Dragon Quest III is one of the best sequels (or prequel in this case) in video games, which marked a before and after not only for the Dragon Quest series, but for JRPGs in general. And this is a remake at the height of the legend.
In 1988 this game was a sensation in Japan, everyone wanted it. It was the first game to sell more than 1 million copies in a single day (which is remarkable for a time when video games were not as popular as they are today), there were endless lines of people with the sole desire to try the title, so much so that many of them were students or workers who skipped their duties. It was a social phenomenon.
~ And thus, the legend was born ~
Dragon Quest I and II were the foundation of JRPGs almost in their entirety, but in retrospect, they feel like portotypes of what a true solid RPG is. DQI had good foundations, but a combat system that was too simple, and while DQII was a giant step forward that improved and evolved many aspects, the development team had many problems during the production of the title as they still did not have so much experience and had a very limited time, making the final game had no clear direction and had many balancing problems. Well then, Dragon Quest III comes to be the pinnacle of the idea that Yuji Horii and Chun Soft had always dreamed of creating for an RPG, a game that had enough time to be developed and tested properly, and in which you can see its developers were quite satisfied, so much so that even Yuji Horii considered it a perfect game. This game was such a significant leap in game design and quality that it takes it to a completely different level, making even JRPGs that were released years after this one feel like mediocre products.
If you played the first game you will know that there was always mention of someone named Erdrick/Roto, who according to everyone's words was a very important figure in the story, so much so that being his descendant directly made you someone important as well, but what did he really do to earn that title, well, Dragon Quest III is the answer to that question. The story begins with an introductory cinematic that tells us how our father, the greatest hero of that time, once tried to stop the archfiend but failed in the attempt, and obviously, as offspring of the great hero, we are tasked with the mission to finish what our father left unfinished. I won't go into spoilers (even though it's a 35+ year old game), so I'll just say that, if you played Dragon Quest I, this game has a plot twist that makes it connect as a prequel in a pretty satisfying way. And it's impressive that only in the third game alone this kind of homage has already been made to the first title, the game that started it all, and it's something I loved very much the first time I played this title. Even with everything, though, the premise is just as simple as the previous games, a simple "go and collect the 6 magic items and save the world from this villain", but I think that what this game lacks in story it makes up for with adventure and simple to understand, but pretty solid gameplay.
This game allows you to customize your party, having a variety of 7 classes for 3 of your party members, it gives you total freedom to build and customize your play style, and it is quite entertaining to experiment with different combinations, because even though there can be difficult places because of having (for example) only warriors and a mage, the game is built in such a way that having a solid strategy, enough wit and a decent team is enough to overcome the adversities, and although I do not deny that the possibility of getting stuck for having a poor party at the end of the title is a possibility, but unlike the first Final Fantasy where if that happened you had to restart the whole game or grind to death, Dragon Quest III allows you to create more characters than you can fit in your party, thus opening up the possibility of you having reserves, and all of this expands further once you get to the place where you can change classes, allowing you to create "hybrid" characters, such as monks with the ability to cast healing magic or mages with better attack and physical defense. Each class levels up and grows in a very satisfying way, which for example with mages and priests, not only makes them more useful in battle by expanding their arsenal of attack or support spells, but they are learning magical abilities that are useful even outside of battles and make exploration more comfortable, for example, you can learn spells that help you get out of caves/dungeons instantly at any time.
