Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake, Part 2 - Kandar's Hentai Empire

 

Realized something after the first post. Where was Ortega? Almost no mention of him, and no intro cutscene of him falling into a volcano. Instead it's just "he went missing". Curious. We'll see what happens.

The crown of Romaly's king has been stolen by the nefarious Kandar, who has upgraded his Hentai Emporium into a Hentai Empire now that he's in HD. I thought I defeated that bastard back in the stone age!

Next stop is a Russian town. The game just completely skips over all of Central Europe by going straight from Italy to Russia. WHY CAN'T YUJI HORII LET WORLD WAR 1 GO?

Next stop is this tower in France. It's...the only thing in that part of the world, so the game basically skips over France too. It's a shame in this remake (where they went all-in with the accents) because it robs us of a French-themed town.

There are a lot of secluded spots like this that usually contain some treasure.

"Psst, dude, come on" says the guy. Sorry, didn't mean to barge in on your make-out camp.

I'm not doing much with the Monster Arena, but it still exists. The more monsters you recruit and send to it, the more abilities the Monster Wrangler class learns, if I'm understanding this right. It also gets abilities through standard leveling.

Back in Russia, I try to get some better equipment. Looks like Monster Wrangler joins Fighter in being able to use claws (but not the Golden Claw)

I travel to the far northeast regions of Russia. In the real world, a lot of these northeastern Siberian lands are almost entirely unexplored. As in, the far northern towns that are unreachable in Winter and barely-populated due to their subzero temperatures.....are still like 1000 miles south of the actual furthest reaches, where humans can't even go outside of brief expeditions by plane.

I should probably stop mentioning Russia, cause site owner Google might flag me as a Russian Disinformation site. Keep doing your thing, you arbiters of truth you.

I grind out some levels in the snowy north lands, which was actually kind of a waste of time because I'd find some MUCH better grinding zones soon enough. Time for a rundown of what abilities my team has learned so far. Archie only has Flame Slash, which is pretty underwhelming. Here are the rest:

Nose for Treasure - Helps Betty sniff out Veronica's location.

Sleepy Slap - Sort of like a slap version of the Vulcan Neck Pinch.

Propeller Blade - One of the early abilities Thief learns, and something good enough to spam for like half of the game

Shocking Slash - Betty writes some fan-fiction that appalls her relatives when she accidentally posts it on her long-defunct Facebook.

Sandstorm - An underwhelming move that should have been something cool.

Animal Instinct - Veronica taps into her feral instincts and acts like a cat.

Tongue Lashing - Don't ask.

Soothing Song - An inexpensive (and not too strong) group heal that's completely broken in the early game, and pretty much what makes the class early on. Monster Wrangler gets it at level 6 and it makes everything else look bad.

Emergency Groom - Veronica licks someone until they're healed.

Cheryl doesn't have much for abilities after goofing off for her entire life. Whistle is actually pretty useful, and a nice perk to the Goof-Off class.

Whistle - Catcalls nearby construction workers to give them a taste of their own medicine, while also summoning monsters to fight.

Sobering Slap - Wakes people up from Sleep status so Cheryl can tell them to get out of her house.

Not sure when DQ started having elemental weaknesses, because I'm pretty sure the NES original didn't and I don't think the SNES DQs did either. The elements were basically just flavor.

Our heroes get back to climbing Kandar's tower, finding his hoarder-like stash at the top. This looks like my living room after a move.

At the top is Kandar Himself, now going by a new name. Know why he's so confident?

Because he's certain he'll win, as he opens a trapdoor. Our heroes plummet....all the way down one floor, right next to the steps. Well, that was an Ozzie-level trap.

Chase Kandar down and the battle is on!

Kandar's the toughest challenge yet, and his goons are also very sturdy. Almost to the point that focusing Kandar might be a viable strategy here.

Veronica keeps licking Betty, and Cheryl is just sort of useless now, so Archie pretty much has to deal with this fight on his own.

Now Veronica is grooming herself! What kind of game is this??

"I'm a cat. Purrr."

Now Cheryl is dancing and twirling about while Archie gets thrashed to and fro by Kandar.

Stop doing that. No really, stop.

After chasing off Kandar (he'll be back soon enough) I head north to Norway. This is a Viking-esque forest town, and everyone here is under some sort of sleep spell.

Not sure what this woman is dreaming about but it sounds pretty exciting.

Elsewhere in Norway is the Faerie Village, home to all manner of pixies and ponies.

They're also super racist and want nothing to do with humans. Come on, we're not THAT genocidal!

Veronica gets another very important ability. This causes four random hits across the battlefield, and is super-useful against metal enemies.

