Soapbox: The Erdrick Trilogy Is The Right 'Dragon Quest' For The HD-2D Treatment

DQIII is, in my opinion, one of the top RPGs that I would place alongside games like Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger (which definitely need the HD-2D treatment too).

The rumors of this being the entire Erdrick storyline are pretty exciting. Would it just be direct HD-2D builds, or could it possibly expand the world of DQ1&2? Maybe the game will transition between the games with time-skips? Whatever happens, I'm looking forward to it.

I’m fine with it just being III, I think it would be easier to create a more cohesive game just adapting the one and it’s the most story-focused entry in the original trilogy.

DQ3 is one of the most influential games of all time easily, especially within the JRPG scene, it paves the path for the standard for RPGs even for games you wouldn't expect (Dark Souls is notable example).

I'm glad that Square is reminding us that they haven't given up on this remake along with DQXII.

If the speculation is correct and they're remaking the whole Erdrick trilogy instead of just 3, then that would explain why we've been waiting so long.
It would make sense given how long we've been waiting since the initial reveal, not to mention Square Enix teased on twitter "The Legend of Erdrick draws near" with the symbol or Erdrick and didn't specify a numbered entry.

Personally I wouldn't mind if it's just 3 as long as they include the additional content from the remakes like the pachisi board and extra postgame dungeons, I just want there to finally be a definitive way to play the trilogy, the mobile/switch remakes are inexcusable and lazily made. If you want a better way to experience the trilogy, skip the mobile/switch versions and instead emulate either the super famicom fan translation of 3 or the GBC version.

The trailer screamed trilogy to me and I remembered what the series creator teased in 2021, that was reported here on NL. Then, I read Midori's words that someone linked. Moreover, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are Square Enix's more important IPs and the older titles are too old to not be remade, as those lazy mobile/Switch releases have shown. I will be buying these on Xbox, but happy that they will be available on all platforms. I would also like IV, V, VI, VII, VIII and IX, but at least I have those on DS/3DS and are easily playable, although I only have played IV so far. 🤣 I thought that it was more difficult but better than Final Fantasy IV, that I also bought for DS.

So... basically, It's no longer the Erdrick Trilogy, it's the Erdrick Quadrilogy, 11 is now the oldest in the timeline, And they are, rather than a full 3d remake, doing this HD-2D crap...
Which sucks, because 3 Is the BEST DragonQuest game. It was the game that debuted the 4 character party, the much loved job system, Character Creation(which was then ignored as a while, save 3 and 9), the Casino monster betting game, mini-medals, and mini-games...
It deserves more than a port, obviously, but that's basically all this would be... a slightly enhanced, upscaled Port...
Sure, the monsters spin-offs and 7 both introduced features still around today(in some games) such as Alchemy and Monster Taming, But nearly everything else? Straight from 3. The worst part is, so what! Sure, they might just do this HD-2D DQ3 Remake, but even so, it probably won't release internationally... they NEVER Release the remakes outside of Japan, except the DS/3DS ones, And only a few of those... I mean, the Monsters Spinoff games Got 3DS remakes of The First, and BOTH second, games... but despite the online petitions and begging from the fans, the CLEAR EVIDENCE that they would definitely sell, especially since they had more content added, All of us Non-Japanese fans were left wanting... Why? THEY DIDN'T THINK THERE WAS A MARKET FOR DQ GAMES INTERNATIONALLY. SquareEnix are DUMB. Just because Joker 3 didn't sell well, there's no market for the franchise? stupid.

My point? Don't get your hopes up.

I have extreme nostalgia for DQ1. There was a brief time where you could get a copy just for subscribing to Nintendo Power and that's how I got my copy. There would never be a subscription incentive like it again and I had to pull out all the stops in begging my parents.

@iLikeUrAttitude SNES version of III is what I played, holds up super well.

I hope we get 4 5 and 6 on switch soon too

dragon quest 3 gets overlooked these days it is one of the best games in the series...

@nessisonett emulated version?

It's an aesthetic I've come to wish would just go away honestly. It kind of had some novelty when Octopath 1 came out, though even then was never in love with it, but it's just been savagely beaten into the ground ever since then with how many games have done the same thing in the handful of years since. At a point they all just bleed together into a forgettable muddy-looking goop.

@Lizuka I know that not everybody likes that style. I didn't like how Octopath Traveller looked on Switch, but on Series X in 4K it looked much more better and I loved it, not just crisper, more beautiful graphics but also chests were easier to find.

I hope this is true! It could be magical to play the whole Erdrick story in one game, and with this look! It would be day one for sure.

The original trilogy is great but Id love to get 4 through 7 on Switch, as they're the only ones I haven't played.

