by ersatz_cats
Dragon Quest 3 – or “Dragon Warrior 3” as I knew it in my youth – is easily my second-favorite video game of all time. (It was my lone favorite for many years, but it’s not easy to surpass the later-released masterpiece that is Final Fantasy 6.) This isn’t to say this game is without its flaws, or its occasional weirdness, as we’re about to see – just that I’ve always found it to be a fun trip. I’ve beaten the original NES Dragon Warrior 3 countless times. I’ve beaten the Game Boy Color remake countless times. And despite not reading a lick of Japanese, I’ve even beaten the Famicom and Super Famicom versions multiple times, untranslated, all strictly from memory. I’m telling you, I. LOVE. THIS. GAME.
Recently, after far too many delays, I was finally exploring the endgame content of the mobile Dragon Quest 3 remake (the one released in 2014), when I came across the single most hilariously bizarre option I have ever encountered in a video game. It’s so absurd, I just have to share it with you all.
Now, you might say “C’mon ersatz, tell us what this crazy choice is!” And if I just out and told you, you’d say “WTF!?!? How is that possibly a thing?” And I’d say “Well, there’s a long story leading up to it.” And you’d say “I absolutely must know how this option came to be.” So I’m just going to rewind that timeline back, and start with the story. If you pay attention, you’ll see where the outcome is headed. In the meantime, there are actually a lot of subtle version differences between the various iterations of Dragon Quest 3, some of which will be relevant to this bewildering dilemma. And those of you who follow this blog know how I love minutiae! So I’ll discuss the various remake tweaks and upgrades (and downgrades) I’ve found most interesting over the years, as we explore the decades-long evolution of a video game, leading up to most head-scratching final game option of all time.
Oh, and in case it wasn’t clear, mucho spoilers ahead.
“THE GREATEST RPG OF ALL TIME”
I always feel like I should establish some basic foundation with these things before diving into the good stuff, but if you feel you know the basic history of Dragon Quest 3, feel free to skip to the next section.
Ever since the proliferation of the Super Nintendo, there’s been a lot of competition in the RPG department. And while I can’t say I’ve played every Wizardry or King’s Quest or random dungeon crawler prior to the 16-bit era, there isn’t any doubt in my heart that, at the time of its release (1988 in Japan, 1991 in North America), Dragon Quest 3 was the greatest RPG of all time. By its contemporary standards, this game was FUCKING HUGE. It felt like God damn Skyrim, traveling around this massive map, with all these little towns and locales hidden everywhere. There were so many cool spells and features, including magic-casting items and Poison Needles. There were Arenas where you could place wagers on monsters fighting each other. It just had everything.
At some point, as you recognized landmarks and got a sense for your surroundings, you realized the world you were traveling was literally the real world – Earth – probably in the late 1500s or so, except of course with magic and dragons and hidden elf villages. Locations were given funny names – “Romaly” instead of Rome, “Jipang” instead of Japan, etc. Regardless of the fantasy overlay, each locale was made to feel authentic.
But what kept me coming back for more was the class system. It was more developed and varied than that of Final Fantasy 1, which in Japan came out around the same time. You had a mandatory “Hero” class – the reason for which becomes apparent later. Only your main protagonist could have this class, and they could not change their profession. You were offered three pre-made allies of optimal classes, but you could recruit about a dozen more characters with a choice of up to six different classes. Around the time you hit level 20, you found a temple called “Dhama”, where you could freely change the class of any character who has reached level 20 or higher. You could have a Soldier who learns Wizard magic. You could have your Wizard change to Pilgrim, to learn both sets of magic. You could start with a Merchant – a strong early game class – then switch them over to a martial-artist Fighter once they start to lag behind. There was even a secret eighth class – Sage – which could only be obtained through a special book, or by class-changing an otherwise-useless Goof-Off. And you didn’t have to maintain a varied party, either. You could use three Wizards, or three Soldiers. You could even go solo-Hero, or alternatively, you could kill off your Hero and save the world with only your custom three. (And, unlike Dragon Quest 4, the designers didn’t spoil it all by forcing your comrades into poor AI. Shots fired!)
And then there was the story! At first, this felt like a separation from the previous Dragon Quest iterations, which were focused on the fantasy land of Alefgard and the descendants of a legendary hero named Erdrick. This tale starts on your 16th birthday, as you follow in the footsteps of your lost father, the hero Ortega. Ortega fell attempting to slay the Archfiend Baramos… or so it was said. After slaying Baramos yourself, following what already felt like a complete video game, you find yourself thrust into a new, darkened world named… Alefgard! Except there’s no talk of Erdrick, and locations (Hauksness, Garin’s home) seem to predate the events of Dragon Quest 1. What’s more, your father Ortega is alive! While it’s never made exactly clear, it would seem he merely appeared to die as he fell into Alefgard in the same manner you have. In fact, Ortega’s such a badass that he clears the watery passage to the infamous Charlock Castle without that pesky Rainbow Drop MacGuffin you’re always told you need. And hey, it didn’t work out well for him in the end, but “A” for effort nonetheless.
More importantly, once you slay the actual final boss, the Archfiend Zoma, you are bestowed the title of Erdrick, solidifying this game’s place in the canon. Yes, this was actually a prequel, and you were the legendary hero Erdrick all along. For two whole games, you heard about this ancient champion of yore, and now you get to see their story for yourself, and all of it under the suspenseful guise of a shocking endgame surprise.
Of course, in North America, they spoiled all of this with a massive tome of a “Handbook” instruction manual that told you literally everything. But hey, I’m sure gamers in Japan were really taken with the big plot twist.
This initial outing has spawned a series of remakes, from the Super Famicom, to the Game Boy Color, to the aforementioned mobile version released in 2014:
Note that there have been additional releases of DQ3 in Japan over the years, both of the original Famicom (NES) release and of the later remakes. These include a 2009 mobile remake, and 2017 ports to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo 3DS. I don’t have access to these, and am not in a position to review them. However, the reporting I’ve seen indicates that aside from graphical overhauls, these are functionally identical to the 2014 mobile version released in the U.S., which features the silly choice I’ve foreshadowed. I also don’t yet own a Nintendo Switch, and so I cannot review the 2019 remake for that platform, which was released in all the standard markets. However, once again, all reports indicate the core game elements are identical to the mobile version, even if the visuals look quite different:
Okay, with all of that out of the way, we’re gonna get into how this game and its many iterations have evolved over the years.
