The Dragon Quest Series Part 3: Crystallization

  

Dragon Quest III is the game where the Dragon Quest series becomes undeniably good. While I enjoyed my time with the first game, it's incredibly bare-bones and dated and the second game was fine up until the final hours. Both games I could only recommend with caveats and even then only to those who like classic JRPGs or are hardcore Dragon Quest fans. Dragon Quest III meanwhile is a fantastic JRPG I can easily recommend to anyone. It builds upon the foundations of the previous games while also avoiding the balancing mistakes of the second game to create a wholly realized experience.

Unlike the first two however, Dragon Quest III's remakes add a substantial amount that as far as I know wasn't there in the original release. Where the remakes of the first two added simple quality-of-life improvements like a vault to store items in, III's remakes add entirely new mechanics that can radically alter how you play. The Switch version also adds a mechanic that I'm certain changes up the entire battle system, but we'll get to that soon enough. It doesn't matter though because no matter what version you play, Dragon Quest III is regarded by many of its fans as one of the best in the series.

Dragon Quest III follows a young Hero after their sixteenth birthday. Unlike the previous two games, DQ III allows the player to choose whether they want the Hero to be male or female, which opens up the role-playing part of this Japanese role-playing game. You don't often see this even in modern JRPGs, and the only games I can think of that even attempted this from around that time were PC RPGs like Ultima and Might and Magic, so I commend Dragon Quest III for adding something as simple as gender options to console RPGs.

Anyhow, the Hero is the child of the legendary Ortega, who set out years ago on a quest to stop the Demon Lord Baramos, but disappeared and is presumed dead. The Hero is tasked by the King of Aliahan to set out in their father's footsteps to stop Baramos and bring peace to the world.

From here, the Hero hires a party at the local tavern. This is where we see Dragon Quest III's unique approach to the party system. The Hero may be special, complete with their own unique character class, but they can't possibly tackle everything by themself. That's where the party comes in. Where the second game offered a completely rigid party of three preset characters, III allows the player to make their own party setup. There are a total of 6 classes to choose from: Soldier, Fighter, Cleric, Mage, Merchant, and Jester. Each of these classes have their own strengths and weaknesses and the player can pick and choose how they want to set up their squad. I went with the default Hero-Soldier-Mage-Cleric, which provides a good tank-mage-healer setup, though the player will be required to use at least one Merchant in order to complete the game. Later on, you can change each character's class at Alltrades Abbey which can lead to interesting scenarios like turning your warrior into a mage to allow for more durable spellcasters. What you really should do though is turn at least one of your mages into a sage to allow better stats for at least one of your characters.

It is also here where we get a good look at the Personality system, a mechanic that has been added to each and every remake of Dragon Quest III. The remakes of III start with a dream sequence where the Hero is asked a series of questions by a mysterious voice. These questions in turn influence what personality the Hero starts with. The personality determines a character's stat growth; for example, a Paragon will have great strength growth but lower magic stats while an Genius will have high magic power but lower strength and defense. In short, you'll want to tailor your party's personalities to ones that befit their classes. You don't want a Soldier with high magic stats and low defense when they can't use magic.

Unfortunately, the Personality system is vaguely presented in-game. You're told how they work and that they're important in determining stat growth, but the game doesn't tell you what kind of growths each personality has. You can see each character's personality in their stats screen, but you'd only be able to guess what each personality does based on those stats, which isn't the most helpful thing in the world, especially early on when you're just getting a hang of the mechanics. There are ways to change a character's personality, so if you get a party member with an unhelpful personality, you do have options to correct that. The most common way is to read books, though equipping certain types of equipment can change a character's personality so long as they keep wearing it. Again though, since the effects of each personality aren't explained in-game, you run the risk of putting another unhelpful personality on your character, not to mention the fact that it's not immediately obvious what personality the books will give you until you actually use them.

This is the one aspect of Dragon Quest III that I highly suggest using a guide for, if only because at least a guide will provide more information on each personality and so you don't screw yourself over with a party with ill-fitting personalities. Don't worry though, this is one of the only few problems with Dragon Quest III, and it's not all that bad once you actually know what to do.

