NES
The Vault

Nintendo
Dragon Warrior

Graphics:
Sound:
Gameplay:
Overall:		 8.14
8.29
8.81
8.73
Votes: 59
Reviews: 6


Rate this game

Review this game

 

Reviewer: Vimm Date: May 5, 2008
Ah, Dragon Warrior. This game was one of, if not THE first modern RPG, and it set the standard for many years to come. It's also where the venerable Slime made its first appearance, and it introduces the legendary spells "heal" and "hurt", plus their beefed up cousins "healmore" and "hurtmore" (courtesy of Nintendo censorship). But despite all that, there have been many advances in the RPG arena and Dragon Warrior's relative simplicity doesn't age well. What was new and revolutionary at the time is dull and boring by today's standards. While the game still has some redeeming qualities, only a die-hard Dragon Warrior fan (or someone feeling quite nostalgic) is likely to finish it.

Graphics: 6
Dragon Warrior's graphics are average at best. The same graphic tiles are used all over the world so once you've seen one, you've seen em all. The monster graphics are decent and clearly had some work put into them. While the game follows the "change the monster's color to make it a new monster" scheme as most RPGs do, they do shake it up a little by altering the monster's costume as well. For example, a Magician is bare-handed while a Warlock carries a staff, or a blue dragon breathes fire while a green dragon does not, or a wyvern is left-handed while a magiwyvern is right-handed. It's not much, but it shows effort on the designer's part.

Sound: 4
The tunes in Dragon Warrior are catchy, but unfortunately there's very few of them and they're all quite short making for lots of repetition. You've got your throne room theme, castle theme, town theme, overworld theme, battle theme, dungeon theme, final battle theme, and closing credits. And... that's it. Some of the tunes are high pitched as well (particularly the overworld), which when combined with the high pitched sound effects can make you want to turn the volume down (or off). It sounds like only two sound channels are used for music with the 3rd channel dedicated for sound effects, leaving the tunes sounding rather simple. One unique thing about the dungeon theme is that the pitch drops the lower you are in a dungeon, and this is even used for a tiny puzzle/trap in the Dragonlord's castle. Overall the music is nice, but it gets old quickly.

Gameplay: 6
The gameplay, like most RPGs nowadays, consists of wandering around towns and castles talking to villagers and buying goods. There's also a world map with various dungeons and random monster encounters. While that may sound ho-hum today, it was groundbreaking in its day.

Combat consists of one-on-one battles against an assortment of monsters and you have a choice to fight, cast spells, use items, or flee. Most of your time will be spent wailing back and forth on monsters, then healing when the fight is over. Your battle spells throughout the game consist of Heal, Hurt, Sleep, and Stopspell. Though combat is the heart of the game there are a couple nuances. For example, enemies can dodge your attacks but you can't dodge theirs, though they can deal you 0 damage. It's particularly annoying when you land an "excellent move" only to see it dodged. Also when an enemy casts Sleep on you it always hits for at least one round, though when you cast it it's often resisted (more with certain monsters than with others). On the plus side, you always attack first unless the enemy gets a jump on you.

My biggest complaint is the lack of content. Overall the game can be beaten in 10-12 hours, however most of that time is spent simply grinding away for gold and experience. There's only 5 full dungeons for you to spend 20 levels in and they aren't very big either. You can travel the world exploring, but there's really not all that much to find. There's simply not enough to do.

One unique feature of Dragon Warrior is the use of torches (or Radiant magic) in dungeons. If your light runs out you're left to stumble around in the darkness which pretty much means you're dead. You'll hear a sound when you hit a wall so you can at least know if you're moving, but if you don't know where the stairs are they're impossible to find in the dark. It adds an interesting dynamic to dungeon crawling and is a refreshing change.

