Friday, March 28th 2025

Square Enix Introduces DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake, Teaser Mentions 2025 Launch
Here's something exciting—a first look at DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake! We've released a brand-new teaser for the game, which gives you the most tantalizing of glimpses at these beautiful new remakes. Take a look and read on to learn a little more about the game. DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake reimagines the first two DRAGON QUEST games with the beautiful HD-2D visual style featured in titles like OCTOPATH TRAVELER series, TRIANGLE STRATEGY, LIVE A LIVE and, of course, DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake. As you can see in the teaser (below), both titles have been remade with the same level of passion and attention to detail as the recent DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake. Speaking of which…
Why is this releasing after DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake?
If you're not familiar with DRAGON QUEST, you may be wondering—why are Square Enix releasing DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake after last year's DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake? That's because these three games are narratively connected and together form the "Erdrick Trilogy." DRAGON QUEST III is chronologically the first game, set many years before DRAGON QUEST I, so it makes sense for it to come out first. That said, each game tells its own largely standalone story, so you can start with any of them and get a complete tale with a beginning, middle and end.Erdrick's legacy... is passed down through the ages.
DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake is a stunning reimagination of the first two legendary adventures in The Erdrick Trilogy, brought together in one package. New adventures await the descendants of the hero, Erdrick! Coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Microsoft Store on Windows in 2025.
I want to play some DRAGON QUEST now!
Has the new teaser got you craving some epic DRAGON QUEST adventures? There are some amazing games available to play right now, including:
Sources:
Square Enix USA, DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake Steam Profile
Why is this releasing after DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake?
If you're not familiar with DRAGON QUEST, you may be wondering—why are Square Enix releasing DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake after last year's DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake? That's because these three games are narratively connected and together form the "Erdrick Trilogy." DRAGON QUEST III is chronologically the first game, set many years before DRAGON QUEST I, so it makes sense for it to come out first. That said, each game tells its own largely standalone story, so you can start with any of them and get a complete tale with a beginning, middle and end.Erdrick's legacy... is passed down through the ages.
DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake is a stunning reimagination of the first two legendary adventures in The Erdrick Trilogy, brought together in one package. New adventures await the descendants of the hero, Erdrick! Coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Microsoft Store on Windows in 2025.
I want to play some DRAGON QUEST now!
Has the new teaser got you craving some epic DRAGON QUEST adventures? There are some amazing games available to play right now, including:
- DRAGON QUEST III HD-2D Remake - Set off on a journey to defeat the Archfiend Baramos in this acclaimed remake of the legendary RPG. Amazing visuals, new content, quality of life improvements and much more make this the best version of one of the greatest games of all time.
- DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition - This modern masterpiece is a love letter to the series and RPGs as a whole. It overflows with brilliant scenarios, unforgettable characters and finely tuned combat, all set in a beautiful and vibrant world. A must-play for fans of RPGs.
- DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS 2 - this actual blockbuster is set in a world where creativity has been all but eliminated. As someone blessed with the gift to create, you must use your skills to build a new future for the world. It's a brilliant game that guides you through a compelling story but gives you room to show off your creativity.
30 Comments on Square Enix Introduces DRAGON QUEST I & II HD-2D Remake, Teaser Mentions 2025 Launch
This horrid 2DHD thing needs to die a swift death.
@ SquareEnix
Please start doing proper remakes, or at the least give us the option to use proper HD character GFX sets. This blended HD-pixel-art crap is just not visually appealing or compelling.
It would be the best announce for a while, I hope seeing this.
(Actraiser Renaissance was OK, but not as good as expected though !)
next best thing........pixel remaster perhaps?
playing Suikoden remake and so nice on 4k.
Will get dragon quest once its out.
If I'm going to play a pixelated version, this is the one I'll chose, all day, any day. You do you.
I'm a big fan of Zelda 2, I know it almost by heart, so I won't be against a new / remaster version to have a bit of surprise in it :)
(whatever, in 16 bits pixels, 2D HD as they say, 3D ...
I still rebember some test screenshoots of Zelda 2 running on the Snes hardware)
They've also made a survey that showed that this art style is actually a selling point.