As for the style, I greatly prefer the style of the Star Ocean 2 remake to the traditional HD-2D look, but I'll take what I can get.

I keep on hearing people criticize the overuse of HD-2D. There's been four games that use this style over the course of six years. All of which are produced by the same team if I have the facts right, and one of which is a sequel to another.

I like HD-2D as its own pseudo-retro art style, but it's not the way I'd want to see any of my favorite retro games remade. When I think of the ultimate pixel art remake, it looks something like these:

absurdly detailed, ridiculously high effort, and absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure if there are any retro or retro-style games that quite hit the standard set by one-off art pieces like these, but most of the ones that come close these days are from indie teams, so I think a bigger company could manage it if they scooped off some of the money they're spending on characters with realistic hair follicle counts and semi-translucent skin.

HD-2D to me almost uses pixel art as a gimmick by putting it in a Paper Mario-esque diorama style. What I really want to see is what a bunch of talented artists with a sizeable budget and modern technology can do when they fully commit to pixel art as a medium.

XI connects to the original Erdrick trilogy, so definitely makes sense. Honestly the first 2 games are good, but III (Seeds of Salvation) was where Dragon Quest first hit it's stride. This is the game almost all JRPGs are indebted to, as the game was was not only very finely polished and was just a pure joy to play, but became such a massive influence to JRPGs and video games as a whole. The game in particular is something of a zeitgeist in Japan.

I'd be happy with just III, but the first 2 games are a welcome addition.

I hope Xenogears is the next HD-2D project

@johnedwin Yeah, would have to get a ripped cart otherwise.

@Darkakuahebi There’s no way S-E would announce this for XBOX and NOT bring it to the west. Also, Live-a-Live was never released in the west UNTIL its HD-2D remake a few years ago. I’m fairly confident it won’t be stuck in Japan.

I’m still hoping for 1-6 to be redone but honestly I just hope SE pulls the series off of the 3DS (which is a one-stop shop for the mainline games). But 9 needs modernization the most. As everything else has been ported at least once.

About Dragon Warrior 2 on the NES, I think its difficulty and supposed lack of balance is highly exaggerated..

When I played through it (blind) I was actually happy that there was a JRPG where there was a little pushback and you actually had to think a little about how you spent your resources. In many games in this genre you are offered a lot of tools, but the difficulty is so low that you can get through the game by using the same commands 98% of the time. Dragon Warrior 2 required you to actually think about things and I liked that.

There was a clear difficulty spike with The Road to Rhone, Rhone and the final tower, but it all seemed very well thought through and balanced to me. With for example the monsters that can eradicate your whole party only existing on a small strip of land right after the last save point, so if they killed you, you only lost a few minutes of play time at most.

In total I only died 10 times when playing the game. Compare that to most action games on the NES and that is a really small number. Even in the easier action games on the system, I died a lot more times before I beat them.

I’ve seen some claims about there being a party imbalance in Dragon Warrior 2. But this seems to be people not being able to utilize the two spellcasting members of the party very well. If you experiment with the spells they have, you will find that several of them are very useful. Or perhaps this idea of imbalance comes from the idea that all party members should do an equal amount of damage. But this kind of thinking about game balance only makes for boring and generic games. I’ve always preferred asymmetric balance, both in strategy games and RPGs. Modern thinking about multiplayer balance in single player games makes them less interesting then they have to be.

I’ve also seen some people claim that this is a game that requires a lot of grinding, but unlike Dragon Warrior 1 that wasn’t my experience. When I played through it I only grinded at three spots, and only on one of them did I spend much time on doing it. Meanwhile when I played through Dragon Warrior 1, at least 33% of my playtime was spent on grinding.

Of course if you have already played through the game before, and especially if you remember it well, there will be some grinding. Because the game balance in all these games is based upon you having to explore the game world and not immediately knowing where you have to go. And likewise if you ruin a game for yourself by using a guide there will of course be a ton of grinding. But then you only have yourself to blame.

I've been waiting for this for three years now, and if it were to be just DQ3, I'd be happy. But if it turns out to be some grand remake that combines all three original titles into one new presentation, then the wait would have been beyond worthwhile.

I cannot wait to hear more, and this might end up being the GOTY 2024 for me.

I'm all for it, although I do wonder how the first DW/DQ especially becomes a game that can stand on its own in the modern day without nostalgia carrying it. Maybe the trilogy is merged into a single experience in acts?

I got a lot of the feels in DQ XI, especially going back from Tickington for the past missions. There's a lot of that DNA that is in modern JRPGs to the point that those feel quaint (like in the SNES Era FF games) but those were just so new back then.

Nostalgia still coloring it 😅