Many of the elements that make this game great had already appeared for the first time in DQ2, however, it was in this game where they really made use of them properly, which as insignificant as this may seem, make a big difference between being just a good game and being a great game. For starters, the battles are incredibly well balanced and far more entertaining by far. Dragon Quest III is also the first game in the series where you actually need to strategize to overcome battles instead of just overcoming them by brute force as in the previous games. Something that highlights the difference between DQ2 and DQ3 despite having the same combat system, is the final battle, where one will require a simple strategy and the other will require you to really be careful and act cautiously if you want to have a chance to be victorious.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's talk about what makes combat entertaining. Something I really like, is how Dragon Quest makes a lot of emphasis on not only using brute force to defeat your enemies, many times using the most powerful attack magic for example is not the most convenient, but the game encourages you to use status altering magic to overcome battles (even those against bosses), for example, it is of vital importance to lower the defense to enemies that are damage sponges to be able to defeat them or, on the contrary, when there's an enemy that with two hits could knock you out, raising your defense several times makes them not even have a chance to scratch you, not to mention that you'd be surprised how many common enemies are vulnerable to the "sleep" or "death" status, yes, their effectiveness is random, but when it manages to hit it feels incredibly rewarding. And another thing I love about the battles is how many monsters have a "personality" so to speak, you can tell by the way they fight and have their own strategies. For example, there are monsters that will try to call on other monsters to heal them in battle (we all know who I'm talking about), while others will be cruel and use vicious tactics to try to defeat you, such as attacking a specific member of your party all at once. There are also some that may look very scary but are so dumb that they will try to use spells even when they have no MP (others will be smart enough to steal MP from you). These are small details, but complemented with the fact that they are designed by Akira Toriyama, give a lot of personality and charisma to the enemies of this game and make the progression and the very fact of playing very fun and entertaining because of the great variety in the gameplay.
The world is gigantic, full of kingdoms, towns, shrines, towers and dungeons to discover, and although your mission is simply to stop the bad guy on duty, you must travel the world in search of the path that will allow you to reach your ultimate goal. From the very beginning the game is very open, you can go explore at your leisure and get to know the world at your own pace, you can go mostly in the order you want, even presenting you with many problems and places that are completely optional, such as awakening the sleeping village or returning the crown to the king in the second kingdom, and once you get the ship the world opens up even more and allows you to progress in the order you want, similar to an open world. I especially like how the 6 magic orbs aren't just obtained by beating a dungeon and that's it, but there are some that have very unique situations and are quite memorable. One of my favorite things and one that I am quite thankful to have is the "Zoom" spell, which allows you to instantly travel to any town you have previously visited, and it is to be admired that since this game there is the option of fast travel, something that other video game franchises took years and even decades to implement. Although a negative aspect of this game is that it has one of the worst defects of the games of that era, as there are many things that are a little ambiguous in their method of obtaining, it is not as serious as in DQII, but for example the strongest sword in the game is obtained in a very particular way, even so, it is nothing that a guide can not solve, although I only recommend the use of this when you are really stuck and do not know what to do. Dragon Quest III is simply a game that has a very good sense of adventure and that is about feeling that sense of progress and exploration in its purest state, because rather than being a burden, it feels like something engaging and a primary aspect of the experience.
Exploring villages is usually something fundamental, and Dragon Quest always makes it entertaining thanks to the NPCs who always have something useful, something interesting or even something silly and funny to say. Something I love about this game is the day and night cycle, which basically makes all the villages have two faces and there are certain changes accordingly, this is also a main mechanic, because many times in order to advance we will have to wait for nightfall, because that way some of the villagers' dialogues will change and with that different clues will be at your disposal, or simply because different things happen in some cases and it's just fun to see it. And something that I really love about this game is how it always rewards your curiosity, which encourages you to stay curious and keep exploring or going back to places that you had already explored so you can access and discover places that were previously locked and get a little reward.
Speaking of the OST, it's superb, if you like classical style music the tunes you'll find in this game will delight you. Koichi Sugiyama may have been a despicable person, but his work on the Dragon Quest series was vital in giving this series that heart and soul that we all love. The soundtrack of this installment shines from the rest of the series especially for the cultural representation that they tried to give to some of the locations that we can see throughout the game, like an Egyptian-inspired pyramid, or Jipang, whose name is self-explanatory of the place it is based on. But talking about the rest of the songs, the battle theme is simple, but it is entertaining and engaging unlike the first and second battle theme of the series which were a bit boring. The overworld theme is heroic, and conveys that feeling of being on an epic adventure very well. Strolling through the villages is always enjoyable when what's playing in the background is a sweet melody like this one. And there are other songs that I love, but I won't leave without mentioning my favorite song; Heavenly Flight. The moment I heard it tears came out of my eyes from how beautiful and majestic it is, simply one of my favorite songs in the whole series.
The graphics in this edition are gorgeous, they really enhance the immersion and are one of the most remarkable of the 16-bit era because of how colorful and well done the art is. I really like how the day and night cycle is very well portrayed, making the background of the battles match the time of day, the villages at night look very pretty especially. Each monster also has animations for each action they perform, which gives a little more life to the battles. And finally, Akira Toriyama's designs are still very nice to have, featuring many monsters and even characters that would become super iconic like the hero or the martial artist.
