The Dragon Quest series is one of the oldest RPG franchises in gaming, though those in North America knew it as Dragon Warrior until the early 2000s. The series has grown in popularity in the West over the last decade or so with the release of Dragon Quest XI, as well as spinoffs like Builders and the return of the Monsters series more recently, but fans have been awaiting the next mainline entry in the series with Dragon Quest XII. In the meantime, Square Enix has chosen to return to the past with one of the most classic entries in the franchise by giving it an Octopath Traveler-style makeover in Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake.
A Trip to the Past
Dragon Quest III initially released all the way back in 1988 for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and has received a number of remakes and re-releases over the years for systems such as the Super Nintendo, Game Boy Color, and even a mobile version that was later ported to more modern platforms. Since those remakes, Square Enix’s Octopath Traveler introduced the idea of the HD-2D style, which has continued to get more popular with Square Enix in recent years. This has included new games using the style like Triangle Strategy and Octopath Traveler 2, as well as the previously unreleased in the West game, Live A Live, finally released in the West with the HD-2D treatment on modern systems. A remake of the most well received of the original Dragon Quest trilogy with this style made a ton of sense and Square Enix has delivered, with HD-2D remakes of the first two games coming in the near future as well.
Dragon Quest III may be the third entry in the series, but it falls chronologically first in the timeline of what is known as the Erdrick Trilogy that comprises the first three games. The story begins with our Hero being summoned by the king on his 16th birthday and is tasked with taking down the villainous Baramos. This quickly turns into a very personal mission for the Hero, as his father Ortega was also entrusted with this missions years prior and was killed in the process of trying to defeat Baramos. The story from there is pretty typical for the majority of the game as a good guy goes on a journey to take down the bad guy, but there are some really surprising moments and twists later in the game that really took me by surprise having only played the first two games of the classic trilogy in the past and how this ties into those.
One of the downsides of this game that has always been the case with the early RPGs is the lack of party members that play any role outside of combat. From the start of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, you must visit Patty’s Party Planning to recruit three additional party members. You can pick from the preset options available or you can request to add specific members based on their class, gender, and design. I always recommend the latter, because it allows you to feel like you played a part in the building of the party, plus you have the option to get any of the classes here instead of being limited to the few offered by Patty directly.
As I mentioned though, the downside here is that these party members do not speak and are only around to help you win battles in the game. This is a major difference from say Dragon Quest VIII, where the party members are created specifically to play major roles in the story. While this is disappointing in a sense, this is just the way that RPGs were build back then and the series even went back to it with Dragon Quest IX as well, so you just have to kind of roll with it as a faithful remake.
After you start on your grand adventure from your hometown of Aliahan, you must venture across different landscapes in the overworld to get from point to point. This is made easier here with a run button to navigate around more quickly both in the overworld and when in a town or dungeon. Like in any classic Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy game, the overworld is quite large with landmasses that include a mix of the aforementioned towns and dungeons. There is a world map to help you figure out where you are going, complete with an optional objective marker to show where you need to go next. This does come in pretty handy, especially when trying to figure out where you need to go after getting sidetracked with different quests in the game.
As you traverse the overworld or dungeons, you will encounter random battles with enemies. The turn-based gameplay here is just as you remember it in the original game, though it now comes with some quality-of-life enhancements. You alternate turns with the enemies and are able to control each of your four party members, though you can even set your entire party or just part of your party to auto-battle using the game’s Tactics menu. In this menu you can set to have them do things like follow orders, fight wisely, focus on healing, and more. I personally prefer to take make every decision in battle so I didn’t use this much, but it’s a cool feature to have, especially if you’re really grinding for experience points.
Speaking of grinding for experience points, the leveling system in Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake does make the game seem a bit hard at times if you are playing on the default normal difficulty even. The game really requires you to do some grinding right out of the gate and to keep up with it throughout the game or else you will find yourself getting overwhelmed by stronger hordes of enemies very quickly. This feels like it could have been balanced a little more, especially if you are strictly going through the objective markers given for the main story and aren’t taking time to level up along the way. To help alleviate this issue a bit, the game did add in an easy difficulty setting known as Dracky Quest if you are just wanting a more passive experience without having to work too much. For those that want even more challenge though, the remake also added a Draconian Quest mode that makes things even harder with stronger enemies, and less experience points and gold coins being earned in battle.
