I've only played these 2 games on nes and nothing else in the series. Based on what you're saying you will hate 2. I would try getting stoned and playing it if you're into that, because of the nature of these games, but otherwise it sounds like you should drop these games. Maybe skip over to PS1 dq or later and see if you enjoy that

Oh and you know how in pokemon you level up your team, beat the current area, then move onto the next town, and repeat until credits? That's the core formula of these dq games, so you have to find some joy in that process or no way it's going to be a good time

>>11390048
>>11390056
I don't mind that, but it's just annoying in DQ1 since everything thing is so damn vague.

>>11390039
Now you didn't use the word, but the discourse around this game specifically in the last few years has me really curious as to what a lot of people seem to consider "grinding."
I played the NES version for the first time last year, and I really enjoyed it. I felt like I had to actually manage resources like MP and items in order to get through a dungeon. I would explore every path until it was clear that only a few battles would easily put me in danger, and then I would back out, head to town, heal and stock up, and then head back in with a better idea of the path ahead.
Is that grinding? I've seen more than one person argue in no uncertain terms that it is. I don't agree with that at all. FF1 felt the same way to me. You could either be a complete fool and fight easy battle upon battle to get overleveled and then waltz through a dungeon on your first go comfortably, or you could just be sensible and play it cautiously like I mentioned.

I'm not trying to necessarily tell you're wrong or that you need to enjoy this game, but I just don't understand some people's point of view on this topic.

>>11390083
The grinding part is okay with me, just like I mentioned >>11390071 with my issue being how vauge everything is. I'm also just wanting to talk about the game too with others.

>>11390083
i think that's just the optimal way to play, like on a "i'm immersed as an adventurer" level instead of reading a guide book and knowing you need to be X level to tackle X dungeon

>>11390071
Basically the town NPCs give away all of the clues. So I just took pictures of what they said if there's a clue. And through remembering clues and looking at my photo notes, I was able to figure almost all of it out myself. I did check guides too a few times, definitely more in the second game, and I never felt bad because I was playing the game and collecting info whenever I had the opportunity

>>11390083

I would say that grinding is repetitively doing tasks that you know will directly or indirectly improve your in-game abilities in a gradual way, with a primary aim in mind of bringing about such improvement.

If you aren't intending to improve but instead are merely fighting for fun or for the sake of testing the danger level of an area, then I would say you aren't grinding. If you ever reach a new town and see some cool item in a store that you can't afford, and then you spend a few minutes fighting outside the town to save up money for it, I would say you were grinding during those minutes. If you never go out of your way to build up resources like that but always consciously maintain a policy of fighting instead of fleeing because you know that it'll tend to keep you growing well, then... I guess it's arguable either way. I'm not especially inclined to call that grinding but I could see calling it grinding. It depends in part on how much you're actually getting out of the fights aside from the XP/money (for example, by enjoying them or by learning from them) and how conscious you are of your choice to bother doing them.

Basically if you don't feel like the activity you're doing should be called grinding or "saving up" or "leveling up", then it probably isn't grinding. I think.

>>11390096

This is good advice OP. If you can enjoy playing these games the way this anon did, then you may as well do so. If you can't, then maybe just don't play them. This is how old JRPGs are, so bend to them or don't.

>>11390087
I get you. I don’t remember having much trouble figuring out what to do, but I kept notes and mapped dungeons myself while playing.

>>11390102
>If you ever reach a new town and see some cool item in a store that you can't afford, and then you spend a few minutes fighting outside the town to save up money for it, I would say you were grinding during those minutes
I did do that, and would agree that my intention was to “grind” to buy that axe or whatever at the time. In discussing this game, I’ve been up front about purposefully grinding twice: once to buy that weapon that I didn’t truly need but I thought would make my life easier, while enjoying fighting at that point in the game because I had enough tools at hand to give it some variety; and again in the last dungeon because I couldn’t manage the final boss at the level I initially got there at.
>If you never go out of your way to build up resources
I would be inclined to call that “farming.” The XP is incidental and to the main goal of acquiring an item or resources. I’m sure that definition is up to some interpretation too.

>>11390118

Huh, well I've never used the term "farming" so it wouldn't even have occurred to me to call anything that.

