What RPG are you playing right now?

[BoneSnapDeez]

Parts one and two are very different - primarily because two is longer and introduces a party system - but both are incredibly slow, tedious, and grindy. They're not bad in the slightest, and are enormously influential, but they can certainly irritate at times.

The GBC ports are much easier. There's less grinding and the introduction of additional items.

And hell yeah, I did all sorts of multitasking while playing these games. It's the only way to get by.

Now, part three is where the series gets really, really fun. It's much more streamlined and entertaining, and is generally just a blast to play.

[Exhuminator]

I like that DQ1 looks to be about 10 hours long according to HLTB. So it should hopefully be some quick fun.

DQ1 on GBC isn't too hard, pretty breezy, I had fun with it.

If you start playing the DQ games in order, you might get burnt out. But I hope you play Dragon Quest VIII before that happens. Anyone who loves JRPGs owes it to themselves to play through that masterpiece*. It's legitimately brilliant.


*I'm referring to the PS2 original. I cannot vouch for any of the ports.

[MrPopo]

For DQ3, you can go with any version. By the time 3 came out on the NES they'd figured out a proper difficulty curve, as well as giving you control over who makes up your party.

DQ1 isn't really hard, it's just super grindy. You need a minimum level of X to go to area B, level Y for area C, etc. About the only way it becomes "hard" is if you do something silly like try to fight your way through the final dungeon rather than just run from everything.

DQ2 is a bigger DQ1. The thing I noticed is that as you pick up party members the enemy groups grow in size quickly, but your party members aren't very good at dealing with long stretches of enemy encounters (their main contribution is magic). So the difficulty curve gets very lopsided, with a reasonably beginning but it gets worse and worse as things go on. I would only recommend it if you want to go for the historical experience. Bonus points if you play it on hardware without save states.

And I laughed at your DQ7 story, because I remember before I bought it that a reviewer was mentioning it took them over an hour to get into their first fight. And I laughed to myself and said "that has to be an exaggeration". And then after checking the time of my first post-battle save I saw that no, it was not.

[Sarge]

Oh, with Dragon Warrior VII, it was definitely no exaggeration. I'd actually started thinking I might have gotten ripped off back in the day. Of course, once it gets rolling, it's a great game.

Play Dragon Warrior/Quest III any way you can. They're all good. There's a thief class in the SFC/GBC versions, but it's not inherently necessary.

It's a harder call on which version of DQIV to recommend. They're both great, but the DS version feels a little more modern, as you might guess. Well, PS1-style modern, anyway. Having full control of your party is also useful, so take that into consideration. The NES version pretty much saw you dumping Cristo because he'd try to cast Beat/Defeat on bosses. Bad Cristo! Don't do that!

[marurun]

I got derailed with DW3 on GBC, because there's a collection aspect to it, and the completionist in me got totally annoyed at trying to do completionist bullshit, like earn monster medals and all that.

[MrPopo]

It's a harder call on which version of DQIV to recommend. They're both great, but the DS version feels a little more modern, as you might guess. Well, PS1-style modern, anyway. Having full control of your party is also useful, so take that into consideration. The NES version pretty much saw you dumping Cristo because he'd try to cast Beat/Defeat on bosses. Bad Cristo! Don't do that!

I found the AI control of the party in IV to be sometimes awesome and sometimes terrible. There's the obvious Cristo things Beat is a good spell problem, but on the flip side your healer ends up being super reactive and effective thanks to the AI control.

[Sarge]

This is very true. Sometimes the AI would really save your bacon.

[Xeogred]

Yeah, I'm going to make DQ8 a high priority. I'll probably skip around a lot. I mainly want to check out the first game for historical reasons. Maybe I'll jump from there, but DQ3-4 on the NES look pretty amazing.

[Xeogred]

Seconds into Final Fantasy Adventure.

Willy passed away.

[alienjesus]

Seconds into Final Fantasy Adventure.

Willy passed away.

And people said Aeris' death was sad.