Look, I gotta confess, I consider myself a pretty big JRPG fan, but I'm not really. I basically played Final Fantasy and skipped all the deep cuts like Start Ocean or Tales of Whatever. They just don't interest me. But one thing that always nagged me was that I had never played a Dragon Quest. It's the first. I was under the impression that if I had played a JRPG, I had basically played Dragon Quest already since this was the grandfather of them all.

It's simple turn-based combat, you grind levels, you fight wizards, I get it. So there are 11 of them now, and DQ11 was coming to Switch and I'm interested. I had also heard that Dragon Quest has basically not changed in 30 years, and that's why people love it. So I think, why not give it a shot. Well, fuck me. It's damn good. It's the JRPG formula in its purest form.

I think I've been jaded by latter-day JRPG systems that are just complicated and janky, but going back to the roots sparked something and I had a ton of fun with this one. It is a bit clunky and archaic, but that only added to the charm. It was punishingly difficult, but not in a "I achieved this victory" kinda way, more like "the random number generator did not fuck me this time" kinda way. The artwork was all done by Akira Toriyama of Dragonball fame, so the style still holds up pretty well. I immediately started the second one after I finished it.