A fantastic continuation of the first 2 Dragon Quest games with how it not only expands into new ideas, but refines the pre-existing ones into something far more compelling, culminating in an experience that feels far more grandiose and finely tuned. The sense of player hostility that the first 2 games revelled in remains a constant here but is shifted in such a way to make it fit the narrative of DQ3 more cleanly. Structural changes with how the player progresses further contribute to the game feeling far bigger and more richly detailed, demonstrating more than just escalating difficulty as a means of engaging the player. Rather than a world wrought with hopelessness that has already accepted its fate, Dragon Quest 3 revolves around the birth of a legend and their rise to this status, with a level of power fitting of being perceived as such.
The game still remains quite challenging, but the player is also provided with enough tools to comfortably overcome all opposition with relative ease, as long as they know what they’re doing, both due to the mechanics feeling more evenly balanced to make turns where the enemy is capable of party wiping far more infrequent, but also by making your entire party actually have the capabilities of effectively helping out in a fight. Dragon Quest 2’s party was comprised entirely of characters that would rigidly conform to their roles without any flexibility to accommodate to situations that deviated from their main skillset, which led to a dynamic that often would only allow one character at a time to meaningfully contribute to a situation, and this rigidity was the most transformative element of the game that was altered to make Dragon Quest 3 feel more balanced in the player’s favour. The way that the increased party flexibility is limited is what makes the game especially intriguing however, as hitting the point where this all becomes relevant takes time and careful planning. At their base level, classes still largely fit into specific niches, but have been given tools to allow them to contribute to a wider variety of obstacles, with healers having enough physical attack to let them still deal serviceable damage in the early game, and wizards having access to certain buffing spells, so even if you’re up against something that resists magic, they can make your attackers stronger instead of being dead weight.
This alone is already enough to make the moment-to-moment decision making feel more dynamic, but it’s the ability to change classes later on that really elevates this decision making process by giving the player a lot of agency in how they want to approach immediate situations while also planning for the future. The system essentially lets you change character classes while allowing that character to retain traits of what they previously were, leading to situations such as warriors that are able to cast spells, or healers that have more bulk to them than average. This mainly is used to bring more versatility to a team while still allowing them to be total powerhouses in other areas, and while not strictly necessary, it makes the 2nd half of the game considerably easier when you’ve got your army of physical attackers also blasting your enemies with huge group magic damage or keeping everyone topped up on HP, feeling like you’ve become a truly formidable party by the end, rather than perpetually feeling on the brink of death. I don’t really prefer one approach over the other in this case, since both are handled so well, but it’s an interesting difference to note.
The ability to become so much more inherently powerful also does wonders for the game’s pacing, as while there is still some degree of grinding (it’s an NES RPG, so of course there would be), it’s infrequent enough that it won’t completely halt the pacing outside of a few key moments that warranted things being more challenging to truly feel climactic enough. The other aspect of the game that makes everything feel as if it’s moving along at a more typical pace is how the storytelling no longer solely revolves around the heroes trying to track down a single antagonist with everything else being there to propel this one goal forward. A lot of towns have their own plotlines that you have to become involved in now, and while most of them result in you gaining another key item to continue pursuing Baramos, the main villain of the game, the plotlines themselves often have little to do with him beyond the towns potentially feeling threatened about the prospect of being destroyed. The world feels far more richly detailed as a result of this decision, being more akin to actual towns in a world rather than just a tool for the player to use and pass through in their singular quest. The game does a far better job of properly orienting the player in the world as well, not just with Zoom now actually letting you to choose where you warp, cutting down on a lot of tedious backtracking, but more regularly pointing you in directions you could potentially go, dodging the aimlessness of DQ2 by giving you a lot of direction. The aforementioned changes in how different locations have been written also make the orb hunt a far more enjoyable process than it could’ve been, especially since most of them are either tied to their own little narratives, or feel climactic to grab in their own right, making them feel more rewarding to pick up instead of just thinking “yeah that was just on the ground, ok next one.”
