Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Dragon Quest III


Dragon Quest 3 is a masterpiece and the best Dragon Quest game. It's also my second favorite game...of course, I make this realization after my latest post being about my favorite games and I hadn't played it yet. I'm always a sucker for stuff that starts the legend of characters or series, such as A New Hope for Star Wars. It's just so awesome to see the start of something that you know unfolds into an epic story or seeing the roots of your favorite character before they were spoken of in legends.

It was called Dragon Warrior before due to trademarks

Dragon Quest 3 was actually one of the first games I had as a kid. Seeing the cover art of Erdrick and his companions is awesome and I can see why my Mom would think it would be a good game to get for her 10 year old son who loved Pokemon and his teal Gameboy. Back in the day I didn't understand the concept of grinding or JRPGs in general so I never got past the first dungeon. I had no sense of party structure so I can only imagine what I had as a team...probably a jester, thief, and merchant. My initial time with the game ended when I asked my Mom what "d-a-m-n" spelled and the game somehow went missing.

Dragon Quest 3 personifies what I love about the series. The world, monsters, and music are all great and there's not much more I can say about that. The charm of the series is something I feel will never be better in any game series. The whole time you think you're going to save the world after you take care of this guy called Baramos. He's terrifying in his own right but the true main villain, Zoma is a final boss for the ages. The final boss music blares as he hurls countless Blizzard spells at you and you scramble to keep your party healed up with the Sage Stone. This all adds up and the tension that the fate of the world is in your hands can get to you. I died like 4 times to him.

Zoma's theme

The class system earlier and it's not something I ever get too deep into with games that have it. I feel like the extra time you need to commit to get the extra skills you're bringing in with an additional or new class could be better used by just leveling up the character I already have. I did end up switching my Mage into a Sage to get a healer/caster and boy oh boy did I love that character. The other reason I loved all my characters is because I named them after my two cats and wife. The epic journey of Mike was helped by the fighter Charlie, the (S)mage Lucy, and the priest Wife. Having created characters was something I thought I would like less than premade characters with character arcs and personalities made for me was something I was hesitant about but I ended up caring more about my DQ3 characters than ones is say, Dragon Quest 5.

My thoughts may seem a little scatterbrain but that's just how I write as I can't remember what I wanted to type 2 seconds ago. As one of the Dragon Quest games people will recommend you check out to get a feel for the series I can absolutely echo those recommendations to those getting into the series and JRPGs with a little more depth. I finished the game on Gameboy after all these years when I bought a complete copy for myself but I'd some day like to play the other versions. I recently bought Famicom and Super Famicom versions that I'll never play but I also have the game on my phone that kind of takes all the best parts of each version into a portable experience. Dragon Quest 3 is a masterpiece in a series full of them. Oh yeah, and the Famicom box art is the greatest box art ever.





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