Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review
A Classic Glow-Up
When Dragon Quest III was originally launched in Japan on a weekday in 1988, series creator Yuji Horii personally went out and saw the long lines of students and workers who skipped out of their responsibilities that day to purchase the game. A decision was made to only release future titles on Saturdays, one that would give rise to the myth that Saturday releases were required by law in Japan. Upon original release, Dragon Quest III came as a surprise prequel to the first two titles, with players not realizing this until the end credits. Fast forward almost forty years and Square Enix and Horii are remaking the original Erdrick trilogy in its chronological order, with Dragon Quest I + II HD-2D Remake coming early next year. While it’s perhaps not quite as necessary these days to form long lines to purchase Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, playing the most up-to-date version of this legendary JRPG is equally as encouraged today as it was back then.
Dragon Quest III opens with players being put through a little psychological set of questions to determine their character’s personality. Players can then customize their appearance before setting out from home on their sixteenth birthday to visit the local monarch. At the castle, players are told to follow in their father’s footsteps and try to defeat the archfiend, Baramos, and bring peace to the world. To make life easier on this quest, multiple party members can be recruited from the local bar. The tale is trope JRPG down to its core from the start, but the way it eventually weaves narratives between local issues, familial ones, and eventually worldwide is splendid story-telling that was amazing for its time, yet still hits hard today. The various plot points have meaning and flow beautifully from beat to beat, especially with additional back stories about the hero’s father, Ortega, that’s new for this release.
The visuals highlight the beauty of the world, from smallest detail to the grandest.
While traveling around the world searching for boats, pots, swords, or orbs, players will quickly realize that the world of Dragon Quest III might look quite familiar, even if they’ve not played the game before. That’s because the world is modeled after Earth, and many more prominent ancient cultures and countries are depicted in one form or another. The HD-2D Remake of the world is amazing. From the beautiful visuals of sunrise over the curve of the planet while flying to the pyramids in Egypt and the log cabins in old America, the way that these amazing graphics capture landmark structures is wonderful. To match the regional settings, the written dialogue fits the local dialect, and voice acting has been implemented for the first time, bringing an aural treat to ears of players during important interactions.
Like in previous releases of Dragon Quest III, a lot of the fun of this title comes from the job class system. While all players start as the hero, they can recruit up to three other party members to join them at any given time. Each member has a bit of nice visual customization available from gender to hair style and color. Classic jobs such as Fighter and Mage are there, along with the Thief class added in previous remakes, but new to this version is the Monster Wrangler class. Unlike other classes that only learn spells and skills upon reaching specific levels, the Monster Wrangler learns increasingly powerful moves based on how well players have interacted with another mechanic new to this remake. Spread throughout the land, roughly 100 monsters are waiting to be found and sent to a monster raiser named Monty. Monty watches over the player’s collection and allows them to battle in Monster Arenas around the world. The more monsters befriended, the more powerful skills Monster Wranglers will learn, making this new class a physical powerhouse that rivals most others in terms of raw damage output. Competing with those monsters in the Monster Arenas and emerging victorious also brings some great prizes for the party.
Collecting wayward monsters not only can net Monster Wranglers new powers, but players get new puns!
The turn-based battle system in Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a classic, but it shows its age compared to more recent mainline Dragon Quest titles. While the ability to learn both physical and magical abilities is a modern touch, the traditional input system, where all commands are entered before a full turn, can feel clunky, especially in later-game encounters. With multiple enemies and numerous actions per round, planning far ahead becomes difficult. As a result, players may find themselves relying on the AI to handle complex battle situations. The classic battle system works just fine as-is, but the series moved to a more modern input method for a reason. While the vast majority of encounters will not require more advanced tactics, there are plenty of late-game and post-game battles where more in-the-moment control would be greatly beneficial.
