Dragon Quest 3 Review

That's it! Dragon Quest III completed. Not going for anything post-game. So here are spoilered thoughts. No major spoilers but y'know just incase. Yup, that's "every RPG is DQ3" alright. Talk about archetypical. Yet it still has it's own identity. It's lighthearted, exploration focused, and wants to keep a very relaxed pace. The class change system is very simple but still allows for some fun strategies and adjustments in the late game. Combat is absurdly straightforward but honestly after so many years of overly complex JRPG system, that works to it's advantage. I think from a modern lens it definitely needed the fast forward for user friendliness. But I don't begrudge older RPGs that, it's just how it worked. I will give the game some insane props for what it clearly wanted the player to experience at the time. Like I can feel the game wanting to be played by a little kid after school, sharing secrets with his friends and flipping through magazines for hints and tips. It's an experience modern games can't recreate thanks to the internet meaning any solution is a few clicks away. But so many want to. That said, being so entrenched in the time it was released doesn't mean it's aged poorly. Far from it. In the end, Dragon Quest III is an extremely solid, baseline RPG experience. Which gives it the same edge I felt the Original Dragon Quest had, in that it's weirdly easy to recommend to non-gamers as a starting point. Especially older people with some arcade/NES nostalgia but who fell out of it as time passed.

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