Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake preview: classic adventuring in near 3D

I only got a small taste of what it has to offer, and as someone of the era, there’s a lot to love.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake / Square Enix

People love to say that gaming is better than it ever has been, and yet there is still something about the classics that keeps dragging us back. There was a period when the NES and SNES were king, and that was the heyday of RPGs. Many of these old-school games have seen a comeback over the past few years. Romancing Saga, Live A Live, early Final Fantasy games, and the Mana series have all returned, and you might have noticed something connecting all of these games. They are all Square Enix titles.

It seemed strange that possibly Square Enix’s most well-known series, Dragon Quest, hadn’t received the remake treatment, but it appears that the publisher was saving up to make something special. Dragon Quest 3 is the first in the series to receive a remake complete with the HD 2D style you might recognize from games like Octopath Traveler or Triangle Strategy. It’s hard to deny that it looks fantastic, particularly when you compare it to the 1988 original, but don’t expect the gorgeous lighting or detailed diorama-style fights of these other games.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake / Square Enix

The DQ3 remake is still built on the bones of a 36-year-old game, and there are some limitations to this. I played around three hours for this preview, and the story so far is fairly bare-bones. There are quality-of-life updates like new difficulty settings, auto-save, and objective markers, but outside of some new classes, it’s mostly the DQ3 that you fondly remember. That has its positives and negatives. People from this era will be getting exactly what they want, but newer players could be put off.

One addition that I know for certain wasn’t in the original is a chest that made me mad. The chest is right next to the recruitment counter, somewhere early in your journey that you are destined to encounter. Most people will find it locked, and the chest will then tell you, “You can claim various items from this chest if you pre-ordered the game or bought it from certain shops. For more details, visit the website of the shop where you bought DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake from, or read the instructions for claiming your bonus items.” It feels gross that a developer would disrupt the immersion and lower the quality of a game to ask you to buy DLC, but with how far other publishers are willing to go to make a quick buck, it might not faze you.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake / Square Eni

I also played on the Nintendo Switch Lite and I found the text difficult to read. This likely isn’t an issue on the bigger screen, but something to note if you have trouble reading small text. It’s just a little detail, but I would have liked some more options for text size and other accessibility options given that this is a remake. You do have the ability to speed up battles, but even ‘Ultra Fast’ can feel a bit slow.

Three hours might sound like a lot, but it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to epic RPGs like Dragon Quest. I only got a small taste of what it has to offer, and as someone of the era, there’s a lot to love. However, it is still very much an older game, albeit in a shiny new package, and more modern gamers without the same attention spans might not be able to stomach the slow pace. Still, I’m excited to see where the adventure takes me.