Dragon Quest has not been as ubiquitous as Final Fantasy in recent years, but the two series are intertwined in the history of defining and formalizing Japanese RPGs. And just as the Pixel Remaster remakes of Final Fantasy have given players a fresh and modernized way to reexperience history, Dragon Quest is aiming to give players a dose of history with the Erdrick Trilogy–the first three Dragon Quest games, remastered across two packages. Dragon Quest 3 was a treat, and now DQ1+2 will round out the set with Dragon Quest 1+2 HD-2D Remake. Despite my affection for retro RPGs, early Dragon Quest is a relative blind spot for me, and after a little hands-on time I’m eager to play each of them to completion.
For starters, the games are a stunning marriage of classic pixel art and modern touches. I hadn’t realized how much better Square Enix’s „HD-2D“ aesthetic had become in recent years. My impression from the Octopath Traveler games and the tactics game Triangle Strategy was still that HD-2D tends to be fairly muted and muddy. As much as I enjoyed those games, the art style didn’t wow me. Dragon Quest 1+2, on the other hand, applies the structure of HD-2D to a much more vibrant world. The color palette and saturation feels reminiscent of 8-bit classics, which makes the beautiful sprite artwork pop.
This package includes both the first and second Dragon Quest games, which are rudimentary by today’s standards, but that’s also what makes them so endearing. The very first Dragon Quest game was a very early blueprint for the series, featuring just one hero character taking on the legions of slimes and monsters to overcome evil. The second game is a bit more reminiscent of early Final Fantasy games, with party members that come and go as the story demands. Even then, though, the options were set by default to give you direct control over the main hero and let the other party members move autonomously.