I will always love Dragon Warrior 3
Dragon Quest III has a new HD-2D remake. I don't love the HD-2D style, if I'm being honest. 2D sprites on a 3D background never look right to me. They looked bad all the way back when I played Xenogears over twenty years ago.
In fact, I googled it: Xenogears came out on PS1 in 1998, so it was actually over twenty-six years ago. Pretty old fuckin' game, Xenogears.
I'm a big Dragon Quest fan. In 2018, I went to a Java One conference in San Francisco for work where I met a developer who worked for Square Enix. He'd just given a presentation discussing their use of Oracle technologies in some Final Fantasy mobile game or another that I'm sure has shut down by now. I approached him and his interpreter afterward to tell him that, because of the company I work for, security is our #1 priority when it comes to our data. How does Square Enix ensure that their databases are secure? Do they do automated testing? That kind of thing.
I got a pretty vague answer, but I wasn't unsatisfied with it. I shook the man's hand and told him, "実は、ドラクエのほうが好きだけど、" and he and his interpreter both laughed.
I'd just told him, "The truth is, I prefer Dragon Quest games, though," using the Japanese abbreviation "Dora Kue" instead of "Doragon Kuesuto." That way, he'd know I was actually a fan. Because I am, and that was a true statement. That's the kind of weird shit you learn when you spend time living in Japan. You can also learn it from the internet, of course. Maybe you just did, from me, earlier in this paragraph. I would be alright with that. Learning things on the internet is fun and easy and cool.
The first Dragon Quest came out in the US when I was very young, though it was called Dragon Warrior, of course. I was too young to be any good at it, because I lacked patience or a mind that could understand how to strategize even in a game where there was only one playable character. My dad played it, though, and I watched him. He played on weekends, because he didn't have time during the week. He named his character "Punky," as in "Punky Brewster," because he thought that was funny. It took us (that is, him) weeks to finish the game, but we (that is, he) eventually did.
I remember being terrified at the final boss battle. The Dragon Lord, the ultimate villain of the game, offers you half the world if you join him, and a Yes/No prompt actually appears.
Now, earlier in the game, you rescue the princess from a green dragon, and she asks you to take her back to the castle. You get a Yes/No prompt there, too, and if you say "No," she says "But thou must!"
"But thou must!" has become a cliche in the world of gaming for this reason.
So my dad assumed that the same thing would happen if you agreed to take half the world from the Dragon Lord. Thing is, it doesn't. Instead, he kills you, and the game ends. Decades later, that ending was used as the basis for the Dragon Quest Builders games, but, as a kid, it terrified me. Keep in mind that the game came out in August of 1989 in the US. Thirty-five years ago. I was five years old then. I might have been six by the time my dad played it, but come the fuck on, that's still pretty young.
We never played Dragon Warrior 2. We never had it. It wasn't until I was a teenager, and NES emulation was possible, that I played it. I never finished it, though, to be honest.
Dragon Warrior 3, though. That came out in 1992. I was eight. I already had an SNES, and Final Fantasy 2. But even at eight years old, Final Fantasy 2 was too much for me. I played it, but I didn't get very far. I literally couldn't find the entrance to one of the game's early dungeons. I won't say which one, because it's kind of embarrassing. It wasn't until I went back to it a couple of years later, at age 10, that I pushed through and finished the game.
I remember very clearly that I was in fifth grade, aged 10, because there was a snow day and I was all dressed to go to school when we found out about it and I went back to the TV to play Final Fantasy 2 instead. I was in the underground, going to the dwarven fortress.
Anyway. I didn't beat the first Final Fantasy game, on NES, until much later, too. I just wasn't good at RPGs when I was that young.
But in 1992, Dragon Warrior 3 was right up my alley. It's a simple game. It's a stupidly simple game. It has a plot that goes so far beyond simple that it's just plain stupid.
You start off at home, sleeping in your full armor, with sword and shield in hand, when your mother wakes you. She explains that it's your sixteenth birthday, and the first time that you'll go to the castle.
You go to the castle, and the king tells you that he's heard about your dad, who died, and how you're going to go die, too.
"It is said that the father Ortega met his end when he fell into a volcano's crater at the end of a battle."
"We do hereby accept your petition to follow in the footsteps of your brave father."