>>11390083
>What do you consider "grinding"?
There's more than one flavor of grinding.
There's pure grinding, where you just fight random enemies until you have enough money to buy that item you want, etc.
Then there's "hunting", which is basically the exact same thing, but you're trying to get a specific random encounter. Like looking for a Pokemon you want or trying to get a specific Blue Magic spell. A lot of people would say this is different from pure grinding, but the difference is mostly semantic.
And then there are repetitive grinding-adjacent sidequests like "kill this enemy 200 times". These may even have a small story, but they're really just one step up from grinding.

>Do you consider retreating from a dungeon grinding?
No, making progress in an RPG isn't just acquiring resources. Acquiring information is equally important.
This is why using a guide to play an RPG is cheating. You're supposed to have to work for information like what enemies are in a dungeon, and take risks to get it.

>>11390039
>I am not enjoying Dragon Quest 1. Will I enjoy Dragon Quest 2?
No. Dragon Quest 2 is a more extreme version of Dragon Quest 1.
You should either play more casual RPGs or develop a tolerance for more hardcore ones.

>>11390083
What you've described is extremely similar to my approach. I'm not really one to explore, but my strategy was to push as far as I felt comfortable, retreat once I felt I was at my limit, heal up/buy new gear, and then keep going further until I eventually get to the next area, rinse and repeat. I feel zoomers might call that grinding since I can't just walk in a straight line and effortlessly kill everything right away, but I was always making progress (getting a little further in the cave than I did before, earning more experience and gold as I fight things), so it never felt like what I feel a grind is where I just wandered up and down the hallway at the entrance of a dungeon mindlessly killing shit

>>11390083
Im not reading all that but Dragon Quest 1 is a grinding game. You sit in one place and kill enemies to get stronger you dont have to get philosophical.

>>11390039
I recently played the NES versions of 1 and 2 and found the second game a lot more enjoyable (I had played the SNES versions years ago). Overall progression feels more natural and faster than in the first game. Early to mid game is pretty tame but you might still get wiped every once in a while, the battles only really skyrocket in difficulty towards the final area. Hunting the crests and moving forward shouldn't be that difficult as long as you take notes/screenshots of hints and keep track of locked doors (Alright, the sun crest location is dope). I suggest you get the manual for the game as it should include a world map, it will make sailing less tedious.

>>11390039
>I'm playing Dragon Quest 1 for the first time on Gameboy Color and tried to avoided using a guide, but failed like 20 minutes in
How is this possible? Did you pay any attention to what the NPC's tell you?

You know I have given up hope on OP's generation, but somehow I still had faith in the next generation, thinking things will get better in the future because they couldn't possibly be as bad. But yesterday I found out that 7-8 years old still piss and shit themselves on regular basis to the point that schools send texts to every parents demanding every kid brings a change of cloth at school.

I guess it was cope all along. No kid will EVER be smart enough again to enjoy NES RPGs.

>>11390312
It’s a grinding game because you decided to grind. Try reading my post. Thanks for replying, idiot.

>>11390039
>>11390087
>I'm also just wanting to talk about the game too with others.
Alright, well here's some tips.

>Buy the Club and Clothes as starting equipment. The slightly better DEF from Leather Armor isn't worth how much longer it takes to kill things with the Bamboo Pole.
>Grind red/blue slimes in the first area until you can afford all the good equipment in the first town. (Copper Sword, Leather Armor, Small Shield, Dragon Scale) Make sure you use/equip the Dragon Scale for the extra DEF.
>Talk to townspeople. This isn't a Final Fantasy linear corridor JRPG. The game will freely let you walk into high level areas if you don't know where to do and doesn't hand out quest items by "story progression". You need to know where to go to get stuff done.
>Past the first town, you can just buy the best weapon you can afford when getting to a new town. Then buy the best armor in the next town. Alternate and repeat the process. The extra few points in attack/defense don't mean that much and it saves a lot of time in grinding.
>Once you find the knight in the ruined town, you can keep fighting it for EXP and gold. It's a lot more efficient than trying to hunt down metal slimes and hope you get a crit. You'll probably need to wait a few levels after first meeting it before you can take it down easily.
>Yes, you do want to save the princess. She gives you a locket which tells you how many steps away from the starting castle you are. There's some relevant item you need to find with that information.
>Go ahead and fully explore the Dragonlord's castle before fighting him. There's powerful equipment hidden inside.