This remake was made by Heartbeat and is made with the Dragon Quest VI engine, which was the last game in the series at the time. Talking about the changes, it rebalances a lot the game without sacrificing totally its original difficulty curve, it adds many quality of life improvements like the bag and a more agile menu navigation. It also makes some small improvements to the gameplay, for example, now you can change equipment in the middle of the battle (as in DQVI). It renews and modernizes the graphics and adapts the songs to the Super Nintendo. And god, the result is amazing and in my opinion makes the game a thousand times better. The soundtrack is expanded by adding new pieces to the game, the graphics are some of the best the Super Nintendo could display, it still looks beautiful to this day and the range of random encounters was reduced considerably to make exploration and the overall experience much more enjoyable.
Conclusion
Despite its age and simplicity, Dragon Quest III defines what a good RPG should be. It is able to offer a solid experience even today that generates an immaculate sense of adventure and a great feeling of accomplishment when you finish the game, thanks to its simple, yet solid design and gameplay mechanics that are still present in many games even today. It was the game that defined and set the gold standard in the JRPG genre. It is directly one of the most important and influential games of all time and to be honest, it is still a very solid and entertaining game despite being a 1988 original, but the fact that this remake puts it on par with any other SNES game is proof of how well designed it was from the beginning in its time.
Dragon Quest III is a game that defined me as a player forever. While not my top 1 of the franchise, this to me is the most important of them all because of the impact it had on me the first time I played it. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I were to one day consider it my true favorite video game of all time, because frankly, to me this game is that precious. It wasn't my first game in the genre, but I consider this to be the game that made me fall in love with RPGs and taught me to really appreciate them.
← Dragon Quest I & II - Review
→ Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen - Review
In 1988 this game was a sensation in Japan, everyone wanted it. It was the first game to sell more than 1 million copies in a single day (which is remarkable for a time when video games were not as popular as they are today), there were endless lines of people with the sole desire to try the title, so much so that many of them were students or workers who skipped their duties. It was a social phenomenon.
~ And thus, the legend was born ~
Dragon Quest I and II were the foundation of JRPGs almost in their entirety, but in retrospect, they feel like portotypes of what a true solid RPG is. DQI had good foundations, but a combat system that was too simple, and while DQII was a giant step forward that improved and evolved many aspects, the development team had many problems during the production of the title as they still did not have so much experience and had a very limited time, making the final game had no clear direction and had many balancing problems. Well then, Dragon Quest III comes to be the pinnacle of the idea that Yuji Horii and Chun Soft had always dreamed of creating for an RPG, a game that had enough time to be developed and tested properly, and in which you can see its developers were quite satisfied, so much so that even Yuji Horii considered it a perfect game. This game was such a significant leap in game design and quality that it takes it to a completely different level, making even JRPGs that were released years after this one feel like mediocre products.
If you played the first game you will know that there was always mention of someone named Erdrick/Roto, who according to everyone's words was a very important figure in the story, so much so that being his descendant directly made you someone important as well, but what did he really do to earn that title, well, Dragon Quest III is the answer to that question. The story begins with an introductory cinematic that tells us how our father, the greatest hero of that time, once tried to stop the archfiend but failed in the attempt, and obviously, as offspring of the great hero, we are tasked with the mission to finish what our father left unfinished. I won't go into spoilers (even though it's a 35+ year old game), so I'll just say that, if you played Dragon Quest I, this game has a plot twist that makes it connect as a prequel in a pretty satisfying way. And it's impressive that only in the third game alone this kind of homage has already been made to the first title, the game that started it all, and it's something I loved very much the first time I played this title. Even with everything, though, the premise is just as simple as the previous games, a simple "go and collect the 6 magic items and save the world from this villain", but I think that what this game lacks in story it makes up for with adventure and simple to understand, but pretty solid gameplay.
