On February 10, 1988, the game company Enix (back before they merged with Squaresoft to become what we know today as Square Enix) released Dragon Quest 3 for the NES in Japan. This third installment in the legendary Dragon Quest franchise was heralded by fans and critics back in the day as one of the most revolutionary turn-based JRPGs of the 1980s. It improved upon the gameplay of its predecessors and incorporated innovative gameplay mechanics that later games in the series would retain, such as being able to create and swap customizable party members, a day/night cycle, an open-world-like gameplay structure, and more.
Over the years since then, Dragon Quest 3 has been re-released worldwide on multiple platforms and received several remakes, including the topic of today’s review – Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. This remake aims to reimagine the classic JRPG with an HD-2D graphical art style, update its in-depth class system with overhauled Vocations and a new Monster Wrangler Vocation, new lore that adds further depth to its story, new optional difficulty and accessibility options to make it enticing for newcomers while keeping the original, challenging difficulty intact for veterans.
Does it succeed? Well, as someone who played the Super Nintendo version of Dragon Quest 3 many years ago during a Dragon Quest marathon I did in the lead-up to my review of Dragon Quest 11 back in 2021, I can confidently say it does. So, sit back and relax as I regale you with my review of Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake and why I think it’s the best iteration of this world-renowned JRPG to date.
Disclaimer: This review was made possible thanks to a review code provided by Square Enix. The company did not see the contents of this review before publishing.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – What is it?
Much like previous versions of Dragon Quest 3, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is a turn-based JRPG where you play as a young hero and a group of customizable adventurers on a quest to save the world from a vile villain known as Baramos.
You will explore the world for information on where to find Baramos and equipment to make your team strong, help defend innocent townsfolk from monsters threatening them, complete sidequests that offer valuable rewards, and traverse the depths of complex dungeons to defeat Baramos' minions in turn-based combat.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – Presentation: Graphics, sound and performance
The game’s beautiful HD-2D presentation is one of the major selling points for this remake. For those who need a primer, ‘HD-2D’ is an art style where characters in-game are depicted by 2D pixel-art animations set against detailed 3D backgrounds enhanced with immersive, realistic lighting effects. This art style originated during the 1990s and was seen in titles like Grandia, Xenogears, Breath of Fire 3, and more. HD-2D was made popular again in recent years thanks to the success of Square Enix’s Octopath Traveler series and the Live A Live remake.
Price: $59.99 (Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch) at MSRP
Developer: Square Enix/ARTDINK
Publisher: Square Enix
Genre: JRPG
Install size: 15.72GB
Playtime: 62 hours
Platforms: Windows PC, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 5
Reviewed on: Windows PC (Steam)
Release date: November 14, 2024
Xbox Game Pass: No
Needless to say, the HD-2D art style of this remake is a perfect fit for Dragon Quest 3 as it helps keep the retro charm of the Super Nintendo version’s pixel art graphics alive while updating the graphical fidelity to modern standards. The pixel-art sprites of the characters and monsters are exquisitely detailed with smooth animations, while the 3D backgrounds are richly enhanced by atmospheric lighting and fog effects.
It certainly shines during the turn-based battles where we get to see classic monsters of the Dragon Quest series come to life with meticulously detailed sprite animations and the player party assailing them with extravagant, flashy spells and supermoves, which are visual eye-candy.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake’s presentation is then further enriched by an epic orchestral re-arrangement of the original NES version’s soundtrack by long-time series composer Koichi Sugiyama with occasional moments of well-executed voice acting that brings certain characters in the story to life.
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Performance-wise, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake runs flawlessly on PC and Xbox, easily reaching consistent frame rates of 60FPS and 1080p resolutions, which enrich the HD-2D aesthetic of the game. I reviewed the Steam version of Dragon Quest 3 using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 graphics card and Intel Core i5-9400 CPU processor, but if your PC rig doesn’t have the latest cutting-edge tech, there’s no need to fret. The PC Spec requirements for this game are fairly low, so you won’t need to rush out and buy the best graphics cards on the market to run Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake at its full graphical potential.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – Story
The story takes place in a fantasy world that is under threat of being conquered by monsters led by the vile Archfiend Baramos. Many years ago, a powerful warrior by the name of Ortega attempted to defeat Baramos but never returned. Cut to the present day, and Ortega’s offspring (our protagonist, whom the player can name and determine their gender) vows to finish their father’s work by embarking on their quest to travel the world and vanquish Baramos once and for all.