Oh, and as others have said, DQ2 is much worse than DQ1 in this regard. I swear, some of those runes I didn't find from hints as much as just doing everything in the world, and even then, I still looked up a guide because at least one seems like it's random.

>>11391171
DQ3 is much less of a problem is this regard. Both due to less grinding (altho you might want to anyway due to class changing) and due to being much better at pointing you in the direction you needed to go.

>>11390658
I'm OP and I'm 32

>>11390972
you have to grind, its a grinding game because you turned the game on.

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>>11391359
I don't even disagree that it's grindier than other RPGs but the speedrun route for this game is to fight a Metal Slime as the first encounter and go directly from Level 1 to Level 5.
The final boss can be defeated at Level 18, which is a lower level than I've had when I've beaten the tutorial of some RPGs.
It can be a very grindy game, but it doesn't have to be.

i would tell you to wait
but thats' what the GBC is for
grinding/playing while watching t.v.
the original took twice as long to level

>>11390083
That isn't grinding, but that also isn't enough for you to be a high enough level by the end of the game, meaning some grind is still required. A lot potentially, if your name gave you shit stats.

>>11390658
I'm 27 and I enjoyed the first two Megami Tensei games quite a bit, easily my favorite RPGs on the console. The first two DQs on the other hand I only finished just to say I did, 1 was not very fun and 2 stopped being fun lategame.

>>11391712
This is really disingenuous considering that speedruns abuse rng manipulation to get perfect luck with crits and they enter the name that nets them the highest stats. The game is 100% impossible to beat at level 18 unless you have the best stats possible from your name.
Also considering that 30 is the cap, level 18 is relative to being about level 59 in games where the cap is 99.

>>11392315
Yes, it is very disingenuous.
It is, however, a good deal less disingenuous than claiming it's literally impossible to beat the game without grinding.

I imagine a good portion of the games intended audience (Japanese kids who had never played an RPG before) beat the game without grinding simply by getting lost for a long time.
It seems patently absurd to me to claim that you have to grind no matter what.

>>11392995
It IS impossible to beat without grinding though. No one is getting lost long enough to hit the level needed to beat the game, hell even from the very beginning of the game you'll need to do some grinding, you literally can't explore past bridges without grinding because you're going to get your ass swiftly kicked by a metal scorpion or some other such thing because you don't have all the best gear available on you, and getting the best gear at each point requires some amount of grinding, ESPECIALLY when you take into account the fact that you will die to stuff as you explore and you will lose half of your gold multiple times.

>>11393165
The average experience given by an enemy in DW1 is ~26.2 (after removing the outliers of Metal Slimes, Goldmen, and bosses).
Assuming the player fights each enemy roughly the same amount of times, and kills no metal slimes, they will reach Level 19 (a reasonable level to beat the final boss) after ~839 encounters. (22,000 EXP)
The encounter rate varies by tile type; ignoring the outlier of bridges, it ranges from ~4.17% to 12.5%. I'll use 8% for simplicity.
The world map is 15,376 tiles big. Not all of those tiles are traversible, but there are also dungeons.
If a player were to step on 15.376 tiles once each, assuming an average encounter rate of 8%, they would have ~1,230 encounters.
Again assuming the amount of EXP from the encounters is roughly average, this is ~146% of the encounters needed to reach Level 19.

While I made a great number of assumptions, my data seems to indicate that it should be possible to reach Level 19 simply by exploring the world map even with no Metal Slimes.

As for gold:
don't die lol

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>>11395772
Your logic doesn't work. Nobody walks on each tile once, this is not Wizardry. When you go from place A to place B on the world map you don't even walk on 20% of the total tiles in between those 2 places even when you're first scouting the place; and that's without mentionning water that your math doesn't take into account

Besides your logic implies that experience distribution would be even with area progression but it's not; the entire design principle of any RPG is precisely that it's not even and that there are huge exp hand out gaps from area to area, which is done precisely to avoid being overlevel'd within a single area, and this goes hand in hand with how much exp is needed to reach certain levels so for instance the game make sure you can reach lvl10 in area 1 but from there it's insanely hard to reach lvl 11 unless you're in area 2 in which case it becomes easy (the perfect example of that would be Earthbound)

Only someone who hasn't played Dragon Quest 1 in its original form would try to claim the game was made to be grindfree. There is mandatory grind, that's the entire point.