He further tells you to get allies at the "eatery," hands you some money, and sends you on your way to kill Baramos, the archfiend, whose name most people don't know, and who is, somehow, going to conquer the world, I guess. And so, off you go. You can recruit three random dipshits from the "eatery," if you want, and you go save the world.
There are a couple of twists once you kill Baramos. It turns out that there was a bigger Archfiend, Zoma, but he doesn't exist in this world. You have to find a big hole to jump into and find the world of darkness where Zoma lives, and then, once you're there, you find and kill him, too.
At eight years old, though, I loved it. The game came with an incredible manual that contained a walkthrough all the way to the ending, and a giant poster that showed illustrations for every single piece of equipment. I used to spend hours as a kid dreaming of how cool it would be when I finally had the best equipment for all my characters. I would try to find, looking over the poster, what all the best equipment even was. For example, the Zombie Slasher was the best sword for a Sage, as far as I could tell. Better swords existed, but Sages couldn't use them. And the Iron Mask was the best helmet for the hero. And the Magic Bikini was a surprisingly good piece of armor despite clearly being a joke armor.
You can find the poster at https://www.woodus.com/den/games/dw3nes/posters.php if you want. It's fucking excellent. My personal favorite is the Giant Shears, a weapon only Soldiers could equip, because of the utter (dare I say, sheer?) absurdity of imagining a character coming at an enemy with big scissors. Good luck finding the Giant Shears in the later re-releases! Someone realized how fucking stupid they were, I guess!
As a child, I struggled a lot with the game. I took a long, long time to get anywhere. I would grind and level up for hours. I tried a few different character classes, but I decided to take the advice from the manual and used a Soldier, a Pilgrim, and a Wizard as my main party.
The Soldier was Adan. The Wizard was named Matthias. Those were their default names. I named the Pilgrim Joel, after someone I knew from school. It was an all-male party, so I never got to use the Sword of Illusions or the Magic Bikini on my main party.
The hero? Oh, he was named for myself. I hated seeing the first four letters of my name, which is longer than four letters, in the battle menu. Matthias simply became "Matt," but Adan and Joel were untouched.
Adan leveled up faster than the hero did, which made me feel like he was the strongest in the party, and so he stood in the front for most of the game. It wasn't until much later, when I started swapping out characters to level up others, that the hero caught up. But when I first went to the town where you have to send a character solo through a dungeon, I sent Adan. That was a bad idea, it turned out. Adan, as a soldier, couldn't cast any kind of healing spells, so he just couldn't last long enough to make it through that dungeon. The hero could. The hero's meant to. You're meant to send the hero through there. I wound up sending the hero through it enough times to get him to the same level as Adan. I wound up going back later to do it again.
There's a point early on when the king of Romaly insists that you take his crown and become king. You can't refuse him. You have to do it. You have to track him down once you're the king and demand that he take his crown back, which he will, because it's an order from the king, that is, you.
You can go back and become king again later if you want. There's no point. You can't leave town when you're the king. You can't even access your inventory when you're the king. There are little joke responses to every menu option when you're the king that say you have no need to check your inventory or your status because you're the king.
But I was a little kid, and I thought it was funny as hell to go back and tell the king I wanted to borrow his crown and walk around being the king every so often. The only thing I could find that was of any use was that there's one NPC who will tell you that you can use certain weapons in battle to cast spells for free. He won't tell you that normally. Only when you're the king.
I remember visiting the home of a friend of mine and bringing Dragon Warrior III over. I don't remember how old I was then, but I met that friend in sixth grade, so it has to have been when I was, at the youngest, eleven years old. I'd been playing the game off and on for three years by then. I'd probably made it to the end of the game, but I'm sure I hadn't beaten it yet.
We killed an entire afternoon at the monster arena in Romaly, gambling on monster fights. It was fun. We probably lost more than we won, but I didn't mind. It was trivial to reset when we lost too much, and save when we won.
About a third of the way through the game, you unlock the ability to change the classes of anybody other than the hero. There aren't a ton of advantages to doing this in the original game.
Okay, let me break it down. There's the hero, but only one character, your starting character, can be the hero. The hero can't change classes, and nobody else can start as or become a hero. So let's not consider the hero any more when discussing class changes. In the original, there were six character classes you could pick from at the eatery when recruiting random dipshits:
The soldier: High HP, very strong, levels fast. The best at fighting. People often say that the soldier has the disadvantage of being expensive to equip, but that's stupid. Invaluable. You should have one.
