Dragon Warrior III (NES) - Re-Retroview

Review Breakdown
Battle System	2
Interaction	2
Originality	2
Story	2
Music & Sound	4
Visuals	3
Challenge	Very Hard
Completion Time	45-50 Hours
Overall
A dark, boring battle.

   In 1988, the third installment of the Dragon Quest series was released in Japan on a weekday; chaos ensued. Children skipped school and adults skipped work just to get their hands on this title. The game caused so many problems in Japan that the Imperial Diet passed a law saying that Dragon Quest games could only be released on Sundays or holidays. Three years later, the game reached American shores as Dragon Warrior III, thankfully without the turbulence. But was the chaos way back then in Japan worth it? Hardly.

   With a few exceptions, the third Dragon Warrior features pretty much the same hit-and-miss battle system as its predecessor. Enemies can beat you to healing, the Run command doesn’t always work against regular enemies, battles are slow, attacks against dead enemies are wasted, and a whole lot of leveling up and gold accumulation is necessary to make it through to the end of the game. An additional flaw is that the lead character is unable to use the Parry command in certain instances. In this installment, parties are up to four characters, and thankfully, there’s a loophole allowing your two middle characters to Parry, cancel out, and use another command yet still experience doubled defense. Furthermore, characters, except for the hero, can change classes upon reaching level 20, although all their stats are halved after the change, and their levels drop back to 1.

   The game’s interface is also hit-and-miss, mostly remaining as it did since the series’ last installment. The menu system is quite irksome, and you’ll easily run out of space, given that equipment consumes about half of each character’s inventory. Additionally, you can’t at all tell the effects of items or how weapons and armor affect your stats before purchasing them. Still, there’s a storage facility allowing you to drop off unwanted items, though picking them back up requires a little charge. Furthermore, several monster arenas exist where you can bet on monsters and get increased Gold if the monster you select wins. Finally, the game introduces a day-and-night system where townsfolk act quite differently during both periods.

   The title’s originality, too, is hit-and-miss, what with its recycling many elements from its predecessors, such as its battle system, interface, and graphics. Still, the game’s storyline, not to mention world, are both quite different than in the previous two Dragon Warriors.

   Speaking of the storyline, it’s hit-and-miss, as well, being your typical “travel across the world and defeat the bad guy” tale. The game has even less story than the second Dragon Warrior (Just what atrocities did Baramos ever commit?), although it does successfully link itself with the first two.

A lighter, yet still boring, dungeon.

   The strongest part of the Dragon Warrior games has been Koichi Sugiyama’s soundtrack, and the third installment, thankfully, is no exception, with many a memorable tune, the best being the ending theme, “Into the Legend.” All tunes naturally have a heavy blippety-bloppety feel, as did the sound effects, as one can easily infer from an NES game.

   As for the graphics, they were given a very slight overhaul, being neither too ugly nor too pretty. Akira Toriyama’s character designs are the strongest parts of the visuals, though battles are still fought in complete darkness.

   Finally, the game, like its predecessors, is quite difficult, what with enemies being painfully hard even at high levels. The amount of leveling up necessary to make it through the title without dying will definitely consume a good chunk of the high playing time.

   In the end, the NES version of Dragon Warrior III is just another average RPG that one needn’t play to make his or her life complete. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: the only thing that these games had going for them in their time was the popularity of their creators.