Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake review: an authentic return for an RPG legend

Early on in the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake, I encountered a boss battle so frustratingly difficult that I just wanted to throw my Nintendo Switch at the wall. I was fighting against a group of hoodlums and its head honcho, and had to sit back as they devastated my party with hard-hitting attacks. I eventually won that battle by pure endurance and using up all of my healing items. I left feeling accomplished as a reward for my perseverance, like a true hero.

I’m glad that Square Enix preserved the intense difficulty that defined the original NES RPG, whose eccentricities have been faithfully preserved in its new upgrade. Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D’s turn-based gameplay may be simple, but its new graphical style complements its retro feel. Those old-school considerations pair perfectly with new modern quality of life improvements that make sure this remake never feels stuck in the past.

Off on a quest

Dragon Quest 3 follows a silent protagonist simply known as the “hero” who has to save the world from an evil monster named Baramos. They bring along three other companions with virtually no personalities to fight alongside them. Given that the original game was released in 1988, I wasn’t really expecting an emotionally moving story or a charming cast of characters like later series entries such as the most recent Dragon Quest 11. RPGs during this era didn’t have hugely elaborate plots, so the HD-2D remake lets me focus on Dragon Quest 3’s strong points: its exploration and battle system.

Dragon Quest 3 feels streamlined at first. I’m collecting items such as a wrecking ball and a few keys. Once the party manages to get a ship a bit later in the story, the game opens up much more, letting the party visit new towns to unlock optional side quests to earn items and equipment for the hard journey ahead.

The remake includes some great quality-of-life features like an objective marker that lets you know how to progress the story. This alleviates the frustration of wandering aimlessly that many retro games have. You’re also welcome to turn the feature off — and that’s key to the remake’s success. It’s a great way to cater to both veteran players who want to replicate the original experience as well as newcomers who want the convenience of modern games. Additionally, the remake does away with arbitrarily low bag limits on individual items so I don’t have to unnecessarily discard anything to make room for new items that I find. It’s a welcome change that modern RPGs like Dragon Age: The Veilguard have embraced and it makes exploration smoother as I don’t have to go back to put items into storage before heading out.

I do wish that these quality of life features extended a bit further. Random encounters can’t be turned off and their rate is annoyingly high. You can also only save your progress in a town’s church, which can be frustrating if you want to do so before stepping into a room with a boss fight. There is a separate autosave that updates after every battle, but that’s only a half-step toward modern convenience, leaving the system in between worlds. As a gamer that appreciates quality of life considerations, these delicate changes felt like they were made to try to keep the original’s difficulty intact, while not alienating modern audiences. Even with some missteps, it succeeds at this balancing act; there’s just enough here to make it feel new without losing its retro charm.

Modern facelift

Exploration is enhanced by the HD-2D graphical style used here. A sprite-based game like Dragon Quest 3 really benefited from this approach as it really adds to the retro charm. One of the major missteps Square Enix’s other recent remake, Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, made was that the move to full 3D took a lot of personality out of the original. That’s not the case here. The environments are lush with detail; trees, oceans, and buildings all look stunning. Despite being 2D sprites, enemies have as much depth as a 3D model.

That has some performance benefits too. The HD-2D remake runs great on Nintendo Switch, with virtually no frame hiccups, although sometimes load times can be a bit longer than I’d like. Waiting to save my progress reminded me of how long older Pokémon games took to do the same.

All the little upgrades add up without totally paving over the original. For its music, the remake now uses a high-quality orchestral score instead of the older digital instruments. That grand upgrade brings the original soundtrack to life in a much grander fashion, providing musical subtleties that the old NES blips didn’t quite reach.

There are a bunch of small touches in battle presentation that give the blank slate party some extra personality, too. The game’s voice acting consists of grunts and effort noises when firing off attacks. When selecting your party’s moves in battle, the camera pans out into a third-person view to show the entire party, whereas the original only showed a first-person perspective. These additions surprisingly add up quite a bit to make this remake much more expressive without throwing away the original’s minimalistic charm.

Old-school battling

While the remake gives the original an aesthetic overhaul, battles keep it refreshingly retro. There aren’t any special gimmicks like Persona 3 Reload’s One More or modern Pokémon Scarlet and Violet’s Terastallizing mechanics in its classic turn-based battles. I simply just take turns with the enemy to dish out attacks. While the battles are very straightforward, there’s depth to how I can build out my party members. I can select their class (choosing from ones like a Mage, Warrior, or Thief) and then reassign them when they reach level 20 while carrying over their skills, reverting them to level 1. This process cuts their stats in half, but makes them stronger in the long run. It’s a foundational version of a class system that would evolve into today’s RPGs — see Metaphor: ReFantazio’s Archetypes — but this simple approach works perfectly for a throwback game like Dragon Quest 3.

Its age can also be felt in its high difficulty, especially before it gives players strong weapons or resources. There are constant difficulty spikes. Random encounters can be harder than some bosses. Keeping the party’s equipment up to date sometimes feels prohibitively expensive, as weapons and armor cost a lot of gold. That difficulty did taper off a bit later in the game for me once I got the ship and was able to explore side dungeons to find new items to help out.

Even on the easiest difficulty, bosses still hit quite hard. Luckily, the easiest difficulty also prevents the party from ever dying, leaving them with 1 HP. It completely trivializes the game’s brutal difficulty, but I’m not ashamed to say that I set my game to it a few times while going through a rough patch. I just wish there were a better solution for players who want to experience the original adventure and still get a challenge. It’s a real Goldilocks situation.

In a time filled with remakes and reboots, Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D remake is one of the more successful ones I’ve played. It doesn’t have to deal with the debate between fixed and free-form camera angles or whether a 3D graphical overhaul lacked the charm of the original’s presentation. In fact, this is probably the most authentic remake I’ve seen in recent years. It kept close to the original vision that’ll keep veterans happy while adding in just enough sensibilities for modern audiences.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake was tested on Nintendo Switch with a code provided by the publisher.