My experience with the Dragon Quest franchise over the years has been anything but linear. Growing up, I exhaustively played Nintendo DS entries like Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime and Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, while I’ve more recently enjoyed other spinoffs like Dragon Quest Builders and Dragon Quest Treasures, and the incredible mainline adventure of Dragon Quest XI. Yet I’ve never really felt the desire to go back to the originals. I love admiring retro games, but it’s tough to gel with a NES RPG, especially when they’re such barebones experiences. With the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake double-pack, Square Enix has gone out of their way to elevate these originally paper-thin RPGs with a wealth of content that bring them up to par with any other entry in the series.
Now, I don’t mean to bad-mouth the original games. I respect their place in history and they are key to what RPGs would soon become, but by their nature of being first, there’re simpler, more straightforward takes on what this genre is. In the original, you play as a singular hero, fighting individual monsters, slowly leveling up and buying new gear until you eventually make your way to the final boss and beat him, too. There’s a whisper of a story to it, but the game was groundbreaking and laid the foundation for decades of fantasy stories and video games all inspired by that very first Dragon Quest. In the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D remake, that straightforward quest is amplified with a wealth of expended story scenes, gorgeous cutscenes, cut-in illustrations and even voice acting.
The game opens with a haunting voice ushering you to raise your sword as the heir to Erdrick, a famous hero whose story is eventually told in Dragon Quest III – hence why that game was remade in HD-2D first. You encounter a group of warriors in the forest and save them from an ambush, then get an audience with the king who instructs you to seek out proof of your lineage as the next hero of the lands. It is, in big strokes, still a deviously simple JRPG story, but the care put into presenting it with so much gusto and energy really elevates it beyond feeling like a dated adventure or a relic. It’s a really gripping love-letter to fantasy, and playing this version of the game now must feel how it did in the heads of anyone playing that original version back when it came out.
There are a lot of nice scenes that help pad out the world and its characters in a fun way too. Early on, you encounter a crew of fledgling heroes nervously navigating a cave full of enemies. Their village was razed by the Dragonlord, and they’re seeking some kind of hidden knowledge or weapon that can help them avenge their home. It feels like something that probably never existed in the original game, but I’m really glad they put it in the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake. It adds some depth to the world and the people who inhabit it, and helps make the story feel like more than just a solo experience-grinding trek.
There are a lot of gameplay quirks in the original Dragon Quest that got expanded on in its sequels, and some of those elements have been folded back into this HD-2D version pretty smartly. You’re still a solo hero in Dragon Quest 1, never recruiting additional party members, but you’ll still be fighting packs of enemies. Thankfully, your hero’s abilities have been expanded to account for that – you can learn a wealth of new skills and spells in this remake that specialise in attacking groups of foes at once. It’s a pretty interesting feeling to play a Dragon Quest game as just one character, but I appreciate the way it helps set this entry apart from the follow-up that’s included in the package.
Dragon Quest II is even more story-focused than the first game in this remake. This time you play as a crew of heroes, each a different prince or princess from disparate kingdoms who all have ties to the legacy of Erdrick. This new version even adds the Princess of Cannock as a fourth party member. I was actually really impressed by the story and characters in this entry – it’s still pretty standard fantasy shenanigans, but the wrinkle of your party all being made up of varying kinds of royalty who share this sort of fated distant connection felt really magical.
Both games in the Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake set feel downright magical, in fact, and it’s in large part due to the HD-2D aesthetic. The whole treatment of combining classic pixel-art character sprites with 3D environments and realistic lighting feels like it’s kind of old hat at this point, but then you boot this game up and walk across bloom-covered bridges or through dimly lit dungeons and it’s just awesome. It’s a really fun way to respect and admire the roots of the franchise by putting so much care and attention on these original character and monster sprites, but pairing it all with the sharp environments and the rich voice acting and the booming orchestral soundtrack turns it into such a rich experience.
Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake is packed with changes, from top to bottom, that elevate these original NES entries into so much more than they ever would have been with a no-frills 1:1 remaster. The thrill of combat and the old-school fantasy vibes are still there in full-force, but with expanded story-telling and tightened up gameplay mechanics, it feels on the same level as every other breathtaking HD-2D game that Square Enix has put out.
