This was the third time I've beaten this version, and the first time since buying it in 2002. The first time I beat it was on a borrowed cart from a friend. For being a very early entry in the genre, it's decent.
Being a party of one for the entire game (I'm not counting carrying the princess you rescue as a party member), all battles are 1-on-1. This makes the battles rather boring. Since all battles are 1-on-1, this makes the vast majority of them go by extremely quickly, since you don't have to choose an enemy to attack. Many of them will consist of a single button press, as the Attack command is where the cursor starts and a good number of the battles will take one round to win. With the extremely high encounter rate, many times getting into a battle every step or two, this makes the rate not so bad, as the 1-button battles will take less than 5 seconds. The only status ailment is Sleep (since dying is a game over, I wouldn't consider Dead to be a status ailment), and the only way to recover from it is by hoping you wake up. For the size of the world, there is about the right amount of locations to visit, with a handful of towns and dungeons each. Each location has a lone key item to get.
The biggest negative for me is the extremely high encounter rate. The amount of experience gained, and the small world, makes the high rate almost a necessity. Since it is such a small world, you quickly run out of places to explore and visit, which will virtually require you to grind for experience. A minor negative is needing to open the menu to talk to people and ascend/descend stairs, which was eliminated in later releases.
If you've never played a mainline Dragon Warrior/Quest game, I think this is a good place to start, as it'll give you a good idea of what to expect from later entries. It can easily be beaten in a weekend the first time you play it. The Game Boy Color version would probably be a more palatable version to play, though, due to its quality of life improvements.
