The original Dragon Quest was release in the US as Dragon Warrior in August of 1989. That September, I was spending the night at a buddy's house so we could go to Cedar Point the next morning (for those not in the know, Cedar Point is the best amusement park on the planet). At around 5:00 PM, my buddy said "Hey, you wanna check out this new Nintendo game?", holding out the Dragon Quest cartridge for me to see.
Flash forward about 12 hours. It is 5:00 AM, and my friend and I have just finished one of the longest gaming marathons of my life. We haven't beaten Dragon Warrior, but we are to the point in the game where we are regularly killing Metal Slimes and Gold Golems, and have become obsessed with increasing our power and wealth before continuing on with the fairly complex story. Remember, this was in pre-internet times, so the fact that we made it this far in one night on our own was pretty extraordinary. We slept for four hours and still went to Cedar Point, slap-happy and exhausted, but with very few regrets.
Dragon Warrior/Quest was my introduction to modern JRPGs - it would be a few years before I discovered Final Fantasy. Though I played many other games in the series, I never got the chance to finish that first game after my marathon night of grinding. No NES + no money = no Dragon Warrior for me. By the time I had a little cash, the series had moved on to bigger and better things. I eventually bought Dragon Warrior 3 without actually owning an NES, just so I could play it at friends' places. But after that one-night spree, I never had a chance to go back to the O.G. Dragon Warrior.
Fast forward to 2025. I am now in my early fifties, and I have spent literally thousands of hours of my life playing JRPGs at this point. But there has been this nagging itch in the back of my mind all this time; I've never beaten Dragon Quest I. So when I got the chance to try out the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, I jumped all over it. Now was my chance to finally push through to the game's ending, to rescue the princess and defeat the dastardly Dragonlord. Metal Slimes and Gold Golems, beware! A true JRPG champion is coming to destroy you all!
And now, about ten hours into that experience, I can report that Dragon Quest I howled with laughter at my excitement before taking one Dragonlord boot and stomping my freaking face into the dirt. As it turns out, Dragon Quest I is hard. We just didn't notice in 1989, because every game was hard back then.
Square Enix has added a lot of quality of life features to the game to make it more palatable for modern players. The game clearly highlights where your next destination should be on the world map (the original just let you wander around aimlessly until you stumbled into things). And 36 years worth of online guides exist, allowing players to look up different objects and objectives, with definitions and instructions. Heck, you can even fast travel to any destination you've already visited. But none of those improvements change the fact that if you wander too far, too fast, you will be looking at a Game Over screen.
Cross one bridge too many, wander one desert too far, and the difficulty spikes in Dragon Quest will grind your feeble 2025 self to a pulp and spit you out. Powerful enemies will pile on during the game's random encounters, stripping you of all your Magic Points and one-hitting you into oblivion. As an experienced JRPG gamer, I feel that I should be able to overcome these difficulties with careful turn use and planning, but I can't. In Dragon Quest I, you don't have a party. There are no support characters to buff or heal you during your turn. It's just you, and your choices in battle are extremely limited. You can attack, or you can heal. You can buff yourself too, and there are some strategies and powers that allow you to reflect damage to enemies up to a certain point, but the bottom line is that if you aren't ready for an area, you are gonna get smushed no matter how much strategy you employ.
I've been enjoying introducing Dragon Quest I to my 9-year-old son, who has been dipping in and out of my playthrough with interest. But a couple of nights ago, I got so frustrated at my repeated deaths that I had to shut the game down for a few minutes to cool off, causing him to innocently inquire as to whether the game was "too hard for you". This caused a great deal of sputtering and stammering, and I eventually went on a walk around the block in the cold to clear my head and get my wits about me. And that was the moment I knew that I was going to turn Dragon Quest down to "Dracky Difficulty".
Dracky Difficulty is Dragon Quest's version of "Easy". It makes your attacks slightly more powerful, makes the enemies slightly weaker, and most importantly - it makes you immortal. This means that I was able to stroll into those more dangerous areas with impunity, and just wear down my enemies. Sure, they immediately strip me down to one Hit Point and zero Magic Points, but they can't kill me. I can just keep whacking away at them until they collapse of exhaustion.
I'm not going to leave the game tuned to Dracky Difficulty forever. I'm telling myself that it's just a way for me to short circuit Dragon Quest's overwhelming grind, allowing me to level up without wasting hours and hours on repeated battles. There's a reason that JRPGs have evolved, and we shouldn't be ashamed of using quality of life settings to get through brutal old-school games. I'll turn the difficulty back to normal when it is time to actually beat the game. Right? RIGHT?
But the 17-year-old inside me can't help but shake his head in disbelief at how soft I've gotten. "Look at how far we got in Dragon Warrior in one night, old man," he says. "You are just using the future version of cheat codes. You might as well be playing with a Game Genie." The 17-year-old inside me has some serious taunts.
But then I think back at him..."Oh yeah? Well, at least I can afford my own Nintendo, LOSER." Yeah. That'll shut him up. And when I beat Dragon Quest I, it will totally still count, right? RIGHT?
Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake is now available on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. It is hard, but it is totally worth playing.
