 So years ago, I made a video ranking of the Dragon Quest games, and since then it has become my most popular video. I've had a lot of people tell me that this video is what got them interested in the Dragon Quest series in the first place, and it always makes me happy to hear that. Well, it's been a long time now, and since then, Dragon Quest XI came out and I've had a chance to replay the rest of the games with a fresh lens. I'm making today's video mostly for people who are new to the series. Maybe you've heard about the games, but you're too intimidated to jump in because there's so many games to choose from. Or maybe you've played Dragon Quest XI recently and you want to dive deeper into the series. In any case, today we are going over my top 5 Dragon Quest games for beginners, and I'm sure dedicated fans will enjoy hearing my opinions too. First let's clear up some questions some people may have. You may be wondering, are these games all connected in any way? Well, kind of. You see, every Dragon Quest game really is a new adventure in a unique world with a relatively self-contained story that stands on its own, but that doesn't mean that there aren't connections between the games. The games have a lot of underlying lore connections to story and items found within, and you may be able to come up with a timeline theory of your own, but it definitely isn't necessary to enjoy the games. Now, if you want to become an expert on the Dragon Quest series and you want to know everything about the lore and history, my obvious answer to you is to play all the games in chronological order from 1 to 11. You'll see the series' gradual evolution and notice all the throwbacks and references. If you want to go this direction and are unsure of what versions of each game to play because there's a lot of remakes and ports of all the games, definitely give my old playing order guy to watch. I go over all that stuff there. Now let's say you don't want to play all 11 games. Maybe you have a job or school and you just don't have the time to play through almost a dozen RPGs, some of which take hundreds of hours to beat. That's totally understandable, which is why I will now be going over my top five picks if you can only play five games in the entire series. These are the ones I think you should go with in no particular order. I think these games are the best in the series and I think they each offer a unique experience from each other. They don't feel too samey, there's some unique aspect about each of these games that make them stand apart from each other, so you don't feel like you're playing the same game over and over. Again, this is my top five in no particular order. Let's begin. The first game I would recommend is Dragon Quest 3. This game originally came out in 1988 in Japan for the Famicom and it released North America four years later as Dragon Warrior 3. I'm recommending this one over the first two games because it just improves virtually everything over the first two games and it really holds its way to all these years later while Dragon Quest 1 and 2 are starting to show their age. This game refined and perfected the RPG formula and it ended up inspiring so many other JRPGs to come after it. The reason I like this game a lot is because it is so open-ended and there is just a ton of replay value. First of all, you get to create your own party members at the starting town. You can name them, choose their gender, and their class. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, they can each equip unique items that you find in your travels and the main fun of this game just stems from experimenting around with different party combinations. Do you want a typical party with a warrior, mage, and a priest? How about some more offensive characters? Throw on a martial artist a super fast, hard-hitting brawler who doesn't need heavy armor. Maybe you want to challenge yourself, recruit the goof off, or even go out into the wilderness all alone. It's really up to you and the coolest thing about the class system is the fact that when one of your party members gets to level 20, you can go to a place called Altrade's Abbey and change their class to another, which resets them level 1, halves their stats, and keeps all the learned spells and abilities. Which means that you can hone and refine your characters by changing classes until you come up with a super character. Maybe a character with the speed of a martial artist, the defense of a warrior, and all the magic spells of a mage. The possibilities are absolutely absurd and this whole choose your own adventure applies to the game structure itself. The game is mostly straightforward until you get a ship to sail the seas. Then the world is your playground, you can actually visit all the next locations at your leisure and tackle all the game's bosses in any order. The world is designed so that no two players will have the same journey, it's just the world you can get lost in with dungeons, towers, and towns of plenty. It is overall such an incredible game for its time that I have no trouble recommending this at all. Definitely give this one a try. I'd recommend the Game Boy Color version of Dragon Quest 3 because it has the most content, such as a new bonus dungeon and a Pachizi board. Also the graphics and pixel art are really nice looking, it's just overall far superior to the NES version. If that's not an option because you don't have a Game Boy, then the Switch version on the eShop is decent too. Just beware that the added content isn't there and the monsters don't animate when attacking, but it runs perfectly fine. Alright so the next game I would recommend is Dragon Quest 4. This game came out in 1990 in Japan and 1992 in