THE ORIGINAL
You would think there wouldn’t be many “version differences” to discuss when dealing strictly with the original game. But no, even this first version fell victim to the editor’s scalpel on its way across the ocean.
First up, per Nintendo of America’s policy at the time, all references that felt sorta-religious-y had to be removed. The “Priest” class had to be renamed “Pilgrim”. The crosses on each church – excuse me, “House of Healing” – had to be ripped out and replaced with some Pentagram-looking thing. Your dead allies changed from cross-laden coffins to transparent marshmallow ghosts. And the miter-wearing cleric sprite was swapped out for a generic old man with a big head of white hair, who always reminded me of Doc Emmett Brown:
I can just imagine asking this guy to bring your dead friend back to life. He straps the lifeless corpse into a juryrigged machine before declaring, “When this baby hits 1.21 jigawatts… you’re gonna see some serious shit”.
Oh, and they definitely had to remove this, lol.
I know, I know, it’s not really a swastika. It’s an ancient Buddhist symbol. And over 80% of Japanese residents are affiliated with Shinto Buddhism. This obviously doesn’t have the same connotation there as in the United States. I get all that. But you know… you could also just not? Just throwin’ that out there. Playing through the Japanese version, and randomly running into this, is like watching a kids cartoon, and suddenly out of nowhere, Elmer Fudd is giving Daffy Duck a blowjob. And you’re just like “Welp, I guess that’s a thing.”
But hey, at least they didn’t have to remove all those cute, inoffensive town names, like Ass-ram and Isis.
The localization was not all bad, though. Remember how, when you left the game running on the title screen, it started a sweet cutscene showing your old man Ortega fighting some dragon along the rim of a volcano?
That wasn’t included in the original Famicom release. That was a treat just for us American slobs, although some variation of it has since been carried over in almost every remake since. It may not seem like a big deal now, nearly thirty years deep into CD-fueled cutscenes, but at the time, it was so freaking cool. I’m sure the technical execution was simple, but it felt like you never saw that much effort put into something that wasn’t even part of the actual game content.
Cutscene and culture considerations aside, the game was also mechanically altered for its North American release. There’s a storied history of games (Mega Man 2, Final Fantasy 4) being made easier for international audiences, with other games (Super Mario Bros. 2, Final Fantasy 5) being deemed too difficult for foreigners altogether. In that vein, experience and gold drops from random encounters were boosted to make the game a little less grindy.
THE SUPER FAMICOM
Localization peculiarities aside, when we talk about version differences, what we really mean are the remakes, starting with the Super Nintendo version we never got.
Sadly, following four Dragon Quest outings on the Famicom/NES, Enix of America shut its doors. For this reason, we in the States didn’t get to bask in the new Dragon Quests 5 or 6 on Super Nintendo, and we also missed out on fantastic SNES-quality remakes of DQs 1 through 3. The Dragon Quest 3 remake was built using the Dragon Quest 6 engine, and features many of the same quality-of-life improvements from those later games.
The contrast is immediate, with a new file taking you right into an elaborate personality quiz, consisting of several yes/no questions followed by a psychological scenario:
Your answers determine which scenario is loaded, and your conduct in that scenario determines your hero character’s personality. And thus leads to the first major change in this version: Each player character now has a personality, which influences variations in that character’s stat growth as they level up. Your wizard’s expertise will still be magic, and your soldier will still specialize in hitting things with big sticks, but the rate at which the relevant numbers accelerate will differ depending on whether that character’s disposition is fearless, or carefree, or solitary, or stubborn. Thankfully, you don’t have to slog through a whole-ass game show every time you want to recruit a new sacrificial Merchant or something; for non-hero characters, much like farm animals, you can feed them seeds to influence their temperament. Note that not all personalities are created equal! For instance, a “Lucky” character will have better stats than a “Cowardly” character. Some of these personalities are also split between genders, with “Macho” personality being limited to men and “Ladylike” being limited to women. Lastly, character personalities can be influenced by book items you find, which will happily clog your inventory over the course of the game. (Let’s call that last bit foreshadowing.)
On the less nerdy side of things, this remake just looks sweet. (I would use past tense, but it still to this day looks sweet.) The pure tile graphics of the original were updated with a 3-D look, with many buildings being redesigned with front-facing doors to accommodate this perspective. And when you get your first enemy encounter, you discover that the boring black battle background from the NES is gone – replaced with a gorgeous vista overlooking your combat carnage. Even cooler, the monsters MOVE HOLY SHIT WHAT!?!?
Again, we were robbed of this reveal at the time. Obviously this sort of thing has been old hat for almost 30 years now. But given how SNES Final Fantasy games still used stationary enemy sprites, I’m sure this added touch would have knocked our socks off!
And the upgrades hardly end there! This game added a ninth bonus class: Thief. And unlike the “Thief” from FF1, they actual steal things, randomly nabbing items from vanquished foes. The Merchant and Goof-Off classes which didn’t have any magic before now have out-of-combat spells, suiting their characters. There are more places to save, and more equipment shops, which feature new gear. Oh, and while melee damage in the NES version was limited to single enemies at the time, this version includes whips and boomerangs, which deal physical damage to whole groups of enemies at a time. The “Tiny Medal” system introduced in Dragon Quest 4, where you win prizes for how many Tiny Medals you find strewn around the world, was retroactively implemented in this remake. Treasures were now hidden in all sorts of places, like pots and barrels and bookshelves. Tedious locations like Isis Castle were also made more accessible.
