Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
| Main series games | |
|---|---|
| Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake | |
| |
| Developer(s) | ARTDINK & Square Enix (Team Asano) |
| Publisher(s) | Square Enix |
| Designer(s) | Yuji Horii |
| Artist(s) | Yoshiya Fujisaki |
| Composer(s) | Kōichi Sugiyama |
| Series | Dragon Quest |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam |
| Release date(s) | Nintendo Switch INT November 14, 2024 PlayStation 5 INT November 14, 2024 Xbox Series X/S INT November 14, 2024 Steam INT November 14, 2024 |
| Genre(s) | Console role-playing |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Everyone +10 |
Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a full remake of Dragon Quest III. It was originally announced as part of the 35th series anniversary celebration on May 27, 2021.
Unlike previous remakes of Dragon Quest III, the HD-2D remake offers a modernized vision of the original title with additional scenarios, voice acting, new vocations, and modern Dragon Quest series features such as battle tactics or faster battle settings. The graphics are completely redone in the "HD-2D" style popularized by previous Square Enix published games such as Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy. With the passing of Akira Toriyama on March 1 2024, artist Yoshiya "Fenyo_n" Fujisaki was brought on to the project as the chief illustrator with Naoki Ikushima providing the game's box art.
New features
Scenario changes
- New scenarios and characters supervised by Yuji Horii.
- New story segments that features Ortega, the heroes's father.
- The monster arena has been totally revamped to allow players to enter their own recruited monsters instead of relying on the arena's stable.
- T'n'T boards added in the Super Famicom remake have not been reimplemented after their removal in the 2014 android/ios port.
Presentation
- Re-imagined locations and HD-quality sprites.
- Certain areas have been slightly modified to account for the perspective changing from the classic top-down view to the pop up book style found in other HD2D titles.
- Orchestral soundtrack.
- Increased language support: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, European Spanish, and Latin American Spanish.
- Dragon Quest III had not yet been translated into most of these languages prior to this remake.
- Voice acting support: English and Japanese.
- Fully animated monsters.
- Faster battle settings, as seen in recent Dragon Quest titles like in the Nintendo 3DS release of DQVIII or in the international releases of DQXI.
- The player can customize the party's appearance by eight options per vocation with four for each sex.
- The new character Healizah can modify a character's appearance between the four options, along with his or her hair colour and voice upon reaching Alltrades Abbey.
- Characters now speak in battle: shouting while attacking, yelling the names of spells while casting, grunting while being attacked, etc.
- The camera pulls back to reveal the party while the player is selecting actions for a turn.
- Equipped weapons are visible during this period.
Gameplay adjustments
- New vocation: Monster Wrangler.
- Certain stats have been modified to modern standards:
- Agility is no longer divided by two to calculate base defence, now only determining turn-order and evasion
- Resilience now determines base defence power instead of HP growth
- Stamina has been added to determine HP growth, using the same formula as Resilience in previous versions
- Wisdom now determines the growth of spell power instead of each spell being fixed to a static range, in addition to MP growth
- New spells, such as Moreheal, Zapple, and Zin.
- The inclusion of skills for melee vocations, such as Double-Edged Slash, Mercurial Thrust, Pressure Pointer, and Cop Out [1]. The battle menu lists lists Spells and Abilities separately.
- Boomerangs and whips can now land Critical Hits, though less frequently than single-target weapons.
- The inclusion of additional monsters, such as a new variant of the Dancing flame monster line, and Garboyle, who originally was an unfightable monster in the game's SNES and Game Boy Color intro.
- Battle tactics, available for the first time in Dragon Quest III.
- Three modes of difficulty: Dracky Quest (Easy), Dragon Quest (Normal), and Draconian Quest (Hard).
- Monsters either have skills and/or spells added to their repertoire. (For example, Seaslimes use Soothing Song and Handsome crabs use Assassin's Stab, while Cumauluses cast Dazzle in addition to Frizz)
Censorship controversy
The game has drawn criticism for certain changes to character illustrations, like the female Gadabout, female Warrior, and male Monster Wrangler, which expose less skin compared to the artwork in previous releases; the Boss Troll also retains changes from Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince. The removal of gendered language the character creation was also criticized, with the male and female types being described as "look A" and "look B" respectively, while the English script still uses gendered terms for customizable party members. Most of the changes have been noted to be mandated largely by the Computer Entertainment Rating Organization, the Japanese video game ratings board, to secure a B rating (ages 12 and up) and allow this release to be legally sold to children. CERO's standards have been criticized as excessively strict by other video game developers like Masahiro Sakurai.
