Well like I said I would try to complete a Dragon Warrior game every 2 weeks or so. So here’s the first one in the serie.



“The protagonist of the story is a warrior who is a descendent of the legendary hero Erdrick (known in some versions as Loto). Starting in the chambers of King Lorik, the player is made aware that the Dragonlord has stolen the Ball of Light which must be reclaimed to restore peace to the land. Although this minimalistic story presents itself at the beginning, the player will find more minor story elements to the game as it progresses. These mostly occur through dialogues with NPCs that detail rescuing the Princess Gwaelin, the destruction of the town of Hauksness, and the hints about relics needed to reach the Dragonlord.

Although this is the first title released of the Dragon Warrior franchise, Dragon Warrior I is actually the second, chronologically, of a three game series which share a storyline. The story is preceded by that of Dragon Warrior III and followed by Dragon Warrior II.”

Dragon Warrior is indeed very minimalistic, I actually had to put some serious retro goggles in order to play this game. The only that kept me going was the nostalgia and fond memories I have of the game and playing it with my mother (she would translate stuff for me). Dragon Warrior did to me what Zelda did to alot of people, by that I mean the sheer size of the world and the epic quest. Even those rudimentary graphics would trigger my imagination and almost send me to another world.



Most of us that are old enough and played this game when it came out got it as a bonus for being old or new subscriber in 1989-90. But that release in North America was a little too late for the game to really take off because Final Fantasy, which at that time was vastly superior, came out that year also. However Dragon Warrior was released in Japan in 1986 and was hugely successful over there.

When it comes to console RPG, Dragon Warrior was the first one of it’s kind, it brought many concepts that are still common place in today’s games, such as the top-down perspective. It was also the first game to receive the honor of having it’s soundtrack played by a Symphonic Orchestra. It also made the Gamespot’s top 15 most influential games of all time in 2000.



By today’s standards Dragon Warrior would be too minimalistic to be recommended to anyone who never played the serie. Unless you really want to play this game badly for historical value or have a major case of retro goggles, I would just recommend to read the synopsis and skip to Dragon Warrior III. It is no wonder that Final Fantasy had much more impact to the North American public with vastly superior soundtrack and graphics at the time. Would it be much different nowaday if the release was set to 1986 ? maybe so.