Dragon Quest III Soundtrack (Nintendo 3DS)

Dragon Quest III Soundtrack (Nintendo 3DS), Koichi Sugiyama, 2017

While its predecessors had been immensely successful in their own right, it was really with 1988’s Dragon Quest III that the venerable franchise became a commercial juggernaut. The original NES release sold a staggering 3.8 million copies in Japan alone. Add several million more from the game’s various remakes, and Dragon Quest III emerges as the franchise’s most successful entry. It also gave rise to the urban myth that the Japanese government blocked future Dragon Quest releases on school days to curb truancy. The game itself did not revolutionise the JRPG genre, but developer Chunsoft still expanded on the first two Dragon Quest titles by introducing a character class system, a feature that would become a series staple.

After the marked improvement of Dragon Quest II’s music over that of its predecessor, Koichi Sugiyama returned for the Dragon Quest III soundtrack and expanded its breadth and diversity further. He continued moving away from the template established by Dragon Quest, introducing a greater number of location-specific pieces instead of relying on a single cue for each town, dungeon, or castle type. The NES score remained somewhat patchy in quality, but it also contained several genuine highlights, foremost among them the magisterial ending theme “Into the Legend”.

As before, orchestral arrangements created and conducted by Sugiyama followed soon after: first with the NHK Symphony Orchestra in 1988, then with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1996, and finally with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra in 2005. Other versions of the Dragon Quest III soundtrack also abound. The 1996 SNES remake greatly expanded on the NES original and incorporated material from the orchestral albums. However, like the earlier Dragon Quest I & II SNES port, it suffered from poor sample quality, particularly in the strings, which acquired an unpleasantly hollow, glassy timbre. The 2000 Game Boy Colour port, unlike the Dragon Quest I & II GBC remake, based its compositions on the NES game rather than the orchestral arrangements. It improves on the original through fuller timbres and revised mixing, which gives the melodies clearer priority over the ostinato accompaniment, but it still inherits the unevenness of its source material.

A 2014 mobile release based its music entirely on the orchestral versions of the Dragon Quest III score, though its synth reproductions of the live performances were somewhat lacklustre. Finally, the 2017 Nintendo 3DS port managed to replicate the orchestral arrangements of the Dragon Quest III pieces convincingly enough, certainly outclassing the horribly encoded 2019 Switch version. There was also a 2017 PlayStation 4 port, though no soundtrack rip seems to be available. In other words, at the time of writing, the Nintendo 3DS version remains the best in-game representation of the Dragon Quest III orchestral arrangements.

Even so, Sugiyama’s work as presented in the 3DS game still sounds noticeably less lifelike than the orchestral recordings themselves, though the woodwind solos tend to fare better than the ensemble brass and strings. Is there much on the 3DS soundtrack that is not already included in the orchestral albums? It does contain material introduced in the SNES remake that was absent from the symphonic arrangements, and of course these compositions sound far better here than they did on the SNES. None of them is truly essential, however. The one clear stand-out is “Adventure 2”, already present on the NES score. Originally a somewhat flimsy cue quoting Dragon Quest’s overworld theme, it becomes a precious little gem in its 3DS arrangement, with the melody slowed down and turned into a dreamy, idyllic woodwind solo.

Still, if the 3DS score is essentially an acceptably downgraded version of the Dragon Quest III orchestral arrangements with little additional content, why not simply stick with the symphonic suites? In essence, yes: there is no reason to choose the 3DS port’s music over the live recordings as a listening experience. But what matters here is music as used within the game, not as a separate album release. In that sense, Dragon Quest III has never sounded better in-game than it does on the Nintendo 3DS. This port thus restores some of the finest orchestral game music arrangements ever written to the title that inspired them.

Indeed, Sugiyama’s orchestral treatment of the original Dragon Quest III material transforms an above-average score into a succession of orchestral delights, with the odd letdown such as “Gruelling Fight” and “Zoma’s Castle”. Some of the NES compositions already contained ample potential, above all “Into the Legend”, whose staggering degree of melodic development set new standards on the system back in 1988. Sugiyama barely has to force the issue to turn this already symphonically minded piece into an orchestral showstopper, one that feels like his own take on the youthful vigour and swashbuckling bombast of John Williams’ Star Wars. “Castle Rondo” likewise displayed his customary knack for combining light-hearted yet regal melodies with elegant contrapuntal writing, a blend that works as well in chiptune form as it does when performed by an orchestra.

What sets the orchestral arrangements of the Dragon Quest III soundtrack apart from the two earlier symphonic suites is Sugiyama’s considerably more imaginative and colourful orchestration. The original NES compositions had already laid the groundwork for this greater variety. “Jipang”, for example, sees Sugiyama successfully evoke traditional Japanese music on the NES through clever pitch bends and chromatic harmonies. His orchestral arrangement skilfully incorporates Western instruments such as French horns into the same idiom, producing a heady mixture of colours preserved well enough on the 3DS release. Sugiyama’s originality comes through even more strongly in the experimental “Phantom Ship”, which gathers several apparently disjointed musical elements into a surprisingly coherent and eerie whole. It provides an ideal springboard for his symphonic treatment of the material, one that uses a host of acerbic timbres to resist easy categorisation.

Elsewhere, it feels as though the orchestral arrangements unlock potential that lay dormant in the NES originals, as if this were how the pieces had always been meant to sound. On the NES, “In a Town” carries a lead melody that can feel almost obnoxiously bouncy, while “Village” offers a gently lilting tune that is ultimately too slight, further obscured by an intrusive ostinato accompaniment. Hearing the orchestral treatments of the same material makes clear just how much imaginative orchestration can accomplish. Sugiyama does not substantially alter the melodic writing, instead content to repeat it several times. Yet by clothing each recurrence in different instrumental colours, he keeps the melodies fresh and charming throughout. Meanwhile, “Village”’s initially overbearing accompaniment becomes a set of graceful string accents that benefit enormously from the nuanced attack and dynamics of live performance.

Ultimately, the Dragon Quest III soundtrack’s orchestral arrangements, reproduced reasonably faithfully on the 3DS port, are not the apogee of the series’ symphonic suites. Even so, they mark the first point at which Dragon Quest music, by and large, attained true greatness.

Since an internet search for screenshots of the Nintendo 3DS version came up empty, the screenshots above are taken from the Switch port.