As someone who likes and even studied art for a bit, I find HD 2D very interesting. It's not the first time artists have chosen to mix different aesthetics in a single piece. For Suidoken I could understand the half-baked argument since they reused the same sprite. But Square HD 2D is made with purpose, the sprites aren't the same as in the old times, they've been remade. And contrary to what one might think, something simple isn't always easier, or proof of laziness. good pixel art is hard to do. You don't just make something in HD and then pixelate it, pixels need to be placed with purpose to look great.
Picasso mastered detailed classical drawing and painting when he was 16. It's when he started cubism that he started to say that he began to really master his craft. But cubism also got a lot of hater, who only see the simplicity of the final result, and don't see how hard it is to break the rules in a good way :D. There's a difference between someone skilled who's breaking the rules and someone who just doesn't know what they are doing.
I also remember seeing and still seeing people who hate cel-shading. 2002 had a bunch of articles talking how divisive that style is when the wind weaker was revealed and had people say "what have they done to my Zelda". in 2024, there are still people wondering how one can find that attractive. I betcha that even if Square had put high-res sprite, you would have people puking at the idea of mixing 2D and 3D. Because even if the resolution would match, the style wouldn't. It's something that gets people in the anime community to go mental. Even if the 3D is well made, the mix of techniques just irks them. There's always someone who's going to hate anything that isn't conventional.
It's not that it's factually bad, but anything unconventional is a risk. Some will appreciate the switch up, others just want people to keep doing things the traditional way. Even the show Arcane had people put off by the whole "painterly 3D animation in 30 fps with 2D vfx at 12FPS" style.
What is this blurfest? The whole vibe is alright imho, it does still feel like ye olde games but with new paint. But they could have painted in a higher resolution...
I didn't sidestepped, I just made a parralell. People disliking uncoventional rendering is old. It's been going on for centuries. Mixed media/mixed rendering got their fans but also their detractors. Wetheir it's in games, painting, drawing...some people just don't like that kind of constrast. But artists or art form that exploited them still managed to have a level of sucess. HD-2D is not an isolated thing.
You will die on your hill, I will die on mine.
Now if they had made the whole game in the pixelized art style, that would be different because everything in the game experience is the same and continuity is preserved. The GFX are not mismatched and thus not a distraction from the experience. Maybe, but it's a parallel that is not in context with the topic being discussed and for the reasons stated above.
I'm not talking about subjective things, I'm talking about continuity and game experience immersion, entirely objective viewpoints. No one wants to be distracted while they're enjoying their jaunt into fantasyland. Mountain, not hill. And I will be at the top of mine.
I'm effectively asking them to update these games with alternate character GFX, a trivial task indeed, so we would be motivated to buy & they can sell to us and, get ready for it....make more money for themselves. Tada.. See how that works?
Stick to the topic.
Stop your back-and-forth bickering.
Report problems and don't be the problem.
Someone pretty high up at Square told to people working on Nier to ignore feedback from the West about the game, and after years of being burned for trying to cater to the West and failing the Japanese game industry did better overall when they focused on what the Japanese thought about their games. If Japan like HD-2D, that's what the rest of the world will get.
Nier Automata's Dev Was "Ordered" To Ignore What The West Thinks Of His Game | Nintendo Life
Welcome to the modern Square/Enix..
I've been taught in uni that Japan is part of those countries where global design UI/UX rules are not always ideal. The way that they look at data is different enough for Global companies to use a different UI/UX on their domestic website. A literature teacher also warned us that Japanese literature is an acquired taste.
Square was just successful for a bit at publishing good Western games made by Westerners, but their attempt at doing Western-like games was a spectacular failure. The only slight exception was when Naoki Yoshida asked the people working on FFXIV to play Wow to get an idea of what a fun and modern MMO should be, but it's more that they took what they liked about the game and spun it with their own sauce, rather than trying to do a western MMO.
Otherwise, you end up with things like Forsaken, which cost a lot, and kinda emulates a Western vibe, but forgot the part about being a good game. (That's the biggest issue of the AAA industry, very expensive dev cost, which requires an insane number of sales to be profitable. Asian games tend to have a much lower cost, either by being technically limited or just having lower wages for the employees in the case of Wukong)
They are getting lost in the sauce by trying too hard at that. Someone at Nintendo also shares a similar sentiment :
"Keep Pursuing Things Japanese People Like" - Masahiro Sakurai On Creating Successful Games