THE Definitive Edition for the Next Generation
It's been roughly 35 years (36.75 years at time of writing, to be more precise) since the ORIGINAL has been released on the Famicom (& later the NES as "Dragon Warrior III"). While the game has been re-released on more modern platforms, including mobile... the game has retained its old-school looks which may dissuade the newer generation of players. The HD-2D treatment has RADICALLY CHANGED the look of Dragon Quest III that will appeal to newer players & bring back the old salts (like me) for another spin.
The storyline for Dragon Quest III is that you're the child of the great warrior Ortega. Your father was on the quest to defeat the archfiend Baramos & fell into a volcano fighting one of Baramos's top minions. On your 16th birthday, the king gives you his blessing to take up the quest that your father could not complete. You effectively retrace (& eventually surpass) your father's steps as you explore the world & make your way to confront Baramos. -- I know it may not be THAT original nowadays, but this is just the start of things to come.
Gameplay is traditional turn-based battles, so you can spend your time deciding your attacks for yourself & your party members. However, with the additional quality-of-life content, you can choose to utilize tactics & have the game AI make combat decisions for you based on the such tactic (like "Show no mercy" will have your team use their strongest attacks available while "Use no MP" will force your team to conserve MP as much as possible) for each party member. If desired, you can use these with everybody in your party to effectively automate combat for each round (you still have to choose to fight or flee). In previous versions, the tactics system made some party members perform some questionable actions that wasted resources. HOWEVER, more refinements with this system (& tweaks to the game) has made me more comfortable utilizing this system with the majority of my party, leaving me to choose the actions of "The Hero" for myself. In terms of combat difficulty, it has shift a little bit towards the easy side in general on the default settings, but the difficult curve has progressed where I'm still being challenged without the old-school pressures or penalties. HOWEVER, you can change the game's difficulty on-the-fly. So you can make the game brutally difficult (nearing "NES Hard") OR a walk in the park if you just want to experience the story without the combat being a roadblock to it.
Save options for the game are running on a three-tier system to offer convenience & flexibility to players. More traditional players will still utilize the Church Priests at the nearest town to save your progress, with additional priests added for convenience. However, if you prefer the pick-up play method, you can drop a Quicksave (which creates a temporary save file) whenever & wherever you are so you can stop quickly without losing your progress. Then there's the auto-save system for inexperienced & lazy players, but it may cause more harm than good in some cases. Regardless of your play style, the game allows you to load from your preferred point.
The biggest & more radical change in this version of the game is the HD-2D treatment, which is the same world rendering treatment that the Octopath Traveller series & Triangle Strategy utilized. While characters appear a bit retro, the world you traverse has been overhauled from a basic tile-map system to a more organic, sprawling world. This has made the game look more organic & way larger than their original design, thus breathing new life into a classic RPG to the point it will likely become THE preferred way to enjoy it. Small additions like story bits littered through the game enhances the storytelling as you organically obtain them. There are more "boss" monsters littered through the game to add some extra challenge & obtaining certain items a bit more rewarding. There's even an extra-hard post-game content that you can challenge yourself with.
SOME of the downsides with this version is that some extras like Parcheesi (or "Treasures & Trap Doors"... or whatever it's called) that some versions had is not included here. The original Monster Arenas are missing as well, but this is mostly due to the sign of the times as gambling, even in fantasy environments, is discouraged as a side-quest activity. The Monster Arenas are now more Pokemon-like as you recruit "friendly" monsters to join your team & select a group of three to battle a small group of opponents in each Arena. This side-quest activity is beneficial to the new Monster Wranger class, which adds some extra tactics for players. The mini medals side-quest is generally something for those who like the scour the world & find those obscure (& not-so-obscure) secrets. You get periodic rewards for hitting certain thresholds, but I do find it a bit draining after a while & let it fall to the wayside so I can press on with the story.
The biggest downside, if you choose to consider it (being a QoL change), is that the spell Zoom (which cost 0 MP now) & Chimera Wings (a consumable item) can be utilized inside MOST caves & buildings. This has seriously taken a chunk out of the game's challenge as players can immediately whisk themselves to safety after a devastating battle in MOST cases. This has also rendered the Evac spell (which took players outside such areas) pointless. While players still lose a little progress, as they have to re-enter the area, they no longer have to spend time grinding for items & conserving MP for more challenging areas. HOWEVER, such challenging areas tend to provide some incentive (like a recover spring) or reward (like an unlockable warp) to encourage you to stick it out.
If you want to give the classic Dragon Quest titles (first chronologically in the Erdrick / Loto trilogy) a shot for the first time OR an old salt like me & take another spin in this world, you will NOT be disappointed as the game has been given a loving attention to detail with quality-of-life improvements that fully warrant that new-game price.