After another dungeon, I get the item to wake up the people of Norvik. This whole section of the game is entirely optional, as I'm realizing that way more of DQ3 is optional than I realized in the past.

Now we know what this woman was dreaming about: Ortega.

That's right, she was having sex dreams about Ortega. Does she realize he's married?

Next is the Middle-Eastern town of Asham, home to the most annoying shops in the game. Some are only open at night, some wildly overcharge and try to make you haggle.

They also have co-ed bath shrines. While this sounds hot, anyone who has been to a Middle-Eastern bath-house knows that it is not.

These guys try to overcharge you by factors of like 8-to-1. It's insane.

Next I cross the Sahara to the Egypt-themed town of Isis (now Ibis)

This is the most memorable part of DQ3 for me. I really like this town and the nearby Pyramid, and it's cool to see them come to life in HD like this.

Crossing the desert, I get sassed by flying cats, while Cheryl just schluffs off as usual and Veronica runs back and forth at high-speed before stopping to meow at the air.

In an effort to stop being sassed by flying cats, Archie rubs himself down with holy water.

And here we are, the Pyramid. The biggest dungeon yet. It's so huge that it takes multiple trips to find everything there is to find in here.

There's a section where spells can't be cast, so I load up on herbs. Items stack, and they stack over 100 even, which is actually a huge boon compared to what the NES version allowed. Nothing stopping you from having essentially infinite healing / MP conservation in this version.

The Pyramid itself is a good time as usual, ending with the next boss fight:

This dastardly blue imp who resembles Firebrand. This ended up being the hardest fight yet and I barely survived it. The game might be finally outpacing my party micro-management. With the Magic Key now in hand, there are a ton of treasures to find in previous towns. I'll get 'em later, because right now I'm in a hurry to track down Kandar.

Portugal is where you go to find a boat. Unfortunately, the good folk here are having a pepper shortage.

The king is having pepper withdrawals and beginning to twitch. He'll give our heroes a boat...if they go to the far eastern lands and return with pepper. Are we sure we're talking about pepper here? This sounds a bit like opium.

Much like in FF1 we've got a dwarf miner who needs to be bribed to get us through to the next section of the world.

Here, our heroes run into the noblewoman from that one episode of Highlander.

"Aren't they all just savages in the east? I hear they bray at the moon! Oh, how exotic!"

Our heroes find a prancing, dainty bard. Behold how he sings! Truly he is the dandiest lad.

The dwarf goes and plants his TNT, grumbling all the while, which allows me to get through to the eastern lands of India and China.

Looks like dwarves are just as racist as faeries. What did humans DO to all these folks before this?

A magical moment, as Cheryl gets level 20. Now I can turn her into a Sage...and probably should as soon as possible.

Baharata is the India-themed town, most notable for the roads being a death sentence. They treat two-lane roads like three-lane roads, and they drive on the bastardized British side of the road which makes it even deadlier.

A couple of locals were kidnapped by Kandar's Hentai Syndicate, and our heroes swing into action to stop this fiend once and for all.

Things aren't looking good when Kandar's minions put up a huge fight and nearly take the party down, without Kandar even being present. Veronica has spent so much of this game in a coffin, you'd think she was larping a vampire.

Note: Wasn't able to get the Vamp personality for any of these characters at the beginning. To be fair, I wasn't trying to, and I wasn't going to reset the game over and over just to min-max. Would have been cool if one of 'em had lucked out, though. The Vamp personality, of course, is a seemingly-random trait that might happen at character creation and gives the character much better level-ups.

Our heroes rescue the townspeople who were imprisoned. Namely, Tanaya (who Kandar no doubt wanted to take as his bride, like Booster) plus her useless boyfriend who showed up to rescue her and also got captured.

They're reunited and F off back to Baharata. Anyway, onward to Alltrades Abbey.

But wait! On the way out, Kandar shows up, blocking our escape. It's like Botany Bay all over again.

"No one beats Kandar except Kandar!" he says while slathering himself in baby oil. I see nothing has changed in all of these years. Have at you!

Uhh yeah this isn't going too well. Cheryl is now completely useless outside of being an unreliable herb bot, Betty and Veronica are taking way too much damage, and Archie just can't carry this fight like the last couple of bosses.

I take the first loss of the game, and find that when you lose boss fights, you can start right back at the fight which saves you a run back. Very good change. Run-backs need to be left in the past at this point.

On the third try, I manage to take down Kandar's goons. This is looking promising. If Archie can just spam enough Zaps...

....nope.

"HEE HEE" says Kandar while slathering himself in more baby oil.

The game has finally decided to get tough. I've got an ace though. Alltrades Abbey, the mythical place of class changing. It's north of here. If I can just make Cheryl useful, I won't be at such a disadvantage.