The story of Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is very much the same as the original NES version of Dragon Quest 3, with its traditional ‘Good vs. Evil’ scenario where you and your party must save the world from cartoonishly evil bad guys. The plot is fairly straightforward, with predictable plot twists (though there are a couple of exceptions) and minimal character developments, as your entire party are all silent custom-made avatars with little to no personality.
The way Dragon Quest 3’s plot is conveyed in the HD-2D Remake is much better compared to previous versions thanks to improved cinematography afforded by its new HD-2D art style and orchestral soundtrack.
While Dragon Quest 3’s story is pretty basic compared to the latter Dragon Quest games (like the epic, sweeping narratives like Dragon Quest 11 or Dragon Quest 8), it is still competently written. Plus, there are a couple of interesting sub-plots that had me genuinely intrigued by their execution and direction, especially for a game originally made back during an era when 90% of videogame plots were no more complex than rescuing princesses or saving the world from fire-breathing dragons.
However, the way Dragon Quest 3’s plot is conveyed in the HD-2D Remake is much better compared to previous versions thanks to improved cinematography afforded by its new HD-2D art style and orchestral soundtrack. This allows certain scenes to have more emotional impact without being held back by hardware limitations of the NES/SNES/Game Boy Color.
In addition, without going into spoiler territory, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake has added additional cutscenes to the main story, which provide more backstory to certain characters and other pieces of new lore that long-time Dragon Quest fans will get a kick out of.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – Gameplay
The gameplay of Dragon Quest 3 is about as traditional as it gets when it comes to JRPGs. You and your party of heroes must venture into the world, visiting towns for information on where to go next, buying equipment and healing items, exploring dark dungeons filled with enemies who must be defeated in turn-based battles, etc. Rinse and repeat.
In this HD-2D remake, the gameplay is 95% identical to all previous versions but with new exploration and combat accessibility gameplay features. For starters, it has a new Recall mechanic in the options menu, which allows you to record conversations you’ve had with NPCs. This mechanic helps you memorize the hints they provide, which then helps you know where to go for your next main story objective or side quest.
Other accessibility options for newcomers are a difficulty option setting to make battles easier or harder depending on your preference, objective markers and objective logs to help you remember what your next main objective is, and maps to help you navigate the world, towns, and dungeons of the game.
These new quality-of-life features are welcome additions since exploration in older versions can admittedly become confusing due to the vast world and labyrinthine dungeons. Not to mention, you had to rely on memorizing the hints you found from chatting with NPCs in order to progress the story. Thankfully, in the remake, Square Enix has redone certain cutscenes, which make it more obvious where a player will need to venture next.
It should be noted that a lot of these quality-of-life features are completely optional. So, if you’re a Dragon Quest veteran who wants to play Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D the old-school way without any assistance, you can turn off the objective markers/logs in the options menu and ignore the Recall mechanic and maps entirely so you can rely purely on your wits and memory of recalling NPC hints just like in the original NES, SNES or Game Boy Color versions.
Vocations have received major upgrades across the board
By far, the biggest gameplay change is the overhauled Vocations in HD-2D Remake. Vocations are character classes that you assign to party members when you create them, and they cover a wide range of roles, such as Warriors, Priests, Mages, Thieves, Merchants, and more.
Almost every Vocation in the remake has tons of new abilities that they never had in previous versions. For example, the Warrior Vocation previously didn’t have any special techniques or magic abilities to speak of. However, now the Warrior Vocation has a huge repertoire of new abilities designed to protect fellow party members, as well as sword-fighting techniques that deal with massive damage.
The same goes for the Martial Artist Vocation, which has been given new devastating super moves, and the Thief Vocation, which has lots of new useful utility skills that can be beneficial both in and out of combat. Even the quirky Merchant and Gadabout Vocations are more viable now as they have been given some very useful abilities in the HD-2D Remake, which will be of great help to the party in the latter half of the game.