Anyway, once you get your party, the beginning of Dragon Quest III plays out similarly to DQ I and the beginning of II, that being following a linear path as you grind your party and get stronger. Your first order of business to teleport off the continent you start on, and to do that you have to run around fetching trinkets to open the way to the Travel Door. Once you teleport to the world proper, then you truly get to see the magic of Dragon Quest III.

As I mentioned in my post on the first game, the Dragon Quest series isn't so much focused on grand-scale narratives like its cousin series, Final Fantasy, as much as it is smaller adventures that are encountered while on the road of a larger story. Dragon Quest feels more like a quest; you are trying to stop a great evil, but it's what you encounter on the way that makes your adventure special, much like how The Odyssey places a lot of emphasis on Odysseus' trials and tribulations in trying to get home. There were shades of this in Dragon Quest II, but III is where this aspect of the series starts to shine.

Right after you travel to the new continent, you go straight to Romaly castle. There, you find that the king's crown has been stolen by Robin 'Ood and his gang. Talk to an imprisoned thief and you'll find that Robin 'Ood is hiding at a nearby tower. Follow that lead and you'll find the crown and Robin 'Ood. Of course, he isn't keen on giving it up so this leads to another first in the series: consistent boss fights. The first two had barely any bosses outside of their final areas, so to see a boss this early in III came as a surprise. He puts up quite a fight too; Robin 'Ood is joined by his underlings and all of them hit hard so be prepared. Beat them and you get the crown back.

When you return the crown however, the king admits that it weighs heavily upon him and asks if the Hero is willing to take his place. Say yes, and the Hero becomes the new king of Romaly. This is a hilarious reverse of the ending of II. Where II ended with the Hero coming home to become the new king of the land, III has this city near the beginning that has you become king after taking out a low-level thief. Of course, kings can't go on epic quests to stop demon lords, so when you're done being the ruler, you can find the old king in the town's gambling den and request that you retire from being ruler.

It's this funny little story that encapsulates what Dragon Quest is all about. Sure, in the long run it's only a step on your way to stop evil and it contributes little to the overall narrative, but it's the journey that matters and not the destination. The people you meet, their problems, their contributions to your quest, it all makes the world of Dragon Quest III feel so alive, and as you go on, the stories start to get tragic. 

 

My personal favorite is the town of Norvik, not long after Romaly. When you enter, everyone in town is asleep save for an old man, who as it turns out is the father of a young man who fell in love with the Princess of the Fairies. Both of them have disappeared and in retaliation, the Queen of the Fairies cursed the town into eternal slumber. Do some exploring in a nearby cave and you'll find a note revealing that both lovers committed suicide years ago because neither of their families accepted their love. You inform the Queen of the Fairies, who grants you an item that will remove the curse from the town out of remorse over the fact that she had a role in her daughter's suicide. You return to Norvik and reawaken everyone in town. The curse is now lifted, but the father of the man discovers his son has died and nothing can bring him or his lover back.

This, in my mind, is what makes Dragon Quest III so memorable over the previous entries. I've had to do similar tasks in I and II where I had to fix a town's problems, but none of them had that element of humor or tragedy the way III does. The stories don't feel perfunctory, they feel like you're a part of a larger world, and every place feels unique because of it.

Like Dragon Quest II, you get a ship fairly early in III, and just like II the world almost completely opens up. Unlike II, III's sense of discovery feels so much more satisfying. For one thing, the game's balancing is much more fair. You aren't as likely to wander somewhere you aren't supposed to and get stomped on. Even when you do find areas with stronger enemies, they're more often than not located near towns with inns so those areas turn into excellent grinding zones.

The other aspect that makes III's world exploration so cool is the fact that the world map mirrors that of the real world.

      

(Bear in mind this map is using the original town names and not the retranslated ones found in the Switch version)

This helps make exploring the world more interesting because you always have a sense of where you are, and where you are has some connection to the real world. For example, the city of Jipang is located where real-world Japan is, and as you'd expect, the city has a distinct eastern Asian flavor to it. Or the colonial village of Soo (Persistence in the remake), located in the middle of North America. There's a lot of real-world influence in these locations which not only makes them distinct from each other, but it encourages exploring these areas because you know they have a real-world connection.

