I spent several hours over the past weeks trying to think of a single remake that’s comparable to Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D Remake, and I couldn’t. I thought about 2023’s Resident Evil 4 remake, which changes the controls, the tone, and even the content of 2005’s Resident Evil 4. However, I could still use my knowledge of the original game to progress through the remake, which for the most part I can’t with Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D. I thought about Final Fantasy VII Remake, which dramatically overhauls the core systems of Final Fantasy VII and changes the narrative in ways that deliberately play with fan expectations. Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D, however, clearly does want to be recognized as the first two Dragon Quest games, not as a riff or commentary on them, as it primarily adds to each game’s overarching story rather than changing it outright.
Even 2024’s Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake is a tangibly different beast than this, as it still generally adhered to the NES-era storytelling of its source material in ways that I+II do not. I realized my best point of comparison for Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D Remake was actually movies like Clueless (1995) and 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). Those adaptations are directly based on the works of Austen and Shakespeare respectively, but they are not bound to those works. Instead, they are movies made unapologetically for the audiences of their time, treating their source material as an outline to follow rather than something to “remake.” Clueless is a more interesting flick if you’ve read Emma and can compare the two works. However, if you told someone “I’ve experienced Emma because I watched Clueless,” they’d tell you to at least pretend to read Emma like everyone else who sleepwalked their way to a Bachelor of Arts in English.
Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D Remake is similarly disinterested in recapturing the essence of the first two Dragon Quest games. As a package it instead strikes me as more akin to a modern Dragon Quest game, with enough retro sensibilities to appeal to fans of Square Enix’s greater “HD-2D” catalogue (like Octopath Traveler or the upcoming The Adventures of Elliot). Given that these two games have seen countless remakes that mainly iterate on 1993’s Dragon Quest I & II for the Super Famicom, a more transformative take on these classics feels overdue. But Dragon Quest I&II HD-2D Remake rides such a fine line between honoring its source material and reinventing it for the modern era that I’ve found myself completely changing the way I even look at the two games it’s based on. To explain what I mean by that, we’ll have to look at these games next to their former counterparts and answer a simple, yet overwhelming question: What even is Dragon Quest?
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Dragon Quest I: The bones are the RPG
The first Dragon Quest, released in Japan in 1986, is sometimes called “the first RPG.” However, that isn’t really true. Series like Wizardry and Ultima were already several games deep by the mid 80s, and gamers in Japan could enjoy region-exclusive hits like Falcom’s Dragon Slayer and The Black Onyx on PC about two years before Dragon Quest debuted. The real claim to fame of Dragon Quest isn’t inventing the video game RPG, but distilling this mouse-and-keyboard genre into a form that could fit on the more mainstream Famicom. It’s objectively not the first Japanese RPG, but it is arguably the first “jRPG.”
As a result, the original Dragon Quest boils down to an exceedingly simple loop: fight monsters, buy equipment, level up. If you cross a bridge and die to strong monsters, do something else to get stronger. Talk to townsfolk, gather hints to find key items, and eventually you will reach the final boss. Dragon Quest hones in on a gradual power fantasy, one in which time invested translates directly into strength gained. These mechanics aren’t a result of the RPG genre freshly emerging out of its primordial goo. Rather, Dragon Quest is a statement about RPGs as a whole—strip the genre to its most essential parts, and this is what you get.
To this day, that loop of “do an activity, level up, repeat” that drives RPGs remains the basis of major video game franchises. You can even find brand new games that specifically iterate on the look and feel of the first Dragon Quest, simply because the core formula is still compelling. The remakes and remasters of the first Dragon Quest have only homed in on that fundamental loop harder, with rebalanced EXP and Gold gains that get players to that sweet dopamine rush of leveling up even faster. The most recent mobile versions of Dragon Quest even highlight the location of key items, nullifying that aforementioned element of hint gathering to get players back to grinding slimes and skeletons until they’re strong enough to overcome their next obstacle.
I’ll be honest, I’m a sucker for these iterations of the original Dragon Quest. It’s now a concise RPG that you can start after breakfast and finish before dinner, which is a refreshing change of pace for a genre associated with wildly long runtimes. The game can feel tough, especially for kids who were expecting a Zelda-like experience after getting it from a Nintendo Power giveaway. But once you learn the basic rules, I’d say Dragon Quest is just as soothing as it is epic (by 1986 standards, anyway). Meanwhile, “soothing” is the last word I’d use to describe Dragon Quest I HD-2D.
