Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake
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.
| 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 |
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 with sound effects.
- 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.
- Defeated monsters and collected items can now be viewed in the misc. menu.
Gameplay adjustments
- New vocation: Monster Wrangler.
- Certain stats have been modified to modern standards:
- Agility is no longer divided by two to calculate base defense, now determining base evasion instead (while still impacting turn-order)
- Resilience now determines base defense 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, and now influences the learning of certain combat skills in addition to spells
- Certain out-of-combat facets have been modified in a similar manner:
- You now save your game at churches, instead of with monarchs
- Upon being defeated, you now have the menu option to revert to your previous autosave (without experience points earned since then), if you don't wish to return to your last save point and lose half your gold
- Zoom now functions as it does in Dragon Quest XI, being usable indoors but no longer usable in fights, and now lets you travel to many more places on the map
- Upon being defeated, you can now choose to redo the fight you lost without penalty.
- Churches now offer a pity discount on Resurrections, based on how many of your party members are dead.
- New spells, such as Moreheal, Zapple, and Zin.
- The inclusion of selectable combat 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 the Garboyle, who originally was an unfightable monster in the game's SNES and Game Boy Color intro.
- Additional boss monsters for certain areas of the game.
- 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)
- Monster damage resistances now function as they do in modern Dragon Quest games, reducing damage by the listed percentage instead of providing a chance to negate. Some monsters now have negative resistances as well.
Credits
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
External links
References
- ↑ Weekly Shonen Jump issue 32, 2024