Reviewing Monsters - Dragon Quest 1

Dragon Quest [1986]

A Slime draws near!

Command?

This is going to be a short one! I've been reading into a bunch of video game history, and came across Dragon Quest -- which is a franchise that I've always been vaguely dimly aware of. It's Final Fantasy's rival-turned-cousin, made by the same company. It's huge in Japan and often parodied in anime, manga and other Japanese material. Its earliest games had artwork dragon by Akira "Dragon Ball Z" Toriyama. And it defined turn-based J-RPG games. So yeah, I know absolutely nothing about this beyond that it's a pretty simple 'kill the evil bad guys, save the kingdom' style of game like the first Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy.

EDIT: This was written a while back, in early 2019 when I was just experimenting with 'reviewing monsters'. I took it down and fixed it up!

Slime, Red Slime, Metal Slime

So yeah, here's the iconic Slime! Even if you don't know the series, I guarantee you that if you hang around the geek scene long enough you'll have seen this dude, or characters based on this dude. The ur-example of the 'weak slime blob enemy' from Dragon Quest, this guy's absolutely cute, simple enough with a happy smiling face, weak enough while also being fantastical enough instead of being 'oh, my character is fighting a town guard or a wolf'. I feel like that adds a lot into the feel of playing through a fantasy game, y'know? That your first enemy is like, a Slime monster? 

Also, it's cute and very marketable and quickly rose into mascot status. Since this is a pretty old game, resources have to be recycled, and the Slime shows up later on in the game as "Red Slime" (or She-Slime in some translations; Dragon Quest has a lot of different inconsistent English translations) and "Metal Slime". The Metal Slime is apparently very popular in the franchise and inspired a TV Trope, setting up a JRPG trope of super-rare but weak monsters with super-rare loot. 

Dracky, Drackolye, Drackyma

Otherwise translated as "Drakee, Magidrakee, Drakeema" in some translations, we've got these cute little fat bats with cartoon faces. It's pretty neat, huh? You could almost see this guy fight Anpanman or something. A very simple face on a simple body -- it's just an angry devil-bat with antennae and wings and an adorable grinning face just to make it look pretty obviously a monster. Another one that's instant mascot material, I feel. 

Scorpion, Iron Scorpion, Death Scorpion

Giant Scorpions! Not much to say here, Toriyama's art does make it look a bit more cartoony with no mouth parts, angry googly eyes and a 'helmet' of sorts, but it's a giant scorpion. Got to have giant bugs in your fantasy game!

Prestidigitator, Legerdeman, Vis Mager

Originally translated as "Magician, Warlock, Wizard", these guys are... dudes in hoods and robes, and they cast spells at you. A pretty simple and neat little enemy trope, even if I think Final Fantasy's Black Mages and Zelda's Wizzrobes certainly have a far more stylish 'robed, unseen evil wizard' enemy. 

Lunatick/Raving Lunatick

Known as "Meda" and "Meda Lord" (Eye/Eye Lord) in the original Japanese and briefly translated as "Druin" in some of the early versions of Dragon Quest, this is an interesting one! It's not just an eyeball monster, but some sort of... octopus? An octopus with a single giant eyeball, two longer tentacles trailing behind, and massive antennae? A very neat looking creature that definitely looks a lot creepier and a fair bit more unnatural than some of the other monsters here. Neat!

Drohl, Drohl Mage

Okay, what? This is an absolute weirdo! The Wiki describes this guy as a 'snail like creature', but I'm not even sure what I'm looking at. It's like a face that's stretched-out, and I love everything about this one! Lunatick up above is pretty cool, but I can handwave it as a stylized version of an octopus the way the Dracky is a stylized bat. Drohl here is... it's got like little feet, penguin flippers, a durrr looking mouth right near its feet, nostrils on its scalloped body, and two eyes jutting out like stalks out of a shelled helmet. What is this guy? It sure is a bizarre weirdo, and that's probably what it's meant to be. 

Ghost, Fightgeist, Spite Geist

Alternatively, some of them have been called 'Poltergeist', 'Specter', 'Metro Ghost' and 'Hell Ghost' but I'm too tired today to talk about localizations and different names. A pretty adorable cartoon ghost, this isn't a game that's trying to be scary or realistic or spooky. You just have some ghost enemies, and I feel like the tongue and witch hat combo really works in making this guy look cute. 

Chimera, Hocus Chimera, Cosmic Chimera

The stronger ones are otherwise called "Magichimera" and "Star Chimera", and depending on the localizations they are either called 'chimaera' or 'wyvern'. They're pretty neat, though, you think of wyverns as two-legged dragons and chimaeras as those lion/goat/snake hybrids. These are more like... weird angry vultures with the body of a fat snake. That kind of counts as a chimera, I suppose, and works somewhat for the definition of a wyvern. Not quite as exciting as any of the other monsters since this is kind of a 'basic' looking fantasy monster, but on the other hand this is also one of the first RPG games. I suppose it's neat to have a weaker dragon-esque enemy show up a bit early on, huh?

Bewarewolf, Scarewolf, Tearwolf

These fake-werewolves are called Lycant, Lycant Mammal and Killer Lycant in the original Japanese. They sure look like Dragon Ball characters, for sure. Specifically, the specific werewolf character that showed up before Dragon Ball became all about screaming and alien warlords. These guys don't quite have a wolf-head, though, and look more like angry dog-men. Pretty neat. 

Knight Errant, Knight Aberrant, Knight Abhorrent

You've got humanoid enemies, and humanoid knights with or without weapons ("Knight Errant" there will probably just bop you ion the face) are pretty standard enemies in a fantasy game. Again, I will forever find myself with not much to say in these sort of enemies. They're important to make a fantasy world feel more complete, but these are just kinda there. I like the exaggerated proportions of the artwork. 

Skeleton, Skeleton Scrapper, Skeleton Soldier, Dark Skeleton

You've got four palette swaps of this guy, and I love the goofy grin on the Skeleton art! I'm not sure why the skull is so elongated, though. Just an art choice, or is this creature created from the skeleton of a non-human? Either way, yay for skeleton warriors! I like skeleton warriors in video games, and these are appropriately goofy-looking ones. 

Gold Golem, Golem, Stone Golem

In the original Japanese, "Golem" is only the middle creature here and is a mini-boss, while the other two common enemies are "Gold Man" and "Stone Man". Whether these are meant to be an adaptation of golems or elementals or whatever, it's still a pretty fun trope to put in a fantasy game of a giant made entirely out of bricks with two glowing eyes. Again, looking at these guys now after seeing so much weird monsters in other fantasy games it's a bit underwhelming, but, y'know, this is very early on in the history of video games, and these golem dudes do feel pretty different from the other enemies here. 

Green Dragon, Blue Dragon, Red Dragon

You got dragons! You can't have 'Dragon Quest' without dragons! The weakling dragons here are all wingless and four-legged, and basically look like generic Western dragons. Again, they sure are dragons, there's really not much to say here. 

Dragonlord

And then you have the Dragonlord. Yeah, he definitely looks like he could be buddies with Pilaf and Piccolo, huh? Dragonlord is fought in two stages, first as his humanoid wizard stage, and the second as a giant winged dragon. So that's why all the other dragons are wingless, it's to make the Dragonlord's final fight feel extra special. A pretty standard villain, and I reckon might be one of the genre-definers for the many, many multi-phase video game bosses. The dragon form is kind of a basic-looking cartoon dragon, but I do like just how much more kaiju-esque the proportions are. And then you've got the glorious horned hair of the human-form Dragonlord. A pretty all right final boss for a fantasy game.