Dragon Warrior* is probably the hardest RPG I’ve...

Dragon Warrior* is probably the hardest RPG I’ve ever finished. I remember playing the game when I was a little kid, but I didn’t end up beating it until years later when I was in middle school and my cousin lent me his copy (along with his NES-101).

At that point in time, I was consuming every RPG that I could get my hands on because the ravages of puberty had transformed me from a once charming, active, young boy into a quivering mass of shame and awkwardness that was temporarily relegated to the status of weird-indoor-kid. At that time though, less than a year after FFVII came out, I was used to the new wave of nerfed PS1 RPGs and SNES RPGs that I’d already beaten several times–and I was ill-prepared for the cold, harsh reality that Dragon Warrior offered up.

I remember heading out of the castle after hearing the King’s wise advice, which I completely ignored as the arrogant gamer that I was, and getting killed in my FIRST RANDOM ENCOUNTER because I’d wandered more than ten or so squares away from the town. That game was no joke. And don’t even mention having to find the Stones of Sunlight…forget about it.

*I don’t say “Quest” because the game that I am specifically referencing, the one that I played here in the US, was called Dragon WARRIOR. Word.