Info about DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake:

Official game description:
  
DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake is a stunning reimagining of the beloved masterpiece and narrative beginning to The Erdrick Trilogy.
Story:
------
Years ago, the great hero Ortega bid farewell to his wife and child as he set off on a quest to defeat the villainous Archfiend, Baramos. Ortega failed his quest, and Baramos still threatens the world. Now, on their sixteenth birthday, Ortega’s only child is summoned by the king of Aliahan and entrusted with a mission of the highest import: to take on Ortega’s quest, vanquish Baramos, and save the world.
Build your perfect party:
-------------------------
Recruit a variety of allies, with three able to join your party to aid you on your quest. Choose their vocations, appearances and their voices. There's even a brand new vocation exclusive to this remake: the monster wrangler!
Travel across an expansive open world:
--------------------------------------
Explore a wealth of towns, castles, caves, towers and dungeons to explore on your adventure, with hidden secrets waiting to be discovered.
Strategic, turn-based battles:
------------------------------
Battle a vast array of monsters in classic DRAGON QUEST turn-based battles. Set party tactics and switch up weapons, abilities and spells to take on all of the challenging foes that await you.

Release date: 14 Nov, 2024

Categories: RPG, Single-player Story, Turn-based Combat, Open-World Exploration, Character Customization, Character Progression, Monster Collecting, Party-based Combat


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Stunning HD-2D graphics and sound (weight 0.97): The remake boasts stunning HD-2D graphics, blending retro pixel art with modern 3D environments, lighting, and animations. This visual overhaul enhances exploration, battles, and cutscenes, creating a vibrant and immersive world. The re-orchestrated music and voice acting further contribute to the game's impressive presentation.
- Many quality-of-life improvements (weight 0.46): The remake incorporates numerous quality-of-life improvements, making it more accessible and enjoyable for both newcomers and veterans of the Dragon Quest series. These enhancements streamline gameplay, reduce tedium, and add depth to the overall experience. Many reviewers express that the remake is the definitive edition of Dragon Quest 3.
- Classic JRPG with freedom (weight 0.26): The game offers a classic JRPG experience with a semi-open world, a flexible class system, and strategic turn-based combat. Players have the freedom to explore the map, customize their party, and tackle objectives in their preferred order. The game strikes a balance between complexity and simplicity, making it enjoyable for both casual and hardcore RPG fans.
- Fun, addictive, and balanced difficulty (weight 0.21): The game offers a balanced and adjustable difficulty, making it accessible to a wide range of players. It provides a fun and addictive experience with a charming art style and engaging gameplay. The game's design allows for both casual relaxation and strategic challenges, catering to different playstyles.
- Evokes strong sense of nostalgia (weight 0.16): The remake successfully evokes nostalgia for the original game, reminding players of their childhood experiences and the classic era of RPGs. The game retains the charm and feel of the original while modernizing the graphics and gameplay. This blend of nostalgia and innovation provides a satisfying experience for long-time fans.
- Excellent and nostalgic music (weight 0.16): The game features an excellent soundtrack, with re-orchestrated versions of classic tunes that enhance the overall experience. The music is described as beautiful, nostalgic, and perfectly fitting for the game's world and atmosphere. The high quality of the BGM is a standout feature for many reviewers.
- Easier and less grindy than original (weight 0.12): The remake is generally easier and less grindy than the original NES version, with quality-of-life improvements and new abilities that enhance player utility. The game retains the feel of the SFC version while being adjusted to be very easy to play. The reviewer appreciates the increased availability of stat seeds, allowing for more strategic character development.
- Modern conveniences improve gameplay (weight 0.1): The game incorporates modern conveniences such as auto-saving, adjustable battle speed, and clear objectives, making it more accessible and enjoyable for newcomers. These quality-of-life improvements streamline gameplay and reduce tedium. The game also includes detailed settings, such as battle speed, allowing players to customize their experience.
- Fun monster collecting minigame added (weight 0.09): The addition of the Monster Wrangler class and the Monster Arena provides a fun and engaging creature-collecting minigame. This new content adds variety to the class system and provides a rewarding side-quest for players to enjoy. The Monster Wrangler class is often described as overpowered but fun to play.
- A must-play classic JRPG (weight 0.07): The game is considered a classic JRPG and a must-play for fans of the genre. It is praised as one of the best remakes of a genre-defining RPG, offering an authentic and enjoyable experience. The game's classic gameplay and well-established RPG format continue to provide a wonderful and fun experience many years after its original release.
- Faithful remake with added content (weight 0.07): The remake is true to the original game while adding new content and features. It is aimed at both newcomers and veterans, offering a mix of nostalgia and freshness. The remake is praised for being done properly and showing love and appreciation for the original.
- Customizable characters and voice acting (weight 0.06): The game allows players to customize the appearance of their characters, including names, genders, voices, and hair colors. This character creation element is a welcome addition, enhancing individuality and attachment. The inclusion of voice acting in key scenes and battles further enhances the experience.
- Detailed and enjoyable town exploration (weight 0.06): Exploring towns is enjoyable due to their detailed environments and the art, time, and effort put into each environment. The town scenery is beautiful and uplifting, matching well with the orchestral music. The game world's height differences, depth, and various town objects create a sense of regional atmosphere and life.
- Expanded story, especially Ortega's (weight 0.06): Additional story elements have been added without major contradictions, especially regarding Ortega. The game features a fleshed-out perspective for Ortega, which was absent in the original. The added depth to Ortega's story is a positive change, highlighting his struggles and sacrifices during his 16-year battle.
- Beautiful HD-2D graphics enhance locations (weight 0.06): The HD-2D graphics are beautiful, with areas like Jipang with its cherry blossoms looking wonderful. The HD-2D art style combines pixel art characters with detailed, dynamic environments, creating a blend of nostalgia and modern aesthetics. The 2D sprites in a 3D world give the game a unique charm.
- Well-made additional story content (weight 0.06): The additional content is well-made, especially the story content featuring Ortega. Extra-hard post-game content provides a challenge. The added story elements and the ending were exciting and enjoyable for fans of the series. The post-game content is a well-executed mashup of SNES/Mobile/GBC content with new additions.