For the most part, there’s a one-to-one correlation between world locations in the Famicom and Super Famicom versions. And yet, when the player travels north from Romaly, they encounter this peculiar shrine, out where no location should be:
And this brings us to a more light-hearted addition to the DQ3 experience: “Sugoroku”! Or, as it would come to be known in English, “Pachisi”, or “Treasures ‘n’ Trapdoors”, or “That board game thingy”. Across the game’s two worlds are hidden four minigame tracks, which function in the style of a single-die board game. As indicated by the name, squares along the game path contain traps, treasures, shops, monster encounters, and all sorts of wackiness. If you can reach the end goal before you run out of die rolls, you win a prize – usually equipment of higher power than you normally access at that point in the game. (We’ll delve a bit more into “Pachisi” in a moment, but for now we’ll keep moving along.)
It feels like everything in this game was enhanced in some way. Enemies cast new spells, and some ally spell levels are adjusted. Bosses were given more HP, but were stripped of their notoriously challenging healing factor. The sprite-flickering seen on NES is gone. The upgraded hardware allowed mist overlays to be added in some locations. Various bugs were fixed. When you win a bet at the Monster Arena, you can now parlay those winnings directly into another larger wager. The puzzle required to clear the Pyramid dungeon was made more elaborate, with four sequential buttons to press instead of only two. Your Hero now has special “spells” to learn and recall important dialogue, saving you from having to write in a physical notebook as you play. Instead of a useless Water Blaster, the kid in Muor gives you your father’s lost helmet. Your surplus inventory is now managed with an item bag, with the Vault in Aliahan (where you used to dump your unneeded items) now functioning as just a bank. Having your entire inventory on hand helps you avoid softlocking your game when your carrying capacity is full.
And there are so many subtle quality-of-life improvements. Every time I think I’ve found them all, I remember one more. There are no more dead attacks, with allies automatically moving on to the next monster group after the chosen target is vanquished. Menu cursors remember your last choice for easy navigation. You can now purchase items in bulk. While the NES version required you to manually use keys to unlock doors, now those doors open automatically as long as that key is in your inventory. And then there’s dynamic cornering! If you walk up to a wall, and you’re just one position off from advancing past it on either side, instead of bonking on the wall like you’ve done a million times in other games, your characters automatically slide around the obstacle:
I only pressed up and down during the above demonstration. Seriously, if this can be a thing, why doesn’t every game do this?
Meanwhile, the Super Famicom version also improved on one of the most wonderful, and simultaneously most frustrating, Easter eggs in the entire NES library. Early in the game, as part of an optional side quest, you encounter a hidden elf village in a forest. These elves have learned not to trust humans, such as yourselves, and as a result want nothing to do with you. There’s even an apparent store, which the player would be forgiven for thinking is merely there for decoration. Later on though, as part of required story progression, you temporarily acquire something called the “Staff of Change”, which allows your characters to change their appearance. Sadly, you have to surrender the staff to some old codger in order to proceed with the game. However – and no one in the game tells you this – if you return to that obscure elven storefront while you still have the Staff of Change, you can use it to fool the shopkeeper into selling cool elf swag to you filthy humans. This was your only chance in the game to buy highly valuable Wizard Rings, and since this access was temporary, I knew to always stock up on those when I could.
Unfortunately, the sprite you change to is always random. Even more frustratingly, in the NES version, literally only one form – a dwarf – will grant you access to the shop. The vendor will even try to dissuade you if you speak to her while in some other non-human guise, like a slime, or minidemon, or skeleton. I always know to budget up to half an hour just for using and reusing and reusing and reusing that damn Staff of Change, cycling through soldiers and kings and merchants and dancers and generic-white-haired-non-priests until I finally get that rare dwarf roll. Thankfully, this barrier was also softened in the Super Famicom and Game Boy Color remakes, since multiple non-human sprites now trigger the proper store dialogue. (I could also swear the dwarf form itself also shows up much more frequently in these versions, but I have no hard evidence to state that as fact.)
The only quality-of-life flaw I’ve observed in this version has to do with menu placement. Remember, I don’t read a lick of Japanese, and so I have to play entirely by memory of where items, spells, and commands are located. Even in one’s native tongue, ideally muscle memory would allow one to play without ever reading most of the commands. Unfortunately somebody thought it would be funny to swap the “Spell” and “Item” commands in the battle menu from their locations outside of battle, as you can see here:
Hey, nothing’s perfect. It’s still a gorgeous, well thought-out remake.
But probably the coolest new feature on the Super Famicom was actual, genuine post-game content. Once you’ve defeated the Archfiend Zoma, your save file is tagged as having cleared the game proper. As is tradition, such a save file will still find the “final” boss terrorizing the world; otherwise, many settings you visit, such as Alefgard, would have to be drastically altered. And you can drop in on the ol’ Zomester any time and remind him who’s boss. You can even now swap out your “Hero” character, and can get bonus dialogue if you return to beat Zoma without them.
However, if you poke around the Castle of the Dragon Queen (where you got the Light Orb), you’ll be warped to some far-flung new dungeon, each floor of which… looks an awful lot like various places you’ve been before (the Pyramid, the Necrogond Cave), but arranged differently and with new treasures. Beyond that is a new return point, “Zenith”, borrowed from subsequent DQ games. And beyond Zenith is an actual new castle, atop which sits the game’s new final master, known in this first Japanese iteration as “Shinryu”.
Shinryu borrows the same sprite from a random encounter in the base game, but don’t let that fool you. She is an especially tough cookie, being far harder to defeat than Zoma ever was. Even a well-developed party can struggle if you find yourself needing spells a given character has not learned. And of course, there is no Light Orb to help you this time.
Shinryu functions as a genie-style figure. If you take too long to defeat her, she will express her boredom with the encounter, and urge you to improve yourself before you waste her time again. However, if you defeat her within 35 turns or less, she will grant you one wish of your choice. And if you can defeat her within 25 turns, she will grant you a second wish, and then within 15 turns, a third.
These wish options come from a pre-determined set of three:
I’m not going to attempt to fully translate each of these verbatim. (There are translation patches for the Super Famicom version if you wish to use those.) But here are basically your options:
- You can gain access to a bonus fifth Pachisi track, located at the bottom of the well in Jipang;
- You can bring your fallen father Ortega back to life;
- You can acquire a special book which grants a character one of the best personalities in the game.
