RPGs have been some of the most popular video games for decades. From Final Fantasy to Baldur’s Gate, players love to immerse themselves in fantastical worlds where they can be the hero. It may sound simple, but this idea is a core principle of what makes video games so special. But many of these experiences simply wouldn’t be possible without a central game – Dragon Quest. Although it is far from the first RPG, Dragon Quest was a groundbreaking game that completely redefined the genre as a whole and gave birth to console RPGs as we know them. Video games today simply wouldn’t be the same without this game.
Dragon Quest was first released in Japan on the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. However, it was not released in North America until 1989 and was renamed Dragon Warrior to avoid a trademark dispute. In these three years Dragon Quest It spread like wildfire in Japan and, while it didn’t have quite the same impact in the West, it definitely laid the foundation for decades of role-playing games, a foundation that continues to this day.
Dragon Quest The world may look simple today, but in 1989 it felt like an incredible, endless fantasy realm.
Square-Enix
Dragon Quest was truly the first console RPG that translated the complexity of PC games, like Lastto a home system. Previous attempts, even The Legend of Zeldahad abstracted many of these central RPG elements, such as statistics and levels. But Dragon Quest Its brilliance lies in the fact that it contains all the complex RPG elements that fans love, while making it more streamlined and accessible to players who might find that complexity daunting. This is essentially the game that combines all the disparate elements of other RPGs into one complete package.
Everything in Dragon Quest contributes to a great sense of adventure, but more importantly, the player is in control of that adventure. You have a party of specialized, customizable characters, a huge open world to explore in any direction, a leveling system that’s all about improving stats, and a thrilling story about rescuing a princess. On that last point: Dragon Quest established rescuing the princess as a staple of an RPG, but also set a precedent for subverting that story by not telling players the true threat until after they’ve accomplished that initial objective.
Play Dragon Quest didn’t require 100 hours of time, you didn’t have to learn complex combat rules, and you didn’t have to know anything about Dungeons & Dragons. Dragon Quest was the perfect RPG to start playing and play – something you could invest a few hours in occasionally or play for 30 hours straight.
For over three decades, Dragon Quest has continued to find innovative new ways to vary its own formula. Even DQXI feels like the ultimate realization of what the first game set out to achieve.
Square-Enix
That’s what made the game so fundamental, it made RPGs accessible and unflinching. The game focused solely on creating a satisfying gameplay experience, and it succeeded flawlessly.
All Dragon Quest Elements became fundamental to the entire RPG genre. A few years later Final Fantasy would take up the formula by implementing a job system, Baldur’s Gate similarly introduced unique party members and a huge open world to explore, and Chrono trigger uses practically the exact same formula, but with a time travel twist. You can even watch the basic presentation of Dragon Questa top-down adventure with battles appearing on a new screen and see how it has inspired people like Earthbound And Pokemon.
Even the Dragon Quest The series itself has continued and repeated the same formula, with Dragon Quest XI actual story references to the first game, in addition to the same ideology of a mythical hero and a great immersive world. For 35 years Dragon Quest has somehow managed to keep repeating that winning formula and keep things interesting even when other games it inspired fall by the wayside. It is one of the few cases where it is not an exaggeration to say that video games as we know them would not have been possible without Dragon Quest.
