
#Games that you play as a dragon series#
Dragon Quest IV was the first game in the series to change things up, and the results are still praised three decades later. Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosenįor better or for worse, the Dragon Quest games are notorious for following a pretty strict formula of an unnamed hero gathering a party to venture forth and save the world. See? There is some hope we might see Dragon Quest X in other territories, it just might take another decade or so.Ĥ. Unfortunately, Dragon Quest’s popularity was at a low point in North America at the time of its original release, and we only saw the excellent DS port of Dragon Quest VI in 2011. There’s definitely a strong Link to the Past influence.
#Games that you play as a dragon full#
Originally released for the SNES in 1995 at the peak of its popularity, the big hook is switching between a “real world” full of typical medieval castles and villages, and a more surreal “dream world” made up of people’s dreams. Realms of Revelation is a really solid entry in the series that arrived way too late in the West to get its proper due. Yes, you’re still the legendary hero out to save the world, but this time when you think you’ve won, the “real” evil appears, and it turns out there’s a lot more game to play, a then-innovative plot twist that would become an RPG staple for years to come. It was the Dragon Quest game that introduced the ability to swap between multiple party members throughout the adventure, as well as quality of life improvements like quick item sorting and the ability to fill all HP with a menu command.īest of all, The Seeds of Salvation features a more fully fleshed out plot than the first two games. Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvationĭragon Quest III is the first title in the series that really feels like a typical JRPG. Still, if you have the time and patience to put into it, Fragments of the Forgotten Past delivers like few other RPGs.Ħ. You have to really, really like the sometimes meandering story and the gameplay to get through this installment. The game certainly straddles the line of what can be considered too long, with a single playthrough typically taking around 100 hours. Opening on a small island that at first seems to be the only landmass left on the planet, Fragments of the Forgotten Past features one of the most interesting stories in the series, and the challenging gameplay mixed with the deep class system gives it plenty of legs.īut Dragon Quest VII also suffers from a major Achilles’s heel: its monumental length. Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten PastĪrriving at the tail end of the PS1 era, Dragon Quest VII was in many ways a culmination of what many still consider to be the genre’s golden age. With only five towns, five dungeons, and 1v1 battles, Dragon Quest is a simple and relatively quick playthrough by today’s standards, but it perfectly scratches that role-playing itch if you don’t have the energy to spend hours tweaking a character and planning strategies in a modern game. Dragon Quest still has incredible charm and addictive gameplay, even if it isn’t the deepest title when compared to modern RPGs. There’s a reason why so many indie RPGs are still built on the bones of this classic: the great grandfather of the JRPG genre holds up remarkably well 35 years after its initial release. With 2021 marking the 35th anniversary of the first game’s release, there’s no better time rank the best and worst Dragon Quest games in the main series. Unfortunately, we could not include the Japan-only MMORPG Dragon Quest X in this ranking as its never been released in North America. Ultimate, the series is finally getting the recognition it deserves around the world. But with the most recent game receiving widespread critical acclaim, and even a nod in Super Smash Bros. Unsurprisingly, a couple of games in the long-running series took more than a decade to see English language releases. that it was given away with subscriptions to Nintendo Power. While Dragon Quest has always been a huge hit in Japan, the original game sold so poorly in the U.S.
Since then, the series has seen plenty of ups and downs.

In fact, Final Fantasy probably wouldn’t exist if not for the massive success of Dragon Quest. While many of these game design innovations are attributed to Final Fantasy, which was released in North America first, the Japanese release of Dragon Quest actually beat Final Fantasy by a full year at a time when Square and Enix were still separate companies. Basic JRPG tropes like the overhead view, turn-based combat, and the medieval fantasy setting all got their start with the original Dragon Quest (then called Dragon Warrior in the West). Even if you’ve never played a Dragon Quest game, you’ve undoubtedly played other titles influenced by the series.