The first option has the most significant material effect on your file, granting access to lots of bonus gear. By contrast, the second option has no functional relevance to the game, but hey, who wouldn’t want to see their heroic pops alive and in his prime again? I mean, sure, you could argue it saps the game’s core story of its emotional resonance, but you could just think of this game as an extended quest to rescue your father, in which you happen to save the world along the way.
The third option is… interesting. You see, the best personality isn’t just any personality. It’s not “Confident” or “Heroic” or “Charismatic” or “Fearless”. It’s sexual attractiveness. And of course, this “personality” is split between male and female, because of course it is. The male version, later localized as “Lewd” or “Lothario”, is among the top five stat-gaining personalities available. And the female version, later translated as “Sexy” or “Vamp”, is literally the single most beneficial “personality” in the game. Why? Because Japan, I guess. It probably shouldn’t be that shocking, given that the game offers female characters swimwear in place of actual armor, and includes the notorious “Puff-Puff” meme (which on English NES was changed to a fortune-telling show). Accordingly, the book you receive from Shinryu, the one that teaches this “personality”, isn’t just any book; its Japanese name is 「エッチなほん」, which translates as “the naughty book”. Again, Japan.
Worth noting is that, even dealing strictly with game mechanics, this “upgrade” isn’t really all that necessary. An accessory called the “Garter” (equippable only by women) can temporarily grant your character the “Vamp” personality, and the “Gold Chain” (usable only by men) does the same for the “Lothario” disposition. And since stat bonuses are only relevant at level-ups, these accessories can be used when gaining experience, and swapped out in favor of more useful accessories during boss battles and such. Being the max gamer I am, I typically throw one of these on a character – especially one that’s undergone a class change – until about level 30 or so, just to reap those sweet stat bonuses. The book is only particularly needed if you have some burning need to emblazon your character with the “Sexy” or “Lewd” personalities permanently. But hey, I guess juvenile titillation is what it’s there for.
We’ll be hearing more about “the naughty book” later. Political correctness aside, these are certainly three viable options for your hard-earned wish. One is flavorful and emotionally relevant, one opens up fun mechanical possibilities in the game, and the third is… there for the people who have yet to discover Internet porn, I guess.
THE GAME BOY COLOR
And this brings us to our next major milestone in our Dragon Quest 3 chronology. One day, circa 2002, I was at a K-B Toys when I saw up on the locked shelf “Dragon Warrior 3”, with new art, for Game Boy Color:
Remember, like most Americans, I’d had no exposure to all the aforementioned upgrades from the Super Famicom – character personalities, battle animations, the Thief class, Tiny Medals, that sweet buttery cornering. The only improvement it was lacking were the battle backgrounds, with this small-screen version reverting to blank white backdrops:
Then you add in all the additional new content exclusive to the GBC version, and it was like a bonus content bonanza! First up, it wouldn’t take players long to get their first Monster Medals:
These beauties – which are different from the “Tiny Medals” – drop randomly after enemy encounters, the same way items do. Once you’ve collected a few, they act as a functional bestiary, cataloguing the game’s enemies, arranged more-or-less in the correct order. At first, the only ones you receive are bronze, but after enough of those are collected silver medal drops become available, and eventually gold. These medals are saved on the cartridge level, rather than the file level – in other words, new save files you begin on that cart will add to the same collection of medals you’ve accumulated previously. There’s also a link option, where you and a friend who own the game can connect your Game Boys and trade medals to fill out your collections. And these Monster Medals had another function as well, although you’d have to progress much further to discover that…
I was already engrossed in this new take on an old fave when I came across that same out-of-place shrine north of Romaly, and found myself playing some seemingly misplaced board game thing:
Admittedly, I didn’t care much for Pachisi at first. How dare they soil my super-serious hero adventure with silly nonsense like underground dice games! But it grew on me. It’s completely optional. It has lots of mechanical relevance, with bonus treasures and stat alterations littered along the track. And on each track, clearing the goal nets you better equipment, such as the powerful “Ultimate Whip” found at the end of the fourth Pachisi track in the village of Kol. Oh, and along with the Pachisi tracks themselves came a modicum of supporting infrastructure. The Tokens you spend to play the game can be found everywhere, and are even dropped by enemies. And if you tire of spending all your Tokens, the reward for finding 100 Tiny Medals is the “Gold Pass”, which allows you unlimited plays of Pachisi. And in turn, the various Pachisi tracks contain ten of those Tiny Medals, offering some cross-minigame synergy.
And there were a few other localization updates as well. Crosses are back! But your “Pilgrim” only gets to be a “Cleric” and not a proper priest. Many names of items, monsters, and locations are shortened, which I assume was less about computer memory and more about valuable real estate on that tiny Game Boy screen. The title “Erdrick” has been shortened to the less badass-sounding “Loto”, which to be fair was always the name of the hero of legend in the Japanese version. Your party member names are also limited to a very restrictive four letters in length. But on the bright side, there’s now an NPC in Dharma who acts as a sort of Namingway, allowing you to rename any character in your party at any time. For extra silliness, you can even rename your item bag!
Mechanically, the GBC added a temporary save feature the Super Famicom version lacked; obviously this was to accommodate the fact that your Game Boy could run low on battery at any time. Flavorfully, not much changed, but they did have to change the layout of this Pachisi track from the Super Famicom:
I swear, there must be some guy on every localization team whose job it is to make sure they found all the swazzies everywhere.
Following Zoma’s defeat, as with Super Famicom players, I was directed back to the Castle of the Dragon Queen, and the road to Zenith Castle in the sky. Once again, atop that palace sat the master sky goddess, now localized as “Divinegon”, which I assume was short for “Divine intervention won’t save you from this bastard of a dragon”. I was so used to soft challenges in this game. I was totally unprepared for how strong this thing was! And you had to defeat her in a limited number of turns!?
Ah, but the reward was sweet. While the Super Famicom version reinforced the genie motif with three wish options, this game’s additional content allowed the remake designers to expand that list to five!
