No shit it's the most beloved Dragon Quest in Japan, or that people skipped work to play it; DQ3 was revolutionary back then and still serves as a gold standard for the genre to this day, putting JRPGs that released console generations ahead of it to shame with its scope. It's full of firsts for the genre, series, and video games as a whole, and playing it today I'm just astonished by how much shit (really good shit, mind you) they put into an NES cartridge, especially after DQ2.
Once you get the ship it's practically an open-world NES game, which sounds like a recipe for disaster - except NPCs actually tell you where to go. Shocking for the time, I know. Just sailing around looking for new towns creates this sense of adventure and discovery that honestly might be unmatched even by later DQ entries, and it's even cooler that you get to explore with self inserts of you and your friends. It actually feels like a world that's lived in, at least as far as NES JRPGs go, with NPCs singing praises of Ortega's exploits, living in fear of Baramos, talking about their lives. Yeah, NPC dialogue serves to do more than just tell you where to go next - another rarity for the time. Couple all of this with its surprisingly deep class system and you might just have a near perfect DnD/tabletop-like JRPG. Insanely good all around, not just by NES standards. JRPG fans should be obligated to play any version.
Once you get the ship it's practically an open-world NES game, which sounds like a recipe for disaster - except NPCs actually tell you where to go. Shocking for the time, I know. Just sailing around looking for new towns creates this sense of adventure and discovery that honestly might be unmatched even by later DQ entries, and it's even cooler that you get to explore with self inserts of you and your friends. It actually feels like a world that's lived in, at least as far as NES JRPGs go, with NPCs singing praises of Ortega's exploits, living in fear of Baramos, talking about their lives. Yeah, NPC dialogue serves to do more than just tell you where to go next - another rarity for the time. Couple all of this with its surprisingly deep class system and you might just have a near perfect DnD/tabletop-like JRPG. Insanely good all around, not just by NES standards. JRPG fans should be obligated to play any version.