Dragon Quest Is Always Dragon Quest

The series is considered a hardcore RPG sometimes, but that’s not what it was made to be. It was actually designed as more of an introduction to the ideas of role-playing games, which were truly hardcore experiences in the mid-‘80s. Chunsoft, the original developer for the franchise, made their name with these kinds of adaptations of existing genres, from Dragon Quest with RPGs, to the Portopia series with adventure games, to Mystery Dungeon for roguelikes. They knew exactly which edges to sand down—not to fundamentally change the genre they were working in, necessarily, in a way that would make it unappealing to existing fans—but to instead broaden its appeal. Little concessions here and there against the established system of roguelikes with Mystery Dungeon games, such as creating spaces to store some weapons and items that’ll remain even after death, or making it so that, at least in early runs, players would know the names of items they discovered in their exploration of the dungeon, and what they were used for, as well. Making it so that you kept your earned experience in Dragon Quest, but lost half of your gold when you died, in order to keep players from feeling like they were wasting time, and that giving things one more try would let them continue to progress since they were guaranteed to be stronger in their next attempt.

Chunsoft left development of the series behind after its fifth game, but their vision for what it was supposed to be remained. Dragon Quest games can be difficult, yes, but only if you don’t approach them in the way they are meant to be approached. And as they are purposefully created to be approachable, even in what is now considered to be their old-school design, so long as you are open to learning its ways, the game will teach them to you. 

That the series has retained these core philosophies through various decades and developers, that each game always feels like Dragon Quest from start to finish—visually, in the game design, even in terms of new additions to the gameplay experience—has made it so that people always know what they’re going to get from one of these games. In Dragon Quest XI, you could mess around with a more modern take on combat where you can free-roam the battlefield and arrange your characters in different areas, or you could just switch to classic combat. Neither has an advantage over the other, it’s just whatever you felt like doing, in the same way you could play with these gorgeous polygonal character models in a 3D world, or lovely 2D sprites in a 16-bit rendition of the world if that’s more your speed. 

Dragon Quest III HD-2D is as much of a reminder of the timelessness and flexibility of Dragon Quest’s design as Dragon Quest XI was. It’s a remake of a game that was first released in 1988 on the Famicom in Japan, before ending up with remakes for the Super Famicom and Game Boy Color, then additional remakes for iOS and Android that were adapted for the Switch and Playstation 4. And now, we’ve got the HD-2D edition, that seeks to update the original loveliness of the 2D design, but with the power of today’s engines behind it—a marriage that results in these absurdly detailed 3D environments for these 2D sprites to explore, along with all the little changes the series has made since the days of the Famicom. Easier to navigate menus and action inputs, difficulty levels to choose from, little bits of encouragement like giving you a few stat-improving seeds to help you get started making a new character you’ve recruited into a useful teammate sooner, and even optional quest markers for those who maybe don’t want to explore an RPG world like it’s 1988. This should all be familiar to anyone who’s played modern Dragon Quests at this point, as they’ve become normal parts of the series—little quality of life additions that keep the series approachable in the present, but still Dragon Quest. 

Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake has sold like wild out of the gate, and chances are good that Dragon Quest I + II HD-2D Remake will, as well. If Square Enix decides to also remake Dragon Quests IV through VI in this style, they’ll surely sell well, too, and whenever Dragon Quest XII comes out… you get it by now. They’ll all be Dragon Quest. Tweaked to be as playable in the present as they were at the time they originally released. Still a testament to the skill of Chunsoft and the core Dragon Quest team that worked together on all 11 of the mainline entries. That’s Dragon Quest, baby, then and now, and it’s why a remake of a 36-year-old game not only topped sales charts in its debut week, but emptied store shelves across an entire country in the process.

Marc Normandin covers retro videogames at Retro XP, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon, and can be found on Twitter at @Marc_Normandin.