If you have ever taken the time to play the original Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line, you know that these are the bone-simple ancestors of the modern console RPG that were the product of huge ambitions being matched with the stifling limitations of the original Famicom/NES hardware. These were games made by diehard fans of tabletop RPGs and PC classics like Wizardry and Ultima who knew that most of their players would have no idea what to do with a game where the primary action wasn't jumping or punching. The first game originally only let your lone adventurer fight a single monster at a time, and its for-the-time gargantuan quest could be completed in just a few hours if you knew what you were doing. The sequel tripled the size of the world map and added a party of characters with different combat expertise to draw from - you even got to fight multiple enemies at a time! - but its notorious balance issues and still fundamentally basic story have made it a difficult game to recommend to anyone that isn't explicitly trying to relive the rough-and-rowdy Wild West days of gaming history.

I am one of those Dragon Quest fans who discovered the series very late in life. Even though I've been obsessed with JRPGs for decades, I only first played the original Erdrick trilogy of games when I got hold of their somewhat compromised mobile ports on my Switch back in 2020. With the original Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II still relatively fresh in my mind, I was quite curious to see just how sweeping and transformative these games would be after getting the HD-2D treatment (especially since I've only dabbled in the recent remake of DQIII. Let me tell you all that I was genuinely not prepared for just how much of a revelation that DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake would be. Yes, it is easy to argue that the games aren't necessarily very “faithful” remakes, given just how much these prototypical titles have been completely overhauled and expanded. These remakes don't even really try to capture the literal experience of playing the old games. At the cost of pure and exacting historical accuracy, however, we have gained something very special, indeed.

The first thing that will stand out to anyone booting up DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake is obviously the gorgeous new coat of patented HD-2D paint that Square Enix has applied to DQI and DQII. It's not necessarily that I'm blown away by the lovingly crafted 3D dioramas and the expertly animated 2D character and monster sprites - though the developers working on these games have clearly honed their tools and improved on their techniques in the years since Octopath Traveler first debuted. Rather, I'm just stunned at how perfectly the HD-2D aesthetic fits the particular tone and atmosphere that defines the best Dragon Quest games. The look is equal parts humble, charming, and deceptively simple, managing to perfectly capture the feeling of moving the world's most delicate models around a series of exceedingly beautiful landscapes carved by a Dungeon Master with an absurd amount of time and money on his hands. On the Switch 2, you have the option to prioritize high-resolution artwork in Graphics Mode or silky-smooth 60 FPS gameplay in Performance Mode. I actually ended up spending the majority of my time in Graphics Mode, mostly because I wanted to squeeze every ounce of fidelity out of the game's pixels as possible, and the more meticulous turn-based gameplay is perfectly enjoyable at 30 FPS. When you combine these stellar visuals with the lovingly re-orchestrated Kōichi Sugiyama songs on the soundtrack, you have what might be the ideal presentation for any Dragon Quest game.

The gameplay itself is a very interesting mix of Dragon Quest's classic, stubborn insistence on age-old mechanics and a wealth of modern quality-of-life features. On top of the expected balance tweaks and additional items and equipment to be discovered, these two games go out of their way to feel more of a piece with the gameplay established in the Dragon Quest III remake with a variety of difficulty mode options, streamlined interactions, and other such niceties. A lot of the battle mechanic changes apply to both DQ 1 and 2 in ways that really transform the experiences of the games, and largely for the better.

The solitary experience of DRAGON QUEST I is immediately enhanced by the simple ability to fight multiple creatures at a time, not to mention the added non-magic Abilities that give our lone hero a wealth of tactical new options to overcome the challenges he will face in his quest. When we get to DRAGON QUEST II, these new Abilities give the often overlooked Hero of the game a much wider array of options to support his companions on the battlefield, since he's the only member of the party that can't use spells at all. In both games, a user-friendly map with optional objectives and secret markers allows players of all stripes to tune the challenge of the adventures to their liking. While the games can still be plenty hard, even on Dracky (Easy) Mode, and there's always going to be some grinding required to prepare for the biggest bosses and dungeons, the friction that remains is very much the good kind. When you consider the smorgasbord of gameplay and visual enhancements provided, you can see how DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake is shaping up to be the definitive iteration of these two classics.

Then there are the expansions to the games' stories. This is where DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake truly goes above and beyond and delivers one of my all-time favorite Dragon Quest experiences, period. I cannot stress enough just how impactful it is for these games to have (mostly) voice-acted scripts that are full-to-bursting with new characters, story beats, and oodles of personality. This is what the later DQ games thrived on, after all. Even if the actual plots were never anything special, and the characters mostly avoided the high-stakes drama you'd find in a Final Fantasy or Star Ocean title, the Dragon Quest games practically forced you to fall in love with them on account of how gosh-darned charming they are. The original DRAGON QUEST I & II were released at a time when you had to get most of your RPG plots from the game manuals since the NES cartridges simply couldn't store enough data to tell the stories in the games themselves.

DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake strikes the difficult balance of providing a truly astounding amount of new quests and story details without ever betraying the simple and earnest heart that is core to the franchise's identity. Dragon Quest I now features several supporting characters who represent the humans, faeries, and dwarves of Alefgard and give the hero's quest some much-needed gravity - and most of them never even get a full name. Dragon Quest II benefits from the script overhaul even more. Now, each of the supporting party members has legitimate personalities, goals, conflicts, and relationships that give the player many wonderful little vignettes to look forward to. Most notably, the Princess of Cannock now joins her older brother as a full member of the cast, and she might just be my favorite character across both of the games.

All told, both of the games in the DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake have nearly doubled in size and scope on account of Square Enix's ambitious re-imagining, but this isn't a case of valuing quantity over quality. Instead, this project brings to life the grand and sweeping conclusion to the Erdrick Trilogy timeline that has, until now, only existed in the generous and forgiving imaginations of its lifelong fans. In many ways, the DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake is a perfect distillation of everything that makes this luminary JRPG franchise so beloved and enduring.