Ranking Dragon Quest is harder than ranking most long-running RPG series, because the games are deliberately conservative — the combat has barely changed since 1986, and that is the point. What separates a great entry from a merely good one is party writing, world structure and how gracefully the remake treats the original. This ranking covers the eleven numbered mainline games, notes where each one is playable today, and explains which entry a newcomer should actually start with.
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Here is the quick-reference table before the full breakdown, covering the eight mainline Dragon Quest games that are easiest to buy and play on modern hardware.
| Game | Platform | Genre | Why It’s Great | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age | Switch, PS4, Xbox, PC | Turn-based JRPG | The definitive modern entry, with orchestral score and 2D mode included | 9.5/10 |
| Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King | PS2, Nintendo 3DS, mobile | Turn-based JRPG | The series’ first full 3D world, and still its warmest cast | 9.3/10 |
| Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride | Nintendo DS, mobile | Turn-based JRPG | A generational story with monster recruiting years ahead of its time | 9.2/10 |
| Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake | Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC | Turn-based JRPG | Free-form class system rebuilt in gorgeous HD-2D | 9.0/10 |
| Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen | Nintendo DS, mobile | Turn-based JRPG | Chapter structure that introduces each hero on their own terms | 8.8/10 |
| Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies | Nintendo DS | Turn-based JRPG | Deep custom-party vocation system and enormous postgame | 8.6/10 |
| Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past | Nintendo 3DS | Turn-based JRPG | Enormous, melancholy anthology of restored villages | 8.2/10 |
| Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake | Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC | Turn-based JRPG | The origin point of the genre, finally modernised properly | 8.5/10 |
Dragon Quest Games Ranked: The Top Tier
1. Dragon Quest XI S — The Best Place to Start
Dragon Quest XI is the entry that finally converted a generation of Western players. The Luminary’s journey is structured as a classic hero-accused-of-being-a-villain story, but the writing does the unfashionable thing and simply commits: the party members are sincere, the world is legible, and the second act pulls a genuine structural surprise that recontextualises everything before it. The S version, available on Switch, PS4, Xbox and PC, is the one to buy — it adds a fully orchestrated soundtrack, Japanese voice option, character-specific side stories and a complete 16-bit-style 2D mode you can switch to at any inn.
Mechanically it is the cleanest the series has ever been. Pep Powers give turn-based combat a burst-window rhythm, the forge minigame makes crafting worth engaging with, and the difficulty modifiers (“Draconian Quest”) let veterans impose real constraints. It is a seventy-hour game that never feels padded until the very generous postgame, and it runs beautifully on modest hardware — see our budget gaming laptop buying guide if you want it portable on PC.
2. Dragon Quest VIII — The Cast That Defined the Series
Journey of the Cursed King was Dragon Quest’s leap into full 3D, and Akira Toriyama’s designs survived the transition better than almost any of his contemporaries’ work. The four-person party — the silent Hero, the loud-mouthed bandit Yangus, the disgraced templar Angelo and the exiled princess Jessica — carries the whole game on personality alone. The world is one continuous landmass with no random-encounter screens, which in 2004 felt genuinely revolutionary for the series.
The 3DS version adds two extra party members, a photography sidequest and removes random encounters entirely, though it loses the orchestral score in the process. Either version holds up. If you are emulating or replaying on a handheld, our handheld gaming PC buying guide is a useful companion.
3. Dragon Quest V — The Emotional Peak
Hand of the Heavenly Bride spans three generations. You play as a boy, then a young man, then a father, and the game’s most famous moment is not a boss fight but a marriage choice that quietly determines who your children are. Very few RPGs from 1992 attempted anything this structurally ambitious, and almost none landed it.
It also introduced monster recruitment, which predates Pokémon by four years and remains one of the series’ best systems. The Nintendo DS remake is the standard version in English, adding a third bride option and a cleaned-up translation.
