It's 6am and I spent all night getting through this and I'm sleepy but this game very much rules.

I think I'm just a huge fan of how console rpgs of this era mixed the exploratory and freeform adventure elements of games like Ultima and the more linear and guided structure of Adventure games, to create something that almost feels like very time-dilated puzzle-adventure games. Of course, the grinding gets kind of miserable in Dragon Quest (Ys combat system makes it way more fun to grind, to use a game with similar vibes as an example), but the simplicity of battles being basically level-gates is something I find incredibly charming.

Dragon Quest's massively successful streamlining of rpg mechanics, at this point in history, could have gone anywhere, and it's interesting to imagine what the rpg genre would have looked like nowadays if its successors, instead of building on the linear/guided narrative aspects of the game, would have instead focused on the level-gate-based adventure-puzzle structure of it.

It's an interesting thought. Not sure I would have liked it though. I don't remember enjoying much most modern games that tried to do that (Zeboyd games are kinda that i seem to remember? I don't remember hating them, but they were a bit too ease-of-use modern-indie-design-y for me). I think the earnest quaintness of Dragon Quest is very much a part of why I enjoyed it this much.

Oh, also the Akira Toriyama designs for the enemies are amazing. Slime might be the best character design in video games of all times.