Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Review (PC) – Mastered Masterpiece

I have been on a Dragon Quest high for the past few months while playing Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake previews. As a fan of the original Dragon Quest III released as Dragon Warrior III for the NES back in 1988, and then again as Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation on December 4, 2014, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the full game. Now that the wait is over, I’m finally able to dive into the game and I couldn’t be more excited about that.

Game Name: Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (Reviewed)
Developer(s): Square Enix
Publisher(s): Square Enix
Release Date: November 14th, 2024
Price: $59.99

The legendary hero Ortega has disappeared, and the main evil, Archfiend Baramos, was not defeated. His child is now tasked with taking up the hero’s call and restoring peace to the world. Not only will you be following in Ortega’s footsteps in the world, but you will be discovering what happened to him.

Becoming A Hero

You begin the game with a personality test. This will be different for most players as the answers you give to these questions then put you in a scenario. This time around I was then a monster that ran around a village. If I tried to talk to anyone, my monster avatar would put them on fire with its breath. After seeing I was only making things worse, I left the village alone. This resulted in the voice telling me I was too caring for my good and then the real game began.

 Once you are given the mission from the king, he tells you to go to the bar to recruit new allies. You can get the first generic three allies from the bar, or if you go upstairs, you can ask for a specific hero. It will ask you for a name, a class, and a gender. My main party started was me, a mage, a warrior, and a thief. Thief is very handy as you get extra items after fights. I eventually went on to change the thief to a monster wrangler.

Something unique to the remake is you can either turn off the objective markers on the map and glean what it is you need to do from conversations with NPCs or keep the objective markers on and it will give you an orange circle that surrounds places you should go to progress your adventure.

The actual mechanics of combat in Dragon Quest III haven’t changed. And it doesn’t need to. The combat is turn-based and solid. It starts with a screen before combat where you decide to fight during an encounter or not. You can also sort out the tactics of your party members as well. This ranges from using up as much MP in combat as possible, to only using the attack button. You can also just put them on a turn order where you can tell them specifically what to do during combat.

When combat starts you determine what action you will take. When things take effect will be determined based on the agility of the characters. Faster character’s actions will start first. Characters can only use the items that are in their inventory. Be sure to give your characters healing items before big battles so that if you lose your healer, the other characters can heal.

 Remaking A Masterpiece

Square Enix could have easily only recreated Dragon Quest III in the new HD-2D engine and called it a day. Luckily they did more than that. There is a new class and a whole new mode in the game. Monster Wrangler is one I tried out and it is a very interesting class. The base stats are low but the abilities a Monster Wrangler gets make it a class able to make up almost any position in the game. You can turn a monster wrangler into an offensive damage dealer. You can also focus on its healing abilities to help a party that needs more healing. Monster Wrangler also gets boosts to its stats and abilities when you deal with the other mechanic of this game, the monster arena.

In Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake you can make friends with monsters that aren’t antagonistic around the world. You will send these monsters to a keeper named Monty. Some monsters are easy to find and will let you get close and talk to them. Other times it requires you to sneak up on them or find certain items for them to join you.

When you have a good number of monster friends you can then pit them head-to-head with another monster party at the monster arena. You will have ranks you can win tournaments for with each rank increasing in difficulty. Combat in the monster arena works similarly as in the field except you don’t level up monsters by winning fights. You level them up by finding the same type of monsters. If you find two slimes it levels up the slime you found first.

A new thing in this remake in particular is added voice acting. All the story beats have moments with voice acting. All the added voice work does add to the experience, especially when the angelic voice from above talks to you. Whoever was doing the voice for her was amazing!

HD-2D

When I first saw the game and concept of Octopath Traveler it became a must-purchase title. The art, the backgrounds, and the pixel sprites all looked beautiful and upscaled to higher resolutions masterfully. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake not only continues this trend but makes it look even better. The maps are all in a 3D plane with the sprites and monsters being 2D.

I played the game mainly on Steam Deck and for 90% of my playthrough it was on a locked 60 FPS. The other 10% happened during big areas of the overworld. When there were a lot of trees on the screen there were a lot of frame dips.

 

Becoming A Legend

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a phenomenal remake of a masterpiece. The new orchestration sounds heavenly, the HD-2D engine makes it look beautiful, and the added mechanics and story beats flesh it out even more. I would recommend this game to everyone and anyone. If you don’t like difficult games, you can change the difficulty so your characters never die. If you want more difficulty and want to test your prowess you can enhance the normal difficulty to make each encounter deadly.

Review Disclosure Statement: Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake was provided to us by Square Enix for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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