Dragon Quest Games Ranked: The Strong Middle
4. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake — The Blueprint, Rebuilt
Dragon Quest III completed the original Erdrick trilogy and established the free-form party template the series still borrows from: you recruit blank-slate adventurers, assign vocations, and reclass them later. The 2024 HD-2D Remake, built in the same visual style as Octopath Traveler, is the best-looking version by a distance and adds the Monster Wrangler vocation plus quality-of-life fixes to the notoriously stingy inventory management.
5. Dragon Quest IV — Chapters and Consequence
Chapters of the Chosen splits its first act into five separate stories, each following a different future party member before they converge on the Hero. It is a brilliant structural idea that makes the eventual reunion feel earned. The DS remake restores party chat, which the PlayStation version cut, and is the version worth tracking down. If you are playing older remakes on a handheld or a tablet, our portable gaming headphones buying guide covers the low-latency options worth owning.
6. Dragon Quest IX — The Systems Game
Sentinels of the Starry Skies is the outlier: you build your entire party from scratch, there is no fixed cast, and the endgame is a treasure-map grotto grind designed around local multiplayer that the DS’s ad-hoc wireless made magical in 2010 and awkward today. The vocation system is the deepest in the series and the postgame is enormous. Playing it now means either original DS hardware or emulation — our best gaming monitors for retro and emulated games guide covers scaling and latency for exactly this use case.
7. Dragon Quest VII — Enormous and Melancholy
Fragments of the Forgotten Past asks for patience — the original PlayStation version famously takes hours before your first battle — but rewards it with the series’ most affecting premise: the world has been erased, and you restore islands one at a time by travelling into their pasts. Each vignette is a small self-contained tragedy. The 3DS version trims the opening substantially and is the only sane way in.
8. Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake — Where It All Began
The 2025 HD-2D treatment of the first two games is the most respectful modernisation these have ever received. Dragon Quest I is a solo adventure and a genuine historical artifact — one hero, one town, one dragon — while Dragon Quest II adds a three-person party and a difficulty spike that has been meaningfully rebalanced here. Neither is the best game on this list, but together they are the most interesting hour-for-hour history lesson in the genre.
As for the rest of the ranking: Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation (DS) is competent but the dream-world structure muddies its pacing. Dragon Quest X Online remains a Japan-only MMO, with the Offline version the only realistic route in for most players. Dragon Quest II standalone and the various spin-offs — Builders 1 and 2, Heroes, Treasures, Monsters: The Dark Prince — sit outside a mainline ranking, though Builders 2 is genuinely one of the best games with the Dragon Quest name on it and deserves its own conversation.
Whichever entry you start with, these are long games played in long sittings, so comfort matters. Our ergonomic gaming chair buying guide and best controllers for turn-based RPGs guide both apply squarely to a hundred-hour Dragon Quest run.
Frequently Asked Questions About Dragon Quest Games Ranked
Which Dragon Quest game should a complete newcomer play first?
Start with Dragon Quest XI S. It is the most modern, the most approachable, and it assumes zero knowledge of the series’ recurring motifs while still rewarding them. Every mainline Dragon Quest tells a self-contained story, so there is no continuity you need to catch up on beforehand.
Do the Dragon Quest games need to be played in order?
No. Only the first three form a connected arc — the Erdrick trilogy, whose chronological order is III, then I, then II — and even those work fine standalone. Games IV through VI share a loose thematic grouping called the Zenithian trilogy, but they have entirely separate casts and worlds.
Which Dragon Quest games are available on modern consoles?
Dragon Quest XI S, the Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake and the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake are all on Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Several older entries, including IV, V, VI and VIII, are available as mobile ports, while VII and VIII also have Nintendo 3DS versions.
Why do Dragon Quest games all look so similar?
Series creator Yuji Horii has deliberately preserved the classic turn-based structure across four decades, and the late Akira Toriyama designed characters and monsters for every mainline entry, giving the whole series one consistent visual identity. The familiar slime, the menu-driven combat and Koichi Sugiyama’s recurring themes are treated as features, not limitations.
