When I reviewed Dragon Quest III HD last year, I talked a fair bit about what an important game it was to JRPGs as a whole and why its reissue was a big deal. One thing I didn’t mention is part of why it had such a big impact: It was a massive improvement in scope, gameplay, and storytelling over the two preceding Dragon Quest titles. With DQIII HD’s sales success and its chronological position as the first part of a story trilogy, Square Enix releasing a similar HD-2D remake of the first two titles made perfect sense.
And here we are now, with Dragon Quest I and II HD Remake–the other chapters in the Erdrick trilogy, now gussied up with Square Enix’s lavish 2D-sprites-on-3D-backgrounds style of graphical presentation. Jumping into these games for the first time in well over two decades, I was surprised to see just how much effort went into “modernizing” them–not just in terms of mechanics, but also to build upon their basic “hero(es) take up arms against an evil force” narratives with more dialogue, setpieces, and story beats. Yet even with all of the enhancements, one game in this bundle clearly comes out as the superior adventure–but still not quite up to the heights of the previous release.
If you’re at all familiar with Dragon Quest, you know what to expect here: classic fantasy JRPG adventures, packed with random-encounter turn-based combat, dungeon exploration, fetch quests, and vanquishing the forces of darkness with the light of heroism. Dragon Quest I is a strictly solo journey–it’s just your brave little hero, going mano-a-mano with the enemy hordes–while DQII uses the series’ now-traditional party system. Though the two games play similarly, having a party makes a world of difference in combat: extra meatshields and actions allow for distinct strategies to take shape, making for more dynamic and enjoyable fights.
Much like Dragon Quest III HD, Dragon Quest I & II HD is an absolute stunner in the audiovisual department, packed with orchestral editions of classic songs and fully remade environments brimming with color and enhanced details. Little touches like tiny rats scurrying around caves and dungeons and shining reflections on the wide floors of the resplendent royal palaces make for striking and memorable imagery. Small touches–like how every item you find while rummaging through pots, cabinets, and chests has a different piece of pixel art–show that there was a great deal of love and effort put into the presentation.
There’s more to these remakes than just a new coat of paint, however. While the original Dragon Quest I and II were formative to the nascent JRPG genre, they are very basic games by modern standards. It could be argued that preserving that simplicity is ideal as it’s both part of the games’ charm and their historical importance, but instead, Square Enix and developer Artdink are trying to tread a tightrope by adding a fair bit of content to each game while still preserving much of the originals’ stories and progression. Mechanically, both games are significantly improved, but results are much more mixed in terms of narrative and overall progression flow.
In terms of overall gameplay, many of the little tweaks, additions, and improvements in both combat and navigation from Dragon Quest III HD have carried over here. There are minimaps for all areas, new combat skills not seen in the original, more enemy variety, a marker to show where your next goal is, and spells like the fast-travel Zoom no longer having restrictions on use. Many of these features can be toggled on and off in the system menu if you want a more authentic experience, so you can make the games as challenging or as breezy as you so choose. You still learn skills and spells through the tried-and-true method of leveling up, but now you can also acquire skills from single-use scrolls. This gives a bit of extra incentive to treasure hunt while adding a pinch of extra strategy to Dragon Quest II–since the scrolls vanish after use, you have to decide who gets what skill.
The additions to the plot and progression of these two games are unfortunately, more uneven in how they affect the games. Both of the early Dragon Quest titles are very basic in terms of plot and overall game flow, and the HD Remake tries to remedy this by adding additional characters, dialogue, locales, events, and even bosses to both titles.
Dragon Quest I’s specific gameplay tweaks make the solo hero more capable in battle, giving him a lot more options in terms of spells and abilities to make up for the fact that he’s all alone in his quest. It’s a good attempt, but–especially in the late-game–it’s still very easy to run into a spate of bad luck where you get one-shotted by a stray critical hit and need to reload your save, or get cornered by multi-hitting enemies you can’t run from. New characters and locations, such as the Tantagel Royal Guard and villages of faeries and dwarves, appear to give more gravitas to the ongoing struggle against the Dragonlord and tie the game more firmly into the narratives of both the second and third Dragon Quests. Some of the new story beats even affect gameplay–a major quest has you looking for a magic key, eliminating the irritating need in the original to buy and carry multiple keys on you at all times.
Trying to give DQI’s narrative more depth is a fun idea, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The simple base narrative and lack of other party members makes little room to connect with these mostly forgettable characters with one-note personality traits, and the extra locations and quest objectives (with new boss fights) feels less like an expansion of the world and more like an attempt to pad out the game as much as possible. It makes the game feel very tedious at times, and not in a “well, games were just different back then” retro-nostalgic way.
Dragon Quest II, however, proves to be a much more solid foundation for gameplay and storytelling additions. Having a multi-character party with companions that have personalities and dialogue with each other makes the efforts to add flair and charm to the narrative much more successful. The biggest addition, both in story and gameplay, is a new party member: the spunky, headstrong Princess of Cannock, who functions as something of a strange rogue/mage hybrid and gives both narrative and combat a bit of extra oomph. Having an extra body in battle shifts the gameplay balance significantly (though there’s still plenty of challenging boss fights that will need to be strategized out), and seeing the team chatter and react to events in the story is a delight. While it still suffers a smidge from feeling padded out at times, DQII is easily the stronger of the two titles in the package.
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One element of both games that I found irritating, however, was the choice of the localization team to try mimicking Old English ways of speaking. You’ll see plenty of thees, thous, thines, and -eths in the dialogue, which starts out cute but quickly grows overwrought. I assume the intent was to invoke nostalgia of the original NES Dragon Warrior I and II, which used similar localization styles in an attempt to play up the medieval-fantasy atmosphere, but that decision ignores that later localized games dropped it for a very good reason. As someone who likes the often silly, flowery, and groanworthy-pun-laden localization style of recent Dragon Quest titles, this was overly obnoxious: not enough to turn me off entirely of the games, but still grating.
Ultimately, my feelings toward Dragon Quest I & II HD Remake boil down to “Would I recommend it over DQIIIHD or Dragon Quest XI? Well… no.” Both of those games are far better experiences for both new and old DQ fans. That’s not to say DQI&IIHD lack any value–there’s good times to be had, especially with DQII. You’re not forced to play either of the games before enjoying the other, so if you just want to play one, you’re free to do so. But the games don’t quite stack up compared to other recent Dragon Quests, even with all the new bells and whistles, and Dragon Quest I’s remake in particular feels like a lot of wasted potential. But if you’re looking for another source for that distinct Dragon Quest flavor of turn-based charm and whimsy, there’s certainly nothing wrong with revisiting these two adventures.
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