When the release date for Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake was announced, I thought I would pick up the version of Dragon Quest 3 that was already on the eShop and play through it ahead of the new version’s release. I’d played through the game before and generally liked it, but I wanted a bit of a refresher ahead of this new and improved version that was about to drop. I went into the HD-2D Remake with high expectations and little information, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to just be Dragon Quest 3 with a fresh coat of paint.
I know, it sounds obvious. Dragon Quest 3 is in the title, so what on earth was I expecting? Well, I was expecting a rebalancing of sorts – the original game got a little bit grindy in places, after all – maybe some big quality-of-life additions, new and improved content, and maybe a bit more story where the original was lacking. Barring that last point, I got very little of what I’d expected.
For those who’ve never played it before, Dragon Quest 3 is the first game, chronologically, in the Dragon Quest series. Kind of, at least — Dragon Quest 11 might actually be a prequel to that, but it’s all a bit up in the air. The game follows a teenager who is the child of a sadly deceased legendary hero, who heads out on their own adventure to discover the world and probably save it from evil, just as their dad had done.
I won’t spoil the rest of the game, even though it’s 30 years old, but it’s a pretty fun romp through a fantasy land with some fun twists along the way. It’s undercut somewhat, though, by an impersonal cast of supporting characters that make up your party.
Unlike other JRPGs and even other games in the Dragon Quest series, your party members aren’t set and defined personalities. Instead, they’re just names and roles, recruited from a nearby inn and replaced just as easily. This puts the focus more on the hero of the story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does make them feel a bit disposable. They aren’t really party members, and this isn’t really a story about a group of adventurers, it’s a story about one person, and everyone else is just along for the ride.
The one benefit to this, though, is that without any personal attachment to your mostly silent companions, you can swap them out as you please, recruiting others in their place on a whim and experimenting with different team setups. It’s a nice way to introduce variety to the combat and encourage you to find new strategies, rather than settling on a single cheesy strategy and sweeping through the rest of the game with it.
Still, despite their impersonality, I did find myself getting attached to the bleached names that adorned the screen in battles. Dorothy may not have ever spoken a word to me, but she was still my trusted mage, slinging spells that saved my rear more times than I could count. When it was time to trade her in for somebody else, I was torn — but a hero must do anything necessary to save the world, and Dorothy was not long for this party.
If all of this is sounding familiar, it was feeling pretty familiar for me too, having just played through the original(ish) game. The fact is that there’s very little functional difference between Dragon Quest 3 and Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. There are a few small additions sprinkled throughout, like some changed up difficulty settings, a new vocation, and some very minor quality-of-life additions, but this is effectively the same game as it was some 30 years ago, warts and all. You’ll probably have to grind a bit, you’ll probably get frustrated from time to time, and there is very little new to discover beyond a few additional cutscenes and a monster arena. Cool, I guess, but not exactly what I’d call a game-changer.
The one thing that has changed, of course, is the graphics, and I’m a little bit torn on this, too. This is undoubtedly a gorgeous game, with beautiful, well-lit environments through which sprite-based characters walk and battle. But it’s also not really HD-2D, at least as we’ve come to know it. Prior games using this art style, like Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy, still had mostly pixel art environments, with familiar sprite tiles projected onto 3D environments to make an almost diorama-like look.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake does away with this for the most part, opting instead for fully 3D environments with only characters being pixel art-based. The result is something that looks closer to something like Star Ocean: The Second Story R than anything we’ve seen in past 2D-HD games, with environments that look like they’d be more suited to chibi-like characters along the lines of Bravely Default than sprite-based characters. I don’t think it looks bad, by any means, and there are some environments that absolutely pop, but it just doesn’t feel like HD-2D to me anymore.
The music, too, is wonderful – though the familiar Dragon Quest themes are starting to get a bit stale at this point – and the UI presentation walks the line between modern and retro, providing a familiar feeling that’s still mostly accessible in the modern era. The text is a little bit on the small side, especially on a Switch Lite, but it’s easily overcome in the grand scheme of things.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D is one of the most faithful remakes I’ve ever played, for better and for worse. If, like me, you’ve played a version of this wonderful game recently, it might not be worth spending the cash on a new version that is functionally almost identical and left me wanting more. If you’ve never played DQ3 before, though, there’s no doubt that Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D is the best way to play one of the most iconic games in the series’ history.
Rating: 4/5
It's Black, Back Again.