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It’s high time for Square Enix to give Dragon Quest the Final Fantasy treatment — at least in terms of games preservation. One of the best parts of the Final Fantasy series is how you can play almost every game on all modern platforms available today. In the same vein, we need all Dragon Quest games on all systems as well.
At this time if you boot up, say, your Nintendo Switch and look for a Dragon Quest game to play, you’ll find I–III, X (if you have a Japanese account), and XI. Sadly, that is the best situation for modern consoles and PC. In terms of mainline games, most other platforms only have Dragon Quest XI available right now.
The one caveat to Dragon Quest game preservation is how mobile devices gained access to most of the games in the series, but not all of them there either. In English, you can find the first six games plus the phenomenal Dragon Quest VIII. However, the seventh entry is only available in Japanese, while the ninth game on the Nintendo DS is tragically unavailable anywhere in the modern age. It is a pretty messy situation, especially if you are a console or PC player. This isn’t the case anymore for Final Fantasy ,with every single older game barring XI and XIII available on most systems these days. (But then, FFXI is still actively running on PCs.) With Square Enix freed up from the Pixel Remaster series of those titles, now feels like the perfect time to give Dragon Quest the same treatment.
Now, we already know about Dragon Quest III’s remake in the HD-2D style of Octopath Traveler. However, this remake is for a game that is already readily available. Not every game in the series even needs a remake, especially the latter ones. A Pixel Remaster-like series of IV–VI would work and be a pretty easy task for Square Enix to accomplish. Then, there are the existing 3DS ports of Dragon Quest VII and VIII, which are already great. They could come with little changes outside of higher resolution and single-screen display for modern systems.
Perhaps the biggest problem of them all is Dragon Quest IX. This unique and beloved title has been stuck on the DS since its initial release. It would need quite a few changes, due to its dual-screen system, messy UI, and graphics to run on a new platform. More than likely, there would need to be a genuine Dragon Quest IX remake of some kind. It would be nice to see one in the HD-2D vein like its predecessor. Perhaps that can come later down the line.
From there, the only other issue is the infamous Dragon Quest X MMO situation. Well, at least for fans outside of Japan. Fortunately, Dragon Quest X Offline now exists as a pure single-player version in Japanese. If Square Enix localizes this version for all modern platforms, it can complete the library.
In an ideal world, Square Enix would take action to make Dragon Quest games much more accessible and preserve them for years to come. Most of these feel like they might only need pretty easy solutions to bring them more people, which would also result in more profit for the publisher. As such, here’s hoping we get all Dragon Quest games on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC soon.
