (instead of moving from town to town as you progress through the game), such that the last time you load up your game, to brave the final dungeon and battle the final boss, you start playing from the same spot you did when you first started the game (and even though the final dungeon is tantalizingly in view of the first castle, it requires a roundabout trek to access it).

* This means that there's a lot of tedious coming and going, particularly in later parts of the game (and with no vehicles to speed things up). The world map is not super humongous, but you have to consider all the time spent traveling through early areas later in the game. Already, at level 10, fighting slimes is nothing but an annoying waste of time. They can in no way threaten your safety, and the paltry reward you get for killing them isn't even worth the effort of squashing them under your boot. And yet, you can't ignore them, because they keep throwing themselves at you like pests!

* You do learn a handy spell (Repel) to solve this problem, but considering that it only works on weaker enemies, and is therefore only a convenience, and not a significant battle advantage, you learn it much too late in the game (level 15).

* Maybe this is just me (I tend to play games in the same risk-averse fashion that I live my life), but the difference between tiers of enemies often seems to be life and death. If I'm on the verge between one tier and the next, I find that there's a tedious period during which I'm strong enough to beat the lower tier without breaking a sweat, but still weak enough to be wiped out by the larger tier in a single battle. Which means, rather than risking my life to fight the stronger enemies which would earn me more experience so I can level up faster, I'm stuck mindlessly fighting the weaker enemies at a slower rate of progress.

* On the other hand, death in this game only means that you lose half your gold and have to start back at the castle. Losing all that hard-won gold is unacceptable earlier in the game, but it seems that there comes a point later on when you max out your buyable equipment, and gold becomes pretty much useless to you.

* I don't know if there's even any point in worrying about this being a spoiler, but all I'll say is that the choice the Dragonlord gives you at the end of the game (and the penalty for choosing unwisely) is ingenious.

Concluding Remarks: I understand that Dragon Quest was an extremely influential pioneer in the realm of console RPGs, paving the way for the likes of the immensely popular Final Fantasy series (among other games), and nothing can take that away from it. Taken on its own merit, it's still a fun and creative little game, allowing for its unavoidably primitive nature (and in some ways, the simplicity can be appealing).

However, I consider the alleged tweaks that have been made to better balance the combat in recent "remixed" versions to be fixing the game (as opposed to tinkering with it), as in its original state, the grinding can become frustrating to the point that only a diehard old school RPG fan would have the patience to play it through to the ending. I feel like I spent about a month longer on this game than I should have - given its simple story - and much of that time was spent dragging my feet because I was too bored to sit and grind for another hour.

Meanwhile, pioneer though it was, Dragon Quest is overshadowed by the more evolved RPGs that followed in its wake, both in the Final Fantasy series, and, presumably (as I have yet to play them, though I'm planning to make some time for it in the near future) in its own series. More precisely, it is my opinion that the golden age of the console RPG was the Super Nintendo years. But it's still illuminating to jump back and see where the boom began.