We’ll get to that blank spot in a moment. You have the three options from before. The “Rare Medal” wish was the only option that gives you a different reward each time you chose it. All told, requesting that wish three times grants you the rarest Monster Medals to round out your collection. (I didn’t particularly need help with Metal Slime or Metal Babble medals, but that damn Elysium Bird would’ve been a pain in the arse to get.) And remember, to get that third wish, you have to defeat Divinegon in 15 turns or fewer. And spending three wishes on these rare medals means you won’t even have begun opening up the other content, like the bonus Pachisi track, or resuscitating the old man, or… whatever other option suits your fancy. Thankfully, as noted earlier, these medals are stored on the cartridge level, so once you collect them on a single save file, or even a copy of a save file, you never have to bother with it again.
So what was the point of all these Monster Medals? Oh ho ho, that’s where that blank fifth option comes into play! Believe it or not, after all this bonus content, including a new dungeon and super-boss, you get to unlock yet another whole-ass bonus dungeon, the “Ice Cave”, followed by an even super-bossier-super-boss named “GranDragn”. He may be limited to nine characters in his name, but he’s not limited in how badly he will fuck you up. Compared to the elaborate premise of Divinegon, Grand Dragon’s schtick is much simpler, offering the ridiculously overpowered Rubiss Sword if you can defeat him in 25 turns or less. Ah yes, the old trope of rewarding you with a mega-sword after you’ve defeated every enemy worth battling. But I guess it’s better than nothing.
However, in order to even get to GranDragn, you have to get past… this guy:
No, he’s not a boss or anything. He’s just an old man, who won’t let you pass until you’ve collected all bronze Monster Medals up to that point. That’s what all that nonsense about Monster Medals was for! There’s a similar geezer a couple floors later, who stops you if you haven’t collected all silver medals, although he at least offers to trade bronzes for silvers at a two-for-one rate. Thankfully, there’s no gate requiring the accumulation of all gold medals, though you can certainly go through the trouble for some extra bit of dialogue from GranDragn if you want. Oh, and if you’re wondering about all those limited encounters throughout the game, such as bosses you only fight once, don’t worry! The first floor of “Ice Cave” offers Mimics, Canniboxes, Boss Trolls, both Orochis, and both Kandars as random encounters, allowing you to fill any remaining holes in your virtual trophy case.
Whew! That was a lot of new stuff! But you know what didn’t have a lot of new stuff?
THE MOBILE VERSION
In late 2014, following mobile releases of its other early Dragon Quest brethren, the U.S. finally got its taste of the new mobile remake of Dragon Quest 3. (Again, this mobile remake is said to be functionally equivalent to the existing Switch remake, but I can’t confirm the details.) Note that, up until this point, the game had always been called “Dragon Warrior 3” in English, due to an obscure trademark for a tabletop RPG. That trademark had since expired, and thus Square Enix were able to localize the early games into English under the “Dragon Quest” name for the first time. Given that these games would surely be marketed as “Dragon Quest” permanently going forward, this necessitated name changes to all the various Wikipedia articles and such.
This version certainly isn’t bad! As long as you don’t mind touch controls. In many ways, it’s still an improvement from the original NES version. You still have character personalities, bonus equipment and shops, Tiny Medals, more places to save. You’ve still got dynamic cornering, which on touch controls is as helpful as ever. You still find treasures in barrels and bookshelves, and all sorts of places the NES version did not cover. You still have bonus post-game content. There’s still a guy collecting Tiny Medals (now called “Mini Medals”), rewarding you with sweet loot for how many you can find. And your hero gets to be “Erdrick” proper again.
However, it also felt like a reversion from how far the remakes had advanced. Monster Medals were right out the window. The sweet opening cutscene with Ortega and the dragon is gone. The Pyramid puzzle was also reverted to the simpler version from the NES. No more parlays at the Monster Arena, either. Even the battle animations introduced all the way back on Super Famicom were disincluded. (I made up a word.) While the graphics were pretty, and spell animations engaging, those enhancements clashed a bit with foreboding monsters like Zoma effectively standing there, frozen in a single eternal pose. You can’t even attack allies anymore – something you could do all the way back on the NES. (This was occasionally useful for snapping allies out of confusion status, or simply because you wanted certain characters to reap battle experience by themselves.) And there were a couple extra exclusions we’ll get to in a moment. But hey, like an on-again-off-again celebrity romance, those battle backgrounds were back yet again!
With that said, things weren’t all old hat for this 2010s revision. No longer did you have to enter all your combat commands manually! Automatic battle tactics were added for the mobile version, both to make things easier on your touch control interface, and to keep up with the times. You can assign different characters different roles, such as “Don’t use magic”, “Focus on healing”, or “Show no mercy”. (And thankfully, the AI is much better than on Dragon Warrior 4.) Or you can have any or all of your characters “Follow orders” and play them traditionally, if say you’re trying to carefully ambush some “Liquid Metal Slimes”. Another subtle, but important change involves the “Return” spell. Now localized as “Zoom”, this is the vital spell that zips you instantaneously around the world map to a previously visited town of your choice. In every previous version of the game, this spell cost 8 MP. I never questioned it, since you were certainly getting your bang for your buck. However, in this mobile version, that cost was reduced to 1 MP. Honestly, this change is an underrated win for the player. I’m not normally a fan of quality-of-life adjustments that involve simply making the game strategically easier, but this function has positive ramifications on one’s game play I didn’t expect. No longer do you have to budget 8 MP for your Return trip (on top of 8 MP for your “Evac” / “Outside” dungeon escape spell), nor do you have to worry if some creature will do a funny dance and drop you below that threshold. Even if you’re out of Chimera Wings, as long as you have a single Magic Point, you have a way back to town. It gets even better when you remember that you can still cast Zoom in battle as an emergency escape when facing certain death. This reduces party wipe-outs, which allows you to retain more gold, and also lowers your reset rate, opening up more fun in addition to that offered by the 7 MP you save.
