
	Platform NES Genre Role-Playing Developer Enix Publisher Enix Released 1991
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Dragon Warrior III

dragon warrior 3,nes

It’s funny how complaints arose during the era of 8-bit gaming of how there were "So few role-playing games for the consoles". Granted there were almost none available for the Sega Master System, but the NES did pretty good for itself considering how anti-RPG the market was at the time. You just had to look a little harder to finding these games. There was Might and Magic, Destiny of an Emperor, Final Fantasy, Bard’s Tale, Wizardry, Ultima, and, of course, the Dragon Warrior series which made an unprecedented four appearances on Nintendo’s 8-bit juggernaut. Arguably the best of the bunch was the third installment. It was a gigantic quest and surprisingly non-linear for its time, making for a unique role-playing experience on a console.

The look of the game was easily the most traditional motif to appear in RPGs on the 8-bit consoles, with cubic little figures representing the adventures, town folk, royalty, et cetera. The environments were all tile-based, with little squares for the grass, the hills, the mountains, the stone walls, doors, stairs, everything. They weren’t at all dazzling then, just as they are now, but they were very utilitarian. They served their purpose and left it at that. The battles showed the monsters from the first person perspective of the adventurers. The art was handled by Dragonball artist, Akira Toriyama, so there was a very comic book-like look to the various beasts. Sound was limited to crunchy thuds and whacks with bloopy, bleepy magical

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sounds thrown in. The music was often very well composed, and did a very good job of complementing the theme of the game, except that the battle music could get very irritating with the frequency of combat in the game.

This constant fighting in Dragon Warrior III, and sadly a predominant trend in RPGs of the 1980s, could sometimes make playing the game a chore. Getting into a fight every three steps was

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bloody annoying. Exacerbating the problem was the constant need to Level-Up if you wanted to progress in the game, not to mention always needing to buy a whole new set of weapons and armor at every town, making the quest a tedious affair at times.

Somehow it remained a fun game for its time though. The story was simple: find the great evil and destroy it. There was plenty of puzzles in the dungeons and extra goodies to be rewarded with, and the game was very long compared to its contemporaries. By today’s standards the Dragon Warrior III would be a tedious chore to muddle through, but for its time it was still fresh and strangely mesmerizing ten years ago.

- Mr. Nash


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