Common complaints:
- Tedious exploration, high encounter rate (weight 0.91): The game features a high random encounter rate, which, combined with slow movement speed and large, confusing maps, makes exploration tedious and frustrating. The lack of camera control and clear visual cues further exacerbates these issues, hindering item discovery and overall enjoyment of exploration. This is compounded by the fact that the maps are fully revealed from the start, removing any sense of discovery.
- Poor combat, enemy scaling issues (weight 0.88): The game suffers from poor combat balance, with physical attacks becoming ineffective in the mid-to-late game due to inflated enemy defense stats. This forces players to rely on magic or specific classes like the Monster Tamer, leading to repetitive gameplay and diminishing the value of other classes and strategies. Additionally, enemies frequently use multiple actions, status ailments, and instant death spells, resulting in frustrating and tedious battles.
- Poorly designed post-game content (weight 0.72): The post-game content is poorly designed, featuring excessive grinding, weapon restrictions, and enemies that rely on cheap tactics like status ailments and instant death attacks. This leads to a frustrating and unenjoyable experience that doesn't respect the player's time or investment, with some reviewers suggesting it's better to stop playing after defeating the final boss.
- Slow vehicle, travel speed (weight 0.19): The movement speed of vehicles, particularly Ramia (the flying mount) and the ship, is too slow, making exploration tedious and time-consuming. This issue is compounded by the large map size and frequent enemy encounters that interrupt travel, leading to frustration and a diminished sense of freedom.
- Monster Tamer class overpowered (weight 0.18): The Monster Tamer class is overpowered, unbalancing the game and making other classes feel irrelevant. Its abilities, such as 'monster call' and 'beast mode,' deal excessive damage and trivialize combat, leading to repetitive gameplay and diminishing the value of strategic party composition.
- Leveling trivializes resource management (weight 0.16): Leveling up fully restores HP and MP, removing the need for resource management and diminishing the challenge of dungeon exploration. Additionally, the difficulty settings are poorly implemented, with the highest difficulty primarily reducing experience and gold gains rather than increasing enemy strength or altering their behavior, leading to a grindy and unrewarding experience.
- Outdated, cumbersome UI (weight 0.08): The game's UI is outdated, difficult to use, and lacks modern comfort features. Important stats are buried, and there are no convenient shortcut functions for frequently used actions, leading to a frustrating and cumbersome experience.
- Inconsistent, poor voice acting (weight 0.08): The voice acting is inconsistent and often doesn't match the characters' emotional states or genders, leading to a cringeworthy and immersion-breaking experience. Many reviewers wish there was an option to turn off voice acting entirely, as it detracts from the original atmosphere of the game.
- Inconsistent world, story issues (weight 0.08): The game's world setting is inconsistent, with plot holes and nonsensical changes to established lore. The story feels disjointed, with objectives feeling like a D&D GM grasping at straws. The game's balance seems questionable, with an assumption of triple-digit HP caps and even level 99 being doubtful.
- Poorly implemented new bosses (weight 0.06): New boss encounters added to the story feel meaningful only at the volcano. Bosses are placed in unexpected locations, surprising veteran players with their strength. Boss attacks inflict paralysis and can instantly kill the player. Boss adjustments degrade the quality of the original bosses.
- Trials are frustrating, unbalanced (weight 0.06): The trials are considered terrible, with the reviewer finding them frustrating due to restrictions and frequent instant deaths from spells like "ザラキ". The game's difficulty spirals out of control about 80% of the way through, becoming overwhelmingly difficult.

