I was worried that Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake might feel like an uninspired and overpriced cash-in on 1990s RPG nostalgia. Instead, it’s the latest in a string of excellent Square Enix tributes to past classics. Like 2022’s Tactics Ogre: Reborn and 2023’s Star Ocean: The Second Story R, it strikes a great balance between faithful port and modern refresh that makes Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake feel distinctly new without abandoning the virtues of the 1988 game it’s based on.
Recently released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC, Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is essentially the original 1988 NES game with some new content, a lot less friction, and a beautiful hybrid art-style that makes even the most mundane RPG adventure tasks feel more exhilarating than they have any right to be. A demonic dragon called Baramos threatens the world. A party of four adventurers must adventure across a wide-open overworld and through many grueling dungeons to save it. Hundreds of primitive turn-based brawls ensue.
That should not be enough to sustain a full-priced, 50-hour game in the year 2024. That fact that it might be is what makes Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake a small triumph. I’ve only played around seven hours of the Switch version so far, hardly enough for a full review but long enough to see my early doubts washed away with each new location visited and boss battle completed. The rough edges that remain—cryptic directions from NPCs, constant grinding, stingy character revives—provide the stakes necessary to make straightforward exploration still feel meaningful and rewarding.
Playing Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake means leaving a village, fighting tons of monsters, gaining levels and gold for stronger equipment, exploring every nearby location for treasures and clues, and then eventually embarking on the next adventure-advancing dungeon—usually a cave or tower. The story, despite some new content additions this time around, remains incredibly basic, even by classic standards. Instead of feeling shallow, however, it feels liberating. Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake does not hold your hand, tutorialize ad nauseum, or continually interrupt the action and player agency with long-winded writing.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t modern amenities. Chimera Wings let you travel to past locations, and the Zoom fast-travel spell from the original has been upgraded to work inside buildings and directly from the main map. A “Dracky Quest” easy mode that you can swap to at any time makes it impossible to die and thus easy to grind new levels. There’s no way to turn off encounters and no fast-forward button, but battle speed can be doubled and Dragon Quest III battles normally default to auto-commands.
A mini-map and optional waypoint marker make navigating the world a lot easier, and an auto-save feature regularly records progress, even if manual saves are still only available at churches. The job system also has a new Monster Wrangler vocation that lets you capture monsters and recruit them for a monster arena that’s unlocked early on. It’s a small but neat addition. Key conversations now also feature voice acting, though it wasn’t enough to make me care about what people were saying.
The real draw of Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake remains its beautiful visuals. Meticulous pixel-art sprites layered on top of vibrant backgrounds full of depth and detail make it the best-looking HD-2D game yet. It evokes the feeling of the original 8-bit world mixed with the clarity, color, and fullness gestured at in more recent Dragon Quest games. Things look especially rich on the Switch OLED, though there are other compromises for playing the game on the almost eight-year old handheld hybrid. Some players have noted it offers slightly less detail compared to the PS5 version, and I’ve personally noticed some unfortunate frame rate drops on screens where the environmental effects are extra busy, though it doesn’t hamper the overall experience.
Calling something “comfort food” provides a license to indulge simple desires without succumbing to the wave of guilt, shame, or embarrassment that normally accompanies giving in. In the wrong context, a buttery grilled cheese and canned tomato soup might taste like defeat, but enjoyed on a cold, damp, overcast day beneath soft light and warm covers, the combination feels cozy, restorative, even sublime. “The idea of comfort food, to me, is the dish I need right now,” wrote Anthony Bourdain.
People love to talk about Japanese RPG comfort food. How else to explain some people’s soft spots for long games with predictable stories full of repetitive gameplay and tedious grinding? In the wrong context, old-school, turn-based RPGs fueled by random encounters and character clichés can amount to boring busywork. But when the retro cocktail hits with the right amount of novelty, the formula feels like coming home. “Like the best comfort food, it’s about giving you exactly what you already know you want,” I wrote back in 2021 about Bravely Default II. That’s also how I’ve been feeling about Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake, an even prettier game with less filler.