Game

Game

Game

Command?

Mastered Dragon Warrior today! Or Dragon Quest I. This game and I have a LOT of history, and it’s a very special game for me. Possibly the first RPG I ever played. I needed something to play that I could play while focusing on other things, something low effort and chill that I knew front to back, and Dragon Warrior is that game for me.

Back in like, 1999, my brother Chris introduced me to a program he had discovered called Nesticle. And thus, emulation was open to me! And the first game we ever emulated? This one, Dragon Quest, cause Chris had played it at a friend’s house in like 1991 once and it stuck in his head as a really cool game and he finally wanted to play through it. And since I loved my big bro I also played it a lot, and fell in love with it too lol

So it’s a special game to me. But it is EXTREMELY simple. Perfect for those days in the early 2000s where we emulated it, but decades later it sure is showing its age. It’s PAINFULLY simple, and pretty much the entire game is just a grind. One nonstop long grind. Once you know where the items are, and where the enemies are, that’s all it becomes. But as a kid, experiencing it the first time, it was an adventure of exploration, of discovering where the map boundaries were for the different enemies, what you could and could not handle, and balancing that so you can get the next big upgrade.

Dragon Quest 1 may not be a great game by 2024’s standards, but it’s an important one, for many, many reasons.

How’s the set though? Took me about 11 hours. The set is as grindy as the game lol. Get up to level 30, which I’ve now done twice and don’t think I ever need to do again. There’s also a 1/20 chance to get a cursed necklace that’s a complete waste of your time, but the SET REQUIRES IT. I got it my first try after settling down for a long grind. I got REAL lucky. And then there’s achievements for taking the princess along with you for a while, like taking her to the dragon lord, completing the game without her at all, etc etc. So I had to beat the game like 4 times, but at level 30 that’s trivial tbh.

Game good. Maybe I should check out the MSX version sometime? Also maybe Dragon Quest 2, I dunno. I don’t know 2 or 3 NEARLY as well as I know 1.