The classes that make up your party will have a dramatic impact on how your combat experience goes, as each class has different focuses. For instance, my party was made up of the Hero, a Martial Artist, a Mage, and a Priest. This gave me a mix of physical offensive, magical offensive, and a healer to keep my team alive, which seemed to work well together. There are a number of other classes available as well that you can choose, including a brand new one for the game known as the Monster Wrangler. This new class is an interesting mix that is worth trying out. In fact, once you reach level 20, you can go and change your classes as well, though you do go back to level 1 while retaining your learned moves.
Also carried over from past remakes is the Personality system, which decides how your party members’ stats grow over time. Each party member starts with a set personality, including the Hero based on the initial questions you answer to start the game, but these can be reshaped via the numerous books that you come across from bookshelves in the game. This is something that the game honestly doesn’t explain too well even in this version, so you likely will be better off looking for more details on each one online.
A new feature in Dragon Quest III HD-2D that is a major help to the enjoyment of the game is the ability to speed up the gameplay in battle with a simple button press. This is something that has become standard in pretty much any modern remake or remaster of older turn-based RPGs that tend to move on the slower side. Without this feature, Dragon Quest III’s combat is very slow and I very quickly found myself turning the battle speed up to the ultra fast option before too long.
Something that actually surprised me in the game was the additional of voice acting for much of the spoken dialogue in the game. A lot of remakes of older RPGs avoid adding this and keep things as they were in the past, but I greatly appreciated this version adding not only English voice acting, but also the option for Japanese as well. The soundtrack for the game has also been redone in this release, though still maintaining the original tunes. Dragon Quest’s classic themes are some of my favorite songs in gaming and hearing them in this new variation here was glorious.
The HD-2D style is very distinct and it works wonders here in Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake. Its art style pops off the screen throughout with its gorgeous environments and pixel characters that look like a modernized SNES game such as Chrono Trigger, but doing things that were never possible on that system either. This is most apparent within the towns and dungeons that really show off the graphical prowess of the game when you really might not expect it to be able to do so.
Not only do the visuals look fantastic, but the performance in the game is top notch as well. Playing on the Nintendo Switch, I never experienced any slowdown, blurriness, or issues with loading environments. Moving around in the game just feels so smooth and mixed with the quality of life speed up features, it has taken an older style game and made it run better than ever.
Another modern quality of life improvement that is a great addition to Dragon Quest HD-2D Remake is that of autosaves. Autosaves are not the default save option, as you still have your multiple save slots that you can use by saving at a church in each town. Autosaves serve as a backup option though that have many more save situations, such as when you enter part of a dungeon or enter a town. You can even restart a boss battle right away instead of having to travel back to the battle if you fail to win. However, this is exclusive to boss battles and not regular battles in the game. I’m the type of person that will always save manually before stopping a play session, but having the autosave as a backup just in case of death in the game to avoid a lot of lost time is a fantastic feature to include.
Monster Arenas have been a big part of the Dragon Quest franchise over the years, with Dragon Quest III having a version of its own in the past that you could bet on. Dragon Quest III HD-2D now has enhanced this to where you can now recruit special monsters you come across in the game and take them to fight in Monster Arena tournaments. Expanding on this feature was a great decision by the development team, as this felt more reminiscent of the excellent Monster Arena from Dragon Quest VIII. Mixing this in with the aforementioned new Monster Wrangler class, fans of the monsters in the Dragon Quest series are going to be in for a good time.
Whether it’s taking down hordes of Slimes or fighting to save the world, there is always something magical about Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake showcases why it is still one of the best entries in the series more than 36 years after its initial release. The HD-2D style is a great way to relive older games like this, giving me hope we may see more in the coming years with a game like Chrono Trigger, and this is yet another fantastic use of it. Mixing in the gorgeous visuals and quality of life improvements on top of what was already a great, yet still a bit dated in some ways game, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a must play for fans of the series as well as any RPG fan that has been waiting to jump into the series for the very first time.
Score: 9/10
Pros:
- Beautiful HD-2D visuals
- Quality of life improvements
- Story is very captivating, especially with late-game surprises
- Revamped Monster Arena
- Added voice acting and redone soundtrack
Cons:
- Party members are useless out of combat
- Still beholden to more rigid turn-based mechanics of its time
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.
