Thursday, May 7, 2015

Dragon Quest 1

On top of working through my console backlog, I have started working through some mobile games. I now spend 40 minutes a day on the NOVA metro, this gives me plenty of time to work on mobile games. They are also something I can do while sitting through repeated viewings of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood with my daughter.
I recently completed Dragon Quest I for the iPhone. I played through this game several times on the NES, and once on my Gameboy, but it has been years since the last time I picked it up. Overall the iPhone version has a lot of great improvements. You gain XP and gold faster, there is a quick save function, there is a context sensitive action button, and it feels like the walking speed has been increased. I think some of these improvements were in the Gameboy version, but I can’t say for sure.
One change that I was not fond of is that the game is only playable in portrait mode. This means you are holding your phone up with one hand the whole time you are playing the game and the field of view is weird. This was not actually too much of a problem with DQ1, but I anticipate that it will be more of a problem as the series progresses and the games get longer and less suited for bite-sized gaming. It wound up not bothering me at all for this game, but I have my doubts moving forward.

There is not much to say about the game itself, it is still DQ1. The translation is still funny, and the game balance is actually more enjoyable than the original. You can beat it in a few hours and it is cheap. There are several DQ1 wannabes on IPhone, this is better than any of the ones I have played. I recently started DQII and bought DQIII (my second favorite game in the series), I should have more interesting things to say about them.

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