Dragon Warrior. Ah the epic quest to save the princess, prove your worth, and slay the evil Dragon Lord. Perhaps one of the worst RPGs for the NES. It holds a special place in many peoples hearts as being a classic from their childhood, but most likely they just never got the chance to play Final Fantasy, or Crystalis very much.

Depth: 1
Now this game, it is long. Like 20-40 hours long depending on how bad you are at it. Its not long because its an expansive world, filled with many different powerful enemies, dungeons, and cities. Its long because there is only 1 small world map, 3 dungeons, 5 minuscule towns, 1 main castle and 1 short 8 floor end dungeon. How did they manage to make this barely any content last? Why we throw strong monsters at you! But lots of them? No. A total of 38, 40 with the final(only) boss, monsters that all do basically the same thing: attack, sleep, heal, or a combination of those. The way they are stronger? They simply pump massive stats into the monsters in the next area so you HAVE to grind for 3 hours just to buy the next sword, shield or armor you want. On that subject, 7 weapons, 7 armor, and 3 shields? Would it have been so difficult for them to have put some effort into this? They did the bare minimum and threw it out saying "okay, its done.". This game lacks any depth whatsoever. The few NPCs who have anything of value to say are obvious as you have to go off the beaten path to get to them, but they just tell you straight out "go here".

Story: 1
Lets be honest here, there is hardly a story to speak of. You start the game and you're off to kill the Dragon Lord. With hardly any money, and the worst equipment in the kingdom. Seems legit. You wander to a town, get told to go to another town cause ain't nuthin' useful here. You go to that town, get told the same thing. In between theres a few people who say meaningless dribble, and a few who tell you to find the princess(paraphrasing here), find certain items, do certain things. All in all its a dull and lifeless story that consists of find the princess, kill the dragon.

Addictiveness: 2
Back in the day, I only had a handful of games. It was between this, Ultima Exodus, Skate or Die, and some crap I don't remember. This was the winner for the simple fact that it isn't evil like Ultima. This game is not addicting, unless you enjoy killing the exact same enemy for an hour because you cant kill the other enemies in the area yet and you want to be close to the key place. Its about as addicting as running headfirst into a wall.

Sound: 3
Cant remember the exact number of songs, I think it was 8. They were all rather repugnant to the ear however, and the terrible sound effect that go along with are no better. The sound effects themselves aren't terrible, its just that I have to hear them every single time I attack and get hit and it gets very annoying.

Difficulty: 7
The game is quite difficult for 1 main reason:
You only have about 3-4 monsters you can face. Oh sure you can always go back and kill slimes and ghosts, but they wont give you the money for new armor and weapon, and you cant kill the monsters in the next area because they are simply so overpowering they will kill you in 2 hits, until miraculously you level up and buy new armor and a weapon, one level mind you, and you are taking almost no damage and killing them with the quickness. Then its back to the same routine.

Graphics: 8
For an NES game, this actually looked rather good. Well, the game itself looked terrible. Bleeding sprites and tiles, barely any detail or animation, HOWEVER, the enemies were very well done. That's probably what took the majority of the space for this game since God knows it wasn't used for the 5 or 6 maps. Unfortunately, the enemies were all pallet swaps. Although there were 40 enemies, there were only 15 individual enemy pictures. The rest were just flipped, changed in color, or had a weapon/shield added. I suppose it was to be expected, they wanted to pump these things out as cheaply as possible back then, but they could have at least given me something different to stare at for hours on end while I grind on the same enemies again and again.

Overall: 3.6
This games really not worth playing. You likely wont have much fun, and almost certainly wont bother to beat the game once you get half way through and realize that its going to take you another 15 hours just to get strong enough to kill the Dragon Lord. People will always try to put a spin on this, how this game was a pioneer, or a classic, but the fact is it was neither. Games like this had been made before it. Better games. RPGs weren't created in the 1980's, they were just turned into better forms. Except this. This was terrible.

This was a pioneer to JRPGs,not to WRPGs,sure Ultima,Akalabeth and Rouge came out and each pioneered for there sub-genre(Standard western,First person and Rouge-like)this game took elements from those and turned them into the norm for a different breed of RPGs,JRPGs such as Final fantasy,Lunar,Lufia and I don't know...the rest of the Dragon quest games? Yes its aged,but its also from 1986,and one of the first console RPGs in general.

