Allahweh’s Thoughts on Dragon Quest

Since my good friend Warren has been posting his Game Travels pieces focusing on “Dragon Warrior/Quest” on my site, it made me think about what this game meant to me growing up. It was interesting that he decided to focus on this specific set of games when  he did, because honestly I had been thinking about them for a while. Now, I’ve got a good reason to write a little bit about the games, particularly the original.

The original “Dragon Warrior” was actually the first real console RPG that I ever played, and I was very young when I got into it. The game was very different from most NES games that were out at the time and rather than present a world where you slogged through action-filled areas or dungeons and vanquished foes, this game presented you with a neat story about traveling through a medieval kingdom, helping the locals, saving a princess held captive by a dragon, and bringing peace to a troubled land by slaying an ancient evil known as the Dragon Lord. True, though, this game still did involve slaying enemies and all of that, but it was a different experience. Also, since we did not see the original “Final Fantasy” in the U.S. until 1990, this was really one of the earliest console RPGs in this vein that was really popular.

I played and played and played the original game when I was little, but then eventually moved on and never completed it. It wasn’t until the Gameboy Color remake of the game that I sat down, focused once more on it, and played it all the way through to its end. It was a different, unique feeling  – a thirteen or so year journey finally coming to a close as the Dragon Lord breathed his last.

What is interesting though is that even though I have a lot of respect for the series, and own most all of the entries, a vast majority of them I have failed to beat, let alone in some cases even remove from the shrinkwrap to play. Back on the NES I never really played the second, third, or fourth entries, and since the fifth and sixth games were exclusive to the Super Famicom in Japan, those I did not see until many years later via emulation on my computer. Of course, most of these games have since been remade in one form or another (such as with the Nintendo DS releases), and I actually own most all of these. Still, I haven’t played much of them. Now, “Dragon Warrior VII” on the PlayStation is a game I did really enjoy and played it pretty much through.

What’s interesting though is that even though I’ve only dabbled in most of the games in this long-running series, this is a series I do know a great deal about. A lot of my knowledge comes from extensive reading about different plot points and the like on the various wikis out there, or checking out some of the theory posts spread across the internet, etc. It is neat seeing how these games fit together and the story that they can tell. My limited experience with the games directly, however, has been positive. I think part of the reason that even though I do own copies of most of these but I have not actually played them is related to what I just said: I already know how most of these games end and the overall story they tell. This, of course, is no substitute for playing the games, and these games are admittedly quite good, but I will say that it lessens the immediacy of my need to play them given the other games I still want to try.

Still, in many ways, I do have the original “Dragon Warrior” to thank for getting me into the world of console RPGs. My memories of that game were fond, and even if I look back on “Final Fantasy IV” and other games of that nature with a bit more investment of time, I can say that I will always remember playing “Dragon Warrior” twenty-seven years ago (wow, has it really been that long?!) and finally, years and years later, revisiting it and managing to complete it.