This game was pitched to me as a sort of successful codification of the standard console JRPG, which sounded historically interesting if nothing else (though not a genre I have a great track record with). The Famicom version predates Final Fantasy by about a year, and in spite of that, has a genuinely shocking amount of stuff in it. Maybe it's just because I'm playing it on my phone during the in-between moments of the day—or because I'm playing the polished-up remake from several years later—but I find it weirdly compelling.
The writing is befitting of a game that had to be squeezed into a quarter of a megabyte—which is to say, hilariously brisk. You wake up on your birthday, get sent to the castle, talk to the king, and then it's off you trot to go save the world from the archfiend, or whatever. The game lets you play as a man or a woman, although you get the same sprite either way and everyone in the starting town keeps accidentally misgendering you if you're a woman (I thought this was supposed to be a fantasy heyooooooo). There's a basic party-building system where you choose who you want to travel with you, and it seems like there's some potential for you to get weird with it, although in the interests of not getting repeatedly owned, I just went with the party members the game pushed in front of me first. You can give your party members books to mess with their personalities—another SNES addition, apparently—which seems dubiously ethical, but does change their stat growth in mysterious ways, which I'm all about.
I think the interesting thing about this game is that you can kinda still see the lineage of older D&D-flavoured dungeon-crawling CRPGs—i.e. Wizardry—in its design. Pressing the A button outside of battle doesn't just perform a generic interaction, but brings up a menu of verbs from which you can talk, search your surroundings, cast spells, etc. Party-based dungeon-crawling is a major component of the game, and the first-person perspective in combat has a whiff of the kind of game where you'd be encouraged to keep a stack of grid paper on-hand. Crucially, however, it is not a sadistic maze designed by a 1970s college undergraduate who crept into the mainframe room after-hours on Tuesdays; it is a game that does not, actively, hate you.
It's a numbers-heavy, narrative-light experience, which I must admit sounds incredibly dry. And yet, it feels like it plays to its strengths. Money and experience are balanced such that every new area feels like a tough fight for survival at first, and every new shop is full of shiny new equipment that provides a tempting—albeit pricey—solution to your struggles. This game makes gold feel exciting, because despite its inherent mundanity, you almost always have something in mind to spend it on. Grinding? Well, you'll probably need to do it eventually (especially if, like me, you were leaning heavily on your mage to carry you when you stumbled into the 'no magic allowed' area) but I got through a surprisingly long stretch of game before it became a factor. Animations are short and battles are typically over in a handful of turns, so it's not even particularly laborious if you're sensible about it.
And maybe most surprising of all, it has a sense of humour—one that feels conscious of its medium and the tools available to it. Casting the fast travel spell that whisks you into the air while inside a dungeon will bonk your party members' heads on the top of the screen. Looting random peasants' nightstands will occasionally just yield useless items like boxer shorts (what did you expect, really?). I engaged in a protracted several-dialogue-box-long argument with a king who desperately wanted to foist the crown upon me, and at one point avoided a conflict with a vengeful mummy by simply assuring it that no, I am not a grave robber, pay no attention to the open chest behind me. Even little actions with no actual function (like trying to move an item from your inventory to... your inventory) often have quirky little flavour text snippets to acknowledge them. The writing isn't exactly subversive of the usual fantasy tropes (I've lost count of how many magic macguffins I've picked up to progress myself to the next area) but it's good at finding little moments to inject some lighthearted fun.
I'm into it. I don't know if I'd have been willing to sit down in front of the television and played it in its heyday, or if I'd have enjoyed the NES version as much. But I also probably wouldn't have enjoyed Doom at its original 35fps, or made it through A Realm Reborn without a friend shepherding me along. or finished Thief Gold without slamming the quicksave button every time I was about to engage in platforming. Our experiences of games are always shaped by the ways we choose to engage with them, and sometimes you have to make the call between whatever the 'authentic' 'intended' experience is, and your own comfort.
So, Dragon Quest III? Great game to play while waiting for the train. No opinion on any other context.
