Dragon Quest III 2D-HD Remake (Switch)
Jun. 22nd, 2025 04:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroYour father was the brave hero Ortega, who set out to fight the Archfiend when you were but a wee child. He failed and disappeared, reportedly falling into a volcano. Now, on your 16th birthday, it’s time to gather companions and set off in your father’s footsteps.
This is, to my knowledge, the fourth remake of this game; it originated on the NES, was remade for the SNES (Japan-only, but it’s been my favorite version via fan-patch—that added mini-medals and Pachisi tracks), was de-made for the Game Boy Color (a terrible version with collectable Monster Medals as the gimmick), and was re-made again for mobile devices and a collection for modern systems (which I haven’t played).
The major change, of course, is the “HD” part of the title, that they’ve redone all the graphics and the music to be much prettier. Gone are the days of beepy soundtracks, everything is fully-orchestrated now. They added a number of cutscenes, including a number of new ones that flash back to Ortega’s journey and give you a much better idea of where he went and what he did than earlier versions of the game. The translation is the high-quality job we’ve come to expect since the PS2 era, generally consistent with other games in the franchise—but using the original American Dragon Warrior translations of most towns and characters in Alefgard. (I prefer Hauksness to Damdara, but frankly as long as they’re using Erdrick instead of Loto I’m good.)
There’s a definite understanding of how games have changed over the past 40 years that is balanced against a desire to stay true to the original experience. There are a LOT of quality of life additions versus the NES original, including full maps, quest markers, a hotkey to heal the party between battles, and a lot more in-game details of items and quests. This version rearranges and adds more mini-medals, but the major new gimmick is adding a class called the Monster Wrangler and a hundred “friendly monsters” hidden around the world. Collecting the monsters powers up the Wrangler and also allows you to use them to fight in the monster arena for money and prizes. This version also adds Secret Spots and glittering item caches to the overworld map, which give you something to search for while you travel and make grinding time feel more worthwhile. (It also seems to make MP-restoring items and life-restoring spells more plentiful and available.)
The Wrangler, for reference, is an excellent class. It can use whips and boomerangs to hit groups, it gets a couple of nice healing abilities for the early to mid-game, and it gets the “Monster Pile-On” ability, which grows stronger the more monsters you find, was eventually my top damage-dealing ability. It also automatically makes shy monsters not run away, so you don’t have to worry about using musk or Fading Jenny herbs to catch them.
On the flipside, they added a number of bosses, because the original game had only a handful. (The original DQ games didn’t have the “new town, dungeon, boss” rhythm that the series eventually got into and because the staple for jrpgs. Heck, the first game only had three fights that could really be called “boss battles” at all.) They also added a sidequest to upgrade Ortega’s helmet to match the endgame gear; and a whole postgame series of insanely-hard battles (and slightly upgraded equipment).
I probably under-utilized the game’s class system, which is clearly designed for you to upgrade party members by switching classes. (If you class-change, you lose half your stat gains but keep all of your previous abilities when you drop to level 1; and then you can power-level back to basically where you were fairly easily while acquiring new abilities.) I started the game with a Martial Artist, but his single-target attacks weren’t strong enough to matter in random battles, he was fragile, and his special abilities weren’t very useful. I dropped him in favor of a Gadabout I power-leveled and turned into a Sage (the best magic class, which learns all the Cleric and Wizard spells and can use most of the same equipment). I didn’t want to change out my Monster Wrangler because she was great; but then I kept chickening out of changing my Priest into something else (either a Warrior or a Sage). In retrospect, I should have started her as a Thief for the speed boosts and unique abilities; and then made her a second Sage.
When you reach the Necrogond, the difficulty really spikes and gets frustrating—monsters that can cast Thwack (instant-kill your entire party) become common random encounters, and everything else starts barraging you with hit-all spells and breath-weapons of assorted elements. (I think the original developers took the wrong lessons from the badly-balanced Rhone at the end of DQ2.) At that point, you’re either grinding levels and rearranging equipment for every fight; or you run from most random encounters. The overworld of Alefgard is much more manageable as you explore, but then both the Talontear Tunnel (where you get the best shield) and Zoma’s Domain are back to being monstrously nasty. Fortunately, the developers realized that this particular problem was also something modern gamers would object to, and let you change the difficulty at any point. So after playing 99% of the game in Dragon Quest mode, I dropped to Dracky Quest (where your characters can’t drop below 1 HP) for the last five fights of the game.
The stinger at the end of the credits implies that Hargon is a priest of the Dragon Queen, which tells me they’re adding a bunch of plot to the I+II HD-2D remake when that comes out. (It’s very likely I’ll play that and I’m looking forward to the quality of life additions to both of those games.)
