I now after having played Dragon Warrior 1+2 (now commonly referred to as Dragon Quest 1 and 2) for the Gameboy Color completely understand why this series became the massive cultural juggernaut that it is now. I played these two games as a complete spur of the moment thing during the last two weeks of the year due to being totally surprised by how pretty the Gameboy Color remake of Dragon Quest 1 looked while watching a Gigaboots stream ( https://youtu.be/1ELg0p31zZI?feature=shared ) of it. I really could not get over how pretty the battle backgrounds looked and how many unique locations they had, it made a limitation of the game (battles only having one enemy per encounter) one of it’s strongest aspects to me. This is of course is in addition to the really fun character and enemy sprites all being distinct and memorable as well. I didn’t even approach this game expecting to want to finish it let alone finish both but the way the games felt like they were always moving forward (DQ1 more than 2 in that regard) kept me interested all the way to the end.
—-
Dragon Quest 1’s combat is as simple as it always appeared to be, a game entirely consisting of one versus one matches of trying to out damage the other. It was a game of breaking new ground in terms of video game genre so it has an excuse at least and even then as with the GBC remake, it’s still decently fun. As a result though, jumping over to Dragon Quest 2 immediately afterwards with its introduction of party members for both you and your opponents felt world changing. Being ganged up on was scary and learning spells that hit multiple enemies felt like a massive upgrade in power. What made the battle systems in both games really click was just how snappy they felt. Random encounters were almost always over within a minute at maximum, attacks are quick, menuing feels immediate, and enemies are felled within one or two rounds. It’s a popcorn like approach to combat, small tasty satisfying bites, easily consumed and never distracting.
What made it more fun to me was trying to find the most optimal way to finish encounters in Dragon Quest 2 in the most efficient way possible (least rounds taken, without wasting unnecessary amounts of magic points). The enemies were all really easily identifiable as to what they’ll do in an encounter (be tanky, heavy hitters, poison appliers) and what made them interesting was the variety of ways they were grouped up with other enemies. Playing through these encounters in manner of quickly reading the situation and giving a fast response in turn eventually made me associate the game with that of Tetris. In both, you’re given the capability to read your current issue at hand and come to a best possible solution in split second timing. In both, you’re never made to feel like theres only ever one way to solve this problem but instead given the freedom to utilize improvisation. This fast, responsive setup to its gameplay always just clicked well with me in creating a flow state that gave a good feeling of thinking without having to think about it.
I totally played both of these with guides and with a good amount of use with the 3DS’s virtual console save state feature. In Dragon Quest 1 it was mainly just always having a map open the whole time so I could know where to go and what town/dungeon was where. In Dragon Quest 2, I don’t think I would have liked that game anywhere near as much as I do currently if I attempted to do it’s convoluted, worldwide search for trinkets that are only hinted at. A friend gave me a PDF of a scanned Prima strategy guide made for the games when they were originally released, it felt like the most appropriate, nostalgic way to play this sort of game. I even did what I always did as a kid and flipped through the whole thing looking for cool art of your characters, one of my favorite parts of my dad always buying the strategy guides for Zelda games or looking at my cousin’s Final Fantasy guides. I attempted to minimize the direct following of the guides and try to figure most things out on my own but after spending what felt like an appropriate amount of time with Dragon Quest 2’s fetch quests, I just did what the guide told me to the end. As for save states, I mainly just used them as a more modern means of saving the game AND a means of trapping any and every metal slime i found in a time loop hell until they gave me the tons of experience that I desired. As a result of that, I found grinding enjoyable and being powerful to just crush everyone afterwards satisfying.
Something I kept joking with my friends while playing through Dragon Quest 2 was the idea that ‘if I can finish Dragon Quest 2 before the end of 2023, then that announced remake of Dragon Quest 3 has to come out in 2024!’ Over the week of playing it the joke became more of a self imposed challenge. This resulted with spending all day December 31st finishing the game up (though partially that was because I just could not put the game down, I was just really enjoying the game at that point). So I accomplished my goal and now the curse of that Dragon Quest 3 remake is lifted and will absolutely come out this year and if it does it’s entirely because of me, you’re welcome. Now though my issue is I really want to play DQ3 right now and now I feel like I should wait out for that remake. I got the want for more Dragon Quest and now I gotta hold it off for the time being (or I can just play that GBC remake of 3, have you seen the enemy animations in that they’re incredible!)
