Note: There are several mods I will recommend, currently hosted on Game Banana at the time of this writing, to fix many issues noted. The score will be based on the stock game, but I highly recommend the mods for a better play experience. This review also concerns the PC port, notes for the other ports will be appended as necessary. Finally, this game is not what the developers intended, certain changes were forced on them by the publishers, more in the review.

Some games are sheer legends that have set the tone for all games since. Some have aged poorly, so they are remade to be in tune with contemporary times, given quality-of-life improvements and a graphical update. Sadly, in trying to do this to a classic game, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake gets a lot wrong along with what it gets right.

A bit of background. Dragon Quest III (released as Dragon Warrior III in Western territories to work around then annoying licensing issues) was released in 1989 and pretty much set the tone many more RPGs since would try to emulate. It was released in 1992 belatedly in the West, so it wasn't as special there, but in its native Japan, it put Dragon Quest on the map as a cultural landmark in the RPG world. To this day Dragon Quest is still wildly popular there. It's worth mentioning this because decisions made not only to the localization but also against the wishes of the developers (by Square Enix) have compromised this game and made it not the product the developers wanted to deliver. And these decisions have even compromised the game in its native language as well, more on that below.

Dragon Quest III starts off rather generically in RPG fashion. On the 16th birthday of your main character, you are given the mission to follow in the footsteps of your dad, who set off to defeat a great evil and lost his life in battle. Since the grave threat he sought to overcome has not yet fallen, you are allowed to finish what he started. This snowballs into a grand quest that reveals far more is at stake than you imagined and brings the first two games in the Dragon Quest series into a whole new perspective.

The core gameplay is as old-school turn-based RPG as you can get. You explore the world map and dungeons, fight enemies in turn-based battles, get new equipment, learn new abilities, and you must defeat the great evils that scourge the land. The core gameplay loop from 1989 is essentially unchanged. There are a lot of quality-of-life fixes and this game does use the engine also used in Octopath Traveler along with a new graphical presentation, but it's not going to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the basics. Given this is a retro game nostalgia fest, that's a good thing. On the other hand, I can't escape the feeling this is just the SNES port with 3D backdrops, it doesn't really do anything I wouldn't expect from an early PS1 game graphically.

However, some of the new features should be discussed. Most of the quality of life features from prior remakes like a giant item bag with no inventory limit for spare items, a feature to remember conversations for later to avoid forgetting important quest details, and modernizing the save mechanics to match later remakes remain intact. However, some other features have been changed.

The Pachisi minigame and the monster medals from the Game Boy Color version are not present. However, a modified version of the second game post-plot dungeon is accessible from this port with a different layout and challenges. The monster arenas are now a mix of the Dragon Quest VIII monster recruitment mechanics mixed with the original version where you bet on monsters engaging in gladiatorial games for prizes. The Job/Class system now has a new job in the Monster Tamer, a character that has their own special skills and makes monster recruitment much easier. The other jobs and classes from earlier ports also return, with many skills and enhancements from more modern Dragon Quest games being used to make them all more distinct and useful. The story itself is largely unchanged, though some new bosses and story dialogue were added for better story flow.

I shall cover this in more detail in the moral section, but male and female roles exist for all playable characters, and this still determines certain armor you can wear and even a few dialogue scenes. They are now confusingly renamed "Appearance A" (Male) and "Appearance B" (Female), even in the Japanese text, but are referred to as male and female appropriately everywhere else, which is confusing, and to be frank, a rather lazy and useless change. There are mods to revert the text back to something more sensible that fixes some of the new clunky dialogue choices (in English only for now) that I recommend.

Graphically speaking, this game uses a 2.5D style. While still using hand-drawn pixel art, it's of decent quality, and world areas are rendered using a degree of 3D with pixel sprites. While this all looks quite good, it's still going to look like a really nice SNES game at best. Given the retro nostalgia feel and given it's clearly taking notes from the SNES port in that direction, this looks pretty good, but I'd pay 30 USD for this, not the 60 the publisher is charging.

It's worth noting that the developers, much against their will, were forced to censor certain artwork, like the character sprites to be less revealing. While this is partially to comply with CERO (the Japanese version of the ESRB), they also made edits to the Troll enemies, removing their prominent-looking lips, in the mistaken apparent belief they were a racial stereotype despite the Troll enemies being fictional beings. Given the Troll enemies now resemble Homer Simpson ripoffs, I would call this a change for the worse.

The characters who can be recruited to your party now have a large degree of customization, with each male or female archetype per class having different designs, a choice of different hair colors, and even voices for combat. Of course, these were censored, but this is barely noticeable in the sprite work for the most part unless you pay attention.