To complement these overhauled Vocations, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake has implemented a new Vocation not seen in any previous version of Dragon Quest 3 – the Monster Wrangler Vocation.
The Monster Wrangler (first debuted in Dragon Quest 6 as the Monster Master Vocation) is essentially a beast-tamer class whose main gimmick is taming friendly monster NPCs you encounter while exploring the world and dungeons to learn combat abilities by wrangling them into your monster pen. In addition, Monster Wranglers can summon all the monsters you have wrangled into battle and have them gang up on enemies to dish out massive damage, depending on the number of friendly monsters you have tamed.
I love the Monster Wrangler Vocation since not only does it look the coolest in terms of character design, but it’s also great fun to use in battle. If you take the time to find and tame monsters, you can obtain some insanely powerful abilities that will shred through bosses like a hot knife through butter. Plus, the Monster Wrangler can be very lucrative thanks to the special Monster Arena mini game, which rewards you for winning tournaments.
While it is annoying that you can’t directly control your friendly monsters in the Monster Arena (at best you can direct their AI behavior so that they’re more likely to use abilities you prefer them to use), it is still fun and worth doing because the Monster Arena has tons of cash and equipment prizes up for grabs.
What I love most about the overhauled Vocations and the new Monster Wrangler Vocation is that they add so much more variety to the turn-based combat system. While the original combat system in previous versions was simple and effective, it did become stale as you were forced to form specific party Vocation formations with samey tactics in mind when dealing with difficult bosses.
A world of new possibilities at the Alltrades Abbey
At a certain point, you encounter a building called the Alltrades Abbey, which allows you to change party member Vocations as many times as you like. When a character changes Vocations, they will retain all the abilities they have learned and gain half the stats they have obtained from their previous Vocation in the process, essentially allowing you to multi-class. Unfortunately, the protagonist can’t change Vocations as they are permanently stuck with the Hero Vocation, which isn’t too much of an issue as the Hero Vocation is extremely powerful in its own right.
This is an original 1988 respec feature that was very innovative and certainly ahead of its time. Yet I hardly ever used the Alltrades Abbey feature when I originally played the Super Nintendo version many years ago due to most of the Vocations not having useful abilities to inherit. However, thanks to the new abilities every Vocation has received in this remake, along with the new Monster Wrangler Vocation, you now have loads more reasons to use the Alltrades Abbey and create all kinds of powerful heroes for your party.
For example, in Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake, I created a powerful character, "Jezerath," by starting as a Priest to learn healing spells, changing him into a Warrior so he could wear heavy armor, and then changing him to a Merchant to boost his attack and summon abilities, and then I turned him back into a Warrior. By the end of the game, I essentially had an unstoppable Paladin-esque character who protected the party while overwhelming enemies with a variety of deadly physical attacks.
I spent hours theory-crafting and experimenting with multi-classing Vocations via the Alltrades Abbey to see what kind of godlike heroes I could create to unleash their newfound powers onto enemies. The results ranged from hilarious disasters to glorious triumphs.
This is just one example of how insanely in-depth the Vocation system has become in the HD-2D Remake. I spent hours theory-crafting and experimenting with multi-classing Vocations via the Alltrades Abbey to see what kind of godlike heroes I could create to unleash their newfound powers onto enemies. The results ranged from hilarious disasters to glorious triumphs.
It was so much fun and added a healthy dose of creativity to Dragon Quest’s tried-and-tested turn-based combat system, so you’re not just stuck repetitively using the same abilities as in previous versions of Dragon Quest 3.
To achieve power, you must be prepared to level-grind for it
However, there is a big catch when you change Vocations at the Alltrades Abbey —characters reset to Lv.1 when you change their Vocation. This means you will have to spend a lot of time fighting monsters and earning EXP (experience points) to level them back up to speed with the rest of your party.
This leads to probably the biggest problem I feel most people may have with Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake – level-grinding. Modern Dragon Quest games, like Dragon Quest 11, for example, are pretty forgiving when it comes to the amount of EXP needed to level up your characters. However, a lot of the NES and Super Nintendo-era Dragon Quests were not, requiring tens of thousands of EXP to level up. The same is true for Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake.
