NES #18: Dragon Warrior

It was a relief playing through Dragon Warrior again. Sometimes I play these old games and discover that they're not as good as I remember. Dragon Warrior is one that I still enjoyed playing. It's hard to say exactly why though. By all accounts this should be an exercise in tedium. Somehow, though, it still manages to be fun and engaging.

This game came out in Japan in 1986 making it one of the earliest console RPGs. Over there it was called Dragon Quest, and the modern US games have taken on that title now. It didn't come out in America until 1989 by which time it must've already seemed a little primitive. The original Final Fantasy came out in 1990 in the US and I think it's interesting that while we only got the one NES Final Fantasy out of the three made we got all four 8-bit Dragon Warrior games in this country. Enix was very dedicated to their flagship series.

The gameplay in this game is very interesting. If it wasn't so slow and time consuming I might call it arcade style. Everything is simplified compared to most RPGs. You only control one character, and he only fights one monster at a time. The battles are mostly text based with no monster animations. You start out very weak and slowly gain levels to become stronger. I'm not sure if there is an RPG that is more centered on level gaining. Basically you are gaining enough levels to go to the next town so you can buy new equipment. There are some puzzles and treasures put in there to make things more interesting, but they don't seem to be the main focus in this game.

Describing this game makes it sound like it's going to be boring, but for whatever reason I really enjoy it. It's one of those rare exceptions where I probably like it more now than I did when I was a kid. At the time when I first played through it I had a insatiable appetite for RPGs, and I would play any of them that I could get my hands on. I originally played through Dragon Warrior while I was also playing through several other similar games like the SNES Final Fantasies. It got lost on the shuffle due to its primitive nature. I still remember playing it for hours and hours, but I don't remember it standing out to me like it does today.

It's not a perfect game though. As usual I do have some gripes. I hate how you can only save at the first castle in the game. It's really annoying having to go back and forth all the time. It's also the castle that you start back at after you die or continue your progress. So you're going to spend a lot of time walking away from the castle getting attacked slimes and ghosts which give you very little gold or experience. It's not till much later in the game when you have spells that take you to the castle and repel those weaker enemies. However, there isn't a spell that takes you away from the castle, so if you want to save your game you'll still have a long trip back to where you were. You can also get back to the castle quickly by dying, but while you keep your experience points after death you lose half your gold. It gets pretty annoying.

And speaking of death, I think it's kind of funny that after you die you appear in front of the king. He tells you that you should not have died and so he has brought you back to life. The king can bring people back from the dead! You would think with godlike powers like that he could kill the Dragonlord by himself. Or at the very least he wouldn't lost his daughter so easily.

Dragon Warrior is often called the game that started the console RPG, and although there are a couple of older ones this game certainly took the genre a long way. While the series is still only a moderate success in the US it is a craze in Japan. At least that's the image we get over here. It's a lot of fun going back to the series' roots and seeing how it all started. Dragon Warrior is an unusually slow paced game, and it certainly has its faults, but it's still a classic. It's almost 25 years old now, and it's still fun to play today. That really makes this game seem like something special.