Support DQFM on Patreon at patreon.com/dragonquestfm 

Dragon Quest is 33-years-old. Some of you have been there since the very beginning. BJ, for instance, played the Nintendo Power Giveaway version of Dragon Warrior all the way back in 1989. And others like Austin became mega-fans after being exposed in 2016 or so. No matter when you come to DQ, what matters is what you're here.

Or almost here.

We get asked a lot about which Dragon Quest game you should start with? Should you start with DQXI because it's the newest one? What about DQVIII because it's one of the most well-known and well-beloved? Or should you, like many suggest, start all the way back at the beginning and play Dragon Quest I-III before moving into the more modern games.

While there's no right or wrong answer to that, we take the time to sit down and talk about how we came to the series, what made us love it so much, and what titles we think are good places to start in the series. More important than that, we talk about why you should start there. Because we can see merit in a lot of different places for a lot of different reasons. We love the series, and we don't think there is any bad place to dig in.

But we do think there are better choices for some people over others. If someone has never played a JRPG before, but has a lot of experience with modern consoles...they might not be the right fit for DQ1 right off the bat. But if someone has a hard time going backward from games that have improved systems, maybe they should start with 1. Or even VIII since XI improves so much on it.

Regardless of where you fall about where to start playing DQ, I think we can all agree on one thing: people should play Dragon Quest. No matter where you start, we think you'll fall in love.

And we know you have opinions on this, too! So send us a voice message at https://anchor.fm/dragonquest/message and tell us which one and why, and maybe you'll get featured in an upcoming episode!

Thanks for listening!

We are on Twitter as @_austin_king and @professorbeej individually, and the show's account is full of DQ goo-dness at @DragonQuestFM.  

Austin is in the middle of playing through each and every DQ game over at DragonQuestAustin.com, and Beej can be heard podcasting on the Geek to Geek Podcast every single week.

Dragon Quest FM is a proud part of the Geek to Geek Media Network