Dragon Warrior III Review

I know what you're all thinking: "after the disasterpiece that was Dragon Warrior II, how in God's name did they get the thought that the world needed more of that game?"

Well, good news, everyone! Dragon Warrior III is much better than Dragon Warrior and Dragon Warrior II! Good thing, too, or else Dragon Warrior would've been killed off outside of Japan rather quickly!

Ortega's ill-fated battle at the start.

Just like in Dragon Warrior II, Dragon Warrior III has a cutscene that shows Ortega, the father of the Hero of Dragon Warrior III, battling a dragon. Unlike Dragon Warrior II, though, this one only plays if you sit at the title screen long enough. Okay, that's not a bad way to start the game, you've got my attention. Anyway, Ortega manages to chop off one of the baddie's wings, but the baddie apparently has the 'taking you with me' trope on its mind, as it drags Ortega into the volcano with it, seemingly killing him. Remember this for later, because Ortega is a fella we'll be hearing an awful lot about.

Now the gals get to be the main character!

Anyway, after that, we have to do what we did in the first two Dragon Warrior games, but *gasp*! Not only do we choose the name of our character and the message speed, we even get to choose their gender!

A dangerous sixteenth birthday.

Anyway, after Ortega fell into the volcano, his child apparently has petitioned that he or she be allowed to finish the quest that Ortega started by going on their own quest. Your mother wakes you up on your sixteenth birthday as proven by the screenshot to the left and takes you to the castle to get the King's permission to go on this quest. Why you need the King's permission to go on a quest like this is beyond me, personally, but whatever. He says "Thy enemy shall be the Archfiend Baramos!" and he gives you 50 gold pieces to properly equip your party to start them off. Now, in the NES version, or rather, the USA version, he only gives you 50 gold pieces, because the characters that you hire and create already come equipped with weapons and armor. In the Japanese version, as well as all international ports, they only come equipped with clothes, so the King instead gives you not just 50 gold pieces, but three weapons and three different armors. Personally, I prefer the USA NES version's way of doing it more, but whatever.

Anyway, you go over to the west side of town to Luisa's Eatery (Ruida's Tavern in the Japanese version, and Patty's Party Planing Place in all modern translations of the game) to recruit some characters, and you'll notice that you've already got three characters pre-generated for you. But what if you don't like their names or starting stats or whatever? Not to worry! You can go upstairs and talk to the guy behind the counter who will let you create your own characters for absolutely nothing! You can choose their name, class, and gender just like you could for the hero. Speaking of gender, there are two things you must know: 1.) The hero in the NES version, even if you chose to be female, will still be referred to in masculine terms, and 2.) There are a few items that only female characters can equip, but most of them don't make a difference, not to mention there are stronger items available for both genders, thank God! I can't stand the trope of 'Game-Favored Gender!'

The slimes are coming!
The slimes are coming!

Anyway, after you've selected your party members, it's out into the world of the game for, what else, random battles. Just like in Final Fantasy I, in Dragon Warrior III (not to mention Dragon Warrior II) you have to plan out your attacks. Remember how I said in Final Fantasy I, if you have one of your party members attacking one monster and that hit kills it and if another character was targeting that monster, that attack would hit nothing and was considered ineffective? Well, Dragon Warrior III has that, too! Only here, it's much worse. See, when you choose to attack a group of monsters, you aren't allowed to choose which specific monster in that group that the selected character attacks, meaning that you don't have that much control over your characters. At least, in Final Fantasy I you could choose which monster you could attack, although that still doesn't justify the ineffective attacks, but whatever. Anyway, grinding is what you're going to be doing most of the time in any single Dragon Warrior game, and Dragon Warrior III is no different. To me, though, being able to go adventuring throughout a Dragon Warrior game with my friends and family members alongside me makes the grinding so much better! Unfortunately, in the Dragon Warrior franchise, the character creation mechanic wouldn't be seen again until Dragon Warrior IX. (Dragon Quest IX even outside Japan, I know, but again I prefer Dragon Warrior.)

Adventuring with a friend from childhood,
my brother, and a stranger.

Hey, you remember how large the world in Dragon Warrior II was, right? Well, the world of Dragon Warrior III is bigger than that, I think! As you can see in the picture, there's an island with a tower on it, but no clear way to get to it. Well, there are actually two ways to get it! It will be four, but the problem is that you have to get the object from the tower to use the third way. The fourth way is by ship, and it comes along so long after you've finished in that particular tower that you shouldn't bother. Okay, so two ways. You're told in Aliahan, the starting city of the game, that you can get to the tower by going to the Cave on the Promontory, and in the village of Reeve, that there's a spot of forest you can enter south from there to get into the tower. Anyway, in that tower, which is named the Tower of Najima, by the way, is the Thief's Key, and as the chancellor of Aliahan told you, "First, find a key. Everything begins with that." And so it does! Unless you're using a game genie or you just grind like there's no tomorrow, you'll have to get that key to get the next item you need to continue the game, the Ball of Light (Wrecking Ball in the more modern translations) so that you can break down a wall that impedes your progress.

It's around this point that enemies can
start poisoning you! Be careful!

