Woah, this is it, this is the mother-bird, the granddaddy of all console RPG's. Its pretty weird saying that really, if you want a classic console RPG from the past... Then you're not going to get any "classicer" than this.
Lets start by getting the bad things out of the way. This game is way too grind heavy, from what I recall, almost 60% of my game-play time went into level grinding and there is alway's going to be a lot of level grinding, they never even let you see how much experience you need to get to the next level unless you talk to the king of Tantegel, which is also the only way to save your game and it can be quite annoying to get back there every time you want to quit playing unless you have the return spell.
Now that the bad things are over, lets talk about the good things this game has to offer. The exploration, this game is full of exploration, thats basically the core of this game and you're not alway's told where you're supposed to go next, but the world map is pretty small so it is alright. To be honest, I love exploration in RPG's and they should really have more of it these day's. The music was fantastic, for Koichi Sugiyama's first video game score it really captured the essence of the world of Dragon Warrior and there's no wonder why Enix hired him to do the music for the next game as well. What I also really liked were some of the little details that they programed into the game like when you open a door with the magic key, it closes once you leave the area, because who would want their door to stay open all the time? I also liked that when your enemy is asleep you have a 100% chance of running away, because why wouldn't you be able to run away from a sleeping monster? One more thing I just have to mention is that as you progress through a dungeon, the music starts to slow down little by little and that really added to the "creepyness" factor.
But to sum up, I loved this game, it may not be on par with the other Dragon Warrior/Quest games, but it was a great start to a majestic series and a lot of fun.
7/10