The NES, GBC, and now mobile localizations each got their own fresh translations. The NES version no doubt had a focus on memory space, with English text notoriously being more taxing than syllabic Japanese text. Alternatively, the GBC version seemed to focus on simplification, with so little physical space for drawn text on a tiny screen. But in this new version, those considerations were passé. The localization team was free to run wild, and run wild they did! As you see above, enemy encounters got new silly names, which seemed to get wackier the further you got. The game also incorporated goofy slime dialogue seen in newer Dragon Quest games:
Oh, and finally, over 20 years later, you could recruit an actual honest-to-God “Priest” into your party:
Other trappings were updated as well. As I progressed further, I began noticing all these tridents everywhere:
Buildings, floors, coffins, gravestones. I was like “What the hell, did everyone here start worshipping Poseidon?” It took me longer than it should have to realize, these tridents were this version’s answer to religious symbolism. Instead of crosses, everyone uses this vaguely cross-like emblem that serves the same flavor purpose but which no one should get offended by. It’s sort of like when sci-fi shows invent their own curse words like “Mother farking beeble blorp”, so their characters can “swear” on network television.
Either that, or they’re just really excited for Mariners home runs.
There were two things in particular I was curious to see as I played out this version. One of these relates to our big question of the day, so of course I’m gonna take yet another tangent to talk about the other one first, lol.
HISTORY AND FANTASY
We’ve discussed how the world of Dragon Quest 3 itself has evolved, as have the objects, events, and game mechanics. But there’s another aspect to this semi-fantasy setting which has changed with the remakes. I’m speaking of course of the people – the NPCs inhabiting that world.
As discussed earlier, this game uses a real world setting, overlaid with fantasy trappings. Of course the intention is fun – “Oh look, the hero Erdrick actually comes from our world! Isn’t that cool?” However, given the nature of stereotyping and negative portrayals of historically marginalized cultures, this can result in real world complications. While I’d rather this particular blog focus on fun stuff like Monster Medals and the vanquishing of successive Archfiends, if I am to do an honest overview of the evolution of Dragon Quest 3, I have to address these cultural portrayals, including the blemishes, with a focus on one of the game’s locations in particular. (And yes, this may lead us into some spicy political talk!)
While the real world analogy is made apparent, locations use slightly altered names, some of which have changed over time. Japan was “Jipang”, which in later versions became “Zipangu”. Edinburgh was “Eginbear”, and now changed to “Edina”. The class-changing temple “Dhama”, themed as a monastery near real-world Nepal, was changed to “Alltrades Abbey” as a reference to later DQ games.
The people inhabiting these locations have also tended to have corresponding portrayals, with perhaps some stereotyping mixed in as well. The shopkeepers of Assaram (approximately Baghdad) are notorious hagglers who are always trying to overcharge you. The residents of Portoga (a mixture of Portugal and Spain) are obsessed with mythical spices from the Far East. These depictions weren’t so pronounced on the Famicom/NES, where most towns used the same generic sprites and dialogue styles. In that version, Japan was the only locale with different sprites for its residents, as well as its own unique town theme music. And as those of you who have played the game know, “Jipang” was the site of a required quest involving an evil dragon Orochi, which was based on some bit of Japanese folklore. Obviously, this special consideration was due to Japan being the game’s home market. The town even included a dedicated priest (or non-religious white-haired guy), lamenting his inability to convert the locals to his own generic brand of deity-based faith.
The historical timeframe for this game’s setting was a bit early for any direct inclusion of what would be the game’s second-biggest market, the United States. But that didn’t stop them from including a reference by way of an empty field, near the real-world location of Plymouth, with a lone villager hoping to start a new town. This venture requires you to leave behind a Merchant member of your party, which honestly was a brilliant use of both the class system and your ability to swap out party members at will. This mission requires you to continually visit this “New Town”, as your Merchant becomes a tyrant, and the villagers overthrow him or her in an off-screen revolution. Oddly, after their liberation, some of the townsfolk lament that maybe they had it better under their despot all along. Who knows, maybe that’s what they think of the American Revolution in Japan?
However, the North American continent is pretty big for a single game location, or even two if you include the random treasure tower the designers placed around the site of present-day Los Angeles. (I’m not counting that weird “Aurhea’s Fountain” spot from the SFC and GBC versions, which feels like it was never completed.) Thus, if you travel to Louisiana, then sail up the Mississippi river, and navigate a short maze of waterways, you’ll find yourself at one of the most remote locations on the map. This little village is called “Soo”, which is obviously a reference to the Native American nation “Sioux”.
Just so this doesn’t go unsaid, no one depiction of Native North America should be treated as encompassing the totality of Native American culture and history. Native society spanned the northeast, the south, the great plains, the mountains, the deserts, the plateaus, and the forests, with each nation being as distinct as the nations of Europe. This wouldn’t be an issue if not for the fact that media portrayals (and a few opportunistic charlatans) are constantly trying to pigeonhole Native peoples as a single monolithic (and marketable) entity. While it was necessary for me to point out this dynamic, I’m going to set all of that aside for this discussion. There are many real world locations that receized no recognition in this fantasy depiction of late Renaissance Earth. The sheer volume of this game was already taxing the limits of the Nintendo Entertainment System; it didn’t need five or six locations to depict the varied landscape of Native North America. Only one portrayal would be included, and for whatever reason, that depiction was attributed as “Soo”. And casting Sioux as “Soo” is also in line with the playful treatment every other worldly people receives in the game. So far, no biggie.
However, you probably see where I’m going with this. A couple characters in Soo on the NES use some broken English, and there’s a bit of “We not tell lies” stereotyping. Are we to believe everyone across the world speaks perfect English except for American Indians? Or is the game choosing to translate other local languages favorably, while handling this one village less charitably? However, setting aside the few outliers, other NPCs in Soo (including a horse, for some reason) speak eloquent English, and the shops operate as normal. This village uses no special sprites; it’s inhabited by the same looking people you see everywhere else. The setting is also noticeably more agrarian, with buildings fashioned from unprocessed trees and not the masonry you see everywhere else in the game. It’s not my job as a white boy to give this a pass, but on the whole I would say it’s a politically tepid portrayal of Native North America compared to some of the things you’ll find out there.
However, I would say that was less true of Soo as it was seen in the Game Boy Color remake. The broken English, which still seems isolated to this one location, has proven a bit more contagious. The construction of the town itself is essentially identical, but it now features all new Native American themed NPC sprites unique to this village, complete with headbands and headdresses and all that jazz. Again, if I’m to be honest, I’ve seen much worse, but that’s not a reason not to do better, and I do feel like better could be done.
