If Dragon Warrior I is the genesis of the franchise and II is the awkward explorative middle child, III represents the first truly great peak for the series. This is the game which first codifies both a ton of Dragon Quest staples, but also influenced a generation of games to come.

I love this game's approach to role-playing. At the beginning you complete an odd little personality test which determines the stats of your main hero. Party members are created and recruited in-game, and each one comes with both a class chosen from a modest range of options and an assigned personality which determines their stats and can be augmented with items. This makes for an unprecedented level of personal role-playing and connection with your party!

Both the difficulty balance and player direction have been hugely improved, making the world a sheer joy to explore, which is good because it's a pretty big world map! Towns change depending on whether it's night or day, so sometimes you'll need to revisit places at a different time of day to get more clues to progress, and there's even the first occurrence of my favourite Dragon Quest staple as the late-game pulls a stunning surprising move that entirely caught me by surprise.

Dragon Warrior 3 was one of the first major RPGs I played outside of Pokemon and Super Mario RPG. It's exactly what it says on the tin and is the quintessential "JRPG" to me, somebody who has played very little Final Fantasy games but enough to know what I'm talking about.

There's almost a purity to how basic Dragon Warrior 3 is. You build a party with different classes, get geared up, go exploring, killing things, and leveling up. There are no frills involved and it feels almost like you're telling your own story. It felt like a grand adventure that could fit into your pocket, with the overworld music fitting that to a T.

Honestly I think a reason I look back so fondly on DW3 is because it laid a lot of the groundwork for the Etrian Odyssey series, one of my favorite series of all time. Dragon Warrior 3 felt like an epic adventure in your pocket in 2000, and it still probably is.