The music is the classic synthesized orchestra the now late Koichi Sugiyama is known for, albeit in higher quality instrumentation. There is now some limited voice acting, with appropriate accents for certain characters. For example, in an area that resembles Rome are Italian accented characters, an area like Portugal has Portuguese accents, and so on. They aren't so thick as to be incomprehensible and given the world map is modeled after many real-world parts of Earth (the map itself was directly modeled on Earth in the original game), this just adds some cultural flavor. The main character can be male or female, hence the singular "they" is used to refer to them as opposed to their name, though "he" or "she" is used as appropriate in certain dialogue otherwise. Battles now have voices for characters in either English or Japanese, much like certain non-battle dialogue. It's worth noting they confusingly do not specify in the voice selection which voice types are male and female, merely labeling them things like "Gentle" or "Determined". To clarify though, the left-side options on that menu are male, right-side options are female.

This title supports both keyboard and mouse and any Steam-supported controller. Both are viable, though I found the controller felt more authentic. Keys are rebindable if need be. One annoying thing is that the "remember conversations" button is assigned to what would be a menu key, while the map has no hotkey for its use, instead requiring manual activation from a menu. Another annoyance that overlaps with the game design is that the world map and even some dungeons feel gigantic, and it's hard to tell when you are running and walking, with the toggle being very unintuitive. If anything, the maps all feel scaled about 1.75x the size of the originals' bare minimum, and that makes traversal far more tedious than it should be.

This has proven to be a very stable experience on PC. It will run on Linux and Steam Deck with Steam Proton, being rated Verified for the latter. Due to being based on the Unreal Engine, it is very easy to mod and modifications to remove censorship and fix the bizarre text choices are recommended for better fidelity to the original intent of the developers. In defense of the requirements, I'll concede to the publishers this runs quite well on modest hardware and does so rather well in my experience.

Some further notes concerning game balance. The game adds "Secret Spots", or areas on the map with added bonus items, which can make the game much easier in some areas. On the other hand, the encounter rate in some dungeons is nightmarishly high even by Dragon Quest standards, I had to get a mod to lower it to much more bearable extremes (Skyfall Tower is an early place where this spikes to high extremes). There are some other minor game balance issues that I found annoying, such as some enemies who are quite aggressive at spamming certain debilitating attacks. There is a super easy 'Dracky Quest" difficulty that makes it impossible for any player character to die if need be (which can be toggled to classic or Draconian Quest difficulty at any time), and I regrettably needed this easy mode setting because some dungeons were getting me wiped out due to the super aggressive enemies spamming certain attacks. The developers, on top of fixing the foolish dialogue issues, would be best served by fixing the balance in these areas. I'm a veteran of the series and even I found some parts punishing.

Morally, this game is going to have some issues.

Violence is in turn-based RPG "give orders and watch it happen" fashion. This is devoid of blood and gore and remains disappear after death. There is one section where you have to take the form of a demon, and you have the choice to murder innocent people or refrain (as part of a hypothetical test of character, no actual people are truly harmed). One scene does feature some mild blood on one NPC shown very briefly as well.

Language is going to be generally mild, with some mentions of h*ll and d*mn aside. There is a weapon called a B**t**d sword, but this refers to a real-world form of weapon. There is some sexual dialogue, mostly in the form of innuendos and flirting. The infamous "puff-puff" joke of series fame (referring to a crude sexual act involving a woman's bosom) shows up, but nothing so crude happens. There is one ambiguous scene where your main character (if male) gets some form of massage, but the exact specifics are never shown or specified in one optional encounter.

As mentioned before, the usual trend of DEI appeasement was done by Square Enix (also part of their defiance of the original developer's intentions), but it was done very lazily. The "Male" and "Female" options were replaced by "Appearance A" and "Appearance B" respectively. Aside from a few edits to the dialogue referencing the main character to avoid sex in the beginning, almost all dialogue refers correctly to male and female otherwise. This is generally harmless but can cause confusion because certain outfits are male and female-specific like all prior versions of the game. certain scenes, advantages, and dialogue are also still sex-specific. It's also part of a sadly continuing trend to appease a small minority of unfortunate people who wish to deny sexual dimorphism is real and further to the point, defies God's contention that male and female are specific things with specific roles by His Will.

The heroic cast does not engage in any occult or otherwise canon evil acts. They are supported by a goddess named Rubiss (who is a real character in-game) and the ingame religion is an obvious stand-in for Christianity. The villains are a mix of demonic and undead and obviously are under no such restraint and putting an end to them is your mission.

Morally, this is about as straight a classical hero as you can get, though you do get a few chances to lie (and are called out for it, most of the time humorously). There is a form of gambling and bars exist (though you cannot get drunk yourself).

Overall, I find this rather disappointing though still with some core enjoyment for its basic gameplay loop. Technically, it's not really as impressive and should have sold for half the price they offered, not to mention has some issues that need to be patched. The core gameplay is decent, but hampered by asinine translation choices with character creation, some odd design decisions, and some difficulty balance needing work. Morally, it has some issues, but it is generally something most older children on up could handle maturely. Strictly for the gameplay alone, that is solid enough, but the other issues mentioned make it hard to recommend, except when discounted and when some issues are fixed.