The goal of this portion is also a lot more clear than Dragon Quest II's. In II, you had to collect a series of trinkets that would help open the way to Rhone, but in III you have to collect six colored orbs that are hidden throughout the world. The orbs will then awaken Ramia, a giant bird that can fly you to Baramos' castle.

I used a walkthrough for this part of the game, and I really wish I didn't. The sense of discovery and wonder feels so fully realized that I think I cheated myself out of the satisfaction of finding everything out for myself. Granted, some of the orbs are pretty obscure, but the game is so populated with NPCs feeding you hints that with enough digging you could find everything by yourself.

But how does the game play? I've spent so much time discussing the world and the storytelling and the exploration, but what about the game itself? Well it builds on the base gameplay of the first two, but it's still a turn-based RPG. You still take turns hitting the enemy, but if there's one thing about Dragon Quest, it's that its gameplay is consistent. The remakes add a handy Item Bag which allows you to store anything. Basically it provides an unlimited inventory without requiring those vaults the remakes of the previous games had. You'll still want to leave some items on your characters like healing items because you can't use the item bag in the middle of combat. All the same, just having an unlimited inventory raises Dragon Quest III in my eyes.

 

One of the major additions to Dragon Quest III is the inclusion of a day-night cycle. Walk around on the overworld long enough and eventually night will come. The towns will even act accordingly, with all the stores save the inn closed down and most of the citizens are in bed. The game says that stronger monsters come out at night, but I couldn't see any tangible difference between daytime and nighttime monsters. It's a primitive system to be sure; it operates on how many tiles you move on as opposed to actual time passed and it's only used for a few specific instances, but for a game made in 1988, that's pretty ambitious for the time.

A new mechanic called the Tactics system was added in this version that, as far as I'm aware, was originally introduced in Dragon Quest IV. I can't tell if the other remakes of III had Tactics, but I do know it wasn't in the original version. What Tactics does is it enables the companions to be AI-driven. You still have to select the Hero's actions, but your party members can be controlled by an AI, which itself can be influenced by the Tactics. For example, during a boss fight you may want your cleric to keep everyone's health up, so you head on over to Tactics and select Focus on Healing. Alternatively, if you're grinding you can set everyone to Fight Wisely and they'll play (mostly) conservatively.

 

You do have the option to have everyone follow orders to play like the original game, but I'd advise against this for two reasons. Firstly, having to only input one character's command versus four eats up far less time when grinding, which in turn makes grinding far less tedious. Secondly, the AI partners are able to devise moves on a whim. Say your Hero is grievously injured, but you didn't account for this when crafting your moves so your cleric does something else. If you have them set to Follow Orders, they won't be able to heal until the next turn. Meanwhile, if you have them set to Fight Wisely or Focus on Healing, they can immediately heal the injured character so long as their move hasn't passed. In short, the AI basically reads the situation and reacts accordingly within the same turn, which is far more useful than having them follow orders and have things potentially go horribly wrong. Besides, the majority of the Dragon Quest games have the Tactics system, so it's best to get used to it while it's here. 

 

About the only issue I have is the fact that your spellcasters do not "fight wisely" as it were. They have a bad habit of wasting MP, casting powerful spells on enemies that do not deserve it. It's especially apparent in the early and closing hours of the game. In the beginning, your spellcasters won't have a large MP pool to draw from but they don't hesitate to throw magic at everything even when you're trying to conserve resources, and when you're at the end they'll cast outrageously powerful spells at the enemies, which in turn results in your party having to rest more often at inns to restore lost magic. As a result, conserving magic is made much more difficult than it needs to be. There is a tactic called "don't use magic," but the problem isn't that they're using magic. They're mages, that's what they do. No, the problem is that they're being wasteful with it and the tactics offer no middle ground. This made the final area of the game significantly more frustrating, and if I hadn't found those ultra-rare prayer rings that can restore MP, I would have been clean out of magic by the time I got to the final bosses.