Gameplay feedback:
- Classic JRPG with modern touches (weight 0.25): The game retains classic JRPG elements such as turn-based combat, random encounters, and world exploration. It balances nostalgia with modern quality-of-life improvements, appealing to both veterans and newcomers. The core gameplay loop remains faithful to the original Dragon Quest experience.
- Inconsistent difficulty, late-game grind (weight 0.1): The game's difficulty balance is inconsistent, with some reviewers noting a spike in difficulty in the later stages. Enemies may have high defense or rely on cheap tactics, leading to a grind-heavy experience and potentially diminishing the effectiveness of certain classes.
- Monster arena and collecting added (weight 0.1): The game introduces a monster arena and monster collecting mechanics, drawing comparisons to Pokemon. However, some reviewers found the monster collecting tedious and the Battle Road mode unenjoyable, with a lack of depth in monster development.
- Deep character customization via jobs (weight 0.08): The game features a flexible job system that allows players to customize their party members. Players can choose vocations, influence stat growth, and change classes, adding depth to character progression and encouraging experimentation with different party builds.
- Story is light, gameplay focused (weight 0.04): The game features a light story, allowing players to focus on gameplay. Additional story content is present, but not particularly significant.
- Personalities impact stat growth heavily (weight 0.03): Character personalities significantly impact stat growth, making certain personalities feel almost mandatory for a balanced experience. The game doesn't clearly indicate what each personality does, requiring players to consult external resources.
- Improved pacing and accessibility (weight 0.03): The game includes adjustments to improve the flow and accessibility of the experience, such as adjustable battle speed and new mechanics. These changes aim to reduce tedium and make the game more enjoyable for modern players.
- Difficulty options lack impact (weight 0.02): The game offers multiple difficulty options, but some reviewers found them not challenging enough. The Draconian Quest option feels pointless because you can switch back and forth from it, and there's no reward for beating the game with it.

