In olden days of yore, the realm of Alefgard was cloaked in darkness. According to legend, a brave warrior, Endrick, brought light back to the land by defeating an evil being. He used the balls of light bequeathed to him by a friend to drive off the enemies of Alefgard. He then gave the balls of light to King Lorik, who unified Alefgard. The land was at peace for many generations. In the time of King Lorik XVI, the balls of light were stolen from Tantagel Castle by the evil Dragonlord, and once again the kingdom of Alefgard was plunged into darkness. Many travellers fell prey to the merciless fangs of monsters, and the beautiful countryside was transformed into poisonous marshes that hindered travellers. It was also rumored that several towns and villages were destroyed; wiped off the face of the land by ghosts and dragons. Many brave warriors tried to recover the balls of light, but none of them ever returned from Charlock, the Dragonlord's dark castle. The people longed for peace, but did not give up hope. The great seer Mahetta predicted that "One day, a descendant of the valiant Endrick shall come forth to defeat the Dragonlord.?
Who is this brave soul? There is only one possible answer: You. Your quest is to find and defeat the evil Drangonlord. The time has come. This is the start of your adventure.

(From the Dragon Warrior instruction booklet)

And so your quest starts inside Tantagel castle, where the Ball of light was stolen. Your goal is to get it back from the Dragonlord before he destroys the world.

Graphic: 7/10
The graphs are average for the time. Final Fantasy has better ones (people and overworld map, mainly), but those in Dragon Warrior are more realistic - you was very slowly when crossing high hills and damaging tiles like barrier floors and poisonous marshes. Also, the dungeons are dark unless illuminated with a spell of a torch, which adds a dose of realism not seem in many RPGs.
Battle wise, enemies are mostly pallet swaps. They are well-drawn but are absolutely motionless; you don't even see a puff of smoke as in Final Fantasy. Also, you don't see the Hero acting; you just see the enemy flashing

Sound: 3/10
The music is rather primitive and loops too quickly. Even The Legend of Zelda has better music. One positive note: the deeper you get in a dungeon, the deeper the music becomes. In the Dragonlord castle, it gets a little creepy.

Story: 5/10
The game is pretty straightforward: you are a descendant of Endrick and must complete his quest to get the Ball of Light once more. No depth whatsoever (it's a fairy tale), but it's better than Final Fantasy I and III, where the good people just happen to pop by. In Dragon Warrior at least, your purpose is very clear.

Depth: 2/10
People doing Tool-assisted speedruns (TAS) were able to complete the game in less than 20 minutes by only doing the essential: fetching Endrick's equipment, not visiting any village and defeating the Dragonlord. That tells you everything there is to know about the depth (or rather, its lack) of Dragon Warrior. There are *some* sidequests (the golem, rescuing the princess), but they are not very interesting.

Difficulty: 9/10
SHOOT ME!! This game is excruciatingly difficult. You are completely on your own, so you have to manage your magic very wisely if you want to cure yourself. Also, just to get to the first dungeon where you find Endrick's instructions, to have to grind, grind, grind... for HOURS before you can remotely hope to be strong enough to withstand the monsters around. And since you can only fight blue (sometimes red) slimes - one at the time -, then you will have to be very, very patient.
Finally, you can only warp back to Tantagel, whatever your means is (Wing of Wyvern or the magic spell). It's pretty annoying when you just want to warp back to the previous town to load up on potions and rest.

In conclusion, I don't recommend this game. It's much too slow and the music is too annoying to be worth your time. Dragon Warrior II is much better than this game; Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda are also excellent alternatives.

After playing this game for about a day and trying again this morning, I couldn't stand it anymore. First off, the music is annoying. Second is the fact that I had no idea about where to go in this stupid game. Barely any of the NPCs are helpful in finding your way to your next objective. It also takes too long for you to get anything. Enemies give you so little experience and gold that you'd be spending hours killing enemies in the first area before you can even buy a sword or continue to the next area. Another thing that annoys is the fact that you have to talk to the king just find how many experience points you need in order to level up. So if you are far off and you want to know how long till your next level you have to travel all the way to the first are and speak with the king. This game reminded me why I despise grinding tediously for hours 

You know, it's funny how two people can have totally different opinions about a game. Taken into consideration on when it was released, this is a great game. Although I will admit that some aspects haven't aged very well. But considering this game was released in the mid 80's and one of the first RPG's ever, it's pretty good. Although I will admit, you need to be a fan of RPG's to really appreciate it for what it is.

As with regards to knowing "where to go" that was a common issue with early RPG's you kinda had to talk to everyone to figure out where you needed to go. Search for clues so to speak.

As far as the difficulty is concerned, it's not really that hard of a game. It's like most early RPG's where if you do some grinding early on, it's easy later in the game. The most difficult part is getting the ultimate set of armor/weapons etc that you need to beat the game.

They uh, still make Dragon Warrior games, so this game sold well. Just sayin'.  Also, old school RPGs loved grinding, early Final Fantasy, Phantasy Star, Seventh Saga - take your pick.

But its good to see a fresh pair of eyes on this old classic - which definitely is showing its age. I did like the battle system in this game - in appearance. The 'in your face' enemy windows worked better for me than the boring 'box of enemies' seen in Final Fantasy one.