I really wish Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was released in a different month (absolutely any other would do). If I hadn’t already pushed through multiple 20-50 hour games in the past few weeks, I probably would have been prepared for it, but I’m out of push. There’s no way I could burn the midnight oil to get a review ready in any reasonable timeframe.
I settled on playing as much as I could and giving my impressions instead. I played through the four NES titles in the Dragon Quest series (Dragon Warrior as they were at the time here in North America) a few years ago, and Dragon Quest 3 was my least favorite of the bunch. I recognize its immense reputation in Japan, and even over here, but it wasn’t the one for me.
So, I was sort of lukewarm about the prospect of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, but also somewhat excited to see if another lap around might make it click with me. Imagine my surprise when I put in well over a dozen hours during a busy weekend.
The first thing you should probably note about Dragon Quest III is that it was before the series got more of a focus on narrative. There’s little introduction before your mom tells you to go make friends and kicks you out the door. Your party members aren’t really characterized beyond their profession and whatever backstory your imagination might come up with for them. They’re just drones that will make up the muscle or support of your party.
It’s somewhat refreshing in a world bloated with exposition. The JRPG format generally favors a storyteller’s touch, but just being able to explore and loot the world without getting interrupted by other people’s problems at every turn can be a welcomed change.
That’s not to say there isn’t a story. You’re the child of a legendary hero named Ortega, who set out to defeat the Archfiend and never came back. People you meet will tell you what an awe-inspiring dude he was, so you’ve got a lot to live up to. And that’s exactly what the game is about; finishing what your father started. Like most JRPGs, this is done by traveling from town to town and righting wrong.
This isn’t the first time that Dragon Quest 3 has received a remake. A lot of the systems from prior remakes (Game Boy Color, SNES, and if you count it, mobile) have been held over, such as the personality systems that affect stat growth. Also, the Thief class, which is important for reasons I’ll get to.
But this is the first full remake since the ‘90s, and it’s a lot more lavish than what you could pull off on those platforms. Another new class (Monster Wrangler) has been added, which gains abilities based on which of the (also new) friendly monsters you locate. I think the monster locating/battling system of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remaster is kind of poor, consider me underwhelmed, but if you’ve played the game a million times before with every class configuration possible, a new one will probably be welcomed.
The graphics got the most prominent overhaul. I do enjoy Square Enix’s HD-2D style and the way it tends to respect a game’s retro roots while giving something more visually splendiferous to chew on. It does look pretty great here, except the sprites are a bit more detailed than I would have expected.
Considering the simplicity of Dragon Quest 3’s original art style, a lot had to be reimagined. Buildings now look like buildings, environments are a lot busier, and the world map feels a lot larger. It looks good, but it’s give and take with how it affects the actual game. It forces a reliance on your mini-map much of the time to know which building has what function, and that can dissuade exploration. It’s also harder to tell what’s interactive in the environment, which can lead to humping everything in search of the interact prompt.
The enemies all look familiar and still follow the palette swap system, but they’re nicely animated. However, that’s the best thing I can say about the battles themselves. I don’t know what’s going on, but the default speed for battles is ridiculously slow. Between the animations, the dialogue crawls, and strange bits of hesitation between, I can feel the frustration creeping in. Who has time for this? I cranked the battle speed up (it can be done on the fly, thankfully) and still found it to be a bit too slow.
You can set your party to use “tactics,” which essentially hands control over to the AI. I found this very useful, since exploring the overworld in the original Dragon Quest 3 usually just boiled down to me mashing the confirm button to make each member of my party use “attack.” Now I can just set the whole party to “Fight wisely,” press a button, and doze off until the next turn. I kind of feel like I’m skipping a major part of the game, but I was technically doing that originally, just with more button mashing.
One downside to the bigger world, however, is that it makes the encounter rate feel extremely high. Whether or not the frequency of random battles is actually higher than the original, I can’t tell for sure. However, they certainly feel more common, and that’s bad enough. At least if you have a thief in your party, you can use one of their abilities to bypass enemy encounters for a time, but then you’re not gaining experience, which will just bite you later on.
As I said, the whole package is a bit give and take, but personally, I feel that the modernizations really help Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake taste a little more palatable. I like the early Dragon Quest games because they feel very streamlined, keeping the action simple so the spotlight can be put on exploration. A lot of that is carried over, even if some concessions have been made that feel more like a waste of time than a worthwhile addition.
The most insulting part for me is that there’s an option to turn on objective markers. I’m sure that there’s a subset of players who find this to be a necessary feature, I’m not trying to invalidate anyone’s preference. However, I feel like if you extract the wandering and exploration from Dragon Quest 3, you’re not left with a whole lot.
And really, I find that the updated graphics make exploring the world more worthwhile, heightening that all-important layer of gameplay. It’s that part that drew me in and kept me playing for as long as I have (so far). Beyond just wanting to see areas I recognize from the 8-bit original reimagined, the visual variety of the art style just makes it feel more like an adventure. I’m looking forward to hitting the seas in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. More than that, however, I’m excited to see how the extra shine enhances the first two games sometime next year.
Published: Nov 19, 2024 12:07 pm