In September 28, an interview with Yuji Horii and former Dragon Ball editor Kazuhiko Torishima caused further controversy when Horii and Torishima were asked about the changes to the female Warrior design. Horii explained the changes had been made to comply with age rating standards, while Torishima strongly criticized these regulations for interfering in creative freedom and international business deals, even calling them "an evil disguised as good".[2][3][4] The X.com account Valute News shared a clip of Horii and Torishima's answer with English subtitles, drawing attention from Forbes and X.com owner Elon Musk.
In October 3, the Japanese radio station Tokyo M.A.A.D. SPIN (which hosted the aforementioned interview) released an official statement claiming that Horii and Torishima's words had been mistranslated by Valute News and taken out of context, specifically pointing out the incorrect translation of the English word "puritanical" into the phrase "sex education". Valute News' administrator apologized for the error before deactivating the account, while Denfaminico Gamer has since set the interview's YouTube upload to private.
External links
Gallery
Illustrations
US boxart.
Artwork of the Erdrick Trilogy HD-2D Remakes by Naoki Ikushima.
Japanese logo.
The Erdrick Trilogy logo created for the game
The party planning the next day while monsters look on
The party takes flight with Ramia, paying homage to the box art of the GameBoy Color version
Promotional images
Healizah giving Samantha a makeover
Preorder bonuses.
Collector's Edition.
Preview spread in issue 32 of Weekly Shonen Jump, 2024
Preview spread in issue 36 of Weekly Shonen Jump, 2024
Characters
The Hero
The Heroine
Ortega
Healizah
Official statements
The response of Tokyo M.A.A.D. SPIN to the viral interview
Page 2
Valute News' apology post
References
- ↑ Weekly Shonen Jump issue 32, 2024
- ↑ NAZ CHRIS: あとすごい話題になってた。そのコスチュームとか、当時とそのままなのかどうなのかみたいなのがありましたよね。 また... 堀井: まあね、あのいろいろ規制もあってね。露出しすぎちゃいけないとかね NAZ: あそこまあちょっとあんまり深掘りする気はないんですけど。いいのにだってフィクションだけど、その中にあ、主人公ってあなたが入って冒険するっていうことでいいじゃないと思うんですけど、違うんですかね？ 堀井: なんなんですかね。よくわかんないですけどね。これについてはね NAZ: ゲームだし、フィクションという自分の中のこうバーチャル体験でのあのノンフィクションだから、楽しくければいいのにっていうふうに思っちゃいますけどね。 堀井: あんまり露出するとね、年齢が上がっちゃうっていうね。 鳥嶋: まあまあね。 堀井: 全年齢じゃなくなってしまうっていうのが 鳥嶋: ルールがやっぱなんか各国違ったりするんでね。広くろうと思うと、一番厳しいところに合わせざるを得ないとか。でも,
- ↑ NAZ: 当時そんなこと思わなかったですね。 鳥嶋: コンプラっていう名のね。やっぱりね、ある種のね。なんだろうな、絶対神と言うべき善の名を借りた悪みたいのがあるよね。あの全員が不快感を覚えないなんてことはないわけだって、株不快はこういうことを覚えるどうこうでもいいわけよ。だって綺麗、汚いとかさ、善悪って人それぞれ感じ方があるわけじゃんで物事はやっぱり。根っこにあるのは、やっぱり絶対やっちゃいけないことだけ。いくつかそれをさえやらなきゃといいじゃないって、そういうのがないわけだから、やっぱりあの欧米英米の方から欧米の方から来てる？
- ↑ 堀井: 主人公もね、男女選べるんだけど、男を女選ぶって書いていけないのねタイプ一タイプ二なのねねえそう男女誰が一体文句言うんだろうと思うんだよね。 鳥嶋: そうそうですね。 堀井: うん, わからない。