Overall: 5
When you get right down to it, Dragon Warrior's just not a fun game. It can be nostalgic at first, but once you get past the first few levels it's difficult to press on. If you set the text speed to Fast the battles move fairly quickly however they get repetitive so it's hard to keep interested. The translation is also pretty weak so the townspeople don't have much to say, and the towns are so small you can explore them thoroughly in a couple minutes. If you're an RPG or Dragon Warrior fan you may get a kick out of seeing your roots, however most people won't find this game very interesting. Overall the game's not difficult, so if you keep an open mind and think of this game in its context as an early NES game blazing new RPG trails and play it in small doses (30-60 mins max) you should get through it with no problem.

Dragon Warrior was the first of many sequels and this is where it all began. Each of them has built on one another and while Dragon Warrior isn't a bad game necessarily, it doesn't stand the test of time. It's fun to take it for a spin and slash a few slimes but RPGs have come a long way over the years and it shows. It was a revolutionary game for its time, but for those who remember Dragon Warrior fondly it may best be left a memory.

 

Reviewer: anizaniacs Date: Apr 2, 2002
This is the first of the DW series. It has a simple plot. DW is actually one of the first fighting games that has a one on one battle system. It is ok but not enough for me to say that it is ""grand"".

Graphics: 2
I give them credit for the graphics, but I feel that they could have improved on their graphics a whole lot. It would help in maintaining the interest of the players. I hate the graphics of this game, it pales in comparison to other games.

Sound: 3
The sound wasn't much better, after a while it gets annoying because it only has 5 tunes when it should have somewhere between 10-30 tunes. There is a definitely a huge margin between 10 and 30.

Gameplay: 6
It has stuff that can make a true gamer sob. Such as the game only has 1 save point. That is next to the lazy king in the castle. Just that 1 thing bugged me a lot, because you have to go all the way back to the castle by walking or Return. Then on top of that you have to walk back to the location that you were at previously and go through all the mazes again. There are a lot of mazes in the game. The hardest maze is DragonLord's castle. According to my knowledge there are a total of 4 bosses. 1) Green Dragon- The green dragon guarding the princess. I'll give you a hint, on the early levels use ""Sleep"" on it and it will fall asleep sometimes. 2) Axe Knight- The Axe Knight in the deserted town of Hauksness guarding ""Erdrick's Armor"" 3) Golem- The monster Golem is protecting the town of Cantlin making it impossible for you to sneak by. You have to defeat it by one way and one way only. 4) DragonLord- The DragonLord has two parts to him the regular DragonLord and his true form a blue dragon with blazing fire and rupturing claws that sear you.

Overall: 7
Overall it was a great start for the beginning of the DW series. They don't know what to expect on the first game of a series. The only reason I gave a 7 is because it's the first of its kind and I understand what it means when you start out on a game series.

Don't give the enemies any chance especially the Demon Knight and Magi-Wyvern foes.

 

Reviewer: Whimsy Date: Dec 16, 2001
Dragon Warrior! What more needs to be said? Well, if you are like the majority, then not much. However, if you are a critic, then you will agree that a lot more needs to be understood.

Graphics: 5
I will never understand why people rate this game so high; these graphis are very simplistic. You have 2 frames of animation. You know what also has 2 frames per character? Bokosuka wars! The detail of this game also rivals that game! The only erason I rate this a 5 is because they textured the ground, and added images for the enemies.

Sound: 7
It squeaks! This game could make dogs cry with the noises. The battle music was well done, however; It gave me the illusion of fast paced attack in a game that uses a step-by-step system. As one can imagine, this is hard to do.

The cave music was mostly fitting, but it didn't give me the dark dongeon feeling I craved.

Gameplay: 4
If not for the battle scenes and simplicity of the controller, I would have rated this lower. No diagonal movment, and terrible hints make for a loooonnnnggg haul. Coupled with the overworld music, and you will die playing this.

The save points are all located in front of the fat, useless king. In every other game, they compensate for challenge with a save point at good intervals. Everytime you die, he steals half of your gold, probably to sit on. Sadly, he can't afford to buy an extra frame of animation either.

