Dragon Quest III is one of the many games that I first played on an emulator back in the mid 1990s. After playing it, I picked up the game when I was collecting retro games in the 2000s. I really didn’t think much of it until I started making YouTube videos.
From what I remember about this game, I liked it more than the second game. It was easier to play, and I liked the improvements made to the party system. There was also more to do in this game, and O had more fun with this one.
It has been a few years since I played this game. Dragon Quest III feels like some of the other RPGs that I’ve enjoyed over the years. It has several things that I like about retro RPGs, and a few that I don’t like at all. I’m looking forward to revisiting this one and eventually comparing it to the other RPGs that I’ve played.
TLDR: This is my favorite game of the first three Dragon Quest games.
Narrative
What I like about Dragon Quest III is that it doesn’t appear to be connected to the previous two games in the series. The Story takes place in a different world with a lot of similarities to real locations on Earth. This all gets explained as you play through the game.
Dragon Quest III acts as a prequel to the first game, and takes place on two worlds. It is a cool idea, and I like how they connect the game to the other two in the series. This explains everything quite well, but I do wonder why no one else ever mentions the other world in the next two games.
It has a fairly standard plot at the beginning of the game. You have to stop a bad guy from destroying the world. Of course, that isn’t the only thing that happens, because there is a second bad buy for you to fight. Once you defeat Baramos, his boss, Zoma, shows up.
He opens a hole to the “Dark World,” which is where the first and second games take place. Once there, you have to gather the items from the first game and then defeat Zoma. With that done, your character is given the title “Erdrick,” which is the name of the main character from the first game.
I like how this game ties into the previous two games. The false ending is fun, especially when you remember that an ending like this was fairly rare for a console RPG at the time. Like many games in this series, plot points were added in other versions of it. I just focused on the NES game, which is why I didn’t mention them.
Gameplay
The gameplay in Dragon Quest III is very good. There isn’t too much grinding, you can customize your party, and the battles are fun. I liked the changes made between the second game and this one.
This is the first Dragon Quest game where you have some control over who is in your party. You don’t go on a quest for your party members, which is a little disappointing for me. Instead, you can make your own characters and decide who to take on your quest. There are six classes to choose from, and you can select the gender of the character. Here are the classes:
- Soldier
- Wizard
- Pilgrim
- Fighter
- Merchant
- Goof-off
This is a turn-based RPG. You get into random encounters, and then select what action each of your four party members will take. If you’ve played any RPG before, this setup should be easy to understand. There is a fair amount of grinding for levels and money in this game, but it isn’t any different from other retro RPGs from this time.
The game still has a bunch of annoying menus. There are fewer of them, but they’re still here. This is something I don’t like at all, but I understand it was a product of its time.
Overall, I do like the gameplay in Dragon Quest III quite a bit. It is an improvement over the previous games, and it is less difficult than the second game. While it doesn’t do too many things different than the second game, it did enough to say it is an improvement over what came before it.
Visuals
There isn’t a big graphical leap between the second and third games. Many of the things I didn’t like about the second game are repeated here. What I do like are the character sprites, how colorful the world is, and the enemy sprites.
I don’t like the battle screens in this game. It is a boring black screen with a few enemy sprites. You don’t see animations for attacks or spells. The only thing you have is a screen flash for spells and a shake for physical attacks. This would’ve been fine in 1988, but I just don’t like it in retrospect.
The character and enemy sprites look very good. I like the way enemies look on the battle screens, but I wish they had more animations to them. Because you have several classes of characters, those sprites look unique and have a decent amount of detail to them. The boss characters really stand out to me. I love how different they look from other RPGs.
This is a more cinematic game than the previous entries. The developers got a lot out of the in game graphics. I really like the opening cutscene and the other cutscenes in this game. A small part of me wishes there were more!
The game also has a day-to-night cycle that is cool to see in a game like this. It does play into the game in a few ways. It is nice to see developers do something like this and have a reason for it in the game.
Overall, I like the minor improvements that the developers made to the graphics. I wish they could’ve gone back to how the battle screens looked in the first game. Having a boring black screen is really disappointing.
Reviews at the Time
So, the reviews for this game are truly bizarre. This game was released in 1992, and at that time, RPGs weren’t as popular as they would be in the mid to late 1990s. I stumbled across a review for this game that doesn’t make any sense. I looked at a few publications for this.
GameZero had four people review the game, and they gave it a 53/100. One person hated RPGs, which makes me question why they assigned this game to him, and the other three thought it was okay, but nothing new. I do wonder what their opinion of this would be if the game had been released a few years earlier.
GamePro liked it. Their rating system is a little screwy, but MobyGames says it was an 80/100. There isn’t too much to say about it, aside from they thought the game was very challenging.
I looked through the Nintendo Power archive, and couldn’t find a review for Dragon Quest III. That doesn’t mean that the game wasn’t covered; it just means I couldn’t find it in that publication. Yes, I’m aware it was called Dragon Warrior III in North America.
It looks like this game didn’t get as much coverage, mostly because of the SNES and Genesis games that were released. It still amazes me that publications have people who don’t like a genre of video games review games in that genre.
8.5/10. I like this game more than the previous two games in the series. Dragon Quest III is a very fun RPG. It has some plot points and mechanics that were new for console RPGs in 1988. The biggest knock I have against this game has to do with the lack of improvements in the graphics.
Pros
- Good Story
- Fun Gameplay
- Colorful Graphics
Cons
- You get forced to use one character class
- No Quest to find your party
Conclusion
Nintendo and Enix made the bold move to release this game in North America four years after it was release in Japan. I’m not sure why this was done. Doing it did have a negative impact on the game’s review scores.
I like this game more than the previous games in the series. It has a lot of things that I enjoy from other retro RPGs, and the story is fun. Dragon Quest III has a great story, good gameplay, and fun graphics.
This is one of the games that I’m glad I played again. There were a few things that I missed during my last playthrough, and it was a fun RPG. I’ll be very interested in comparing this game with the other RPG’s I’ve played.
If you liked this post, please check out my other Dragon Quest posts. Such as Dragon Quest II or Dragon Quest vs Dragon Quest II.
I’ll be hopefully the HD 2D remaster this year. I started it briefly last year when it came out but had to set it down for other projects. I was a little overwhelmed at first, too, with having to hire characters – and going out into battles with a high rate of missing on all my attacks. Hoping that goes away as I level up some more!
How are the HD 2D versions? I’ve been playing the NES versions of the games.
I’m not far enough to really give an impression besides to say that I do really like the art style. I played a re-release of DQ2 last summer that looked essentially like the original with some fresh sprites. Haven’t touched the first game in ages but that was the first RPG I ever beat – like in 5th grade!