Performance notes:
- Good performance across platforms (weight 0.11): The game generally runs well across various platforms, including PC and Steam Deck, with smooth performance and acceptable loading times. Some reviewers noted that a high-end PC may be overkill, while others confirmed it runs well even on low-spec laptops. The Steam Deck is frequently mentioned as a well-supported platform.
- Frame rate and visual issues (weight 0.03): Some players have reported issues such as screen tearing, frame drops in specific areas, and a locked 60 FPS. Additionally, some found the 30FPS mode visually unappealing. Turning off bloom reveals cut corners in shading.
- Appealing HD-2D graphics (weight 0.02): The game's visuals are generally well-received, with reviewers praising the HD-2D style and clean, polished graphics. The game successfully blends modern graphics with an old-school JRPG feel, visually resembling Octopath Traveler.
- Unreal Engine 4 crashes (weight 0.02): Several reviewers have encountered crashes due to Unreal Engine 4 errors, sometimes leading to save data corruption. This issue appears to be more prevalent during post-game content, and has even rendered the game unlaunchable for some users.
- Inconsistent loading time feedback (weight 0.01): Some reviewers find the loading times before battles, in towns, and in dungeons unacceptable for a modern game, despite the game's small data size. However, other reviewers found the load times almost unnoticeable.
- Minor audio hitches (Denuvo?) (weight 0.01): Some reviewers have reported minor audio hitches, potentially related to the presence of Denuvo. However, Denuvo does not appear to significantly impact overall performance.
- Small installation size (weight 0.01): The game's installation size is around 20GB, with a download size of 15GB. This is considered relatively small for a modern AAA title, but expected for an HD-2D game.
- 'Move in inactive state' bug (weight 0.01): There is an issue where the game cannot be controlled when 'move in inactive state' is checked, which needs to be fixed.
- Characters disappear during battle (weight 0.01): Characters disappear from the battle screen when selecting actions, even though they are visible behind the command menu.
- Hard-to-read HP/MP display (weight 0.01): The HP/MP display is difficult to read due to the small numbers and their placement on the far right of the screen.
- Slow ship/Ramia movement speed (weight 0.01): The movement speed of the ship and Ramia is very slow, making it difficult to collect sparkling items.
- Unnatural character movement (weight 0): Some reviewers found the movement of the dot-art characters to be strange, describing it as more of a sliding motion than walking.
- Choppy Ramia animation (weight 0): The animation for Ramia is worse and more choppy compared to the SFC version.

Recommendations:
- SFC version may be better (weight 0.67): Some reviewers suggest that the remake doesn't significantly improve upon or even match the quality of previous versions, particularly the SFC (Super Famicom) version. They feel that the additional elements don't justify the price and that a simple enhancement of the SFC version would have been preferable. Some reviewers even recommend playing the SFC version instead.
- Great for JRPG/DQ fans (weight 0.65): The game is highly recommended for fans of the Dragon Quest series and classic JRPGs, especially those seeking a nostalgic experience. Many suggest it's a must-play for enthusiasts of the genre, while newcomers might find it a good entry point, though some recommend starting with Dragon Quest XI instead. Reviewers also express excitement for future installments and remakes in the series.
- Wait for a sale (weight 0.6): Many reviewers suggest waiting for a sale before purchasing due to concerns about the full price not matching the game's overall quality and content. Some suggest specific price points (around $30-$40 or half price) that would make the game a worthwhile purchase. Waiting for a sale is a common recommendation, especially for those unsure about the game or new to the series.
- Overpriced for the content (weight 0.58): A significant number of reviewers feel the game is overpriced for what it offers, with many suggesting it's not worth the full price (around $60-$80). They propose more reasonable price points, often around $30-$50, reflecting the game's age, content, and perceived lack of significant improvements over previous versions. Some reviewers even describe the full price as a "scam" or "robbery."
- Inconsistent game balance (weight 0.52): Some reviewers note balance issues, with the game being too easy initially and then becoming too difficult later on. They suggest playing on hard mode for a more balanced experience or recommend specific classes to mitigate difficulty spikes. Some also mention that the game feels like a "chore" or "slog" due to these issues.
- Severe screen tearing issue (weight 0.47): Some reviewers mention a screen tearing issue that detracts from the experience. This technical problem is severe enough for some to not recommend the game until it is fixed. This issue is a major flaw that needs to be addressed.
- Form your own opinion (weight 0.41): Some reviewers suggest that players should approach the game with an open mind and form their own opinions, rather than relying solely on reviews. They encourage players to focus on the positive aspects and enjoy the game for what it is, even if it has flaws. This point is somewhat generic and lacks specific feedback.
- Great on Steam Deck (weight 0.38): Some reviewers specifically recommend playing the game on Steam Deck, praising it as a perfect experience. They also express hope that other titles in the series will be brought to Steam. This point is specific to a particular platform and may not be relevant to all players.
- Feels rushed and unpolished (weight 0.38): Some reviewers express disappointment with the game, feeling that it doesn't live up to expectations or that it was made carelessly. They mention a lack of love from the developers and a sense that the game was rushed or unpolished. These points are somewhat vague and lack specific examples.
- Awaiting DQ 1&2 remakes (weight 0.1): Many reviewers express excitement and anticipation for the upcoming remakes of Dragon Quest 1 and 2, hoping they will address the issues found in this remake. Some are cautiously optimistic, while others have lowered expectations based on their experience with this title. The quality of this remake will affect the sales of the next installments.
- Game is highly recommended (weight 0.07): Some reviewers express strong positive feelings towards the game, calling it "great," "highly recommended," or even a "masterpiece." They believe it's worth the purchase and that fans of the series and genre will love it. However, these points often lack specific details about what makes the game so enjoyable.
- Easier than previous titles (weight 0.02): Some reviewers note that the game is easier than previous titles, targeted towards light users and newcomers to the franchise. They suggest that experienced players may find it underwhelming due to the lack of features compared to older games. This point is specific to difficulty and may not be a concern for all players.