As good a thread to ask as any: Are there any other jrpgs like DQ3 that let you change the order of characters and play as a character you can sort of pick rather than be forced to play as the gay teenage chosen one dude? I like playing as fat dudes (Torneko, Wario), monsters/nonhumans, aliens, and old wizard types. DQ3 lets me name and set as leader any of several cool classes, effectively letting me ignore the hero character. Been playing through the SFC version for the first time, using a mage as leader, and I want to have another game locked and loaded for when I finish it.

>>11390039
>use guide
>instantly know where to go
>instead of exploring as intended, just beat head against wall of area you're told to go to next
I played DQ1 with the SFC version, which is close to GBC in balancing and never needed to grind, nor did I use a guide. I genuinely don't know why people feel the need to use one when you are told everything you need to know- just fucking talk to people.
If you adventure properly, you'll naturally be guided towards the left where you find Loto's tomb, and then your second village, and by then you should have enough gold to get some new equipment before going south and getting your first death against a more absurdly high level enemy.

Try going east after that and by the time you reach a scorpion, you should have a flame attack. Thing that looks like it's cover in metal + fire = dead is a very basic concept, and soon enough you've already found your first shrine and third village.

And it just continues like that. Exploration is the name of the game, and every spell in your arsenal is valuable with the later enemies, but most people seem to think only damage spells matter like they're fucking cavemen.

>>11392315
>The game is 100% impossible to beat at level 18 unless you have the best stats possible from your name
No it's not lol
Just make use of all aspects of your character. Inventory, magic, and attack are all valued equally in DQ1.

>>11396072
I can tell you for sure never played the NES game.
Inventory is worthless against the Dragonlord, you hold onto the scale for extra defense, but the herbs won't do much cause they heal for 20-35 HP and that's just a waste of a turn cause he's got a 50% chance to breath fire for 43-48 damage or he'll just smack you physically for 30 something usually. Magic is worthless outside of healing because he has 15/16 resistance to everything. Attack is the only thing that matters, and if you have shit attack due to your name, you will only be dealing 4-8 damage at level 18, and he has 130 HP for you to chip through. Healmore is only buying you one extra turn to swing with typically, and with bad attack you'll need 17-33 hits, but you're only going to be able to cast Healmore about 10 times.
Level 19? You'll have an extra cast of Healmore and your damage rage will be 4-9, making the range 15-33 hits, still bad odds of winning.
Level 20 is where you'll have okay odds since you will deal 5-11 damage, making the range 12-26 hits on top of having yet another cast of Healmore.

So yes, being only level 18 or even 19 with a bad name makes the fight impossible to win without insane luck or rng manipulation for consistent high damage rolls. Even level 20 can get cucked for just rolling average, you'd still need a little luck on your side. 21 is when the odds would actually be somewhat in your favor to win if you have a bad name.
Though if you have bad attack and bad MP, you might even need 22 for the fight to be in your favor.

>>11396976
Glad to see someone else acknowledging how fucking insane the stat gaps from the name system are. After I beat this game i looked it up, and like you said, I was basically 4 levels of stats behind a "good name" in terms of damage calcs. Cool game otherwise but the name-stats stuck out to me as a failed experiment and was pretty annoying

>>11396023
You could play one of the Phantasy Star games and put weird aliens + Chad/Rambo types in the lead. Won't be able to do that off the bat in say, IV, though, but it's also not too long til you get weird aliens.

>>11396976
You're straight up lying. With level 20 and Erdrick's sword you have an ATT stat of at least 122. This is with the biggest name strength penalty as possible. The Dragonlord has 75 defense.
Damage of non-crits in Dragon Quest goes randomly between
>ATT/4 - DEF/8
to
>ATT/2 - DEF/4
which means 21-42 damage here.


With a name without STR penalty you have no issue defeating him at level 17.

>>11397045
He has 200 defense in dragonform in the NES games, dumbfuck

>>11397050
>>11397045
(Yes i know this is effectively 100, but you're saying 75 because you're working from the port/remakes' agility value of 150) (dumbfuck)

>>11397045
>I can tell you for sure never played the NES game.
>NUH UH *immediately talks about stats from SNES port*
lmao

>>11390039
>too much grinding
>on the GBC ver
idk man
it sounds like your attention span is absolutely fucking fried
its like a 6-8hr game