Just finished single playing every Dragon Quest after not playing one for over 30 years, here are my thoughts
Incredible series that I'd been sleeping on.
I had fond memories of playing Dragon Warrior in the 90s with my older brothers, but I never returned to the series since then (or even knew about the passionate lore of it all).
Fast-forward to a few years ago when I was looking through highly rated games to play on the Swtich, and Dragon Quest XI was on there. "Sure", I thought, "Let's see what they've done with it." I was completely hooked by the end.
In fortuitous timing, DQ1-3 had recently been remade and released. having recently played Octopath Traveler 2 and given my nostalgia for Dragon Warrior 1, it was a slam dunk decision to jump right into DQ3-HD as the game designers intended. Then DQ1 and 2. And wouldn't you know it, DQ7 Revisited is about to be released, so of course I had to jump into that!
Now I HAVE to play DQ5 and DQ8. So down the emulation hole I went -> Started with DQ5, then played DQ4 and DQ6, just to stay in the Zenithian trilogy. So, finally I could get to DQ8, and it really met all the high praise. (Played the fan-modded version on PC.)
So of COURSE now I have to play DQ9, even though the heyday of the DS years and playing endlessly, locally with friends is long gone and past. It's the only one that hasn't aged as well in my humble opinion, but I can see it being spectacular if they remake it one day.
DQ10 Offline is the last one I threw on, using a combination of machine translation mods and google lens to get through, and it really is a great middle ground between DQ9 and DQ11. Was a lot of fun warping around maps, buffing up characters, running quaint little sidequests. Probably my 3rd favorite game of the whole series. One of these days I'll throw myself into online and play V3-8, but that's a dream for another day.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
I can't complement the franchise runners enough for turning Dragon Quest XI into such an effective nostalgia vehicle, and then leaning into that to remake DQ1-3 and DQ7, incredibly well-executed, and they can just print money at this point with the zenithian trilogy and DQ8 / 9 waiting in the wings.