Overall: 7
I hate this game. I rated it a 7 simply because I don't want to have missed anything. But sadly, this game has no redeeming factors other then I bought it for $10. This game will make you depressed. I am a fan of the fantasy genre, but after reading ""THOU"" fopr the 8000'th time, I nearly threw the cartrrage at the NES in an attempt to exorcise the memory of this vision.

If you want a game you can enjoy, play nethack. If you want to see what the hype machine known as Nintendo Power could deficate into the public's vision, grab this. This game was free at one point, and after playing, yhou will know why.

 

Reviewer: RayTapia Date: Dec 3, 2001
This game is first off, a classic. I watched my mom play it as a young boy. The puzzles had me then, and as i played it at an older gae i knew why she sat for hours on end playing this game. The plot is a basic save the princess type. For the most part you go around lvling.(hoping for that chance that you get critical strike on your enemy. The plot draws you in because you have to not only save the princess, but find Erdricks armor, Erdricks sword, and prove that you are of the line of Erdrick. There is 4 bosses in this game. 1: the Axe Night atop erdricks armor in a tattered village.(spooky)2:The Golem that has a weakness you must exploit to kill.3: The hard Red Dragon(hardest dragon type) that stands between you and the legendary erdricks sword.(only sword that can penetrate the dragons scales. Finally the last boss the dragonlord. He asks you to be his ally, and as a TRUE hero you say no!! he attacks. You kill the dragonlord then POOF his true form. A fire breathingblue dragon that is ferocious. When you kill him you go back to the castle as the greatest hero of all time. Great game. my 2nd favorite.(my favorite is dragon warrior 2)

Graphics: 9
simple, but they get the point across. the enemies are hand drawn with exceptional quality.

Sound: 7
the repetitive sound can get annoying, but the game itself makes it alright.

Gameplay: 10
FLAWLESS. theres poison patches, eletric fields, secret stairs, the depth is amazing. the puzzles arent to perplexing, but they do challenge.

Overall: 9
This game is the greateset RPG of all time.(unless your a ff fan you might disagree.

Play this game if you are a true RPG fan. this one started them all.

 

Reviewer: The Journeyman Date: Jul 11, 2001
I won't use numbers but I'll tell you this.

Dragon Warrior should be the RPG every fan should play, right up there with the Final Fantasy series. The simplistic outlook doesn't hurt the game too much; in fact, it makes it more fun to play.

A big difference between FF and DW is that FF generally has more plot. Most of what you do in this game is fight. Fight, fight, and fight. And save a princess. And fight again.

And there are few ""boss monsters"" in this game as well. Closest being the Green Dragon that you fight to save the princess and the Axe Knight that stands atop Erdrick's Armor. And perhaps golem. Of course, the Dragonlord is your final enemy in the game; the ONLY unique enemy besides Golem.

Basically, the idea is to fight for GP and ExP. When you get enough GP, upgrade your armor or weapon. You can completely bypass the best buyable armor and sword if you plan it right; that's the problem. The game plot is a bit shortcoming, as after the princess it's just leveling until you fight the Dragonlord.

I wouldn't pass this up; it's nice to spend some time hitting that ExP mark and really feel you've done something.

 

Reviewer: Jigsaw Date: Jul 1, 2001
This first game in the Dragon Warrior series set the standard for all future RPGs. Games such as Final Fantasy were modelled after this one. You are the descendant of Erdrick. Your goal is to defeat the evil Dragonlord who ransacked the kingdom of Alefgard and recover the stolen Ball of Light. Along the way you will have various sidequests to conquer before you can reach the Dragonlord's island, such as recovering the items to make the Rainbow Drop and rescue Princess Gwaelin from a Green Dragon.

If you play any RPGs, this game is a must to play. The people in Japan will tell you this as well -- Dragon Warrior (known as Dragon Quest in Japan) is the best selling RPG series, far above even Final Fantasy.