Hot take alert: the first ever NES JRPG is wildly obtuse and grindy! I used a guide, a map, and like 4000% speed and it made the game not awful. Granted, it was effectively a waste of like 10 hours, but it was far more bearable than the first couple Final Fantasies. Instead of backtracking all the time, you just kind of go all over the place. I'm not sure how much of the navigation issues were with the game itself and how many were with the order the guide was taking me in, but the game itself has no direction at all so it's probably the former. The grinding is awful, but unlike Final Fantasy it doesn't pretend that you can beat it without grinding your ass off. I think the honesty and humbleness of Dragon Quest 1 is what makes it better than the game it directly inspired. Still sucks tho lol

FF1 & 2 are both NES JRPGs, which means that they are obtuse, grindy, and generally annoying to play. There are actually a lot of differences between the two games, with FF1 being a very traditional JRPG with the twist of literally no story until the final boss gives you a bit of a lore dump and then the end credits tell you the rest of the story which was actually pretty cool and really charming. FF2 decided to try and do something different by making an NES JRPG even worse of an experience by making you backtrack back to the starting town after you did literally anything, as well as forego traditional leveling for levels in every single aspect you possibly imagine, which actually sucks and is awful. They imposed way more story into FF2, much to its detriment. Instead of being charming, it's incredibly annoying and boring until the last hour or so, where it gets kinda cool, but by that point I was so incredibly annoyed with this experience that I just wanted it to be over. Both games did some cool things, but overall I would say do NOT play these games if you value your time at all, or give a single shit about not hating yourself for going through this.