When in the West we think of role-playing games, the first name that comes to mind is that of the saga of final Fantasy. This series, born thirty years ago, has the merit of having given a decisive boost to the success of Japanese-style RPGs, thanks above all to the success of the legendary Final Fantasy VII, released on the first PlayStation. From then on, Japanese RPGs slowly came out of the niche of titles for a few fans, becoming a genre increasingly loved by the general public. Although the fame of the Final Fantasy saga is enormous even in its homeland, if you ask a Japanese what is the first JRPG that comes to mind, he will probably answer you Dragon Quest. The saga, originally born thanks to Enix and ready to return in its eleventh incarnation, it has in fact entered the hearts of the Japanese as the RPG saga par excellence.
The saga of Dragon Quest was born from the mind of Yūji Horii, which won a competition induced by Enix for young developers in the 1982. The prize was a trip to America, where Horii discovered Wizardry e Ultima, two famous titles that inspired him for his original work. Horii then involved the composer in the project Koichi Sugiyama and the mangaka Akira Toriyama, father of Dragon Ball. Since then, this trio has curated every major chapter in the series. The first Dragon Quest came out in 1986 for the Nintendo Famicom and l 'MSX, and in the next two years the second and third chapters came out, bringing in the work of Yūji Horii in the Olympus of the best-selling and best-loved titles in Japan. In the West the series arrived for the first time in 1989, but only in America and, due to copyright problems with the paper role-playing game of the same name, with the title changed to Dragon Warrior. The three-year delay was fatal to his success. The graphics and game mechanics were obsolete, and the title faced the pressure of competition from more recent games, including the first. final Fantasy. The following chapters suffered the same fate, arriving too late on the market, with the third and fourth already arriving in the 16-bit era. The failure in the West stopped the series in the fourth chapter and we had to wait for the arrival of the seventh up PSX to see him again on American soil. In Europe the situation turned out to be even worse. The first title of Dragon Quest officially arrived was the eighth chapter on PlayStation 2, between 2005 and 2006.
Fortunately, the situation has changed today. Currently it is possible to recover all the original chapters of the saga: from 2014 you can play on the smartphone the first historical three chapters with improved graphics, while on DS remakes of the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters have been released, with several additions and corrections. The seventh chapter has recently arrived in its new version for 3DS, along with the eighth as well, while the ninth originally came out on DS. Only Dragon Quest X hiding in these parts, since it is a MMORPG released, at least in Japan, for Wii, Wii U e PC and that goes beyond the narrative line and the classic mechanics of the other episodes, a bit like it happened with the chapters XI e XIV di final Fantasy.
The main difference between the saga created by Yūji Horii and that of Hironobu Sakaguchi can be deduced by taking a look at the last chapters of both.. If we look at the fifteenth chapter of final Fantasy we can see an enormous evolution in terms of gameplay, so much so that there are few points in common between the first and the last title released. Looking instead to the upcoming eleventh chapter of Dragon Quest, let's see immediately, from the characterization of the game world and the characters, how much this saga has kept some characteristics unchanged since the first episode. To give an example, the protagonist of each chapter has always been mute and without an official name, in such a way as to make the player identify with the hero of the moment. The monsters, all designed by Toriyama with his inimitable style, they entered the common Japanese imagination, starting with Slime: blue jelly-like monsters that have always represented the first enemy we encounter in the game, always a sort of official mascot of the saga. Even the gameplay, over the years, has never undergone major changes. The base is that of an old-school RPG, with a vast, freely navigable map and a turn-based combat system.
The combat system is inspired by the Wizardry model, a historic RPG series linked to a particular first-person view. This system remained unchanged until the seventh chapter, when we begin to see our characters in action for the first time. Until the fifth chapter it was not even possible to directly control all of your characters. Another curious choice was the possibility of not being able to select the enemy to attack directly in every situation: if three appeared in battle Slime and another monster, we could decide to attack either the single monster or the three slimes, considered the latter as a single target. In this second case, the attack is directed towards one of the three slimes in a random way, without the possibility of choosing one in particular.
Dragon Quest is also considered to be one of the most difficult RPGs to play, especially in the original versions of the early chapters. Originally, the only places where it was possible to save were churches and castles, and each new dungeon represented a huge risk to the party, also considering the high rate of random encounters present, not to mention the demanding boss battles. The option to escape from a fight rarely worked with monsters of the same or higher level: if the escape did not go through we would have suffered an extra turn of enemy attacks. Upon the death of a character, this became a coffin and had to be taken to a church to resurrect it, also spending a lot of money. The most powerful healing items were in short supply, while in the event of the death of the whole party there was no game over but we resurrected in the nearest church with half of the accumulated money. For this reason there were banks, so as to always have some money aside in particularly desperate cases. Dragon Quest did not discount anyone and this side hardcore helped to give it a particular charm.
Of course, one of the most important points in an RPG is also the story. Dragon Quest has been able to give us stories and characters that are still mentioned today in the world of video games. From the point of view of storytelling it is probably inferior to what is seen in final Fantasy and in other JRPGs, strong in a complex narrative, deep and full of twists. The game of Yūji Horii has always remained tied to the canons of classic fantasy, such as, for example, the story of the very first title, where we find the hero who must save the princess from a dragon. Although the narrative model of the hero destined to save the world from a demonic threat has been somewhat repeated, it must be said that Dragon Quest has several merits as regards the drafting of the plot, anticipating many other games of the same genre by years.
In the third chapter the prologue changed according to some answers given at the beginning, giving our hero different statistics. Also, once you reached level 20, it was possible to change the class of the characters; this feature would also return in subsequent chapters. The fourth, on the other hand, was divided into episodes. In each fragment of the narrative we would have controlled a different character. One of these, Torneko, he was a merchant, with the ability to live just like one of the shopkeepers we always see in every RPG. In the fifth chapter we follow the whole life of our hero, being able to choose our bride among different girls and then use our offspring in the continuation of the adventure. Another interesting addition to the game was the ability to use monsters in our party, in a sort of ancestor system of the gods Pokémon; this possibility became popular and was revived in other chapters, so much so that it also gave life to a spin-off called Dragon Quest Monsters. Also, unlike Final Fantasy, some episodes of the saga are linked together, especially the first three, known to fans as the trilogy of Roto (Erdrik in the western version). The IV, V and VI are known as the trilogy of Zenithia, a castle suspended in the air and present in all three episodes. In fact, by the same admission as Horii, narratively these three chapters are unrelated to each other, but the fans wanted to imagine a particular bond supported by the magical presence of the floating castle.
But the element that probably made Dragon Quest the most loved JRPG series in Japan is the fantasy. In a time when the graphics were still extremely limited by technology, players had to compensate for what they did not see on the screen with their imagination, finding themselves experiencing epic adventures in a large and well-made fantasy world, where they did not play to learn history, but they lived it as protagonists. This cognitive experience at the limit of the imaginative between videogame work and player, stimulated by many gimmicks like the wonderful drawings of Toriyama found in the manuals, have made millions of players fall in love, making Dragon Quest the best-selling JRPG of all time in the Rising Sun.. In the West, given the cultural difference, we struggled to understand the beauty of this saga, but soon the awaited Dragon Quest XI will also arrive with us, which we hope will become the chapter he will consecrate Dragon Quest even in this part of the world.
