Thoughts on the Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest series

[Alpha2099]

As a longtime fan of RPGs, particularly the Final Fantasy series, I felt that I owed it to myself to play the Dragon Warrior (or Dragon Quest, if you prefer the true title) games to get a better feel for how console RPGs were born and have evolved over time. I'm going to give my thoughts, and I'd love to hear others' thoughts if they've played any of the games.

I tried DW1 in my sophomore year of college. I thought it was fairly decent, even though it felt very bare-bones from a graphics and gameplay stance. I did like the mini windows that appeared for a battle, creating a pseudo first-person view. I didn't like the copious amounts of grinding, and whether I was just too impatient or dense to figure everything out, I played with a walkthrough by my side. I don't think that detracted from the experience, though, since it was largely educational. Bottom line: decent game.

Dragon Warrior II, on the other hand, was terrible. I played it four years after beating the original. I applauded the addition of other characters to the party, but the application was sloppy. By the end of the game, they were only good as being meatbags to take punishment away from the hero. The enemies were way too strong and the grinding was even more painful than in the first game. And beating the final boss just came down to luck. That's a game that I'll probably never play again, but at least I can say I played it once.

I just finished Dragon Warrior III about a month ago. Much better than either of its predecessors. The class system is a lot better, and I found the difficulty to be much more tolerable. The end parts required some grinding, but it wasn't as tedious as before. I also liked the day-night system and the fact that it did have a purpose at times, rather than just being thrown in for novelty.

I'm currently playing Dragon Warrior IV now, and I'm on Chapter 5. So far I don't know if I can say it's better than DW3. They might be equal in my eyes. The different stories for each chapter is a nice addition, and there's clearly more of a story than in previous games. At times I've felt like there's too much back-and-forth going on, particularly when Taloon needs to raise 60K gold to clear the tunnel. But in general, I'm liking it.

As you can tell, I'm playing the games in order. I have translated SNES copies of Dragon Warrior V and VI, and I also have Dragon Warrior VII for PlayStation. I've heard great things about DQ8 for PS2, so I'll have to get my hands on that sometime.

So, after that long-winded post, what are your thoughts on the Dragon Warrior series? Do you think it's held up over the years as a franchise?

[Little Miss Gloom]

In recent years, I've definitely felt Dragon Warrior (I refuse to call it Dragon Quest, just the same as I refuse to call Princess Toadstool "Peach") is a far better series than Final Fantasy from a gameplay standpoint.

Dragon Warrior on NES I used to have a pretty love-hate relationship with. I didn't beat it until only a couple of years ago, and since then I've really fallen in love with it as a game. I'm really hoping 7's 3DS remake makes its way over to North America.

My only gripe with the series is the re-translations on the DS are awful. Silly puns aside, the unnecessary need to give everyone an accent has caused me to unfortunately skim through the games' scripts. I love listening to Irish and Scottish dialects, but they do not bode well in phonetic text. I'll take Dragon Warrior's Elizabethan over that cumbersome shit any day.

[BlastProcessing402]

I love the accents in the DS games, especially 4 where they're most prominent. Really adds a nice flavor and makes it seem like different lands are actually different.

DQ9 goes a bit overboard on the puns, though.

[Edmond Dantes]

I own Dragon Warrior I, II, and III (on both NES and GBC) and have yet to beat the third one, however I loved the first two to death. They actually had a hand in reviving my love of RPGs, after Final Fantasy 8 and Chrono Cross had killed it the first time.

Terribly underrated if'n ya ask me.

[retroman]

I love Dragon Warrior 1-6..All great games..7 I did not care to much for...I thought 8 was very good, and 9 was ok, but I just never got into the story for 9.

[Peonpiate]

I really loved DQ8, that game took me by surprise by how it good it was. The only other DQ game Ive played is DQ5 and that was the PS2 release of it with the English language patch that I emulated, it was good but not as good as DQ8 imo. I would still place DQ5 in my top 10 rpg list though. Ive been tempted to try out the newer games but from reading fan reviews of the series it seems like they changed them for the worst, similar to how the FF series has changed for the worse now.

[bb_hood]

I tried DW1 in my sophomore year of college. I thought it was fairly decent, even though it felt very bare-bones from a graphics and gameplay stance. I did like the mini windows that appeared for a battle, creating a pseudo first-person view. I didn't like the copious amounts of grinding, and whether I was just too impatient or dense to figure everything out, I played with a walkthrough by my side. I don't think that detracted from the experience, though, since it was largely educational. Bottom line: decent game.

The first Dragon Warrior game DOES have a huge amount of grinding needed to complete the game. It kinda makes it a hard one to complete, but not really challenging. I think its fair to consider it a 'decent' game, but considering its a very early RPG I think you can also consider it an excellent game at the same time.

All 4 Dragon Warrior games on Nintendo are excellent. I have fond memories about the 1st & 2nd especially. I got the 1st one with the Nintendo Power subscription back in the day. The second one I remember renting from the video store that was down the road from my house during a blizzard. Me and my dad hiked up there through alot of snow instead of driving and I ended up playing DW2 all weekend.