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Dragon Warrior Review (Nintendo NES)
Review by 
7.51/10 from 15 user ratings
 

RPG fans have no qualms about going back to their 16-bit favorites—your Final Fantasy Sixes, your Chrono Triggers—but NES RPGs are the Dangerfield of the genre: they get no respect. Often criticized for being tedious, grind-heavy slogs, the dungeon-crawlers of the 80s have an admittedly high barrier of entry to them.

It’s not that I don’t get these complaints; in fact, I used to be one of those critics! But it’s far too easy to overlook the elements that some of these games brought to the table, the impressive foundation work that set the stage for nearly every other game in the genre to follow.

Enter Dragon Warrior. Released on the Famicom in 1986 under the name Dragon Quest, this title was really the one to shape the Japanese RPG as we know it. Series creator Yuji Hori wanted to bring to the masses a more accessible fantasy adventure than the usual. The “usual” in this case meaning pen-and-paper games chock full of stats and rules that could fill a tome. Hori took a bit of the genre’s existing titles—like Wizardy and Ultima—and compressed them into a simplified, digestible form known as Dragon Quest. Or Warrior, in the case of the first few games of the series in America. Exploring was top-down like in Zelda, while the battles were in a static first-person window.

A big part of making the game more fun was bringing aboard illustrator Akira Toriyama, who’d then just begun to create the manga series Dragon Ball. Toriyama did the character design and—more importantly—the monster design, ensuring that every creature came to life with personality, even in 8-bit. Mix in orchestral composer Koichi Sugiyama and you’ve got quite the talented Triforce of artists working on this game. In fact, one of the reasons the franchise is seen as so consistent and reliable is because these three men have worked on every one of the mainline games. The writing, despite being peppered with ye olde English, has a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor to it, even on the NES, and that charming appeal only grew as the series did.

Slimes were one of many DW baddies that had a lot of personality onscreen.

DW’s gameplay is very straightforward. Your job—as the nameless Hero and the title’s solo fighter—is to defeat the Dragonlord and recapture the stolen Ball of Light. Naturally, you’ll start off weak with little in the way of equipment, and gradually gain both EXP and Gold as you battle enemies one-on-one. The world of Alefgard is moderately-sized but intimidating, with the creature difficulty quickly ramping up if you wander too far. There are a few towns and caves dotting the landscape, but it’s often a long and treacherous walk to the next point of interest, which means you’ll be doing a lot of fighting to make progress.

DW does a few things extremely well, and might not get the credit it deserves for them. The first is that the world is mostly nonlinear. You can theoretically wander across the entire world map from the very beginning of the game (with only the very last area being blocked off), and the only things really keeping you from doing so are the strength of the enemies. This makes the early game progression of gradually pushing yourself to explore further and further away from the safety of the castle quite addictive. And just barely making it to the haven of that next town by the skin of your teeth never fails to feel supremely rewarding. The narrative of the lone hero setting off to solve the mystery of finding the Dragonlord is charming and permeates throughout the game, even if the plot itself is very basic.

The original Famicom version is on the left. Your sprite always faced forward, even when moving to the side!


The challenge level during the game’s first half is very well-balanced, too. You’ll rarely be able to afford all the new equipment upon reaching a town, so you’re often trying to make tough choices on whether to boost your attack, your defense, or get a lesser piece of equipment so you can stock more vital items like Herbs and Torches. Many modern RPGs make the mistake of having everything in a new town immediately buyable, which kind of eliminates the dilemma of choice and rewarding feeling of coming home with a shiny new treasure. Likewise, you can really feel the increase in power when upgrading your weaponry in this game.

Finally, this might be the only RPG I’ve played where every spell is quite useful and has its own place. There are only ten of them, but they’re essential to your success and it makes the resource management of MP a constant challenge to keep track of. The MP consumption prices make sense (particularly with Heal, which I find is too cheap in other games), and that’s especially impressive given the time this was made. Heck, the game's sole status-affecting spell, Sleep, actually works on enemies and is worth doing (of course, it works when the enemies do it too, which can be infuriating)!

Now let’s address that initial complaint: DW requires a lot of battling. A lot! I hit severe roadblocks a few times where my warrior was far too weak and needed to simply level up for 1-2 hours at once before progressing to the next area. The final boss in particular has ridiculously powerful attacks, and most players won’t stand a chance against him without extra grinding. I really feel that the first half of DW flows nicely, while the second suddenly hits the brakes because of the difficulty. It does feel like a slog and drags the game down, but this was really more of a later-game issue—the early game was paced pretty well.

Additionally, compared to later RPGs, DW’s controls feel “sticky” and slow, its battle music is oddly amelodic for the composer (hey, he was just starting out), and the random battle frequency can be irritating. Enemies sometimes get the drop on you with a first strike and...remember that Sleep spell I mentioned? Right, few things are more irritating than being ambushed by that and not waking up, allowing the foe to beat you into submission without a single turn of your own.

