Backlog Game Reviews 17: Dragon Quest 1 and 2 for the Gameboy Color part 1

                                                            

        Hey there and welcome to Backlog Game Reviews. Today let’s take a lo­­­­­­ok at Dragon Quest for the Gameboy Color. It was released on September 23rd, 1999 in Japan, and on September 21st, 2000 in North America. It was part of a compilation that featured remakes of the first two Dragon Quest games. Known as Dragon Quest 1 and 2 in Japan and Dragon Warrior 1 and 2 in North America. For this review, I'll be focusing on the first Dragon Quest. Let's see how this game holds up today.

                                                      

The Dragon Lord's monster stealing the Sphere of Light.

 

       The story begins when the Dragon Lord, a powerful sorcerer that commands monsters, attacks the Kingdom of Alefgard. During the invasion, the Dragon Lord's monsters kidnap Princess Gwaelin and steal the Sphere of Light from Tantegel Castle. Having stolen the Sphere of Light monsters are now free to roam the land, and Alefgard is engulfed by eternal darkness. Cue the hero, the character summoned by the king and whose role the player assumes. The king informs the player that you are descended from the legendary hero, Erdrick, and tasks you with saving the princess, recovering the Sphere of Light, and defeating the Dragon Lord.

                                                      

The monsters kidnapping the princess.

 

      Overall the story is very simple and straightforward. However, when the game was originally released on the Famicom in 1986, the concepts explored by the story were exciting and original. All things considered, there's nothing I can really complain about in terms of story.

                                                         

Sleeping at an Inn will restore you HP and MP.

 

        The gameplay is just as straightforward as the story. The king outlines the hero’s mission at the beginning of the game, your goal as the player is to explore the world and gather information that will help you on your quest. As long as you listen to what the NPCs have to say the game is pretty easy to figure out. There aren’t any cryptic messages, hidden secrets, or anything of the sort in this game.

                                                       

To see your surroundings in a cave or dungeon you'll have to either light a torch or cast the spell Radiant.

 

         While exploring the overworld and dungeons you'll run into various monsters. The encounter rate isn't incredibly high, but it's high enough to become annoying after a while.

Like everything else in the game, the battle system is quite simple. As you never gain any additional party members every fight is a one on one battle, so fights require very little strategy. Just keep doing melee attacks and heal when necessary to successfully complete any encounter. If your level is high enough you can handily win every fight following this method.

                                                    

Encountering a Slime.

        While you do possess offensive magic and a sleeping spell, they’re borderline useless. Your attack spells are marginally more powerful than a basic melee attack, so it's better to save your MP to heal. Furthermore, the sleeping spell isn’t 100% effective, so you often end up wasting both MP, which could be better used to heal, and an action, thus wasting a turn.

                                                      

Fighting a Ghost in the woods.

 

       As previously stated, the battle system is very simple and close to no strategy is needed, but it's this simplicity that makes it fun. There are no exceedingly complex rules or battle mechanics to learn, so the learning curve is low enough that anybody can pick up the game and understand how to play. I think that the simplicity is what gives this game its charm and it wouldn't be as enjoyable if it were a more complicated game.

                                                  

One of the many towns you'll come across on your quest.

       While I think Dragon Quest is a fun game, it's definitely not for everyone. I would say the vast majority of the game is level and money grinding. If you're the kind of person that can get into a simple retro-RPG and don't mind grinding then I would recommend giving this game a try.

                                                           

Battling a Ghost in a valley.

 

      The gameplay while fun may not have aged all too well, but the presentation is a different story. The graphics are nice, the monster sprites are visually appealing, and occasionally the background will change during battles. While there may be only one in the game, the sole animated cutscene looks great, it's a shame that's the only one. The music is good, although excluding the title theme nothing stands out. The overworld theme can get a little repetitive after a while. All in all, Dragon Quest’s presentation is really good.

                                                        

Battle against a Dracky

 

       That's all I have to say about this game. It's an easy to understand and fun JRPG. If you like or at least don't dislike games with a lot of level grinding then consider giving this game a try. But if grinding for levels doesn't sound like fun you may want to consider other games.

        Thank you for reading! Next time we’ll look at a NES game. I hope to see you again at Backlog Game Reviews.

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