A Quest for Dragons

In 1986, Dragon Warrior (screenshots below) came out for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and I was thus introduced to Role Playing Games (RPGs).  In Dragon Warrior, you walked through an 8-bit world of plains, forests, deserts, swamps, and hills slaying monsters (encountered randomly) and visiting towns along the way to finish minor quests or upgrade your armor/weapons.  Every time you killed a monster, you received gold to procure said upgrades and experience points to 'level up', which increased your strength and abilities.  You learned magic spells, and your quest culminated in an ultimate 'boss' encounter after many hours of gameplay.  More titles came out as the years went on for the NES and newer platforms, but I stayed away for two decades.

In 2007, I purchased a Nintendo DS (NDS), and enjoyed all four NDS titles in this series (now called Dragon Quest): Dragon Quest IV, V, VI, and IX (don't know why they skipped a few).  In the first three, the premise is largely the same as the original game- you just had better graphics, use of both DS screens, and mild variations (like having a team of folks in your party, each getting to develop separately).  Dragon Quest IX was rather different- here, the monster encounters were no longer random (you could see them walking around the screen, and could choose to engage them at your discretion), the world was more 3D, and you could customize your character to a large degree (choosing hair color, build, complexion, etc.).  As with the original, finishing a game took a long time- between 40 and 60 hours.  Game covers and screenshots are below.

Obviously, I felt there was a lot of good in this series:
- It's a turn-based RPG, meaning each step of combat is sequential- you attack or use a spell/item, the enemy attacks, you attack, etc. until one of you is dead.  I enjoyed that, as it felt less stressful than real-time RPGs that had multiple things going on simultaneously.
- The graphics, though 'poor' by many of today's standards, were also appealing to me, as I wanted an escape and wasn't looking for realism.
- Exploring the world (towns, wilderness, etc.) and developing the hero (upgrading along the way) were both enjoyable experiences

Nothing's perfect, though.  Here's what I didn't care for:
- There were times when you had to spend time to 'walk around and kill monsters' just to level up- without furthering the story.  That could slow things down and get monotonous.
- The replay value is low (meaning once you beat the game, playing a new game wouldn't deviate markedly from past adventures, so playing it again all the way through was boring).
- It was a serious time drain (as said above, 40-60 hours per game).

Though fun overall, the negatives were enough to make me sell after playing each of them all the way through.  A good game series, in the end, but with deficiencies.

Rating (for all): B+