"But when the celebrations finally died down, our hero was nowhere to be seen...She left only a sword, a suit of armor, a shield, and an amulet behind, and these became great treasures of the kingdom."

TO BE CONTINUED IN DRAGON QUEST I + II

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Both times I've played Dragon Quest III, it's the ending that hits the hardest. The first time, all the way back in 2013 on a Snes9x emulator running on a battered old laptop in my parents' house, it struck me, mostly, because it was supposed to strike me: this was The Thing I had been told about this game, the really cool finale where you travel to the world of the original Dragon Quest for the final showdown, and to become the legendary hero Erdrick from the prior two games. That was a twist when the game was coming out, but I knew it going in. I expect most people do at this point. So I wasn't surprised when it happened. I was dutifully Impressed, like I was supposed to be, and then finished the game, and liked it like I was supposed to, and then moved on to Dragon Quest IV.

I wasn't exactly in a state of mind to have many particularly developed critical thoughts at that stage, in many ways. I was just feverishly devouring RPGs, one after another, and ultimately all I needed from Dragon Quest III at that point was something to fill time and it did that quite dutifully.

Dragon Quest is something that comes with an assumed quality. Aside from maybe 2, the conversation around any one of these games never really floats the idea that any one of them might be bad. The cultural conception of Dragon Quest is that you know what you're going to get from them, and that thing will be good, and it will not be revolutionary. This perspective was even absorbed by the series itself at some point, with every entry since 7 feeling like - for better or worse - a conscious nostalgic throwback that resists change and evolution pridefully. And when I was younger, I think I just sort of absorbed that assumption into my own perspective uncritically, without ever really trying to work out how *I felt about this game, and why, if these games were so consistently great, did none of them - bar one - really capture my imagination the way FF8 - a Bad Game by assumed understanding, especially back then - did?

Because here's the thing: all of that stuff? It's bullshit. Not just because there are indeed bad Dragon Quests - 2, 6, 7, and (if I'm feeling mean) 11 all make that quite clear - but because once upon a time, these games were absolutely revolutionary.

Years before Final Fantasy III's Job System, Dragon Quest III's class system is surprisingly in-depth and meaty for the time and makes leveling characters delightfully moreish and rewarding in a way that no RPG really managed prior to this point. It doesn't seem that way at first: while you can create whatever party you like from the available classes at the start, you're probably going to stick to that party, but, once you get to a certain point in the game - around a third of the way in, maybe a quarter depending on how much you do - you unlock the ability to reset any character bar the hero to level 1 in another class - except they keep all the spells they've learned and the stats they had were halved.

Suddenly, the possibility space explodes. That fighter who's been too slow to be useful outside of bosses? What if you let them gain a few dozen levels as a Thief or a Martial Artist, and then switch them back to Fighter? What if your healer takes up the Fighter role for a while to become a jury-rigged Paladin, healing and smiting with equal fervor? It's such an exciting sandbox to play around in, and the fact that the EXP curve becomes wonkier around this point - and you have a nearby source of Metal Slime spawns - means that resetting a character back to Level 1 isn't too big an ask, because they're likely to be back up to your level within a couple of hours. This system is wonderful and I can absolutely see why this game became an absolute sensation on its original Famicom release: I can imagine endless playground discussions about cool things you can do with this system, with maybe even one kid mentioning how you can turn a useless Gadabout into a (sorta) all-powerful Sage if you stick with them for 20 levels before they're laughed away by their friends.

While I do now think that Dragon Quest III is not as good a game as the original, owing mostly to a meandering structure it shares with II that just doesn't sing like the tight, lean original, this revolutionary leveling system was something I found really engaging once it opened up, and twinned with some genuinely tough bosses that made the most out of DQ's minimalist combat system (that is, frankly, not terribly fun in and of itself most of the time) and got me genuinely sweating, I still think this game is can stand tall as a very good game, even if I think the design philosophy of the original classic works less and less well the bigger the game is.

Dragon Quest III does allow you to play as female characters for the first time, which is cool, but it does also open up the series to another part of the Assumed Myth around it that I increasingly struggle to stomach, which is that Dragon Quest's shockingly frequent filtrations with outrageous Horn is part-and-parcel with the series' charm rather than being just straightforward sexism that feels particularly gross in a series that is meant to be enjoyed by all ages. And I'm sure there are people leaping to their keyboards to inform me that, actually, female characters in this game are better than males because they get exclusive powerful equipment and personalities with better stats than their male counterparts, whilst conveniently forgetting to mention that this superiority takes the form of battle bikinis and "sexy" personalities. Yes, you totally can gaslight gatekeep girlboss into the ultimate female warrior in Dragon Quest III, but you're going to have to objectify yourself in order to do so.

Having said that, I am glad that I played this game with an all-girl party, not only because it was just pretty fun to save the world with 16-bit renditions of the Gullwings by my side, but also because it allowed the ending to unexpectedly hit me in a way it hadn't before.

Like I said at the top, the ending is what hit the hardest, this time as last time. But not because of the shock of nostalgia and the presented Big Twist. But because I found this ending to be, quite unexpectedly, crushingly sad. From finally reuniting with your father after hearing about him your whole adventure, only for him to die in your arms never recognizing or realizing that you are his daughter, the hollow end of Zoma as he says, correctly, that all of this will Happen Again before you are forever locked away from returning to the world you fought to save, and are trapped forever in this strange land where people speak as from a different age gone by. A land whose king rewards you by stripping you of your name, and claiming that now you will be recognized and venerated as Erdrick, the greatest hero the world of Alefgard has ever known.

It's horrible. To lose everything, your family, your world, even your name, was bad enough, but knowing from the prior two games that this woman would instead be remembered as a Man?* Fuck, dude. It hit me like a truck. I don't think the narrative of Dragon Quest III is particularly compelling as a whole, but this specific beat, this ending? Genuinely tied my chest into knots. This isn't anything anyone talks about when they talk about Dragon Quest III. Nothing of the assumed myth around this game records this heartbreak, most people don't even see this ending as particularly sad.

The hero, whoever they were before, is dead. Long live Edrick, the great man who vanquished the darkness, his legend persisting through history, an assumption of What Happened In Dragon Quest III that colors the history - and woman - that really happened, in this telling of the tale, at least. Erdrick and Dragon Quest are as one, casts made in the something that never was, but something it was assumed to be.

Is this a happy ending? It doesn't feel like it.