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Dragon Quest I HD-2D: So are the worms
Dragon Quest I HD-2D separates itself from its source material right after you select “new game.” Following a series of cutscenes that introduce a few major characters, the hero embarks on a quest that is not driven by accruing strength, but by traveling to set locations to advance the plot. This is now a story-driven game, and the story it tells is practically the antithesis of the original game’s loop. You are not a mighty warrior embarking on a power fantasy. You are alone in a world devoid of hope, where death and defeat are always a breath away.
These feelings permeate the combat of Dragon Quest I HD-2D. In the original Dragon Quest, battles are quick 1vs1 skirmishes in which your actions typically consist of attacking, casting a spell, or healing.” In HD-2D Remake, the hero now faces full groups of enemies at once. This pushes you into the role of the wary tactician, perpetually one bad turn away from defeat. Battles are now drawn out affairs in which individual enemies can attack multiple times per turn as if to reinforce how heavily the deck is stacked against you. If an enemy scores a single critical hit on you, a game over is likely to soon follow.
That’s the essence of Dragon Quest—simple, poetic adventures that give us the space to slow down and reflect on our lives.
To compensate, Dragon Quest now lets you utilize a plethora of modern Dragon Quest spells and abilities. In the original Dragon Quest, the hero learns ten spells in total. By the time I finished Dragon Quest I HD-2D, the hero had forty-seven. Weapons and armor now boast unique properties, a far cry from the static stat increases of the original Dragon Quest. Even in regular encounters, I found myself swapping my equipment nearly every turn to exploit weaknesses and optimize my elemental resistances. And lest you think I’m just doing hard mode things, this is all on the default normal difficulty!
The irony of these new battle mechanics is that they do feel retro-inspired, just not in a way that’s specifically faithful to Dragon Quest. There’s a heavy emphasis on dice rolls, where a single status effect landing on either side can single-handedly determine the outcome of combat. Missing an attack with a whip on a group of enemies feels crushing. Enemies spam instant death moves as frequently as they would in a proper full-party Dragon Quest. Were it not for this remake’s generous autosave system, dungeon exploration would probably feel tense in a way hardcore dungeon crawlers often do, but the cheery, inviting Dragon Quest series typically does not.
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Dragon Quest 0.2 – A Fragmentary Passage
You may be wondering how one could make a story-driven version of Dragon Quest, a game that has virtually no story. The answer, of course, is to write an almost entirely new story that integrates the major beats of the NES classic. Dragon Quest I HD-2D Remake is completely treated as a sequel to Dragon Quest III. Plot elements that only appeared in that third game now take the forefront here and completely recontextualize the story. Dragon Quest originally spent a lot of time talking about the heroic deeds of the first Erdrick. Dragon Quest I HD-2D proclaims that you know the first Erdrick, and it spends the entirety of its 15-hour run time acting as a bridge between Dragon Quest III and Dragon Quest II.
In fulfilling this role, the tale of Dragon Quest becomes somewhat darker than it has seemed in past incarnations. Princess Gwaelin, once the prototypical damsel-in-distress, is now blessed with powers, though they’re still insufficient against the villainous Dragonlord, costing the lives of her protectors before she is flung into a dungeon where she is psychologically tortured. At least one named character dies in a demon attack that feels as cruel as it is pointless. The soldiers who escape with their lives are broken by their helplessness, wondering what they can possibly do to defend against the powers that could target their loved ones next.
Through these threads, Dragon Quest I HD-2D focuses on one of the oldest themes in jRPG history: don’t give up hope. The solution for many of these struggles isn’t to go out and take on the world without aid; instead, people move forward by focusing on what they can do, which in turn creates the conditions for the hero to succeed.
“… You’re only one person. You can’t keep the whole world safe single-handedly,” a character tells the hero after her village wards off a deadly invasion. “We can’t give in to fear. If we run, then what happened to us will happen to others. The world won’t be safe. So we have to be strong. And we have to keep going.”
This is where I feel Dragon Quest I HD-2D strains a bit in its identity as, well, Dragon Quest. In an interview with Shacknews, remake producer Masaaki Hayasaka discusses how the team originally pitched series creator Yuji Horii on the idea of giving the hero more party members. However, according to Hayasaka, Horii was adamant that Dragon Quest remain a solo adventure, stating “… Dragon Quest 1 is a story about one man’s adventure, one journey, and it’s the history of the series.” This is a true statement about the first Dragon Quest, but it is not true of Dragon Quest HD-2D.
Dragon Quest I HD-2D is very much not one man’s journey. It’s the story of people coming together to ward off a fearsome, overwhelming evil. It’s a celebration of small victories, like a father realizing that he can be a hero just by defending his family. It’s a game about a princess doing what she can to protect her kingdom, and it legitimately feels awkward that she doesn’t become a party member when she outright asks to join the hero. Frankly, more companions could have smoothed out some of the rough edges in this remake’s modernized combat system too, as it’s clearly designed for a full party.
