Review
So, I promised I would review this game a while ago, and here I am, delivering on that promise. Note: the terminology here follows the NTSC version of Dragon Warrior, as per the English localization. I don't give a crap what the spells and game were called in Japan. I'm an American.
The beginning of Dragon Warrior is a tedious slog; you will mostly be fighting slimes right outside Tantagel Castle. This is, in fact, one of the grindiest RPGs I have ever played, and with that being said, it is hell of rewarding progressing through the game.
There is a fair bit of stuff you can find through simple exploration, but for true 100% completion, the game is too obscure without a guide of some sort. Many items and enemies are hidden on single tiles that you must "search" to find, and besides some one-off dialogue with a random NPC which may or may not lead you to connecct the dots, these are not spelled out ever.
With that being said, this is a timelss RPG. Nothing can quite beat the trill of wandering into the wrong area too early and thinking "oh, fuck, I am not prepared for this!" For a very long time, you will be using basic spells that are quite frankly outclassed by items (the herb restores 50% more HP than the "Heal Spell"), but the end-game spells are flat out broken, killing enemies in one hit and recov3ring all your HP. There is no in-between to mediate the sucky skill and the good ones.
You will find yourself spamming the "heal" spell out of battle until you are low on Mana, and then using the "Return" spell to go back home and heal up your health once you run out. There is a particular town in the southwest of the map that you can spend plenty of time grinding in, returning to town and healing, and coming back out to. This is where you'll buy the best armor and weapon; well, that is, it is the best weapon until it instantly becomes outclassed at the final dungeon.
Some enemies are very easy to beat, because they will spam the "Stopskill" spell, which is basically useless since you will mostly be healing out of battle anyways, and by the time you reach them, the Hurt spell becomes outclassed. However, the tables are turned when you use this spell: since enemies generally have two options, spells or attacks, if you use Stopspell to disable their skills, they have a 50% chance of failing to do anything, which is quite good.
You will need to grind to at least level 20 to finish off the final boss, assuming you have all the best equipment.This might sound easy, but there are only 30 levels in the. game. Thank God that I played on an emulator, where I could speed things up by 2x; otherwise, this would have been insufferable!
Losing half your gold everytime you die is a pretty steep punishment, but fair nonetheless. The variety of enemies in this game did impress me, I must say. The game feels absolutely enormous, but once the player becomes familiar with the landscape, it is seemingly dwarved.