The fighter: You'd think the fighter would have some kind of advantage over the soldier, but not really. People often say that the fighter's big advantage is that you don't have to spend so much money equipping them, but that's stupid. Later versions of the game included many more weapons and armor for the fighter that would close the gap between them and the soldier, but in the original, the Iron Claw was the best thing you could give the fighter to use as a weapon.
The merchant: Complete garbage. Can't cast magic, and isn't as strong as a soldier or a fighter.
The pilgrim: one of two classes who can cast magic. Casts healing spells and some buffs/debuffs. Can eventually revive dead characters. Invaluable. You should have one.
The wizard: the other class who can cast magic. Casts attack spells and some buffs/debuffs. Can eventually cast the "open" spell, rendering all keys meaningless, and the "day/night" spell, allowing you to make it nighttime whenever you want instead of having to fuck around walking outside. Invaluable. You should have one.
Goof-off: a joke character. Weakest in every way. Sometimes spends turns doing nothing. No value whatsoever. I mean it. None. Nobody can change to a goof-off, not even someone who used to be a goof-off and who leveled up and changed classes. You should never use a goof-off.
There comes a point later in the game when you need to bring a merchant to a place called New Town and abandon them there forever. They permanently leave the party. They never come back. That's the only use for a merchant as far as I am concerned. Some people will tell you that merchants are actually quite strong in the early game, and thus you should use one until you reach the temple where you can change their class into something else. I am telling you not to do this. I am telling you that there are exactly three good reasons to change a character's class.
One: you have an extremely high-level wizard or pilgrim who has learned every spell, and now you want to make them into a soldier. This will let them keep all of their spells, even though they will be terrible at casting them. See, changing your class cuts all your stats in half, so the new soldier's MP will only be half of what it was, and their spellcasting stats will be, too. They'll be bad at it.
Two: you have an extremely high-level wizard or pilgrim who has learned every spell, and now you want to make them into the spellcasting class they weren't. That is, you want your wizard to become a pilgrim, or you want your pilgrim to become a wizard. This will allow them to learn spells from both classes, and their spellcasting stats and MP won't be utter shit.
Three: you have a pilgrim or a wizard of any level and you want to use the one and only special book that exists in the game to turn them into a sage. The sage is a class that nobody can ever start as. They can learn every wizard and every pilgrim spell, and they can equip more weapons and armor than either wizards or pilgrims. They are the best class in the game. Choose wisely. My suggestion is that you turn your pilgrim into a sage.
Some people will tell you that there is a fourth good reason. Let me explain something to you. They were wrong.
They will tell you that you can level a goof-off to 20, the minimum to change classes, and then, when you go to change your goof-off's class, the option will be there to change them to a sage. This allows you to have as many sages as you want. This is stupid. Don't do this.
Here's the thing. Goof-offs don't gain MP when they level up, but they do gain intelligence, the stat which determines MP gain. See, when you level up in Dragon Warrior 3, the game looks at your character's level and determines, based on their class and their level, what their stats "should" be. If their stats are already above that level, they only gain one or zero points. So your level 20 goof-off becomes a level 1 sage, but has the intelligence of a level 10 goof-off. Until they surpass that point, your new sage won't gain intelligence.
But that means they also won't gain MP! Characters ONLY gain MP when they gain intelligence in Dragon Warrior 3! So your sage will NEVER have as much MP as they would have had if they'd started their life as a pilgrim or a wizard. They'll be a shitty sage.
You might think, well, it's better to be a shitty sage than no sage at all! And to that I say, FUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU
As a kid, I never knew that goof-offs could become sages. Nobody tells you that in the game. You're just supposed to figure it out, or read a guide online, which I eventually did, many years later. I thought goof-offs were just fun little dudes. I created one and named her Goofus, because I thought that was funny.
I leveled Goofus to something like level 40. Because she was the only female character I regularly used, she got all the female-only equipment I found: the Sword of Illusions, the Magic Bikini. That kind of thing. I loved Goofus! She was great! Especially once she put on that bikini, because it actually changed her character sprite to make it look like she was suddenly a sexy bikini babe!