I’m not here to argue with Yuji Horii about a video game that he made in the 1980s. It’s just that Dragon Quest I HD-2D is not that game. I can’t state enough that I love the original Dragon Quest, and I sincerely recommend that you find the time to play any past iterations of the game if Dragon Quest I HD-2D was your first exposure to it. Yet as I watched the credits roll, I found myself curious about the vision Hayasaka’s team had in mind when they pitched the idea of adding more party members. Could we have seen a deeper relationship blossom between the hero and Gwaelin outside the “love at first sight” premise of the original? Is there a world in which Robbin ‘ood could have worked as a playable character? I find these possibilities much more interesting than the idea that the original Dragon Quest must be a solo journey, especially when virtually everything else about it has changed.
That said, I’ll admit that limiting the game to one party member gives greater thematic significance to the second game in this package.
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Dragon Quest II: “The worst Dragon Quest”
After all my passion for the first Dragon Quest, forgive me if I don’t sound as enthusiastic about Dragon Quest II. I didn’t play it as a kid, and most of the western hemisphere seems to hold it in relatively low regard. It routinely ranks at the bottom of mainline Dragon Quest rankings, though these same rankings often clarify that the writers don’t outright hate the game. In my opinion, it’s missing the strong hook that would have made it distinct from the other mainline games. The first Dragon Quest is a less technically impressive game, but its simplicity gives it a lasting charm that Dragon Quest II lacks.
One look at Japan in 1987, however, paints a very different picture. In an archived interview with 1Up, Chunsoft founder Koichi Nakamura describes how he “was very confident that [the first Dragon Quest] was going to become a hit.” However, he was disappointed with how the first game initially sold, as he was “expecting it to be a bigger hit.” Dragon Quest II was actually the breakout success that would eventually lead to the series spawning wild rumors about Japan declaring a holiday whenever a Dragon Quest game is released. According to Nakamura, “once [Dragon Quest II] was out in stores, it created a huge panic — the Dragon Quest panic — everybody wanted Dragon Quest, and the stores all sold out.”
It’s fitting, as Dragon Quest II introduces much of the flavor that would define Dragon Quest beyond “it’s kind of like Ultima I guess.” The player now commands a party that must contend with swarms of foes in strategic combat. The world is vast in scope, going so far as to include the island of the first Dragon Quest as a small slice of its map. The journey spans multiple granular arcs that balance drama with whimsy. If the first Dragon Quest is the core of the turn-based RPG, then Dragon Quest II is the core of Dragon Quest as a series.
Dragon Quest II also released in a notably unfinished state. In a 1987 interview, Yuji Horii describes how the development team had to scramble to balance the game, which ultimately delayed the game’s release. Dragon Quest II was also designed with more elaborately drawn cutscenes in mind, but those had to be cut due to memory limitations. Items were wholesale removed from the game, leaving some treasure chests empty. Even the ending was cut down to size; Horii originally entertained the idea of having the Prince of Cannock sacrifice himself during the final battle, which would lead to the Princess of Cannock murdering the protagonist out of revenge for her lost brother. I don’t think that would have been a good idea, but it definitely is an idea!
The point is, Dragon Quest II comes across as a game whose narrative ambitions outstripped what was feasible at the time. It’s been remade about as many times as the first Dragon Quest, which has afforded its makers many opportunities to fix any lingering balance issues (ask your local NES gamer about what the final act of the game was like). However, aside from altering some dungeon layouts and introducing some extra stuff to interact with, none of these remakes have punched up the content of Dragon Quest II to better match that original vision. Keep in mind that its sequel, Dragon Quest III, received a massive overhaul when it was remade on the Super Famicom way back in 1996, with new items, core mechanics, and content that would mostly carry forward to its subsequent remakes. The precedent was there for Dragon Quest II to get a glow up, but it never got one, until now.
For this reason, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Dragon Quest II feels much more impressive than its predecessor in this package, even though the two games were treated virtually identically by Masaaki Hayasaka’s team. It too is very different from what it previously was, but it also feels closer in spirit to what Dragon Quest II has always aspired to be.
