Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake brings a classic title to modern standards with its stunning HD-2D art. While the art doesn’t have the fancy animation other HD-2D titles have, it’s still gorgeous and preserves the original art direction. The combat offers tons of tactical choices thanks to a variety of classes and an abundance of status effects, although boss fights lean too far into RNG.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
Developer: Square Enix and Artdink
Price: $60
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC
An Xbox Series X|S code was provided by the publisher for review
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake takes a classic SNES JRPG and transforms it visually into a modern masterpiece of pixel artwork. The new art style brings the classic environments to life in a globe-trotting adventure. While the art is undeniable, there are also a number of quality-of-life improvements to help a modern audience, but it also doesn’t go far enough in a few places. Perhaps it’s unfair to compare it to other modern remakes, but Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake doesn’t quite shake off all the rust.
The story of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake sees you set off into the world with two tasks; finding your father Ortega and defeating the great evil plaguing the world. In the more classic JRPG style, this global adventure doesn’t have a single focused storyline to propel you, instead offering smaller stories in each town as you find more clues about your quest. One of the new features is an objective marker, which you can turn on and off whenever you like. The world provides plenty of clues, which you can save to a notepad with a simple button press, but for anyone who doesn’t want in-world help, you can use this new feature.
Exploration is done on a large overworld map, where you travel to new destinations. Towns and dungeons exist as you would expect, but traveling in between isn’t as exciting, with minimal areas and items to discover. That said, the dungeon design still feels top-notch, with plenty of side paths begging to be explored. You are rewarded for that exploration more often than not, so you aren’t disappointed frequently enough to abandon exploring altogether.
The art style of the HD-2D blends stunning backgrounds with impressive pixel artwork in the foreground. Locations look stunning this way and enemies in combat also make the most of this impressive art. Somewhere the HD-2D doesn’t get to shine enough is in combat, which still uses the almost first-person view, where your party isn’t visible while attacks are being exchanged. Combined with some lackluster animations in combat, this is an area where Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake feels much more like a remaster, a feeling that underlines, but doesn’t overtake this great RPG.
Combat itself is excellent, with a large variety of abilities and spells across the different classes. The group system forces you to be more tactical with your turns, with the ability to hit all enemies with spells coming much later in your journey. The emphasis on status effects can be felt, especially in how you have to play defensively. If you ignore these status effects for even a turn, your entire party might be unable to attack for multiple turns. The combat has teeth on the normal difficulty, with a small number of mistakes resulting in a wipe.
Where the combat doesn’t always feel great is boss fights. The emphasis on status effects turns boss fights into a game of chance instead of a tactical one. You are frequently at the mercy of overpowered statuses and overpowered abilities. Most boss fights took a few attempts if I wasn’t overleveled and it never felt like I had to make meaningful changes to my strategy, I just needed to get lucky. In a few fights my resurrection spells failed upwards of seven times in a row, which never feels good.
A lot of this frustration is helped thanks to some of the quality-of-life additions like autosaves. Losing a battle resets you to a recent autosave, which is almost always the last fight you won or the last door you walked through. Boss fights allow you to start from the beginning of the fight, which probably prevented me from needing to walk away from Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake at my most frustrated. A quick save so I could quit in the middle of the dungeon would have been nice, but I think most of the frustrations someone new coming to this game would have if they played the original version have been smoothed over.
The job system is another place where Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake shines. While I never felt compelled to make or pick up a new party member unless I had to, I did frequently change my party members’ jobs. Not only are you encouraged to do it since it results in higher stats overall, with only half of your current stats lost on each switch. There is a nice variety of jobs but also not an overwhelming amount to work through either.
Once the story reaches a point of being more focused on your main quest, it hits a nice stride, allowing for a few impactful, if not revolutionary, emotional beats. The small stories across the game also flesh out the world in an expansive way that allows you to feel the weight of fighting for everyone. By modern JRPG story standards, it isn’t the best of the best, but it accomplishes far more than you would expect at first glance.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is an excellent recreation of a classic JRPG, using the spectacular HD-2D art style to create a gorgeous modern look without sacrificing its original pixel form. The narrative is strong, but a bit quaint in terms of its story beats, although it’s enough to propel you across its many continents. The boss fights disappointingly don’t feel tactical the way the rest of the combat does, and combat animations don’t feel on par with the rest of the HD-2D art, but these minor issues don’t entirely deflate an excellent RPG.
The Final Word
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake accomplishes its goal of bringing a decades old game to modern standards, offering a gorgeous art style and some quality-of-life additions. The tactical nature of the combat still works, although the lack of tactics during boss fights is disappointing. A chunk of battle animations could have used more love as it doesn’t feel like complete remake. The story isn’t as compelling as more focused modern RPGs, but it does still offer satisfying world-building and a few emotional beats. That said, the pros outweigh the cons for this remake, even if the remaking could have gone a bit further.
MonsterVine Rating: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