This game allows you to customize your party, having a variety of 7 classes for 3 of your party members, it gives you total freedom to build and customize your play style, and it is quite entertaining to experiment with different combinations, because even though there can be difficult places because of having (for example) only warriors and a mage, the game is built in such a way that having a solid strategy, enough wit and a decent team is enough to overcome the adversities, and although I do not deny that the possibility of getting stuck for having a poor party at the end of the title is a possibility, but unlike the first Final Fantasy where if that happened you had to restart the whole game or grind to death, Dragon Quest III allows you to create more characters than you can fit in your party, thus opening up the possibility of you having reserves, and all of this expands further once you get to the place where you can change classes, allowing you to create "hybrid" characters, such as monks with the ability to cast healing magic or mages with better attack and physical defense. Each class levels up and grows in a very satisfying way, which for example with mages and priests, not only makes them more useful in battle by expanding their arsenal of attack or support spells, but they are learning magical abilities that are useful even outside of battles and make exploration more comfortable, for example, you can learn spells that help you get out of caves/dungeons instantly at any time.
Many of the elements that make this game great had already appeared for the first time in DQ2, however, it was in this game where they really made use of them properly, which as insignificant as this may seem, make a big difference between being just a good game and being a great game. For starters, the battles are incredibly well balanced and far more entertaining by far. Dragon Quest III is also the first game in the series where you actually need to strategize to overcome battles instead of just overcoming them by brute force as in the previous games. Something that highlights the difference between DQ2 and DQ3 despite having the same combat system, is the final battle, where one will require a simple strategy and the other will require you to really be careful and act cautiously if you want to have a chance to be victorious.
But let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's talk about what makes combat entertaining. Something I really like, is how Dragon Quest makes a lot of emphasis on not only using brute force to defeat your enemies, many times using the most powerful attack magic for example is not the most convenient, but the game encourages you to use status altering magic to overcome battles (even those against bosses), for example, it is of vital importance to lower the defense to enemies that are damage sponges to be able to defeat them or, on the contrary, when there's an enemy that with two hits could knock you out, raising your defense several times makes them not even have a chance to scratch you, not to mention that you'd be surprised how many common enemies are vulnerable to the "sleep" or "death" status, yes, their effectiveness is random, but when it manages to hit it feels incredibly rewarding. And another thing I love about the battles is how many monsters have a "personality" so to speak, you can tell by the way they fight and have their own strategies. For example, there are monsters that will try to call on other monsters to heal them in battle (we all know who I'm talking about), while others will be cruel and use vicious tactics to try to defeat you, such as attacking a specific member of your party all at once. There are also some that may look very scary but are so dumb that they will try to use spells even when they have no MP (others will be smart enough to steal MP from you). These are small details, but complemented with the fact that they are designed by Akira Toriyama, give a lot of personality and charisma to the enemies of this game and make the progression and the very fact of playing very fun and entertaining because of the great variety in the gameplay.
The world is gigantic, full of kingdoms, towns, shrines, towers and dungeons to discover, and although your mission is simply to stop the bad guy on duty, you must travel the world in search of the path that will allow you to reach your ultimate goal. From the very beginning the game is very open, you can go explore at your leisure and get to know the world at your own pace, you can go mostly in the order you want, even presenting you with many problems and places that are completely optional, such as awakening the sleeping village or returning the crown to the king in the second kingdom, and once you get the ship the world opens up even more and allows you to progress in the order you want, similar to an open world. I especially like how the 6 magic orbs aren't just obtained by beating a dungeon and that's it, but there are some that have very unique situations and are quite memorable. One of my favorite things and one that I am quite thankful to have is the "Zoom" spell, which allows you to instantly travel to any town you have previously visited, and it is to be admired that since this game there is the option of fast travel, something that other video game franchises took years and even decades to implement. Although a negative aspect of this game is that it has one of the worst defects of the games of that era, as there are many things that are a little ambiguous in their method of obtaining, it is not as serious as in DQII, but for example the strongest sword in the game is obtained in a very particular way, even so, it is nothing that a guide can not solve, although I only recommend the use of this when you are really stuck and do not know what to do. Dragon Quest III is simply a game that has a very good sense of adventure and that is about feeling that sense of progress and exploration in its purest state, because rather than being a burden, it feels like something engaging and a primary aspect of the experience.
