Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake review: Guess who's back, back again?

Lately I’ve found myself wondering, what makes a video game remake worthwhile? And frankly, the answer seems to depend heavily on the game being remade. I can look at something like Resident Evil 4 and scratch my head over why it exists, but then feel my eyes bulge out of my skull for something like Romancing SaGa 2. Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake (what a title!) lies somewhere in the middle. It’s perhaps one of the least necessary remakes of all time, but thanks to this latest facelift and the timelessness of the original, still makes for a compelling and soul-soothing adventure.

A re-re-re-re-remake of a classic

If you’ve played Dragon Quest 3 before, whether it was the NES original, the SNES remake, the Game Boy Color remake, the mobile remake, the… well, you get the idea, you know what you’re getting into here. This is a classic RPG adventure, perhaps the classic RPG adventure. This is the game those “Dragon Quest Day” urban legends started for, the game that is still treated in Japan like the pinnacle of the genre. And when you play it and imagine yourself being a kid seeing it for the first time, it’s easy to understand why. Dragon Quest 3 has everything: a massive hero’s journey with an intriguing hook, a huge world to explore with secrets and mysteries, and a fully customizable party system that lets you take control of your own narrative.

This HD-2D Remake has it all and then some. Obviously the main attraction is the visual style, something that’s been honed and refined since its debut in Octopath Traveler. It works quite well here, with a bit of a twist. There really isn’t any “classic” pixel art, neither worked into the 3D environment textures, nor the character sprites. The environments are fully realized, and the characters have a distinct style, still 2D but not in a referential way. The late legend Akira Toriyama’s monster designs are represented fabulously, with silly sound effects and the most elaborate 2D animation these creatures have ever seen. Even if the HD-2D gimmick isn’t for you, there’s no denying the ambition involved in making an NES game look this spectacular.

Doing a great job with jobs

If a Dragon Quest entry includes the "Vocation" system, that's inevitably my favorite part. Class/job/whatever party customization is always fun to play with, but when the systems allow for tinkering and powerful rewards for time spent, I’m all in. This remake brings Dragon Quest 3’s system closer to more contemporary games, with lots of incentive to work on characters across multiple Vocations. As you swap roles your character gets stronger and has access to more abilities. You can grind to your heart’s content, and you’ll be rewarded for the time you put in with stronger and more diverse characters. You can also customize their looks and voices a bit, which is completely new! It’s very strange to hear voice acting in an old school Dragon Quest, but it’s here!

Finding things and finding your way

Another new feature I wasn’t super into is the monster arena. Other games in the series have had similar minigames, but the way this one is implemented feels awkward. It’s essentially a scavenger hunt, with monsters hiding out in the world and appearing under certain conditions. Once you see one you have to sneak up on it using the right item or ability, that is unless you have a Monster Wrangler on your team. This new Vocation is neat, getting strange new abilities based on how many monsters you’ve found. I used the class and had fun seeking out monsters, but the arena itself was kind of a dud. When you find a monster it comes at a set level, and doesn’t power up until you find another of the same species. Since monsters are rare and some are pretty tough to find, you can end up in a situation where you simply don’t have the stats to progress in the arena. In that way it doesn’t feel functionally distinct from finding mini medals, which are also in the game.

Quibbles aside, other new features include a lot more tools for navigation and knowing where to go, which is great for a game of this vintage. Often finding your way around meant either guessing, or talking to every NPC and both remembering and correctly interpreting their hints. Here you have a “Recall” button, which saves lines of dialogue, signage, and other hints to a memory bank in the menu. You can also use waypoints for main objectives, or turn them off if that’s a step too far for longtime genre sickos. As someone with an unreliable memory for details like these, I appreciated having the options, and not feeling the temptation to look at old walkthroughs.

Those old walkthroughs wouldn’t have been perfectly helpful anyway, as this remake also adds new content to the story (and localizes some things differently). You get more background to the story of the hero tracing his father’s footsteps, getting to see some of your old man’s exploits instead of just hearing about them. The additions don’t suddenly elevate the storytelling beyond its Famicom roots, but it’s nice to have some new stuff if you’ve played Dragon Quest 3 two or three times before already.

I admit, as fun as it looked with its shiny, new coat of paint and new features to play with, I approached Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake with some cynicism. How couldn’t I with a title like that? Seriously, it sounds more like I bought a used car than played a video game. But the charm and timelessness of Dragon Quest 3 will shine through anything, and having it on a big screen and operating like a modern game was admittedly exciting. For all the bells, whistles, and flourishes, this is still the classic adventure that inspired millions of players over thirty years ago. A polish job like this just makes it shine brighter.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake is available on November 14, 2024 for the PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. A PC code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.