 

If you're a newcomer to Dragon Quest, the remakes of III will give you a good idea of what to expect should you decide to continue on with the series. It's also for that reason that I think it's a much better starting point for general audiences. Where I could only recommend the first two for very specific people, I can recommend III to most people in general. Well the remakes anyway; I do have to wonder what the original version was like since it seems as though the remakes of III are more radically different than the original. At the same time, if you do start with III, you might miss some of the subversions the game throws at you as you go on.

 

Such as the fight with Lord Baramos. If you're interested in playing Dragon Quest III at all, I suggest you skip on ahead here. The last part of the game works much better as a surprise.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE

 

Once you awake Ramia, you can go straight to Baramos' castle. Baramos was noticeably harder than the Dragonlord and Hargon, and if you're not prepared he can easily wipe you out. But with enough perseverance, blatant abuse of the autosave system, and grinding, you can beat him. From there, the game proceeds like the previous two, where you go back to the starting town to receive a hero's welcome. As the king congratulates you however, a sinister voice cackles, revealing that Baramos was merely a pawn and that the true evil mastermind is Zoma. Your quest is not over. You still have some work to do.

 

This whole part is a work of genius. It completely flips the endings of the first two games on their head. Just when you think you've won and conquered the dark lord, the game lulls you into thinking that's it, you finished your quest. But as you receive the traditional congratulations by your king, it pulls the rug out from under you and reveals that you haven't won just yet. It's a great way to subvert the first two and I do think that if you hadn't played them you might miss out on just how big a shock this false ending is.

Admittedly, it does feel like the game is padding itself out. Dragon Quest III is a pretty meaty game that even reaching this point will take some time. That is until you visit the Dark World, Zoma's domain. You can visit the Dark World via a pit that's conveniently located right next to Baramos' castle. Once you arrive, you can find a boat that you can take to a nearby continent. The Dark World itself is shrouded in eternal night, creating an ominous and melancholy mood. This is a land that has not seen the sun for a very long time. Then you find a nearby town and it begins to dawn on you.

The town is Tantegel. This land is Alefgard, the same place you explored in the first two games.

Talking to the NPCs will reveal the land fell into darkness a long time ago and that no one here remembers what light looks like anymore, but they all hold out hope for a hero from the land above to appear and bring them salvation. You aren't the first hero to descend to the Dark World however; years ago, a man named Ortega arrived here. Though he lost his memory, he dedicated himself to saving this forbidden land, but he disappeared years ago.

This part also encapsulates something else I like about Dragon Quest's storytelling. A modern story would have accompanied these reveals with dramatic stings and characters acting shocked and all sorts of things that would have made it overblown and melodramatic. DQ on the other hand leaves that feeling to the player, makes them feel that switch flip on in their head. It's minimalist to be sure and it's not going to work for everyone, but that feeling I got when I pieced what the NPCs were saying by myself and the ensuing moment of shock is one I can only get from video games like this.

However, I don't think that newcomers are going to catch the twist of Tantegel being in the Dark World. Having visited there in both the previous games, finding it in the Dark World came as a surprise. Again, this is why I wonder about starting off with this one because it works off players' expectations based on the earlier entries, entries that are tough sells to a modern audience. I don't even think reading a plot summary will grant the same effect because the whole point of early Dragon Quest is the experience you get out of it and how you respond to it, not what the characters get.

In fact, this entire stretch of the game plays like an abbreviated version of Dragon Quest I, complete with Zoma's castle being right in view of Tantegel. Your goal is to collect three major trinkets that you collect in Dragon Quest I: the sunstone, the staff of rain, and the sacred amulet. Once you have all three, you can can get the Rainbow Drop to create a bridge to Zoma's castle. This section is a lot shorter than the original though because you are already pretty powerful by the time you arrive and the boat makes navigation much faster. Again, I can't imagine newcomers understanding the full power of this section of the game.

The ending itself though is shockingly bittersweet after two straight games of uplifting, gratifying endings. As the Hero makes the assault on Zoma's castle, they come across Ortega doing battle with a King Hydra. Ortega is mortally wounded, and as he lays dying, he doesn't recognize the Hero as he tells them to return to Aliahan and tell his child that he's sorry he wasn't a better father. Shortly after, you do battle with the King Hydra as well as the reanimated corpse and the soul of Baramos before the final confrontation with Zoma. Of course, this being Dragon Quest, Zoma is defeated and his castle crumbles. With his dying words, he proclaims that a new darkness will rise eventually.

