I fell in love with Dragon Quest at a young age with DQIX. They announced this game not too long after, and I was crazy excited for it - but I didn't really understand that it was a remake of a Super Famicom game, so when the day finally came, I was a little let down by the lack of a character creator and the "downgrade" to first person battles with sprite graphics. I dropped the game for a few months, came back to it on a random night and got absolutely sucked in. Something just clicked - the dream world plot was so mysterious, I realized how huge and grand the world was, and the class system proved to be addicting.

I still have so many moments from this game permanently ingrained in my mind and I plan to replay it again soon. The evil world you visit in that final stretch of the game was so immersive and the whole summoning scene where a demon demolishes a castle blew my mind. Gradually coming to love this game's older style was probably the beginning of my descent into dungeon crawlers