>>3971p5's battle system was pretty fun though. I do agree though, the first 3 dq's really capture the essence of a JRPG in the purest sense imo.
Some people call them basic but even with limited exposition, and no dialogue from the MC in some of them I felt it was able to make you feel part of the world and story better than most other games that tried to do a lot more.
In Dragon Quest for instance you get your ass kicked pretty hard early as you make you way down across the map in the first leg of the game. When you start the second leg, I'm guessing intentionally you cross over the starting area and it feels really rewarding, like you are a sort of shonen protagonist as it demonstrates your progress up to this point. What was kicking your ass a few hours before is just fodder now. A lot of jrpg's are always scaling things up so everything feels just right but in this original DQ they point out to you that you have in fact become much strong in a short period of time and that you can in fact complete your quest and be the hero. IDK I was smoking a lot of weed when I played it and it gave me some serious feels.
I still have my discs of DQ7 for the psx that I never finished and really should start it up and finish it this time. DQ is literal comf and doesn't bog you down with all the crap some of the later FF titles do.
NTTAWWT