Exploring villages is usually something fundamental, and Dragon Quest always makes it entertaining thanks to the NPCs who always have something useful, something interesting or even something silly and funny to say. Something I love about this game is the day and night cycle, which basically makes all the villages have two faces and there are certain changes accordingly, this is also a main mechanic, because many times in order to advance we will have to wait for nightfall, because that way some of the villagers' dialogues will change and with that different clues will be at your disposal, or simply because different things happen in some cases and it's just fun to see it. And something that I really love about this game is how it always rewards your curiosity, which encourages you to stay curious and keep exploring or going back to places that you had already explored so you can access and discover places that were previously locked and get a little reward.
Speaking of the OST, it's superb, if you like classical style music the tunes you'll find in this game will delight you. Koichi Sugiyama may have been a despicable person, but his work on the Dragon Quest series was vital in giving this series that heart and soul that we all love. The soundtrack of this installment shines from the rest of the series especially for the cultural representation that they tried to give to some of the locations that we can see throughout the game, like an Egyptian-inspired pyramid, or Jipang, whose name is self-explanatory of the place it is based on. But talking about the rest of the songs, the battle theme is simple, but it is entertaining and engaging unlike the first and second battle theme of the series which were a bit boring. The overworld theme is heroic, and conveys that feeling of being on an epic adventure very well. Strolling through the villages is always enjoyable when what's playing in the background is a sweet melody like this one. And there are other songs that I love, but I won't leave without mentioning my favorite song; Heavenly Flight. The moment I heard it tears came out of my eyes from how beautiful and majestic it is, simply one of my favorite songs in the whole series.
The graphics in this edition are gorgeous, they really enhance the immersion and are one of the most remarkable of the 16-bit era because of how colorful and well done the art is. I really like how the day and night cycle is very well portrayed, making the background of the battles match the time of day, the villages at night look very pretty especially. Each monster also has animations for each action they perform, which gives a little more life to the battles. And finally, Akira Toriyama's designs are still very nice to have, featuring many monsters and even characters that would become super iconic like the hero or the martial artist.
This remake was made by Heartbeat and is made with the Dragon Quest VI engine, which was the last game in the series at the time. Talking about the changes, it rebalances a lot the game without sacrificing totally its original difficulty curve, it adds many quality of life improvements like the bag and a more agile menu navigation. It also makes some small improvements to the gameplay, for example, now you can change equipment in the middle of the battle (as in DQVI). It renews and modernizes the graphics and adapts the songs to the Super Nintendo. And god, the result is amazing and in my opinion makes the game a thousand times better. The soundtrack is expanded by adding new pieces to the game, the graphics are some of the best the Super Nintendo could display, it still looks beautiful to this day and the range of random encounters was reduced considerably to make exploration and the overall experience much more enjoyable.
Conclusion
Despite its age and simplicity, Dragon Quest III defines what a good RPG should be. It is able to offer a solid experience even today that generates an immaculate sense of adventure and a great feeling of accomplishment when you finish the game, thanks to its simple, yet solid design and gameplay mechanics that are still present in many games even today. It was the game that defined and set the gold standard in the JRPG genre. It is directly one of the most important and influential games of all time and to be honest, it is still a very solid and entertaining game despite being a 1988 original, but the fact that this remake puts it on par with any other SNES game is proof of how well designed it was from the beginning in its time.
Dragon Quest III is a game that defined me as a player forever. While not my top 1 of the franchise, this to me is the most important of them all because of the impact it had on me the first time I played it. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I were to one day consider it my true favorite video game of all time, because frankly, to me this game is that precious. It wasn't my first game in the genre, but I consider this to be the game that made me fall in love with RPGs and taught me to really appreciate them.
← Dragon Quest I & II - Review
→ Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen - Review
2 Comments
I agree, this is my favorite prequel too, and yes, for a game from the beginning of 1988 it has a lot of depth and complexity, as for example, games at that time used to have very little text inside the game, but this one despite the memory limitations contained a lot of dialog and content, not to mention the variations you can get with the day and night cycle, it's just mind-blowing as you say. Dragon Quest III was undoubtedly surpassed by the following games, but that rather than being something that devalues this game is something that I have always admired, because the series continued to improve in each installment, but Dragon Quest III was the first game to start that chain of excellent games, that if it had not been for this one, the others would not have existed.
And yes, I too will wait another 12 years for that remake to arrive haha. Thanks for reading my review and for commenting @kirbb!
And yes, I too will wait another 12 years for that remake to arrive haha. Thanks for reading my review and for commenting @kirbb!
kirbb
6 months ago