Anyway, you make it through the dungeon that the Ball of Light opens up for you, and you make it through that dungeon to the Kingdom of Romaly, which has a suspiciously-similar-sounding name to Rome, don't you think? Ah, whatever, probably just my imagination. (sarcasm warning) Anyway, here you discover that the Golden Crown was stolen by some jerk named Kandar (Robin 'Ood in the modern translations) and the King expects you to get it back for him. Problem is, Kandar is no pushover, in fact, he's the first boss of the game! So, what you'll want to do is go north to Kanave to get some better weapons and armor, not to mention grind a few levels out, and then help Noaniels with their problem, and then you can go to the Tower of Shampane (I honestly forget what it's called in the modern translations) to fight Kandar, and he doesn't come alone, oh no, he has three henchman with him, meaning you have quite a fight on your hands, especially if you didn't bother grinding up enough levels and buying better equipment for your characters!

Come on, you didn't think it would be
that easy, did you?

Anyway, after you beat Kandar, he begs for mercy and gives you the Golden Crown, which upon taking back to Romaly, the King makes you take over the Kingdom (you can refuse in all the remakes of the game) to which you have to find him gambling in the arena and tell him that, while the kings and queens of the world have it good, you'd really much rather be back out adventuring with your friends. He says that he won't make you continue doing something you dislike, and takes back his throne. He moans for a little bit, and then you go east, to the Arab-sounding town of Assaram. Here, the shops have equipment that's probably a little bit better than what you'd normally get at around this area, but the problem is is that all of the prices are jacked way up there! I honestly just skipped it altogether, except there are two weapon and armor shops here, one that's open during the day, and the other that's open at night. The nightime one sells weapons, I think, and the daytime one sells armor. Anyway, here you find out that the Magic Key is located somewhere in Isis and that you should go there. Since you need the Magic Key to get to Portoga, that sounds like as good a place as any to go adventuring.

First to the east, then to the west....

Anyway, in the Kingdom of Isis, you learn that the Magic Key is actually located in the Pyramid, and that it, just like in everything else, is basically a royal tombstone that has a load of treasures inside, but it also has a lot of monsters, including mummies and spirits, and that's before we get to the maze on the second floor and the traps! Anyway, as you can see from the caption for the screenshot to the right, or if you talked with the children in the Isis Castle Throne Room, they give you a hint about how to proceed on the third floor. Pressing two buttons will open a corridor that leads to an Alter of some sort, which has a stat-boosting seed and the Magic Key! We're through in here, but we have to walk back down to at least the second floor, as this dungeon is the first of... two, if I remember correctly, where magic just absolutely refuses to work. Anyway, with the Magic Key, you head off to Portoga and the King there says he'll give you a ship if you'll bring him back some Black Pepper. He says that Black Pepper is plentiful in the far east and gives you a scroll to give to Norud the Dwarf. The best way to get to Norud is to cast Return or use a Wing of Wyvern and go back to Assaram and then head into the cave.

Norud can show us the way!

After Norud opens the passage that leads to the east, you go into the town of Baharata where you learn that an old man's granddaughter has been kidnapped. The old man wants your party to do it, but Galin, the love of the old man's granddaughter, says that he can't ask something so important of strangers and runs off to do it himself. Naturally, that won't end well, so we chase after him, going to a cave slightly northwest of Baharata. In that cave, who else could've done something this despicable except for Kandar! Your party tells Garin and whatever-his-love's-name-is to amscray while you fight Kandar, who has seriously toughened up since the last time you fought each other (of course, you have, too, hopefully) he says that this time he really has learned the error of his ways, so of course you have to let him go again. Only this time he means it because you never see him again, at least for a while. Going back to Baharata, Garin has returned to work as the Black Pepper guy, and since you saved him and his lover, he gives you the Black Pepper for free, along with a little bit of advice: to the north, in the mountains, is the Shrine of Dhama (Alltrades Abbey in the modern translations) and you then take the pepper back to the King of Portoga and, keeping good on his end of the bargain, gives you a ship, meaning that you can now travel all over the world of Dragon Warrior III! The game also gets pretty non-linear from here, and I don't want to spoil anymore of the story, so let's move onto other things now.

Class changing!?

The gameplay of Dragon Warrior III is, as you've no doubt noticed or started to pick up by now, is very similar to Dragon Warrior II, apart from being able to create your own characters as party members, not only that, but you get to change their classes, as well! Needless to say, though, you can't change the Hero's class, but whatever. Also, in order for a character to become a Sage, they must possess either the Book of Satori, or they must be a Goof-Off (Gadabout in the modern translations. I swear to God I hate British English with a passion, I wish they'd take it out of Dragon Quest's modern translations) and Sages are well worth the effort it takes to get them. They have an equipment list that is slightly better than that of the Pilgrim's, and they can learn both spell lists, Pilgrim and Wizard! Also, Sages don't seem to favor any single stat save intelligence, but their other stat growths are fantastic, as well! Now you know why you aren't allowed to create them at Luisa's Eatery!

The music for Dragon Warrior III was once again composed by Koichii Sugiyama, a literal war-crimes denier who pretends that the bad stuff that the Japanese did in China never happened, but whatever. The character designs were done yet again by Akira Toriyama (and yes, that is Dragon Ball's Akira Toriyama, in case you were wondering), and the game's scenario was written by series creator Yuji Horii. These three would work on this franchise as the roles they are now for years to come, as well, and they each do their jobs fantastically!

I honestly see why this game is so beloved in Japan, and it's unfortunate that it didn't get the love and respect it deserves even today. I hope that my review can help change the Western World's views on Dragon Warrior, because this one, although it has it's problems, still holds a special place in my heart, and it's why I will always hang onto my NES cartridge version of Dragon Warrior III for the rest of my life.

My final score for this game: 8/10. Definitely worth your time!