I suppose this is where I’m supposed to explain why this is important. I’m not bothered if some people are put off by the fact that I care about these things. North American settler society, to which I belong, has shat on Native Americans for over 500 years, ever since you-know-who lucked out on what would ordinarily have been a doomed voyage to nowhere. My ancestors forcibly relocated Natives off the prime land they wanted, then meddled with them again when it was discovered the wasteland Natives were moved to had valuable uranium. We undermined their autonomy at every turn. We stole their kids to destroy their society – an act now recognized as literal genocide. And we committed other unspeakable horrors as well. And the message from Native society in return has always been the same: “Please just leave us the fuck alone”. This is why I support things like honoring treaty rights, even if I’m personally not big on the idea of whale hunts. And it’s why I’m against media mockery and down-punching, including that of sports mascots, for which Native Americans are at this point just about the only race deemed “worthy” of that “honor”. I have no control over what happened in the past, but I can certainly control the sort of political considerations I promote today.
Getting back to this village of “Soo”, it is worth pointing out that both the NES and GBC versions of Dragon Quest 3 were originally Japanese media, intended for a Japanese audience. (That’s setting aside the Super Famicom version which was exclusively for a Japanese audience.) However, it’s also worth noting that, as with all those *ahem* Buddhist symbols, the point of localization efforts is to be mindful of cultural sensitivities. Game companies certainly don’t fail to censor any naked tits that pop up. The politics behind Japanese depictions of Native North Americans to strictly Japanese audiences are a bit beyond my expertise to comment on directly. And I honestly couldn’t tell you if the broken language seen in the English-language product was retained from the original Japanese script. However, I will point out that the reason it’s so important to have positive depictions of Native North Americans in North American media is because those are the depictions we, as the settlers who overran this ancestral homeland, export to the rest of the world. These aren’t “just” media portrayals; these are the cultural reservoirs from which so many people’s “understandings” of the world flow. People imagine a certain thing when they think of Native Americans because that’s the only image that is ever provided.
With all of that said, while playing through the early stages of the Dragon Quest 3 mobile remake, I was curious to see how this village of “Soo” would be treated in this newer age. Granted, this was still a few years before the fallout of the 2020 George Floyd protests, which among other things finally saw the Washington Football Team and Cleveland Baseball Team feel shamed enough to retire their racist trappings. But in 2014, cultural sensitivities were already headed in that direction. So I wondered, would this version roll back the broken English? Will it be worse? Are they going to engage in some other ridiculously stereotyped thing I wasn’t expecting? Or – goodness forbid – will the portrayal actually be reasonable?
The answer was, “None of the above”. The entire village has been reflavored into a Puritan-style settler town named “Persistence”. The agrarian setting was retained, and the underpinnings of certain bits of dialogue are still there:
But it’s been given a distinctly Christian-coded ethos. One villager advises you to “work hard and say your prayers”. Another refers to his many relatives “in heaven”. The old man at Greenland is referred to as “an unrepentant user of magic, and a stranger to honest labour”. And of course, reverence is expressed for “the Goddess” – the generic, inoffensive deity worshipped by all the world’s priests – complete with those biblically capitalized pronouns.
And obviously, since these are essentially European settlers, everyone speaks in perfect, eloquent English. Meanwhile, the distinctly Native population, rather than being mocked or dehumanized, are vaporized instead.
It would be easy to assume this move was an attempt to avoid offending people with the stereotypical trappings which, if I’m to be blunt, didn’t really needed to be exaggerated in the GBC version in the first place. But part of me does wonder if something else was going on behind the scenes.
There’s a bit more racial caricaturing throughout the mobile remake and its expanded translation. The NPC sprites are still fairly generic, but the dialogue has been updated for each location. The people of Romaly now talk like stereotypical Italians. The denizens of Baharata (real world India) speak like caricatures of South Asians. The Eastern Europeans of Khoryv (originally “Kanave”) have found the broken English others left behind. Part of me wonders if the designers turned up the dial on these stereotypes across the board, including for Soo, prompting some other part of the team to step in and say “Woah woah woah, we’ll let some of these slide, but this one’s too far. Whatever you’re trying to do here with Soo, stop it, and change it to something else altogether”. Again, I have no evidence for this theory; it’s just a possibility that came to mind as I was writing this out.
I don’t wish to belabor this point much further. I am certainly not going to say it’s okay to insert fake Native Americans (or one’s fictional idea of them) into any old fantasy settings of one’s choosing. However, given that this was ostensibly a real-ish world setting during an identifiable era in history, I don’t think there was anything wrong with the residents of Soo just being indigenous Americans, as opposed to Christian settlers. I mean, there were a lot of people living on this continent at that time! If you’re trying to depict actual historical Earth, fantasy trappings or not, then the indigenous residents of lands such as the Americas are part of that setting. Portrayals of the continent as some sort of vacant wilderness tamed only by white settlers is also part of the problem. Erasure may be considered politically safe, but it’s still erasure. And I don’t believe this is a lose-lose proposition, either. I promise you, there is a way to do respectful depictions of actual Native North Americans (historical and present) as real fleshed-out people, but you will never find it by focusing on what mixture of broken English sounds funnier.
Hey, I do love this game, but I also said it had flaws. With that unpleasantness out of the way, let’s get back to the real juice.
THE BIG QUESTION
Okay, it’s time for the big reveal! If you were paying attention, you may have noticed that I left something out of my accounting of which features did or did not return for the mobile remake. The last big exclusion was the Pachisi minigame. Sadly, no longer can you sneak into weird misplaced shrines and traverse underground Monopoly boards for cash and prizes. However, removing Pachisi isn’t simply a matter of disabling the few locations where it could be accessed. Again, significant infrastructure was added to accommodate this feature. All the little Token items you used to find in barrels and treasure chests have to be altered or disabled. Certain monster drops have to be changed or removed as well. The ten Tiny Medals (now called “Mini Medals”) found at various Pachisi tracks had to be relocated elsewhere. And if the designers wanted to include other prizes from these tracks, such as the advanced weapons, those have to be redistributed as well.
