Should you love basic Japanese RPGs like I do, then Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake might be one in every of your most anticipated video games of the yr. If it isn’t, it needs to be.
I had an opportunity to play a brief demo of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake once I was at Gamescom final month. I maintain the unique in excessive regard, contemplating the perfect of the 8-bit era of RPGs. That was because of the sport’s giant world, customizable vocation system, and robust core of JRPG fundamentals.
All of that’s on this remake, and the brand new HD-2D visuals make Dragon Quest III an unimaginable looker. It nonetheless has that basic, pixelated fashion, however the brand new graphics and lightning showcase a extra vibrant world.
A basic then and endlessly
After my demo, I had an opportunity to ask Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii about Dragon Quest III’s reputation. I’ve to confess, it’s not too usually that I get starstruck when doing interviews, however Horii is just about the daddy of all JRPGs. His contributions to gaming are huge. So it was a deal with to listen to him discuss this recreation’s legacy.
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“Back when I made Dragon Quest 1, 2, and 3, Dragon Quest 3 was actually a big twist. It turned everything on its head,” Horii informed me. “I think a lot of people still remember that shock and drama. Another reason is a lot of people played Dragon Quest III when they were kids. You always look back fondly on stuff that you played when you were young, that you shared with your friends. I do think that’s why it’s stayed in the hearts of a lot of our players.”
Monster mash
The HD-2D Remake isn’t just a one-to-one remake. It consists of new options and expanded story content material. I discovered the brand new character class, the Monster Wrangler, essentially the most thrilling. The unique Dragon Quest III featured the vocation system, which lets characters change between a number of archetypes, like Gladiator or Mage.
The Monster Wrangler is a wholly new vocation for the HD-2D Remake. It lets gamers use skills from enemies in battle. I requested the sport’s producer, Masaaki Hayakawa, if Monster Wrangler took inspiration from the monster-recruiting entries within the sequence, like Dragon Quest V.
“Of course we did take inspiration from V,” Hayakawa informed me. “But there was a whole process we went through to end up with this new vocation. One of the things we’re attributing to it is that the world map, the field area here, is much bigger in this remake. There’s a much bigger area for players to explore. We wanted to add something else for players to do, add some new gameplay to this area.”
Talking of monsters, there may be one other means that they add to new content material within the remake.
“Another thing we had in the back of our minds, in the original there was an arena where you could bet on monsters fighting,” Hayakawa mentioned. “That wasn’t something we could include in this remake, partly because of ratings and things like that. It just wasn’t the content we were looking for. So we were thinking, what could we add to the game to take that place and be something new and positive instead? That’s when we came up with the monster arena that we have in this version you see today. Then we thought, how could we combine the new gameplay that we wanted to add to the world map with this monster arena? That’s when we came up with the idea of the monster wrangler vocation. Then you could go out and capture monsters and take them to the monster arena. Everything is connected in this nice flow.”
HD 2D is for me
The brand new options are nice. And together with the unimaginable new visuals and the preservation of Dragon Quest III’s basic vibe, this HD-2D Remake is shaping as much as change into a particular deal with for traditional JRPG followers like me.
And it’s simply the beginning, since Dragon Quest I and II will get the identical therapy. Frankly, I hope that they don’t cease there.