Now to move the entire other side of the spectrum from gory gothic horror, we have my favorite Dragon Quest entry in the series. I will say now that while I have played varying versions of it, I'm going to try and stick to the GBC version due to it being the first version I played and the one I remember the most fondly. With that said, I have screenshots from other versions due to google image search telling me that no one really bothered to play this version, so you'll likely being seeing some screens from the Super Famicom or iOS versions.
In the summer of 2001, I had recently graduated from high school and was stuck on a family trip to Florida. I was able to bring my Game Boy Color and my new copy of DQIII I got with it, that I had kind of been ignoring. To offset the boring car ride and my needy family, I took a serious dive into DQIII and found myself incredibly immersed by the whole experience. What it lacked in gripping narrative and visual eye candy, it made up for with lots of variety, well-rounded design with lots of options, and DQ's greatest strength: the sense of accomplishment from the game's various mini-victories. Only old school games ever give you a sense of satisfaction for going off the beaten path in a dungeon to find a new weapon, which may not even be a super weapon, but just raises your stats enough to feel worth it. It's the little victories that make this and many old school titles a serious treat for me. I didn't finish it on the vacation due to the GBC devouring all the batteries I bought, but I didn't finish it later that Fall around my birthday. This game and DQVIII I feel are the two games that I always think about around Fall season, and I'll still get in the mood to play through the franchise that time of year.
The Kingdom of Aliahan has grown increasingly concerned with the rising power of the Archfiend Baramos, who wishes to conquer the world. Sensing he may soon succeed, they task their greatest hero Ortega to journey to Baramos' castle and slay the demon king. Despite leaving behind his wife and newborn child, Ortega undergoes the journey and, in time, is never heard from again while Baramos' influence continues to expand. Sixteen years later, you, the child of Ortega, are now tasked with fulfilling your father's quest and must build a party of adventurers to travel the world and stop Baramos.
In hindsight, I really feel like DQIII is quite possibly the best RPG on the NES/Famicom. There is so much this game does right, and it has far more staying power than a lot of other RPGs available in the 8-bit era. It also does a lot of crap that modern games still get praised for, such as allowing you to choose the heroes gender, heavy customization mechanics, and day and night cycles that affect the monsters encountered and change the dialogue and towns. The definitive version to me, is the Super Famicom remake, from which the GBC and later ports all borrow from as it adds quite a few new mechanics to increase the games depth such as the Mini-Medal side quest from later games, Pachisi Game boards, and the new personality system.
In the remakes intro, your character has a dream concerning a mysterious voice in which you get to choose your gender and name. Afterward, the voice decides to see what your character truly entails and makes you do a few mini-scenarios that help define your character better. These scenarios are often pretty clever, and people familiar with the GBA FFIV port will notice similarities to Cecil's optional Lunar Trial. My favorite scenario has your character transformed into a monster, with a village trying to hunt you down. There are also ones concerning corrupt nobles and Good Samaritan scenarios. Depending on how you choose, your character is given a personality which directly affects your stat growth, such as Macho types giving boosts to strength and endurance at the cost of Intelligence and MP growth. There are even personality traits that are exclusive to gender.
Once the dream is over, your character speaks with the king and is sent on their quest. Here you can stop by Ruidia's Tavern and find adventurers to help you. You get to build these characters by selecting the job and gender and then using Stat Raising seeds to customize their ability. Personalities are randomly assigned, but you can always re-roll a character if it doesn't work out the way you want. The original had seven jobs you could acquire: Warrior, Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Merchant, Goof-Off/Jester, and the hidden Sage class. The remakes add Thieves as an eighth class. Your hero is restricted to the Hero class, but the class has above average stat growth and a host of unique spells and equipment that compensates for being locked out of the class system. Where the class system really shines is that you can eventually reach Dharma Temple (No I'm not using the mobile names), where at Lv. 20 a character can change jobs but be returned to Lv. 1 with their stats halved from their previous jobs. This means that these Lv. Characters will be significantly stronger compared to their original versions and as long as you follow the rules of having the character be Lv. 20, you can do this indefinitely to build incredibly powerful custom parties. In fact, once you beat the game, you can drop the hero and build your own custom team.
This level of customization depth was unheard of for it's time, and may actually be the most broken customization system in the franchise. Also, some gear can actually change your character's personality as long as it's equipped, and spells learned in a class are retained across job changes, meaning you can turn a mage into a warrior with magic, and then use an item to offset the stat growth modifiers to something more beneficial. See? Broken, of course, it's also time-consuming as hell.
Another interesting treat about the game is that the world map is actually loosely based on the real world, with many of the game's locations lining up with real world places and the towns following suit. There is a pyramid you can visit to steal a pharaoh's treasure which will curse your party to fight a battle every step until you leave the place (in the original, the curse never leaves) and the Japan themed town has you re-enact the Orochi Tale which I find kind of amusing considering that the other half of my time on this vacation was ogling the new screenshots for FFX, which borrows heavily from the Japanese myth. This game ultimately established the DQ Formula of having every location have its own story, which builds into the greater narrative of finding and slaying the Demon Lord. From smoothing over relations between Elves and Humans in one town, to stopping the game's comic relief villain from his newest scheme, to even sending one of your own party as a Merchant to start their own town only to have to save them later from an angry mob when their egos grow too big. It's all quite memorable, and I still think fondly of the adventures I had with this game.
The biggest element that impressed me about this game is the huge plot twist 3/4ths of the way into the game. I am actually going to spoil this, so if you hope to play this in the future and want to leave this a surprise, you can and should skip this part. 3/4ths of the way in, your party will reach Baramos Castle and fell the Arch demon. During the victory celebration, you learn that Baramos was simply an underling of a more powerful Demon Lord from another world. To truly save the land, your character must travel to this dark dimension, which turns out to be Alefgard from DQI and II. After undertaking a quest to create the weapons needed to stop Zoma and restore light to the world with your Orb of Light, your character finds themselves trapped in the world forever but also a legendary hero given the title of Loto/Erdrick, meaning this whole time, you've been playing a prequel to the first two games in the series. This idea was sch a hit, Hori used it again in DQVI concerning the origin of Zenithia, and it's legendary gear.
Overall, the game is a great classic NES RPG with good music, a great story, cool locations and ideas, as well as rewarding gameplay. It left quite the impression on me, despite DQI and VII being my first forays into the franchise. I still consider it to be the most clever and best made entry in the franchise, and I'm not surprised at all that Japan still regards it as one of the best in the series.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 03-17-2023 at 11:12 PM.
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