…gonna do some grinding.
…lots and lots of grinding…
…I hope I don’t fall asleep!
The last time I played this game, I’ll admit that it got boring pretty quick. It was groundbreaking back in 1990, but needless to say RPGs have come a long way since then and grinding as your primary storyline doesn’t take long to get old.
Now that said, this time around I ended up finding the first in the Dragon Quest series on the Switch because they happened to be running a sale where the first three games together were under $10, so late one night last week after the kids were in bed I decided to give it a go. Lucky for me, apparently back in 2014 this got ported to iOS and that upgraded version is what eventually made it to modern consoles, so as you can already see the graphics are much better, and it felt like the XP and leveling got tweaked a little because the grind wasn’t nearly as tedious as it was in the past.
I even got Christopher mildly curious as he watched me play for a bit here and there between his own games, so I let him take a few rounds and (luckily!) I was in a place where all of the monsters were pretty easy to kill and he could just attack without having to worry about healing and doing anything else!
It turned out that the playthrough wasn’t really that bad this time around and after about an extra half hour of grinding tonight, I was able to take out the Dragonlord and call it a day. I think it worked well for me this time because surprisingly the simple playthrough made it something that I could casually play while watching the kids do something else or even a bit in the car while I waited for Christopher at swim class.
I haven’t really played much for mobile games in a while because these old eyes of mine can’t handle the tiny screens and even on my phone, there’s not really room for controls without taking up half of the real estate on the screen. But the Switch seems to be a good option that I’ve wanted to see for a long time – full-size buttons and a BIG screen, your usual library of console games, and it’s just as easy to dock it to the TV to play on the couch with a controller when you’re not out and about, which is honestly most of the time for me.
I’m actually kind of looking forward to digging into DQ2 & 3 now that I’ve got the first one behind me, albeit with copious use of this walkthrough because I’m just here to enjoy the game, not solve puzzles these days! I’m not sure how much of the Dragon Quest series is available on the Switch to date, but I’d love to slowly work my way through and eventually get back to DQ8, which I played through on the PS2 while my wife was in nursing school and thoroughly enjoyed!
So watch out, slimes – this grind has only just begun… 😉