Your first indication of this change comes when you check the Mini Medal collector’s prize list. The reward for collecting 100 of the game’s 110 Mini Medals is no longer the Pachisi “Gold Pass”. Now, it’s the “Gringham Whip”, a.k.a. the “Ultimate Whip”, a.k.a. the top prize from the fourth Pachisi track in Kol. Further progression into the game would confirm what you already knew at this point to be true: Those old Pachisi locations from the previous remakes are gone.
As you ponder the ramifications of this change, you realize the biggest one may come after the game’s formal end. Divinegon, the post-game super-boss, had previously expanded her wish offerings to a very generous five options on the Game Boy Color. Of course, with no Monster Medals, one would expect that particular wish to disappear. The Ice Cave, which was built around collection of those Monster Medals, was also a likely candidate for the chopping block. That’s fine. After all, the Super Famicom version only had three options, and three fits with the genie theme. But once you remove the bonus Pachisi track as an option as well, suddenly things are looking grim for our friendly god-dragon. Will this version even have Divinegon at all? Or will something replace option #3?
Obviously, some care had been expended in the extraction of Pachisi. The Mini Medal collector doesn’t just give you a “Gold Pass” to nowhere. I was curious if the top prizes for the bonus Zipangu Pachisi track – the Bolero Robe and the Goddess Ring – might now be rewards you can wish for directly. Alternatively, one cool feature of the final Pachisi track is that you can find valuable Staves of Change randomly laying around the game board. Maybe a Staff of Change will be the new third wish? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have permanent access to that sweet Elf shop again.
It’s possible to zip through the game without much taking in the surroundings. But when you’re interested in these sort of details, it takes a while. And it takes even longer when you’re assembling a party with an eye on defeating Divinegon, since your characters would benefit greatly from knowing all Priest spells and all Mage spells. But after defeating Kandar twice, and Orochi twice, and Boss Troll, and Baramos, and finally Zoma, you can finally begin your quest to answer this most burning question.
In this version, “Divinegon” is localized as “Xenlon”. But going into the battle, everything seems to be in order. She challenges you to defeat her, and promises to grant your greatest heart’s desire if you do. She doesn’t specify ahead of time what wish options will be available, or the fact that you need to defeat her in 35 or fewer turns to be granted a wish, but she never prefaced her battle with that information in the previous remakes either.
I eagerly anticipated learning what the third option would be, only to discover it was… nothing.
And there you have it. After all that work, all that anticipation, after curating your perfect fighting party and besting the omnipotent god dragon in the sky, you’re given the option of either bringing your beloved dead father back to life and reuniting him with his loved ones, or… getting a free porno mag?
What?
………Really?
Lest you think I’m unfairly assigning any misplaced meaning onto the “Naughty Book”, which in this version has been given the name “Guns ‘n’ Buns” (lmaooo), the game makes the intention clear in basically every way that’s allowed. First, if you choose the book, Xenlon chastises you for seeking such “filth”:
That’s before calling the book her “greatest treasure”, and asking you to “Treat it with the care it deserves”.
The book is also enough to make your disposable Merchant blush when you ask them to appraise it:
But if there were any doubt left, using the book on a character puts that to rest. Each time you use the book, you get a different message at random. But if you reset and reuse it enough, you certainly get the gist.
Oh, and in what should be the least surprising twist of all time, those messages are different depending on whether you use the book on a woman or a man. Here’s one I got when I used the book on my male Hero:
lol “Nah man, I just read it for the articles.”
Given that this version was released nearly ten years ago, I’m certainly not the first person to be bemused by this final option. And yes, the Switch version offers the same choice. Please don’t misunderstand my tone in text here. This doesn’t bother me the way the more serious question of cultural portrayals does. And this certainly isn’t the first “Puff-Puff” style reference I’ve seen inserted into a Dragon Quest game – although I do generally prefer my media not read like it was written by horny thirteen-year-olds. I’m just amazed the choice is a thing. Did nobody, on any team, step in and say “Wait, are we really doing this?” I guess, technically the option was always there, and it was always silly, but the book’s nature wasn’t quite so emphasized on English GBC, and the offer itself was masked with the third choice of a Pachisi track. They couldn’t just throw in any third or fourth option here? A Staff of Change? Rubiss Sword? Or something new, like a permanent reduction of MP use? They had to go all “Your choices are either world peace, or a free peep show.”
Now… If you’re wondering which option I chose… out of respect for my fictional pops, I chose “Bring Ortega back to life”. But thankfully, I had enough gas left in the tank to subsequently defeat Xenlon in 25 turns to collect all these screenshots. Even better, I managed to luck out and slay her once in fifteen turns, satisfying my curiosity of what happens when you are granted three wishes with only two options. Oddly, the game allows you to choose the Ortega option again, and even asks for confirmation, before offering a broken interjection of “This wish has been granted you already” and kicking you back to the same two-option screen from before. Thus, with my third wish, I had no choice but to accept another copy of Guns ‘n’ Buns from Xenlon’s private stock:
I suspect that someone out there, somewhere, has honed their party into the ultimate fighting force, and has collected the entire 99-volume Guns ‘n’ Buns series. And with her private stock exhausted, I guess poor Xenlon will have to get by with her old worn-out copies of the Sears Catalog.
THE HD-2D REMAKE
Ah, right. There’s yet another remake on the horizon, and this one is massive!! A full accounting of changes and updates in the upcoming HD-2D edition of Dragon Quest 3 will have to wait for another day, once I’ve actually gotten my own grubby mitts on it. But trailers, preview stills, and a few live demos at special events have confirmed some elements of the remake. The cinematic with Ortega and the dragon appears to be back. The player is given an unprecedented level of customization of the classic Dragon Quest 3 character sprites. Oh, and a few location names have understandably been changed as well, lol.
A while back, folks noticed the apparent inclusion of a bonus tenth character class, based on early revealed packaging. This class has since been confirmed to be “Monster Wrangler”, and is connected to a reported overhaul of the Monster Arena.
Everything in this remake, old and new, looks like immense fun. Honestly, I cannot wait to play it and review it in November, at which point I’ll be happy to add my thoughts to all these changes.
And… you know… Hopefully by then, they’ve found and removed all the Swastikas.
Thanks for reading, as always. And we’ll see you next time!