Other player notes:
- Faithful remake for original fans (weight 0.11): Many reviewers emphasize that the game is a remake aimed at fans of the original NES/FC version, preserving its core gameplay and difficulty while updating the graphics. Some find the game's age to be both a positive and negative aspect, appreciating its historical significance but acknowledging its dated elements. Some reviewers specifically state that this version is not intended to revolutionize the series.
- Minor controversy over character appearance (weight 0.1): Several reviewers address the controversy surrounding character appearance selection (Looks A/B instead of Male/Female), with many finding the changes inconsequential to gameplay. Some find the implementation humorous due to immediate correction to "hero and heroine". Some reviewers also mention minor censorship, such as changes to character outfits, but consider it superficial and easily overlooked.
- HD-2D remake questioned by some (weight 0.04): Some reviewers feel the game should have been a full 3D remake instead of HD-2D, questioning the use of Unreal Engine for the graphical outcome. Some believe the HD-2D remake primarily targets players who have experienced the original game, appealing to a niche audience rather than the general public.
- Playtime varies; completionists invest more (weight 0.03): Reviewers report varying playtime durations, ranging from around 50 hours for a leisurely playthrough to over 100 hours for completing all trophies and defeating hidden bosses. Some reviewers also mention obtaining various know-hows and playing through the game a second time.
- First chronologically in Erdrick Trilogy (weight 0.02): The game is the first chronologically in the 'Erdrick Trilogy', with the first and second games to be released in HD-2D remakes. Dragon Quest XI shares the same universe.
- Lack of post-launch balance adjustments (weight 0.01): Some reviewers express disappointment with the lack of balance adjustments or fixes released months after the game's launch. They feel like they were paid testers and hope for future updates to address various aspects of the game.
- Unremovable pre-order bonus chest (weight 0.01): The pre-order bonus is located in a treasure chest in Ruida's Bar. The chest cannot be removed even if the player did not pre-order the game.
- Lacks combat animations; mobile quality (weight 0.01): Some reviewers criticize the game's lack of combat animations and the absence of characters during battles, comparing its quality to that of a mobile game. This point is somewhat subjective and may be addressed with mods.
- Mods used to improve experience (weight 0.01): Some reviewers used mods to improve their experience, such as skipping the intro, increasing ship speed, and improving frame rate. This suggests that some aspects of the game may be lacking or could be improved.
- Limited character skin color options (weight 0.01): Some reviewers wanted to be able to change the skin color of the characters. The game does allow for character appearance customization.

Emotions:
No emotions}