Your opinion is all well and good but. . .

to say that this game isn't a pioneer or a classic is wrong. Yes, Western RPGs such as D&D, Ultima, among others, came before this, but Dragon Quest was the one that pioneered the jRPG genre, as DARKANINE pointed out. I agree with most of the points you brought up otherwise, such as being long and tedious, but there is no denying that DQ and its successors (such as Final Fantasy) made jRPGs into what they are today.

- - ARLD 'Richard'.

Incorrect. Japanese made games were also in existence, and better, before this. This was just one of the first NES titles like this, that doesn't make it a classic, it doesn't make it special, it just makes it an early NES rpg, that the makers put almost no effort into. 

I agree that the game is terrible. Overall, Final Fantasy I was much more enjoyable.

The music is annoyingly repetitive and loops too quickly. Although, I like the darker tone of the dungeon music as you got deeper underground.

The story is lame but seems to be usual for the time. It's not like Final Fantasy I or the Legend of Zelda had tremendous psycological development.

I'm surprised you didn't give difficulty a higher level. You have to run around for about 10 hours in order to safely move outside the perimetre of the first city (more if you only fight the blue slimes). 

TetraDigm : Very nice review.. it has a good amount of depth Good grammar And it is very easy and simple to read.. Keep up the good work

TetraDigm :

Name me a single turn-based jRPG that has a leveling system similar to this that came before the DQ games.

I'll assume you mean an experience based rpg? The Black onyx is one. Though not an overworld, generic rpg that dragon warrior is, same essential type of leveling system.

You succeeded in naming a jRPG that came before DQ, but perhaps I should have been a bit more clear.

The overworld is particularly what made DQ unique and, while it -was- done in games prior to its release, it takes concepts from Ultima and Wizardry (another jRPG that came before DQ that had the same type of battle system in which it revolved around the stats rather than equipment) and refines upon them, at least at that time. The sequels improved upon these concepts even more, and with Final Fantasy, became the main selling point for RPGs in Japan - much like how The Black Onyx introduced Japan to RPGs and how Ultima introduced the West to computer RPGs (since many pen and paper tabletop RPGs were popular, then).

I also need to apologize if I came across as rude in my earlier posts. I just got a bit peeved when you didn't recognize the importance of the first game and shouldn't have acted accordingly.

- - ARLD 'Richard'.

Really Dragon warrior was the best rpg in 1985 before final fantasy come out in 1987

It was the greatest rpg in the nes..But to be honest Dungeons & Dragons really should 

Take a place in over rated rpg games..

ARedLetterDay :
alright lets go that route. the game took ideas from other games, and dumbed them down into "spam attack and heal" and "but one of the handful of equipment available". so still it didnt pioneer anything, just because a different country put it out. thats like saying a chinese ipod ripoff is a pioneer in mp3 players because it was made in china, and led the way for more cheap ripoffs. the game was terrible even for the time it came out, and almost no effort was put into it. the overworld was only unique in that it was tiny and had almost nothing on it except monsters too strong for you to fight 90% of the game.

rider:
over rated? you mean people enjoyed the terrible D&D games?

TetraDigm : "...people enjoyed the terrible D&D games?" Ehh... Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most successful online games in existence... So I guess people do enjoy those games. Remember, just because you don't like something (and it's fine to have an opinion, don't take anything else out of my post) doesn't mean it is bad.

D&D came out long before any computer games were even popular. I don't know how it's overrated when it has a world and lore nearly as expansive as Lord of the Rings and is still constantly being updated with fresh, new concept. Heck, without D&D, a good majority of the most popular RPGs wouldn't exist, I.E the Baldur's Gate games, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, et al.

As for TetraDigm, you obviously misunderstand my point and refuse to acknowledge the importance of Dragon Quest as far as console RPGs go.

I'm referring to the D&D video games. Not specifically the online version, though its quite generic. Dragon warrior HAS no importance. Its just a bunch of ideas used from other games, badly. So Japan made it, do you honestly think that makes the slightest difference in the fact that it was reused ideas, reused badly, MADE badly, and had almost no content whatsoever? 


to be clear, when I say the D&D video games, I also mean the console video games. ive not played most of the pc ones, though haven't found them very inspiring when I did. Probably because I'm a big fan of real D&D, and the dumbed down versions they made into video games infuriate me.