But there’s still plenty to like here, from the generally decent art style and compositions (gotta love that main theme and overworld theme), an open/nonlinear world to explore, a mostly suitable challenge level that often works with the game, and the lack of losing progress upon dying. Plus, you know, it kinda showed how an RPG could be done on a console. If you’re the patient type that enjoys the series and wants to get a fun history lesson, you could do a lot worse than the original Dragon Warrior. If you’re willing to put up with the work involved, of course!

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 Great  8.9 / 10
08/13/16, 04:53   Edited:  08/13/16, 05:00
 
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Nice review! I got Dragon Warrior as a free gift for subscribing to Nintendo Power back in the day (as I'm sure many of us did). It was my first RPG, and with the help of the included guide I was able to beat it at the age of 10. I haven't touched the game since then, but maybe it's time for a replay? I just assumed that it would be very clunky today, but your review makes it seem doable...as long as the battery is still working in my cartridge.

Posted by 
 on: 08/13/16, 15:54
@canonj
I'm also in the Nintendo Power free gift club.
I remember when I got my first critical hit, I scoured the cheat card and instruction manual on how I did it. CLEARLY we had more direct control in fights. We had to!

I really, really didn't understand the game at the time, but I eventually got through it and enjoyed it by the end.
I also remember being amazed that rescuing the princess wasn't the end of the game. I dost love her!
What a wonderful shock to my gaming system this game was.

Posted by 
 on: 08/13/16, 18:11   Edited:  08/13/16, 18:12
Yeah, I think I'd played FF3 SNES before DW by the time I got around to trying it (a neighbor's copy) so it wasn't entirely foreign to me. But I think it's a really strange, surreal feeling the first time a kid plays an RPG, selecting their attacks from a menu and whatnot. Considering other games are action-packed stuff like Contra and Castlevania and Mega Man and even Zelda. It's cool how RPGs have a wholly different appeal than games like that, though.

Posted by 
 on: 08/14/16, 01:36
I still don't like this game, but I recognise everything it did for the genre, and everything's gotta start somewhere.

Despite its relative simplicity, the overworld music is still one of my fave field themes in any RPG. There are also some later renditions of it that added to it in nice ways.

Posted by 
 on: 08/14/16, 22:09
Not sure if you played it, T-Bun *checking the handy dandy database* -- and it appears you have! And you're playing now!

Not sure how far you are, but there are a lot of callbacks to this game in Fortune Street, one stage in particular. I was markin' out pretty hard (wrestling term) when I made my way to it, and as Mop it up mentioned, the music they used in that area certainly paid homage in addition to scratching that itch.


Now the big question: when the heck are we getting ALL these games (in a single package) on Wii / Wii U / other?

Posted by 
 on: 08/15/16, 08:31
I found my old cartridge, plus all the guides and maps last weekend. The battery still worked and had all of my 25 year old saves (including a file where I made it the max level, 30)! I've been playing this past week and beat the Dragonlord this morning at level 20. I was so close to death with no MP left when I dealt the final blow, which made it all the more exciting!

Fun game, but it's pretty darn linear and I would have been stuck a couple times if I didn't have a guide to consult.

Now I'm going to borrow the first Final Fantasy from my sister, which I've never played before...although this time it will be via the GBA remake and not the NES original. Still, it will be fun to see how they compare.

Posted by 
 on: 08/21/16, 18:44
@canonj They made a lot of changes to that version so it isn't the best choice for comparative purposes, but better than nothing. I actually prefer the magic point system of the original game, it's one I would have liked to see more of, and changing it to the same MP system as later games also screws up the balance and makes things way easier.

Posted by 
 on: 08/21/16, 19:11
@Mop it up

Interesting. I'd rather not have to buy it on the Wii Virtual Console since I don't have any points to spend, and I don't think it's available on the Wii U or 3DS yet. I'll probably still just play the GBA remake because it's readily available to me and I'd rather play it on a portable.

Posted by 
 on: 08/21/16, 20:00
@canonj

Yeah, that Dragonlord is a serious challenge even at level 20. Sounds like an exciting match!

As for Final Fantasy 1, keep in mind that it's one of the games on the upcoming Mini-NES thing, so if you're getting that, you can have easy access to it and other NES games.

Posted by 
 on: 08/22/16, 04:45
Nice review! This was my first RPG. And the only traditional RPG that I've beaten.

Funny story. Two of my friends pooled their funds to buy me this game for my birthday. So I excitedly opened it up and popped it in...

to find that one of them (the one who was holding on to it, supposedly) already had a save file with 40 hours on it. He was all, "Yeah, I opened it up and played some..."

Bad form!

Posted by 
 on: 08/29/16, 04:04
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