With Zoma's defeat, light returns to Alefgard for the first time in years, and the Hero has saved the worlds for real this time. But in doing so, the door between realms has closed, meaning the Hero can never return to his homeland. The Hero returns to Tantegel to the applause of the king and his subjects. The Hero is given the title of Erdrick, and with his deeds he has allowed Alefgard to thrive as its own realm, to become a world unto itself.

Shortly after, Erdrick disappears, leaving behind his armor, his sword, his helm, and his amulet, all of which become sacred treasures to be passed on to his descendants so when evil rises again, they too can stand tall to face it.

The twist that Dragon Quest III is actually a prequel to the first two games isn't really a twist anymore since everyone will mention it when discussing the story, and I think that's a shame because the game does a good job hiding that fact up until the Dark World segment. Knowing it doesn't make the game's ending any less powerful though. I was struck by this weird pervading sense of tragedy. Sure, you won and became the legendary hero spoken of constantly throughout the first two installments, but at the same time you vanished from your homeland in almost the same way your father did. Not to mention, only Erdrick knows what truly happened to his father; all of Ortega's family and the friends he made in his homeworld will never know what ultimately became of him. The fact that Erdrick straight up disappears never to be seen again afterwards leads me to believe that he tried to find his way home somehow, though whether he'll succeed is something we'll never know. Perhaps I'm looking way too deeply into the ending of this 30+ year old video game, but DQ III's ending feels so markedly different from the way the first two ended, and the lengths it went to subvert the traditional Dragon Quest ending leads me to believe that the melancholic ending was intentional on some level.

END OF SPOILERS 

 

When all's said and done, Dragon Quest III is where the series hits its stride in terms of storytelling. No longer are you some schmuck with a preset goal and you just do it, no, now there are actual story sequences, moments where the plot does more than exposition and setting up what you're gonna be doing for the entirety of the adventure. It's still an ancient JRPG so the storytelling still isn't complex or anything, but for 1988, seeing this on a console RPG must have been mindblowing. This was also released before Final Fantasy II, which itself tried its hand at telling a bigger, more engaging story. While Final Fantasy II probably did a better job telling a grand, epic story (for the time anyway), Dragon Quest III still feels like an adventure, and sometimes that's a little more fun and ages better in the long run when characters don't have to be deep and complex.

Dragon Quest III is the first game I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone looking to get their feet wet with the series that doesn't want to experience the incredibly aged mechanics of the first two. I do think newcomers will miss out on some awesome reveals for reasons I outlined in the spoilers section, but conversely it might make playing the previous games a more interesting experience should they ever decide to visit those games. The remakes of Dragon Quest III make it a more modern experience as well, and I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. I played the Switch version, but the Game Boy Color remake is quite popular among fans of the series and I myself would like to try it out someday.

Now here's the difficult part. I played through the first three Dragon Quest games on Switch, and as of this writing there isn't any word on whether future installments will also see a release. Which also means I have no idea when I'll get to Dragon Quest IV or V, which I am extremely interested in playing. The big problem with being a western Dragon Quest fan is that many of its games see limited releases and what is released tends to be very expensive. IV for example is extremely rare in its original NES release, and the DS remake that came out years ago is ungodly expensive as well. The obvious solution would be to emulate it, but emulation isn't something I'm keen on. I'm not against it, it's just not something I do too often and I prefer getting an official release when I can.

So what does this mean? To put it bluntly, I'm not sure when I'll get around to playing the next entry in the series. Either it gets released on Switch or I just bite the bullet and emulate one of the remakes. I do think that IV, V, and VI will eventually come to Switch if for no other reason than the fact that they also got IOS versions based on their DS remakes; after all, the Switch versions of the first three are based on their IOS remakes so I'm holding out hope. Until then, I've been playing Dragon Quest XI so at the very least I won't be starved for the series for quite some time. Mark my words though, I will do Dragon Quest IV some day.