North America for the NES. This game came right after DQ3 and it took a completely different approach and it set the structure for what the current Dragon Quest games would be like. This time around you aren't creating your own characters, you actually have a group of pre-made characters to guide and they all have personalities and unique abilities. The game is split into 5 main chapters where you play through each character's story and build them up individually, leading to a final chapter where they all have a badass team up against the main villain. This chapter system makes the game feel really fresh, almost like 5 games in one. I especially like Chapter 3 where you play as the merchant Tornico Talune as it does some really cool stuff with an in-game economy and a buying slash trading system to get ahead in the world. This chapter is really unique especially the way it incentivizes making money over gaining EXP to win fights. The game overall is really cool and it has some of the most memorable characters a series has ever seen. You have a heel slime who wants to become human, there's a Russian princess who's also a badass martial artist and she spends her chapter defending two guys who are supposed to be her royal bodyguards which I think is amazing and shows how Dragon Quest flips popular tropes on their heads. The main villain, Sorrow is also great, he isn't just some stereotypical evil dude, he has a very sympathetic backstory and is probably the most complex and interesting villain in the entire series. Overall a great game and super unique in the series so I have no trouble recommending this one. If you want to play it, there is of course a remake on the Nintendo DS that improves virtually everything from the NES version, however I would actually recommend playing this on your Android or Apple device if you can, it's on the App Store and the Google Play Store. At the time of this video it is currently the best version of the game unless they port it to modern consoles in the future. This version is nearly identical to the DS remake except for the fact that the DS remake doesn't include the translated party chat because they didn't translate due to budget cuts and as a result you have about two thirds of the game script just straight up missing in the game and the mobile ports restore this. So yeah, you want to play this on your phone, I know it sounds crazy but the phone version runs really well, it maintains the graphics of the DS port and the music actually sounds better so you can't go wrong with this version. The next game I think you should play is Dragon Quest V. I've said this many times in the past but this is my favorite game in the series. In fact it's my favorite JRPG of all time. Most people consider this to be the best game in the series and even the creator of Dragon Quest Yuji Hori has said that DQ5 is his favorite. It's pretty obvious why I'm recommending this. The game is excellent, if you can only play one game in the series make it this one you won't regret it. This game just got so much right, it basically starts off with you playing as a kid traveling the world with his father. The game gradually sees a player transition from a child to a man. It has an incredible story that is very emotional and impactful. It is the most amazing coming of age story in a video game and I stand by that statement. During the child portion of the game everything has it's laid back, adventurous and whimsical feeling. You go with your father to a new town, meet a new friend and the two of you sneak out to battle monsters when the grownups aren't looking. You can't even read the in-game signs during this portion because the main character is too young to read, it's amazingly innocent. And when you're with your father you can see how strong he is first hand which is the game's way of showing you early how strong the main character will one day become. As the game progresses the main character gets older and things get more dark and depressing as he goes on a journey to find the legendary equipment. The game is an emotional roller coaster and it's a monumental achievement in game design. They just did so much right with this game. The pacing is phenomenal, some of the best in the series, you never feel like any time is wasted and the soundtrack is in my opinion the best the series has to offer with some really memorable tracks and epic battle theme. There's even a new monster taming system where sometimes monsters you beat up will actually ask to follow you around and you can have a whole team full of monsters with unique abilities and this game came out before Pokemon by the way. So if you want to take a guess as to where they probably got that idea from this is a good bet. The game is a little more linear than Dragon Quest 4 and would mark the beginning of this trend for the series but the incredible story and design more than make up for the lack of free roaming if you ask me. The original Dragon Quest 5 came out on the Super Famicom in Japan and we got it in English on the DS for the first time and that's definitely the version you want to play. The mobile phone port is pretty much the same as the DS version but I like buttons so yeah I stick to the DS version. The DS remake also added the famous party chat feature that lets you consult with your party members on where to go next and get commentary. Oh boy they really went all out with this feature as your party members this time around have some unique dialogue lines to say after you talk to practically any random NPC in the world and when you enter any new area. Every time I play this game I lose count of the hours I go by it is just so easy to get yourself lost in these characters this world and this