When you reach the latter half of the game, you’re going to be spending a massive amount of time killing enemies to level up your characters in order to learn their new abilities and survive battling the bosses, which can be pretty hard to deal with if you’re unprepared. As you can imagine, this can be a very time-consuming and tediously boring process.
If you can’t stomach the thought of level-grinding fighting the same enemies over and over for a couple of hours at a time, then this game may not be for you.
Thankfully, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake does have a couple of features that can speed up the process of level grinding somewhat compared to previous iterations. You can adjust the difficulty mode to its easiest setting to significantly increase the amount of EXP you’ll gain from fighting regular enemies without being forced to sorely rely on tracking down the iconic and rare Metal Slime monsters for big EXP gains, then go back to your preferred difficulty mode once you’re done.
I also recommend adjusting the animation speed of turn-based battles to ‘Fast’ or ‘Ultra-Fast’ so you can get battles with low-level monsters over and done within a flash. On top of that, when a character changes Vocations at the Alltrades Abbey, the amount of EXP they need to level back up to their previous level is cut down by a good margin. However, if you can’t stomach the thought of level-grinding fighting the same enemies over and over for a couple of hours at a time, then this game may not be for you.
A Personality problem
Another issue I have with this game is the Personality mechanic. This determines the rate at which your party members gain certain stats when leveling up. You can temporarily adjust a party member’s Personality by wearing specific equipment or change it permanently by reading books.
I’m personally not a big fan of Personalities because they require hours of experimentation and trial-and-error to understand which ones are beneficial or useless. Plus, Personalities make half of the equippable accessories useless; if you aren’t paying attention to an accessory’s item description, they can alter a party member’s Personality without you realizing it and mess up their stats. It's no surprise that we haven't seen this feature in return for future Dragon Quest titles because it feels half-baked in execution.
Is Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake playable on handheld consoles?
Absolutely, because Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake has been confirmed to be Steam-Deck Verified. This means you will have no issue playing this game on the best gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck, Lenovo Legion Go, or the ASUS ROG Ally.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake Review – Should you buy it?
You should play this if ...
✅If you’re a fan of old-school lighthearted JRPGs or a fan of Dragon Quest
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is an old-school JRPG at heart, yet it’s made enough gameplay changes to keep it relevant in the modern era without sacrificing what made the original game special. It’s got a light-hearted narrative, an enjoyable turn-based combat system, overhauled Vocations, and a colorful world filled with secrets and sidequests to uncover.
You should not play this if ...
❌You prefer RPGs with darker stories or don’t like level grinding.
Dragon Quest games don’t usually venture into dark and mature themes very often but when they do, they can leave a big emotional impact. That being said, you won’t find much darkness in here as Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake’s standard ‘Good Vs Evil’ plot is about as traditional and light-hearted as it gets.
Additionally, you probably won't enjoy Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake if you detest level grinding, as this game does demand a fair amount of it, especially if you wish to take full advantage of its character class system or have an easier time challenging its late game bosses.
Overall, I enjoyed Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake. It took a beloved classic JRPG and successfully modernized it while keeping its old-school charm alive and well. The HD-2D art style is pretty to look at, the combat is entertaining, and the Vocation character class system is vastly improved. The new quality-of-life features are welcome additions, and the game is packed with tons of engaging gameplay content to keep you busy for hours on end.
While the level grinding can be tedious and demanding during the latter portions of the game, I feel the reward is worth the effort now that you can have tons of new character-builds to create and experiment with due to the overhauled Vocations in this remake. If you’re a stalwart fan of Dragon Quest who grew up playing previous versions of Dragon Quest 3 or a lover of retro old-school JRPGs that hark back to the 1980s or 1990s, then you’re going to love this game.
Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is set to release on November 14, 2024, for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. This was one of the best PC games and best Xbox games I’ve played in 2024. I can’t wait to see how Square Enix will tackle reimagining the first and second mainline installments of the Dragon Quest franchise when Dragon Quest 1 & 2 HD-2D Remake releases sometime in 2025.
