Last year, I visited Japan for a few weeks, soaking in the culture, the nature and way too many plates of curry. Giant billboards advertised the latest niche gacha game, and multi-floor department stores dedicated huge displays to current and upcoming game releases unlike anything I’d ever see back in America’s dried out and dour shopping culture. The single most mind-blowing display of gaming reverence and promotion, though, was when I walked into a Lawson convenience store in Osaka that had been converted from front-to-back with a Dragon Quest theme. The signage outside was made of slime smiles, when you walked into the store you’d hear the crunchy NES sound-effect of an opened door from the original game play, and half the store was dedicated to selling merch related to the franchise. Dragon Quest has had a lasting impact not just on gaming, but on Japanese culture as a whole. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, above all else, is a reminder and a celebration of that.
For people outside of Japan, it can be hard to notice that influence, and a lot of that is simply due to the Dragon Quest series not being nearly as impactful or consistent overseas. Mainline entries like Dragon Quest IX on the Nintendo DS or Dragon Quest XI have certainly made an impact on gamers worldwide, but for Dragon Quest III and what is essentially this franchise’s equivalent of Final Fantasy VII, there hasn’t been a widely accessible or brushed up release until now with this remake.
Of course, with HD-2D in the title, it’s clear that this isn’t a Remake or Rebirth moment for Dragon Quest. The bones of this game are the same as they were in 1988 – you’re a young adventurer boy or girl, tasked with forming a party of companions and setting off into the world to vanquish the demon Baramos and save the world. It’s without a doubt a clichéd story that’s been adapted and twisted and parodied for decades, but what’s important here is that Dragon Quest III is ostensibly the game that invented that kind of story in the first place.
As a remake, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake isn’t doing a whole lot to reinvent that story, flesh it out or turn it into some kind of meta-commentary. There are some additional Episodic story scenes you can access throughout your journey, but they serve to flesh out some of the already existing characters and story threads – like getting a deeper look into the adventures of your famous father Ortega. As a protagonist, you’re a blank-slate, and the same goes for your customisable companions.
Each character class has a unique set of sprites and can be customized with their own names, hair colour, and personality-types, but with no spoken dialogue from your comrades, that final element only affects their stat-growth on paper. Still, that didn’t stop me from telling a story in my mind where my scatterbrain cleric Kikuri kept wasting her MP and missing attacks because she was nursing a perpetual hangover/drunken stupor like her Bocchi The Rock anime namesake.
A new gameplay feature that helps amplify that sense of self-driven storytelling is the ability to Recall conversations. Anytime someone says something you’d like to keep in mind for later, instead of having to jot down a note in your notebook you can just press the start button to save that entire conversation in-game for later access. In a game like Elden Ring, the natural experience of remembering characters wants and objectives can be hard to keep track of the deeper you get into the game. A quality-of-life feature like Recall makes that process a bit easier without hampering the self-guided nature of the journey at all.
Lots of other quality-of-life features have made their way into Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, like the introduction of multiple difficulty options that can be swapped at any time. This isn’t a particularly difficult RPG by traditional standards, but certain tricky bosses or lengthy dungeon back-tracks definitely had me relying on a temporary drop in difficulty to get through them a bit more swiftly.
There’s also a brand new vocation called Monster Wrangler for your companions – it starts out as a pretty standard brawler type with good physical attributes, but eventually turns into a bit of a Blue Mage style character. By capturing and recruiting monsters, you can learn skills from them for the Monster Wrangler. On top of the really fun skill variety, having the added layer of monster-capturing on top of every enemy encounter made battles a lot more enticing and exciting. Your recruited monsters also feed into the newly expanded Monster Arena side-mode, a huge upgrade from the monster-battle gambling of the original game. It feels like a huge love letter to Dragon Quest Joker, the iconic Pokemon-inspired spinoff series, to have these Monster Wrangler and Monster Arena elements worked into the game – and it’s impressive how seamlessly they fit into your grand adventure.
The biggest change and upgrade in Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, without a doubt, is the shift in visuals to an Octopath Traveler inspired blend of 3D environments, realistic lighting, and traditional pixel-art sprites. It’s done incredibly well, and the mix of old-school elements like the sprite art and chunky sound effects combined with the flashy new visual touches creates such a fun contrast. Particle effects have been given a wild modern upgrade too, leading to incredibly satisfying moments in battle where your spells and abilities summon huge gusts of wind and searing fireballs.
My only issue with the HD-2D treatment is that, in a lot of locations and times of day, the bloom lighting can be a bit too distracting – I nearly had to wear sunglasses from how bright the sun was reflecting off my parties sprites.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a lovingly-crafted celebration of gaming’s most iconic franchises. Rather than reinvent that wheel and change the game for modern audiences, Square Enix has highlighted and elevated the elements that made this such an iconic game all those decades ago, while slipping in a treasure trove of quality-of-life features that make it an even smoother experience to either dive into for the first time ever or return to yet again.