As a high schooler, I got access to the GameBoy Color remake via emulation. That was basically a crime, but hey, let's pretend it wasn't.
The GBC remake included a lot of new features. Among them, the merchant and goof-off classes got new spells that only they can use, and the new thief class was added. This means that, if you want a character who can cast every spell, you can't just use a sage.
There's only one thing you can do. You have to become a goof-off, then a sage, and also a merchant and a thief on top of that. Obviously, this is the right and good thing to do. It's the only smart thing. Doing anything else is simply dumb as hell, and you shouldn't do it. Also, all your characters should be female. There are female-only equipment items, but there no male-oonly equipment items. Your hero should be female, and so should all your party members.
They should end as thieves. Thieves increase the chances of items dropping from enemies, including the stat-boosting seeds, which means that you can, with a little patience, have a team of four level 99 characters, all of them with maxed-out stats, three of them thieves who can use every single ability in the game.
This is the only smart thing to do. This is what I did. Twice. Once on the GameBoy Color ROM I had as a high-schooler, and again as an adult on my Android phone when playing the mobile release.
Doing that makes the final bosses, even the postgame superbosses who didn't exist in the original game, pretty easy to beat. That's really what it's all about.
Some people might say, hey, that sounds very boring. You don't need to do that. You could beat the game with a merchant and a goof-off in your party if you want. You could beat the game solo if you want. But that's not the smart thing to do. The smart thing is to max yourself out.
I haven't played the HD-2D remake yet. I'll get my copy tomorrow. I wanted to wait until it was out for a few days before I ordered a copy. I honestly kind of wanted to wait even longer, until it was cheaper, because I don't have a lot of money right now. But I love this game.
I've loved it many times over the years. I credit it with my lifelong love of RPGs, and, honestly, a big part of my love of fantasy in general. Final Fantasy, the original game on NES, included warp cubes and robots and a fucking War Mech who could attack you with an ability called "NUKE." It was fantasy, but only on the surface. It eventually became sci-fi. But Dragon Quest never did. It stayed fantasy from start to finish.
You rummage around in a horse field in Dragon Warrior III to find the material you need to sell to a merchant so that he'll forge the Sword of Kings for you. It's the strongest sword in the game. Only the hero can use it. It didn't exist already. You have to make it exist. And then you go and you kill the strongest bad guy with it, and that saves the world.
There's a twist, at the end, that I didn't see coming as a kid. Maybe you know about it. Maybe the fact that Dragon Quest 3's remake is coming out before Dragon Quest 1 and 2, due to the fact that Dragon Quest 3 takes place first chronologically, gives you a pretty big fucking hint. As a kid, though, I didn't know that. I thought that it was really cool that I could go around gathering, and creating, my own legend as the strongest fucking guy around, even if I also had three other guys with me.
As an adult, I wonder what happened to those other three guys. I guess they didn't get to be legends. They just died in obscurity. So it goes.
But tomorrow, I'll play the game again. I'll name my female hero Nester, because Nester can be a girl's name, too, and because I made a promise 30 years ago to always name the main character of any offline game I play "Nester."
I will never explain this beyond what I just said.
My other three characters will be a Monster Wrangler, a Priest, and a Thief, because that's the best party I can think of. I could potentially make a Wizard instead of a Priest. Wizards can do more damage, but Priests can heal more damage. When I can change character classes, I'll make the Priest/Wizard into a Sage.
Eventually, they'll all become Gadabouts, and Merchants, too, to get all the abilities in the game. That's the goal. That's the only smart thing I can do. I'll have to find out if they all need to become Monster Wranglers, and decide if I want to have all of them end as Thieves or if I want one of them to end as a Monster Wrangler while the other two end as Thieves.
There's only one smart thing to do, and I'll find it, and I'll do it.
The game itself? Dumb as hell. I love it. I'll always love it. I have a sad feeling that I might play it again in another twenty or thirty years, when I'm an even older man, or retired.
The idea of sitting down at seventy years old and starting up the newest version of Dragon Quest III and naming my hero "Nester" honestly sounds kind of nice. I hope it happens.
I don't think anything I've said here would convince anybody in the world to play this game, but I wanted to explain myself when I had this rare opportunity.