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Dragon Quest II HD-2D Remake: Party like it’s 1999ish
As you might expect, Dragon Quest II HD-2D is also now a story-driven game. While the original Dragon Quest II mostly treated the player’s party as observers traversing through the world, Dragon Quest II HD-2D makes the protagonists active participants in the unfolding events. The characters now discuss events at length that passed in mere seconds in the original game, and we get our fair share of “you couldn’t sleep either?” conversations in which the cast can intimately discuss their feelings. It’s not quite a “modernized” Dragon Quest, but it does more closely match the jRPGs of the SNES and PSX eras, rather than the NES one.
By focusing more on the main characters, Dragon Quest II HD-2D builds off of that feeling of hopelessness that pervades so much of its predecessor. Back on the NES, the Princess of Moonbrooke occasionally felt like the little sister who you had to let follow you so your mom wouldn’t get mad. She contributes to combat, but her lack of defenses and low level cap could make her a liability. In Dragon Quest II HD-2D, not only is she an invaluable party member, she’s practically the beating heart of the entire cast. Hers is the only kingdom to be destroyed by the villain Hargon’s forces, so her sorrow and desire for revenge give a weight to the conflict that never existed before.
As the Prince of Cannock tells the protagonist, “The princess fights to exorcise the grief and anger that cloud her heart…We may never be able to soothe the Princess’s pain, nor replace her family, but perhaps we can offer her another.”
Dragon Quest II HD-2D lingers on that sorrow for much of its early game, but something interesting happens as it progresses. In the original game, the world map theme that plays at the start carries a melancholic tone, riffing on the equivalent theme in the first Dragon Quest. However, once the party of heroes is assembled, the theme changes to a happier, jaunty tune, marking the moment as a sea change for the rest of the game. This remake’s narrative similarly shifts in tone as it progresses. That overwhelming darkness starts to feel surmountable in a way that wasn’t felt in Dragon Quest I HD-2D, and that theme of clinging to hope finally feels like it pays off.
“But lately, I dream [of Moonbrooke’s destruction] no longer,” the Princess of Moonbrooke tells the protagonist later in their journey. “I dream instead of our time together. The meals we enjoy in one another’s company. The arguments. Even the battles. I once believed that the purpose of this journey was to see Hargon and his minions suffer as I have suffered. But I know now that this is not true. And I know this thanks to all of you.”
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The epic conclusion
Dragon Quest II HD-2D isn’t just a Dragon Quest II remake: it is the culmination of all the Dragon Quest HD-2D games. The villain Hargon has been built up and teased for two games now. It feels as if evil forces are a generational inevitability that can only be subdued rather than outright defeated. For someone who is freshly experiencing the first three Dragon Quest games via these remakes, it might feel like this is just what Dragon Quest is: Monsters endlessly returning time and again, like the villains of the week in an old Super Sentei series.
However, Dragon Quest II HD-2D counterbalances this by showing how good works can become generational too. The heroes are regularly saved by relics of the past, like Princess Gwaelin’s pendant which both opens otherwise blocked paths and dispels enemy magics that confound the party. The legendary armaments crafted for the past Erdricks can also be found and used throughout this journey. The heroes of Dragon Quest II HD-2D are younger than their heroic predecessors were when they faced generational evil, but the legacies of their ancestors give them the strength to do what couldn’t be done in the past: End this cycle once and for all.
“It’s interesting to think that every generation between Erdrick and yourselves had its own heroes,” the party is told. “All those who came before you: your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents…All of them were heroes in their own right, if only because they kept Erdrick’s legend alive until you lot came along to repeat it.”
This reframing of Dragon Quest II HD-2D gives it a unique warmth in relation to the other HD-2D games. Dragon Quest III technically has a party system, but it’s filled with generic mercenaries created by the player, so it still feels a bit lonely. Dragon Quest I, as I described above, is a solo adventure despite this remake’s best efforts. So coming into Dragon Quest II HD-2D, with its full party of developed characters, brings an end to those hours upon hours of isolation you feel by playing these games in this order.
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Strength through unity
Dragon Quest II HD-2D leans into this theme by adding the Princess of Cannock to the cast of playable characters for the first time in this game’s history. It’s a big departure from the original for sure, but given Yuji Horii’s original aspirations for the Princess to take a more prominent role, her inclusion feels appropriate. She doesn’t kill the protagonist (sorry, spoilers), but I think Horii would have agreed this direction is best even back in 1987. From a pure gameplay perspective, the Princess of Cannock is a major boon to the combat system. Dragon Quest combat works best with a party of four, as this gives the player enough actions per turn to cast buffs and debuffs, and even to take a gamble on some status effects here and there.
