Mistakes were not fixed
The good:
- The plot has some interesting twists (I won't reveal spoilers here, in respect to players that want to play the game cleanly), it's worth a try.
- The world is not small and has a variety of items and monsters that should make most players happy.
- Some occasional humour here and there (a bit silly, but better than nothing at all.)
The bad:
- Terribly repetitive soundtrack. I think the composer should be replaced, but it seems the same even after the SNES versions of Dragon Quest sequel, unfortunately. The soundtracks are terribly predictable. If you play any instrument, you can notice how silly is the harmonic progression, as if we could predict entirely the music just listening the first measures. The opening music (not the title music, I mean the music that plays when you choose name, gender, etc...) almost makes me turn off my sound.
- Silly overall visual. A slime is smiling at you, while it shreds you to pieces. The look is too cartoon-ish even for Japanese standards. There's no visual in battle, you must imagine whats happening entirely. Before you accuse me, I am not a fanboy of visuals or maniac by graphics (I am more than 30yo and I do not care about playing pixelated graphics), but Dragon Warrior's negligence with the player about the battle system is unacceptable to me. NES can do much more than just display numbers and show drop-like slimes smiling at your face like little kids saying "hello, daddy".
- Over-cliched plot. You start the game and go meet the king. A little more creativity would not hurt. Like, (an example) start a game in a beach, memoryless, and then find a city, then go for the king, offering your services as a warrior. But no, instead you start the same blablabla in a generic room again, and "go see the King". Every RPG has its cliche, but once again, Dragon Quest series irritates me, like if the game was made in RPG Maker by an amateur or semi-pro developer.
- Absolutely UN-friendly field controls. Oh my god, you have to open a menu to TALK to a person or even search a jar in the ground. Why couldn't they copy Final Fantasy formula and make a single-action button once for all?
I hope you have fun with this game. A try will not hurt, but voting close to 9 to this game forces me to say: it is an over-rated game, but I humbly respect the fans and the players that disagree with this review.