Dragon Warrior III (NES) Playthrough [1 of 2]

A playthrough of Enix’s 1992 role-playing game for the NES, Dragon Warrior III. This is part one of a two-part playthrough, showing from the beginning up through the defeat of the Orochi in Jipang. Part two can be found at Dragon Warrior III is the final chapter of what is often referred to as the “Erdrick Trilogy.“ Taking place long before the events of Dragon Warrior ( ) and Dragon Warrior II ( ), this origin story kicks off as you wake up on your sixteenth birthday. Your father, the renowned hero Ortega, was on a quest to defeat the evil tyrant Baramos when he fell in battle against a dragon. Now that you’ve come of age, the king of Aliahan has asked you to continue on in Ortega’s footsteps and rid the world of this menace. In Japan, the game carries the subtitle “Soshite densetsuhe...,“ which means something along the lines of, “And it became legend.“ They certainly weren’t kidding. In its home country, Dragon Quest III is often thought as not just the best game of the series, but as one of the best JRPGs ever made. The game might look a lot like its predecessors at first glance, but there is a whole lot more going on under the hood than you might imagine. Your party can now have up to four characters at a time, and their roles are no longer predetermined. You can assign character classes however you like, so if you want a well-rounded group for adventuring, you could always start out with a soldier/warrior/wizard/pilgrim combo. If you’re in the mood for a stiff challenge, you might try swapping the wizard for a jester and the pilgrim for a merchant. There is a lot of flexibility in the system, especially when you consider how much magic has been fleshed out. DW2 had twenty-two unique spells, while DW3 has a whopping sixty. Moreover, if you’re willing to invest yourself in the complexities of class changing, you can even create hybrids balanced to your liking. If you want the hero to be a muscle bound she-warrior that can haggle or cast curative spells, then go for it! The game world itself has seen several upgrades. It’s absolutely massive (going so far as to include the continents from both prior games!) and it’s dense with towns, shrines, castles, and other points of interest. It also now features a regular day/night cycle that meaningfully impacts NPC behaviors, so it feels more like a living world than ever before. The structure of the journey is top-notch, too. The plot has some real substance to it and the gameplay loop avoids leaning too heavily on the tired “grind, then fetch item X from dungeon Y“ formula. You get to be king for a day, establish your own town, gamble on monster fights - there’s lots of cool stuff to do. It is a shame that Enix waited so long to bring this one stateside, though. The Japanese version was released in 1988! By the time 1992 rolled around, it looked hopelessly outdated next to the latest 16-bit RPGs like Final Fantasy IV and Phantasy Star III. Not that that had any bearing on the quality of its gameplay. Thirty-four years later, time still hasn’t tarnished the core experience: it’s as brilliantly playable now as it was back in the early 90s. Is anyone else looking forward to the Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake? Random thought, but I miss the corny writing style of DW1 and 2. “You have defeated red slime,“ isn’t as fun as, “Thou hast defeated the red slime,“ don’t you think? _____________ No cheats were used during the recording of this video. NintendoComplete () punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!