Overall: Probably the best way to experience this game, though there are still arguments for the fan-translated SNES version. They did a nice job keeping the original flavor but making it accessible to modern gamers.
This is, to my knowledge, the fourth remake of this game; it originated on the NES, was remade for the SNES (Japan-only, but it’s been my favorite version via fan-patch—that added mini-medals and Pachisi tracks), was de-made for the Game Boy Color (a terrible version with collectable Monster Medals as the gimmick), and was re-made again for mobile devices and a collection for modern systems (which I haven’t played).
The major change, of course, is the “HD” part of the title, that they’ve redone all the graphics and the music to be much prettier. Gone are the days of beepy soundtracks, everything is fully-orchestrated now. They added a number of cutscenes, including a number of new ones that flash back to Ortega’s journey and give you a much better idea of where he went and what he did than earlier versions of the game. The translation is the high-quality job we’ve come to expect since the PS2 era, generally consistent with other games in the franchise—but using the original American Dragon Warrior translations of most towns and characters in Alefgard. (I prefer Hauksness to Damdara, but frankly as long as they’re using Erdrick instead of Loto I’m good.)
There’s a definite understanding of how games have changed over the past 40 years that is balanced against a desire to stay true to the original experience. There are a LOT of quality of life additions versus the NES original, including full maps, quest markers, a hotkey to heal the party between battles, and a lot more in-game details of items and quests. This version rearranges and adds more mini-medals, but the major new gimmick is adding a class called the Monster Wrangler and a hundred “friendly monsters” hidden around the world. Collecting the monsters powers up the Wrangler and also allows you to use them to fight in the monster arena for money and prizes. This version also adds Secret Spots and glittering item caches to the overworld map, which give you something to search for while you travel and make grinding time feel more worthwhile. (It also seems to make MP-restoring items and life-restoring spells more plentiful and available.)
The Wrangler, for reference, is an excellent class. It can use whips and boomerangs to hit groups, it gets a couple of nice healing abilities for the early to mid-game, and it gets the “Monster Pile-On” ability, which grows stronger the more monsters you find, was eventually my top damage-dealing ability. It also automatically makes shy monsters not run away, so you don’t have to worry about using musk or Fading Jenny herbs to catch them.
On the flipside, they added a number of bosses, because the original game had only a handful. (The original DQ games didn’t have the “new town, dungeon, boss” rhythm that the series eventually got into and because the staple for jrpgs. Heck, the first game only had three fights that could really be called “boss battles” at all.) They also added a sidequest to upgrade Ortega’s helmet to match the endgame gear; and a whole postgame series of insanely-hard battles (and slightly upgraded equipment).
I probably under-utilized the game’s class system, which is clearly designed for you to upgrade party members by switching classes. (If you class-change, you lose half your stat gains but keep all of your previous abilities when you drop to level 1; and then you can power-level back to basically where you were fairly easily while acquiring new abilities.) I started the game with a Martial Artist, but his single-target attacks weren’t strong enough to matter in random battles, he was fragile, and his special abilities weren’t very useful. I dropped him in favor of a Gadabout I power-leveled and turned into a Sage (the best magic class, which learns all the Cleric and Wizard spells and can use most of the same equipment). I didn’t want to change out my Monster Wrangler because she was great; but then I kept chickening out of changing my Priest into something else (either a Warrior or a Sage). In retrospect, I should have started her as a Thief for the speed boosts and unique abilities; and then made her a second Sage.
When you reach the Necrogond, the difficulty really spikes and gets frustrating—monsters that can cast Thwack (instant-kill your entire party) become common random encounters, and everything else starts barraging you with hit-all spells and breath-weapons of assorted elements. (I think the original developers took the wrong lessons from the badly-balanced Rhone at the end of DQ2.) At that point, you’re either grinding levels and rearranging equipment for every fight; or you run from most random encounters. The overworld of Alefgard is much more manageable as you explore, but then both the Talontear Tunnel (where you get the best shield) and Zoma’s Domain are back to being monstrously nasty. Fortunately, the developers realized that this particular problem was also something modern gamers would object to, and let you change the difficulty at any point. So after playing 99% of the game in Dragon Quest mode, I dropped to Dracky Quest (where your characters can’t drop below 1 HP) for the last five fights of the game.
The stinger at the end of the credits implies that Hargon is a priest of the Dragon Queen, which tells me they’re adding a bunch of plot to the I+II HD-2D remake when that comes out. (It’s very likely I’ll play that and I’m looking forward to the quality of life additions to both of those games.)
Overall: Probably the best way to experience this game, though there are still arguments for the fan-translated SNES version. They did a nice job keeping the original flavor but making it accessible to modern gamers.