Visually, the battles got quite an amazing HD glow-up compared to other versions of the game, but there are some graphical caveats here that keep it from being more amazing. Primarily, huge praise for the battle backdrops. They’re gorgeous and always have some dynamic thing going on whether it’s clouds floating by, a flag flapping in the breeze, or water flowing past; there’s always some little thing that catches the eye. The monster sprites and animations are just as gorgeous, especially the dying animation and fading away when defeated. Another positive comes at the start of each round of battle. Players’ characters are shown from behind and looking closely, their specific equipped weapon is shown in their hands. However, when battle rounds start, the camera zooms in only on the monsters, one doesn’t get to see the characters attack, just some stock animations. Similarly, while selecting commands, players can see animations over characters that are poisoned, buffed, confused, etc. which of course helps in decision-making. However, when the camera zooms in for battle, there’s no visual representation of anything other than their HP and MP. Not that it’s super-important, but with some turns taking ~20 actions, it’s nice to plan ahead during all the fighting, but visually, that’s hard to do.
Beautiful battle backgrounds are bountiful, but it’s impossible to know if any party members are confused or asleep at this point.
The overworld has been given a massive overhaul, as what was just a few dozen steps can now take minutes to span the massive open spaces. This gives everything a more globe-spanning scale and these flourishes have extended to the towns and dungeons as well making things seem larger. Thankfully, there are glittering caches of useful items and special zones to enter to keep the long journeys exciting. These special zones can typically be identified by a different colored tree or rock formation, and these are where a great deal of wandering monsters can be wrangled. While all these changes are primarily for the better, travel by boat and air across the world feels painfully slow, and the encounter rate seems a bit too high while walking. The amount of random encounters fought while just exploring will keep players well above what’s needed to continue, making things feel too easy as a result. There is a difficulty slider that can make things more challenging if needed. Small quality of life improvements like quest markers and the ability to lend party members between save files speeds up both initial and repeat playthroughs.
No review of any version of Dragon Quest III would be complete without discussion of the game’s soundtrack. Koichi Sugiyama’s score for this game is a favorite among Dragon Quest fans, and hearing everything in its full orchestral arrangement is as much a treat for the ears as the HD graphics are for the eyes. From earworm town, battle, and overworld themes to amazing individual songs such as Heavenly Flight and Into the Legend as well as perfectly timed callback tracks from the original Dragon Quest game, it’s hard to find a track that isn’t iconic. There is a reason many of these get used in multiple Dragon Quest spin-off titles. Adding to the aural treat, ambient sounds, and all the little utterances both by party members and monsters in battle are just little cherries on top of the audio adventure.
For a game that I’ve played a half-dozen or more times over on almost equally as many systems, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake definitely feels like the version I’d most recommend. It’s a beautiful remake of one the oldest JRPG classics, one that holds up to this day as an amazing game. The visual flourishes make everything a more fulfilling adventure to take part in, with something exciting to experience around the corner for newcomer and series veteran alike. Seeing all the game has to offer this old fan, I’m even more excited to see what changes are in store for the first two games in the series when they get their HD-2D Remake next year!
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Soundtrack is a banger, sounding amazing in its full symphonic version
New job class is a hit
Visually, a beautiful remake of a cultural classic
Multiple quality of life improvements make this available to nearly every gamer
Battle system could use more modernizing
Sailing and flying feel far too slow
Encounter rate feels a bit too high
SO HYPED!
Minus the awful sliding puzzle at the end of the game… not hyped for that.
As for entering battle commands for each character, Dragon Quest III HD-2D has automated battles through the tactics system similar to Dragon Quest 4-6, 7, 8, 9, and 11.
The local dialects for each town and regional settings in the game, such as Sanskrit for Baharata, Brazilian Portuguese for Manoza, Portuguese and Spanish for Portoga, British English for Edina, Italian for Romaria, Southern American English for Persistence, Russian for Khoryv, or Japanese for Jipang, adds a nice regional feel to it.
I agree that flying and sailing is a little slow, and money earned in each battle is far less than previous DQ 3 versions, but the game is still a hit and improvement from its predecessor versions.