Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake review – this is what nostalgia looks like

Some excellent improvements make this the definitive version of Dragon Quest III, but it could do even more to make it entirely welcoming to newcomers.

When you meet someone for the first time, you don’t tend to start stripping away their personality and pointing out all their deepest flaws, but Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake doesn’t shy away from insulting you and straight up to get to the point. . This is an old-school JRPG where the way you approach your stats matters and you don’t have anything on hand to guide you through it. There are dragons. There are quests. And there are a lot of deaths.

To be honest Square Enixit does attempt to hold your hand a little while you form a group and travel the world to fight the arch-enemy Baramos. You get difficulty settings and combat speed adjustments, but it also remains steadfastly stuck to the core combat and story systems of the original Dragon Quest III. Being a remake of a game first released in the late 80s, it feels inherently dated, even with all the changes. It tries valiantly to walk that fine line of appealing to nostalgia while accommodating modern conveniences, but it often stumbles as it leans more heavily on the original game’s side.

The HD-2D overhaul is stunning. Blocky sprites are replaced with sprites with much more detail, and they are placed on 3D backgrounds with a camera tilt that still maintains the proportions of the old sprite style. It looks exactly like you remember playing old games – the glasses of nostalgia have become reality – only now everything is a little smoother thanks to the new autosave, a greater number of places to save in general, objective markers to help you, and an easier way to teleport between visited locations. There are also a few new features, such as some additional story chapters, monster battle arenas, and even a new Monster Wrangler class to add to your team, allowing you to learn different monster attacks and turn them against your enemies. However, things start to look a bit rusty once you get a few fights under your belt.

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Being an old-school turn-based RPG, battles involve selecting attacks and spells before watching them crush a crowd of monsters. It’s a lot like Square Enix’s older Final Fantasy games, except Dragon Quest has never really tried to reinvent itself over the years by adding more advanced systems or new twists on familiar concepts. Instead, it’s just that age-old back and forth switching of blows, and especially in Dragon Quest III you’re often fighting many more monsters than you might be used to in other RPGs.

Naturally, as more enemies come at you at once, the damage they do will be greater, and healing is a real problem in this HD-2D remake. You can let each of your party members choose their own attacks to save time entering commands themselves, and you can even try directing them with tactical profiles like ‘conservate MP’ or ‘go all out’. Eventually, though, you’ll have to switch to entering things individually to keep everyone alive, or do a lot of level grinding to even have a chance of getting through combat unscathed.

I tried lowering the difficulty from the normal ‘Dragon Mode’ to ‘Dracky Mode’ but all that did was keep me from dying instead of actually changing the difficulty of the battles. It’s no fun knowing that the only reason you get through fights is because you can’t get below 1 HP – although getting beaten to a pulp and barely getting through is still better than grinding endlessly for EXP just to to cross a field safely. open area of ​​the world map to the next town or dungeon. Sure, it might be easier, and maybe I’m a wuss, but I’d certainly enjoy the illusion of a fair fight instead of being dragged through it by my hair.

It also doesn’t make much sense: why add a mode where you can’t die as an option, but you can’t disable random encounters? I can’t claim that any concessions have been made to make things easier, any more than wearing shoes makes walking easier. But it also seems like a mistake not to go further. Square Enix’s recent Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters and the Switch version of Final Fantasy IXfor example, did this very well – you could enjoy the pure version if you wanted, but you could also grease the wheels a bit by adding loads of options to speed things up, avoid random encounters and ensure that all your hits do a lot of damage. Everyone could enjoy the sights, even if you took a maximum cable car ride to get there.

I still can’t believe how much patience it must have taken us as kids to get through games like this. Has grinding to make progress ever been fun? I understand that Dragon Quest is all about keeping things the way they are, but adding more options doesn’t detract from the achievement of taking a purist approach.

Fortunately, the world is a joy to explore, even if you’re dragged into a fight every 30 seconds. The story that takes you through it may not be particularly complex (you’re usually urged to go to certain places to pick up an item or fight someone just because), but the sense of adventure remains strong throughout , because every nook and cranny is filled. with secrets. The map is covered in hidden spots and treasure troves full of shiny items, and the cities themselves are packed with loot and hidden monsters to recruit for the new battle arena. There’s still nothing quite as satisfying as that old-fashioned feeling of walking into someone’s home and raiding their cupboards for medicinal herbs and equipment.

The world really opens up once you’ve purchased a boat and your adventures can take on a more free form, but the lack of a guiding hand in the HD-2D Remake is even more acutely felt here. In this part of the game you are tasked with collecting orbs from around the world, but each usually requires you to first obtain an item from somewhere else, and it is never explained where. Even with all the objective markers in place, the temptation to reach for a guide to the original game is extremely strong. Even then, there’s still a lot of backtracking and teleporting around the map to find what you’re looking for. It’s like a puzzle where you have to put partially completed pieces together and hope that the next spot contains the missing piece you need to bring it all together. While there is a very satisfying twist that makes all this hassle worth it, the game will test your patience to get there.

Other additions, like the remastered score, are wonderful and add an extra, soaring layer to that sense of adventure and discovery, but others seem redundant. Key parts of the dialogue are now fully spoken, which sounds good in theory but rarely adds anything to the experience. It also leads to quite a few awkward accented situations. Alefgard is loosely based on our world, with several areas based on places, such as a prospecting town full of Americans and a palatial Florentine town where everyone speaks with cartoonish Italian accents. There’s also a town full of white people speaking with thick, stereotypical Indian accents, which is sure to raise some questioning eyebrows, even though the source material is over 35 years old.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake left me with mixed feelings. As a remake of a classic, it’s stunning: the game does a fantastic job of capturing that feeling of nostalgia and making it fit on a modern screen. The story may be old and simple, but there is something pleasant in it. I may not have the patience for random encounters anymore, but playing with such a wide range of weapon types, class types, and stat personalities was still mostly fun, even if I was regularly overcome by monsters.

That sense of preserving its history is both the blessing and the curse of the game. For every change that improves on the original, there are points where it hasn’t evolved enough and ultimately holds itself back in the process. There’s still a good game to discover here, and if you played the original you’ll no doubt enjoy this new remake. However, if you’re a more casual Dragon Quest or JRPG enthusiast looking for a classic, you’ll find yourself bouncing away when the combat starts to feel like a bit of a slog.

Publisher Square Enix provided a copy of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for review.