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If I have never played the first Dragon Warrior / Quest game, which version should I play? There's the original on the NES, the remake on the SNES (there's been a fan translation) and a newer remake on the Switch. Or is there some other version you would recommend?

The original is a rough grindfest. Every version since then has adjusted the experience/gold you get off of monsters so that you don't have to grind as much. So I think you're fine as long as it's not the NES original.

For ease of access, I'd say the Switch release. I played through it a few years ago and thought it handled everything way better than the grind-heavy original release on the NES. It will be more respectful of your time in that regard.

Say I wouldn't mind using a patch... I see there is one that double the experience and gold earned, and another that reduces the amount of points needed to level up by a factor of 10 as well as reduces item costs by a factor of 10. So say I use one of these patches, would the NES version be a contender? Or are there other things? Aside from prettier graphics, of course.

NES version has that ye olde English localization, which has some charm. It's a fundamentally very simple game, so the remakes have mostly stuck to just better graphics and not as much grind. There's not much else you can do past that without losing the feel.

I played through the GB (GBC enhanced) versions of Dragon Warrior 1-3 and they were a blast. It's an old school grind fest perfect for a handheld. Plus unlike the NES versions where you have to open a menu to do anything, the action button automatically talks, opens, and searches. This alone makes the game 100% better in my opinion.

Well I just noticed that the first three Dragon Quest games are on sale right now on the Nintendo eShop. Apparently the sale ends in a few hours (as of this posting). I got the first game for $3.24 LOL, can't beat that! I think I'll check out both the NES version (with the 2x exp/gold hack) as well as the Switch remake. If I enjoy them, which I think I will, maybe after some time I will try out the GBC and the SFC versions.

I don't mind grinding, in and of itself. But it seems like the grinding needed in the original NES Dragon Warrior is just relentless.

Ziggy587 wrote:I don't mind grinding, in and of itself. But it seems like the grinding needed in the original NES Dragon Warrior is just relentless.

When I played it, it took me about 4 hours to do all meaningful content before the final boss, and then 8 hours of grinding to actually reach a level where I had a decent chance against the final boss.

And to be clear, I know that was necessary, because you can literally find probability calculators that tell you your odds of winning against him at each level, depending on your player name (your stat growth varies slightly depending on this). It's a very basic game.

The TAS can do it at level 7, but that's due to full RNG manipulation so that Dragonlord never tries an actual attack on you.

Are the GBC versions better, or even good? I heard a lot of good things back in the day, when playing them on a GBA was popular.