gameplay. It's a crazy deep experience that I think every RPG fan owes it to themselves to play. You need to play this game. Alright so the next game I want to talk about is Dragon Quest 8. This game came out on the PS2 originally it's the very first game in full 3D and damn did they knock it out of the park. I mean the graphics still hold up the game looks absolutely amazing even today. It was developed by level 5 as a matter of fact the same people who would eventually make Nino Kuni. This game is just big. You have this massive open world just begging for you to explore it. This has to be what the creators of Dragon Quest always envisioned the series would become 30 years ago. For a lot of people this is the one that got them into the series it's the game that got me into the series. When I first played it I was just so mind blown by how expansive it was. I hadn't played anything like it on the PS2. The world just seems endless when you first dive into it with treasure hidden in every corner a vast sea for you to sail across and so many towns to visit with problems to solve. The orchestrated soundtrack really complements the game it gives you this grand sense of adventure it has these bustling towns that are super fun to explore and full of secrets. The gameplay is cinematic and exciting with a psych up feature that allows you to save a turn to strike harder and leveling up allows you to dedicate points to a weapons path making for many different character builds. And there's fewer party members you've got the hero, Yangus, Jessica and Angelo. I think the smaller group of party members lend themselves well to this game as everything is more so honed in on these four characters and their struggles which makes it simpler for newer players to handle. The 3D graphics and voice acting means the game is also more cinematic than ever before and it has a great story that you can just get sucked into. These four party members are an iconic team. Even the main character is probably the best designed character in the series. His yellow jacket, blue undershirt and orange bandana as well as his little mouse companion Munchy just chilling out in his coat pocket has all the makings of a classic and iconic character design. I absolutely love the way this character looks. It's a great game overall. It's very comfy and inviting to newcomers. It's really no wonder it's such a popular choice. Now this game was actually remade on the 3DS after it came out on the PS2. Basically the 3DS version has morey and red as recruitable party members. There's new content including photo missions, the monsters are not visible in the field, there's just loads of quality life improvements across the board. The only downside is that the graphics really took a hit. The 3DS version doesn't look nearly as good as the PS2 version. There's no dynamic shadows at all. The colors are all saturated and there's less trees and grass. So it's your choice if you prefer more content or a better looking game. Either way the game is definitely worth a try. So for the last Dragon Quest game I would recommend for beginners. Dragon Quest XI. At the moment this is the latest game in the series. It sort of takes all the lessons JRPGs have learned over the years and applies it to a very well paced, highly refined adventure game. Dragon Quest XI builds off of Dragon Quest VIII and it really feels like a sort of tribute to the series entire history. I made a whole review of this game a short while ago for Square Enix. You can check it out to see my full thoughts on the game if you want. But basically what it boils down to is that Dragon Quest XI is a very well paced game with refined turn based combat and a very balanced leveling system. There's a new crafting system, skilled trees for the various characters, lots of unlockable costumes and a whole lot of adventure as you travel the world of Ardrea. I put well over 100 hours into this game before I felt like I had finished everything. There's a lot to do in DQ XI. Lots of side missions, lots of collectibles, outfits to find, abilities to unlock. It's a lot of bang for your buck, definitely one of the finest RPGs of our time. And it just shows that Dragon Quest still has it after all these years. It has that wow factor. This game takes the classic gameplay of Dragon Quest and brings it into the current day and overall I was very happy with the game. That's not to mention that the story and characters are amazing, it's a real tear-jerker I'll admit. But the story doesn't drag on with long cutscenes either, it's very to the point and the emphasis in the game is always on the action with an emotional story on the side. This is definitely an essential Dragon Quest game and I highly recommend it. You can buy it on PS4 but there's also an updated edition Dragon Quest XI S that has a bunch of new features, new costumes, quality of life improvements and more. Once again it is better than the original in almost every way except for the graphics and lighting which are better in the original. But I would honestly go with Dragon Quest XI S if you want to play this, the experience is overall better. Great game, absolutely my favorite RPG of the generation no doubt. So that's it, my top 5 Dragon Quest games for beginners and veterans alike. These ones are the most unique, the most enjoyable and the most accessible, they perfectly represent everything great about Dragon Quest. But the series is overall great, so if you like these don't hesitate to try the others either, I'm sure you'll have a great time. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the video, did you agree with my choices? I'd love to hear what you think, let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.