I can see why Dragon Quest 3 is often considered to be the first great game in the series, as for as much as I appreciate the charming simplicity of the first game, this takes a lot of the same framework and expands upon it in ways that make it feel utterly massive for the system. The entire final act is also fantastic in how it’s able to recontextualise a lot of pre-existing elements in ways that make it feel entirely new, yet familiar. Playing the NES of this is what truly got me to appreciate just how cool this game was for its time, even though I already thoroughly enjoyed it beforehand, and while the SNES version is definitely still the one I’d return to if I decided to play this again in the future, there’s something incredibly cool about seeing this game in its roughest, most unforgiving form as well.
The game still remains quite challenging, but the player is also provided with enough tools to comfortably overcome all opposition with relative ease, as long as they know what they’re doing, both due to the mechanics feeling more evenly balanced to make turns where the enemy is capable of party wiping far more infrequent, but also by making your entire party actually have the capabilities of effectively helping out in a fight. Dragon Quest 2’s party was comprised entirely of characters that would rigidly conform to their roles without any flexibility to accommodate to situations that deviated from their main skillset, which led to a dynamic that often would only allow one character at a time to meaningfully contribute to a situation, and this rigidity was the most transformative element of the game that was altered to make Dragon Quest 3 feel more balanced in the player’s favour. The way that the increased party flexibility is limited is what makes the game especially intriguing however, as hitting the point where this all becomes relevant takes time and careful planning. At their base level, classes still largely fit into specific niches, but have been given tools to allow them to contribute to a wider variety of obstacles, with healers having enough physical attack to let them still deal serviceable damage in the early game, and wizards having access to certain buffing spells, so even if you’re up against something that resists magic, they can make your attackers stronger instead of being dead weight.
This alone is already enough to make the moment-to-moment decision making feel more dynamic, but it’s the ability to change classes later on that really elevates this decision making process by giving the player a lot of agency in how they want to approach immediate situations while also planning for the future. The system essentially lets you change character classes while allowing that character to retain traits of what they previously were, leading to situations such as warriors that are able to cast spells, or healers that have more bulk to them than average. This mainly is used to bring more versatility to a team while still allowing them to be total powerhouses in other areas, and while not strictly necessary, it makes the 2nd half of the game considerably easier when you’ve got your army of physical attackers also blasting your enemies with huge group magic damage or keeping everyone topped up on HP, feeling like you’ve become a truly formidable party by the end, rather than perpetually feeling on the brink of death. I don’t really prefer one approach over the other in this case, since both are handled so well, but it’s an interesting difference to note.
The ability to become so much more inherently powerful also does wonders for the game’s pacing, as while there is still some degree of grinding (it’s an NES RPG, so of course there would be), it’s infrequent enough that it won’t completely halt the pacing outside of a few key moments that warranted things being more challenging to truly feel climactic enough. The other aspect of the game that makes everything feel as if it’s moving along at a more typical pace is how the storytelling no longer solely revolves around the heroes trying to track down a single antagonist with everything else being there to propel this one goal forward. A lot of towns have their own plotlines that you have to become involved in now, and while most of them result in you gaining another key item to continue pursuing Baramos, the main villain of the game, the plotlines themselves often have little to do with him beyond the towns potentially feeling threatened about the prospect of being destroyed. The world feels far more richly detailed as a result of this decision, being more akin to actual towns in a world rather than just a tool for the player to use and pass through in their singular quest. The game does a far better job of properly orienting the player in the world as well, not just with Zoom now actually letting you to choose where you warp, cutting down on a lot of tedious backtracking, but more regularly pointing you in directions you could potentially go, dodging the aimlessness of DQ2 by giving you a lot of direction. The aforementioned changes in how different locations have been written also make the orb hunt a far more enjoyable process than it could’ve been, especially since most of them are either tied to their own little narratives, or feel climactic to grab in their own right, making them feel more rewarding to pick up instead of just thinking “yeah that was just on the ground, ok next one.”
I can see why Dragon Quest 3 is often considered to be the first great game in the series, as for as much as I appreciate the charming simplicity of the first game, this takes a lot of the same framework and expands upon it in ways that make it feel utterly massive for the system. The entire final act is also fantastic in how it’s able to recontextualise a lot of pre-existing elements in ways that make it feel entirely new, yet familiar. Playing the NES of this is what truly got me to appreciate just how cool this game was for its time, even though I already thoroughly enjoyed it beforehand, and while the SNES version is definitely still the one I’d return to if I decided to play this again in the future, there’s something incredibly cool about seeing this game in its roughest, most unforgiving form as well.