The Princess of Cannock also breathes new life into the party’s relationships with each other, offering fresh perspectives as the protagonists interact with the world. I can only describe Dragon Quest II HD-2D as overwhelmingly empathetic, with its heroes unifying the many peoples and species of the world with their kindness. Meanwhile, disorder notably divides the villains of Dragon Quest II, with Hargon’s generals routinely sabotaging each other for personal gain. The Princess of Cannock mentions this outright, as it becomes a massive advantage the heroes can press over their enemies.
“I am overjoyed! For I have seen that we can win!” the Princess of Cannock proclaims. “That victory over Hargon and his armies shall surely be ours! …There is no unity among the monsters. No harmony… Each is a law unto themselves. We, on the other hand, have made—and continue to make—allies of the people we meet.”
These themes of hope may be new to Dragon Quest II, but they’re not new to RPGs. Notably, however, they have gone out of vogue in recent years. As Michael Lee writes in his reflection on this very topic, “The question video game narratives are asking has shifted from ‘How can we save the world?’ to ‘How do we live in the world we couldn’t save?’” Dragon Quest II HD-2D Remake is modernized, but not so modernized to age itself out of this classic theme. The way it homes in on this concept makes it feel like an homage to the entire RPG genre as it evolved following the original release of Dragon Quest II back in 1987, and that story is exactly what we need in the present day.
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The real Dragon Quest was inside you all along
Neither game in Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake is profound in ways I’ve never seen before. I can point to games with better stories, better battle systems, games that are better at whatever criteria we use to discuss a game’s quality. Yet I found myself regularly tearing up playing these games, even during banal moments that shouldn’t elicit an emotional reaction. These games aren’t facsimiles of what they were before. But as I interrogated that deep response I was routinely getting, I realized that’s the essence of Dragon Quest—simple, poetic adventures that give us the space to slow down and reflect on our lives, taking whichever shape will reach us in the moment.
Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake invites us not to look at this series as a set collection of rules and systems, but as classics that should speak to whichever time period they’re revisited in. After all, while the first Dragon Quest is a great tutorial for how RPGs work, the modern Dragon Quest fan doesn’t necessarily need one of those. Homer’s The Odyssey probably wasn’t created to be forever discussed in academic settings. But whether it takes the form of the tale of escaped convicts in 1937 Mississippi or a series of musical numbers that are covered and animated by internet denizens, the story continues to resonate throughout society. Were Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake a fully modernized, 3D reimagining, we’d probably look at it as a new game totally detached from what it was before. But it maintains just enough of a retro sensibility to bring RPG fans back to the halcyon days of their youth, even if the core essence of these games has drastically shifted.
As Tim Rogers says in his very in-depth and very good review of Dragon Quest XI, “Dragon Quest games are bedtime stories.” I don’t think I’m the only one for whom calming my ever-present anxiety enough to get eight actual hours of sleep has been a struggle for these past couple of years. There have been so many layoffs in the video game industry that it got its own tag on this very website. The cost of living is unconscionably high. My own career as a writer has been completely and utterly slashed to unrecognizable shreds thanks to shortsighted media networks and AI-driven algorithm changes. How can someone dream of a joyful future when just surviving for the next six months is an overwhelming prospect? Where does one find the energy to take another step forward in a world that seems to detest their existence?
In this mindset, it’s all too tempting to retreat into nostalgia, living in a fantasy of “the good old days” as our bodies age and our minds wither away. And for the RPG enjoyer, there is no more reliable comfort food in such times than Dragon Quest. I find it moving to think that those most in need of the hope these games offer may come to them seeking to blot out the world by retreating into the nostalgic comfort they offer and perhaps instead find the courage to face the darkness enveloping their lives. A world in anguish is a world that can be united. Evil is not an inevitability that has to endlessly repeat. Maybe we aren’t Erdricks, but rather, we’re the people simply enduring, searching for our own small destinies as we bolster our heroes. The sun will rise again no matter how endless the night may feel, and it will be because the suffering that connects us is greater than the philosophies that divide us. Those who oppress us are too disordered and too selfish to overcome a force as powerful as that.
Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake is the bedtime story for the broken. It’s comfort for those who desperately need to find their strength again, a reminder that it’s okay to dream of a world where we’re surrounded by friends and we fight for a brighter future. What we get here is not Dragon Quest I, nor is it Dragon Quest II, but its connection to the original form of those games is not arbitrary. Rather, through this reinvention, I once again remember the promise expressed by the gameplay loop of the very first Dragon Quest: Take your time and get stronger. Know when to fight another day if you encounter a challenge you cannot overcome. Talk to those around you. Gather hints and follow the clues. The road ahead may be fraught, and you may face defeat. But always remember the time you’ve invested is not wasted. Fight bravely and do not back down. Persevere, and you will finally win.
