If you had to pin down Japanese games from the late 80s with two key characteristics, it would have to be genre-defining new ideas and baffling naming conventions, especially when bringing those games to the West. Final Fantasy’s number confusion is well known, but Dragon Quest has its own convoluted naming history so that, chronologically speaking, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is retelling the first game in the series – a series originally called Dragon Warrior in the US. Square Enix are sticking with it, though, with an HD-2D trilogy going in canonical order.
Square Enix has often tapped into the rich vein of their 80s and 90s Dragon Quest back catalogue, whether it’s with modern mash-ups like Dragon Quest Heroes and Dragon Quest Builders, or the various enhanced remakes and ports that go all the way back to early smartphones, Game Boy Color and even Super Famicom. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is re-retreading ground in those respects, but given how good the results are, I doubt anyone will complain.
Playing on Nintendo Switch (and with the game also coming to PlayStation, Xbox and PC), this HD-2D remake looks simply sublime. I’m at the point where I think Square Enix should put their entire library through the HD-2D conversion process. Sure, there’s the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series which is a great way of preserving the original art style and adventures for new systems, but HD-2D provides a far more luxurious and appealing feel to the games.
You still have the same form and structure to the world of Dragon Quest III, with an overworld to wander across getting into randomised battles, and then towns and dungeons to venture into. There’s a lot of lovely touches and tweaks across all of this, though. The landscape of the overworld has a subtle topography to it, for example, which you’ll also notice in a town like Reeve, and the buildings that you step into in Aliahan feel larger and packed with more visual detail. All buildings have separate interiors now, instead of being exposed while wandering the town. Then there’s just the lighting, which adds a delightful dusky glow as nighttime descends and has shafts of sunlight streaming through windows.
Really the only downside I can think of is that these conversions will take longer to produce, as they’re rebuilding games in Unreal Engine. Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D was announced way back in 2021 and it’s more than three years later that it’s coming out. Even so, I know there’s people who’ve been banging on tables for a Chrono Trigger HD-2D remake for years now.
As well as the graphical overhaul, there’s some quality of life improvements that have been fed into Dragon Quest III. Most noticeably there’s now a mini-map in the top right corner, so you can better see where you’re heading – though pulling up the full map will still needed at times to avoid getting too lost in dungeons – there’s better equipment icons for managing your party’s gear, and you can save at churches and certain other figures, not just when chatting to Kings. There’s also auto-saves as a further fallback.
The early part of the game has been improved with more tutorials, both with hints and tips being dished out by people you chat to in towns, and with full pop-ups at key points to explain other key ideas.
A common nicety of a modern remake is a sped up combat system, and that’s very true in this HD-2D remake. By default you simply control the Hero while the rest of your four-person party will automatically fire off attack and abilities in accordance with predefined tactics settings. You can adjust these on the fly to emphasise support or all-out attack, set the whole party to automate, or just take individual control for key moments, and on the whole it’s a great way to get through any level grinding. You’ve also got three speed settings for combat, with the middle ‘Fast’ setting being what felt most comfortable for me. There’s also three difficulty settings – the witty ‘Draky’, ‘Dragon’ and ‘Draconian’.
There are still some historical oddities, though. The main combat screen initially shows your characters arrayed against the enemies, but as attacks are dished out it switches to the old view of just enemies. Additionally, you can only target enemy types, as opposed to specific enemies, and that does limit your ability to gang up on particular enemies. It could have gone a touch further in the revamp here, but chose instead to preserve the original style.
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is shaping up to be a truly sublime way to revisit this classic RPG, staying true to the original, but giving us those sumptuous HD-2D stylings alongside plenty of modern quality-of-life tweaks.
