People often talk about seeing their favourite thing for the first time, and having an instant gut reaction to it, a reaction of need. “I don’t know what that is yet, but I need it.” I can think of a few instances in my life where this has happened to me. Seeing Minecraft’s pre-alpha gameplay back in 2009. Seeing the first 10 seconds of the Shadowbringers trailer for Final Fantasy XIV. It is an incredibly rare and special thing to find yourself at the cusp of a fascination which you know will satiate you for hours to come.
Like many DS-owning teenagers in the mid-to-late 2000s, one such moment of eye-catching wonder was when I set my eyes upon Dragon Quest IX. I’d never played a Japanese created RPG before, and I hadn’t grown up with Dragon Ball either. But Toriyama’s art style and monster design instantly jumped out to me and grabbed me. Now unfortunately, this story doesn’t continue with me then finishing IX, playing IV, V and VI, then VII and VIII and XI. It’d be a better story if it did. I blame the writer. Ultimately, I hit a difficulty wall in one of the earliest bosses in the game, and being unfamiliar with the genre, wasn’t equipped with the wherewithal to go and grind some more before trying again. I just gave up.
All the same, I’d spend many years afterwards looking for games which played like Dragon Quest, and while I found them, something was always missing. I had fun in other RPGs, but those first 5 or 10 hours with Dragon Quest IX always remained in the back of my head, like an itch waiting to be scratched. Meanwhile, Dragon Quest’s popularity skyrocketed in the West, culminating in more localisation and remakes of older titles and spinoffs. Eventually, many years later, Dragon Quest Builders caught my attention, and from there, my steady ascent into the world of Dragon Quest truly began.
It’s a journey which I am still very much at the start of. After playing some Dragon Quest Builders 1 on Switch and 2 on Game Pass, I played through a decent chunk of XI S, also on Game Pass. I began to truly fall in love with the series. I also picked up VII and VIII physically on 3DS when it was announced that the eShop was shutting down, and I feared that prices would skyrocket to unattainable highs as was the case with IV, V and VI on DS. I’m currently around 35 hours into VII, making it my most played Dragon Quest game so far, and despite this being one of the less celebrated entries in the series, I’m having as good of a time as I ever have in a Dragon Quest game. I’m also knee deep into Dragon Quest Builders 1, which I picked up again on Steam as it released on PC this year.
Dragon Quest is, of course, the culmination of many wonderful and talented people’s hard work, and I’m optimistic about its future even now. But I want to stress that the thing which was missing from other RPGs I tried over the years was the unique charm Akira Toriyama brought to the franchise.
In 2022, I decided that it was past time I experienced the world of Dragon Ball. I grew up on Bleach and Naruto, two shows and manga which openly owe a lot to the groundwork established by Akira Toriyama. So I decided to read the manga for both Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. And once again, I found the same lighthearted yet often serious charm that I found in the Dragon Quest series of games. I didn’t grow up on the anime with everyone else, but I had such a fantastic time reading through the original source material for those shows.
It’s clear to me that Akira Toriyama had a certain kind of magic with his creative spirit, something which he shared with the world through years of dedication and hard work. We were so lucky to have him with us, and while the world will be a dimmer place without him, it will continue to be coloured by both the many vibrant works he left behind, and the countless other magicians he inspired and uplifted throughout his time with us. May his legacy last a million years.
32 Bit Brain 