Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (PS5) Review

Few Japanese role-playing games have been as influential to the genre as a whole as the first four Dragon Quest titles originally released for the Famicom/NES. While it may seem strange to start a new trilogy with the third entry, Square-Enix has a very good reason for beginning the Erdrick Trilogy with what used to bear the Seeds of Salvation moniker. Whether this is your first time playing Dragon Quest III or your thirtieth, there’s enough in here to make it feel like a fresh experience.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake opens with a familiar premise to the NES original. As the son or daughter of the famous warrior Ortega, you’re tasked by the King himself to pick up in your father’s shoes after he disappears on a journey to slay the great evil of the world, Baramos. This simple narrative tale harkens back to a time when the big bads were front and center and venturing out to slay them was a task often reserved for a coming-of-age tale.  Players won’t have to venture out alone as they did in the very first Dragon Warrior title. Instead, adventurers just need to stop at the local tavern conveniently located in the Hero’s hometown and make a call to action to pick up three more folks to tag along for the trip. 

While the player’s role is set in stone as the eponymous Hero, the three that come along are free to pick up any one of eight initial classes to fit the ideal party role. While only seven base classes were available in the original release of Dragon Quest III, Square-Enix has introduced a new Monster Wrangler class first featured in later Dragon Quest titles to the roster of available professions. This new class takes advantage of meeting and befriending more than a hundred different monsters scattered throughout the landscape and rather than using them in individual combat, they merely increase the effectiveness of just a small handful of the class’ signature attacks. The other purpose for recruiting these monsters is to do battle in the Monster Arenas that are found in various cities and provide a great source of income assuming the monsters are strong enough to win. These monsters don’t gain levels in the traditional sense and only get more powerful as players recruit more monsters of the same subspecies. It’s ideal to keep one of these Monster Wranglers in the party at all times given their combat potential but also to sneak up on pacifist monsters and recruit them to your cause without them running away from smelling the player’s powerful stench.

One of the things that made Dragon Quest III such a memorable title in its original release was the open-ended design of the adventure once players secure themselves a boat. As players get more comfortable in their adventure, suddenly the guardrails are taken off and players are given the chance to explore the world as they see fit in order to acquire six mythical orbs needed to secure a path to the game’s main antagonist. There are a plethora of side quests, main story missions, and collectible diversions along the way for players that aim to seek everything out and unlock the platinum trophy. Think along the lines of 110 Mini Medals and even more monsters to recruit for the battle arena. Pro Tip: try to collect and hold onto five Hardwood Headgear along your journey. You’ll thank me later.

Dragon Quest has by and large been one of the most pure and perfected version of turn-based JRPG combat and the HD-2D Remake of Dragon Quest III is no exception. There are no fancy gauges to clutter the screen or combination attacks that need advanced preparation. Instead, players give out commands to each of their four party members individually and watch as turns play out simultaneously based on which attacker has the highest agility stat. Unlike the original game, there’s a significant amount of bloat to the outgoing damage that players give and health pools of the tune of sometimes ten times what the original enemy list had in both the NES and SNES versions of Dragon Quest III.

By the time I nearly cleared the postgame of Dragon Quest III (neither Pachisi or the Monster Medals make their return but Xenlon and his list of wishes did), my Hero was just shy of level 60 with all three party members in their mid-30’s on their third or fourth class change. The added stats and having access to nearly every skill/spell across the whole party was definitely beneficial, especially given how prone enemies in the lategame are to unleashing critical attacks, inflicting status effects, or even outright killing a character.

Depending on your tolerance for punishment, all three difficulty settings are available from adventure’s onset, whether you’re craving a much more challenging Draconian Quest or want to take it easy and just enjoy the story with Dracky Quest. I will admit that Dracky Quest is one of the series’ easiest difficulty modes to date, with enemies literally unable to kill a party member no matter how hard they try and simply reduces their HP to 1. If you’re in a lengthy dungeon and out of restoration items, you could consider taking the easy way out and flipping the difficulty mode just long enough to make it back to the overworld and save an expensive trip to the church to revive your party.

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake has been given a complete graphical overhaul, instead giving the iconic RPG a makeover in the same vein of Square-Enix’s Octopath Traveler and other similar titles. The entire world is brightly colored and blooming with light. Even if you’re intimately familiar with every step retracing Ortega’s journey, the complete re-imagining of the adventure makes this feel like a brand new adventure rather than just another release of Seeds of Salvation. All I can say now is that I can’t wait to go through Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake next year.

[Editor’s Note: A PlayStation 5 copy was provided by the publisher for editorial purposes.]

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, while not the definitive edition that includes all of the previous side content, embodies the perfect version of Erdrick’s adventure that both old and new fans can appreciate as if a brand new adventure from Yuji Horii

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