You never found that tablet in the monster-less cave north of the starting castle, I take it. Because it does lay out, pretty explicitly, what you’re supposed to do: gather the items to build the Rainbow Bridge in order to get to the Dragonlord’s Castle.

My own experience with Dragon Warrior was quite a strange one and it kinda changed my perspective on RPGs. It was in 2003 and I was bored of the genre, but out of boredom I popped in the NES cartridge, intending to just run around for a minute then put in Ninja Gaiden or something… but wound up hooked, because it turned out to be the kind of RPG I wanted.

The magic of DQ (and most of the earlier games in the series) is that in a way they’re almost more like detective stories. There’s no cutscenes forcing you down a railroad (except for the opening one, of course), instead you talk to people and the info they give (if they give any) guides you. I often tell people not to use a guide, because that ruins it–equivalent to reading the last chapter of a mystery novel so you can cheat and know who the killer is (when the whole idea is you’re seeing if you can figure it out before the detective reveals all).

There’s stuff I didn’t like about the Switch port. I think its fine for people unfamiliar with the original but I honestly think the NES version is better. My two major gripes are:

1. There’s now a sparkly thing to indicate where items you can pick up off the ground are. Thing is, these are supposed to be HIDDEN and you’re supposed to do detective work (IE be told by someone) where to use the “Search” command… said command still being present and in fact you still get the hint as to where the hidden items are (one hint has even been turned into a cutscene for solving a miniquest). They either should’ve removed the hints or else kept them as something you have to “Search” for.

2. The magic has been rebalanced. One thing that made me fall in love with the NES game was it was one of the first times I played an RPG where status effect spells like Sleep actually work on bad guys (most times, they only ever affect small fry you don’t even need to use status effects on, never on bosses where it would be useful). In the Switch version tho? This would never have happened.

In fact a lot has been rebalanced. On the NES if you go from a cypress stick to a hand axe, it feels like you gained twenty levels. On the Switch it feels like barely anything. On the NES the battle mechanic is each turn, you always go first, making trying sleep et all much less risky… on Switch, its random whether you or the enemy goes first.

It’s actually possible to sequence break the NES version by going for Erdrick’s Armor (if you know where it is) as soon as you have sleep. That ain’t gonna happen on the Switch.

That’s not to say the Switch port is a mess or anything, I liked some things (they actually did update the dialogue) but just, the NES version is an overall more fun experience.

RPGs already existed in Japan before Dragon Quest, including some Western import like Wizardy & Ultima: Dragon Quest could be seen as a Ultima exploration + Wizardry combat mix. There’s a good article there: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePepe/20161010/282896/19821987__The_Birth_of_Japanese_RPGs_retold_in_15_Games.php

It required them to cut out a lot, and develop a very minimalist RPGA, striking out to capture the basic essence of the genre. This ended up working in their favor at the time. Zelda hadn’t even come out yet in Japan, and this game ended up serving its place in Japan, of convincing the mass public that games could be a big adventure, rather than simple and straightforward action games. it had mechanics simple enough to be playable by people more familiar with Super Mario or Donkey Kong, and created an interest in the public for strategic and rle playing games with more sophisticated gameplay.