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There are a lot of great games out there which, despite being beloved classics, having numerous glaring flaws that are easily visible to fans, especially after multiple playthroughs. Probably most games, really. Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest 3 fares better than most, but even it gets hit with numerous instances of useless items, extremely underpowered classes, spells that are either so situational or learned so late you'll never use them, and miscellaneous odd mechanics. The endgame in particular, though great, ends juuust before you are likely to get the last few spells, and is filled with monsters that are only roughly on par with the ones you've been slaughtering in the Cave of Necrogond and Castle of Baramos, plus some that are downright wimpy, so the game after Baramos seems relatively easy until Zoma. And several aspects of Dhama Temple are handled so poorly that many players choose to just ignore it.

This hack fixes all of that. No items are superfluous, and in the endgame, all items, including all the cursed ones, are viable; you will have to make some serious decisions about things like whether you most prioritize defense, magic/breath resistances, or weird cursed item benefits/drawbacks. Merchants are just as good as any other class, and Fighters no longer lag behind from abysmal equipment options. Your Hero, Pilgrims, Wizards, and possibly even Sages will be able to learn all their spells with minimal grinding. All those spells are actually good; monsters are both tough enough to warrant the use of them throughout, and yet capable of actually being consistently hit by them rather than just evading/resisting everything. The dark world and the final dungeon are clearly a step up from everything that came before, despite everything that came before being greatly buffed as well.

This hack may advertise itself as a "Hardtype" hack, and it definitely is that (yeesh, that cave near the elf village... what the hell, pyramid... dear god, Orochi... oh man, Baramos and his two undead halves... make it stop, everything in Zoma's castle... and of course, Zoma himself, who is bad enough that there is no way I'm trying him without the Orb of Light...), and that is fun. But for me, that is not this hack's biggest draw. For me, the best part is what this hack does to the game balance, from start to finish.

Dragon Warrior 3 has had many remakes and ports over the years, containing a lot of quality of life improvements and even the addition of mini medals and the thief class.

So why play a hack of the NES game that is clunky and lacks much of the updated content?

Well, this hack takes the original DW3 and supercharges it. The classes are all different from before, and more distinguishable. The Merchant class now provides meaningful gold bonuses and increased item drop rates. The Soldier is tankier and stronger than before with the best end game equipment options (other than the Hero of course). The Pilgrim can wear pretty good armor and is a decent physical attacker. All of the magic classes now have access to stronger, more useful, and less MP-costly spells. The result is, you actually will use your offensive magic and in fact you may find yourself relying on it heavily like I did. Every class has access to good, diverse equipment that suits them throughout the game.

Zombero added lots of new gear that wasn't in vanilla DW3, so be sure to check the shops and consult the tables linked to in the description. It will help you identify the best gear for where you are in the game and list out enemies that can drop it.

Speaking of drops, it's really great to see the item drop rates increased. I was able to find a lot of good stuff from enemies and there is just nothing better than getting a nice piece of gear for FREE. The original was farrrr too stingy with drops.

The difficulty is REAL and if you are a casual DW player like me you will hit some grind walls here and there. That's OK! If you don't enjoy a bit of grinding and dropped-item hunting, maybe you don't like NES Dragon Warrior games :)

Highly recommend this hack if you enjoyed this game on NES or even the remakes. It adds another dimension to an all-time great JRPG.

If you've played through DQ3 in all of its iterations multiple times, you will want to try this out. Difficult, but fair, and well balanced. The class changes are great, with a choice between Merchant, Fighter, and Soldier being genuinely difficult now. The Hero spell changes are good - they become a high MP cost / high damage caster. Mages are much better as well. Can't recommend this enough.

As a long time player of Dragon Warrior III, I really, really recommend this. It is not a kaizo type hack, but a hack where you need to be skilled at the vanilla version. That is, most of the changes are very nice. Here's the pro:

• The balance feels right. Even if enemies got buffed, your party members have new tricks up their sleeve to dealt with it.
• Speaking of classes... each one of them received a overhaul. The merchant has really nice new skills like increasing % of drops after battle and can use most of the equipment to simulate wizard spells. Speaking of the wizard, his spells are now stronger compared to the vanilla version where he was just good at casting bikill.
• Each battles is a fight for your life. You really need to think before your first move. Will you try to wipe out your enemies in the first round or will you play more defensively? It all depends on your party and enemies on screen.
• Oh... and it really feels like an adventure. It's really immersive.

I do have two complaints, though:

• I have the feeling the merchant growth have a bug. In my second playthrough, my merchant almost stopped gaining stats points at level 50 which was not the case with my other characters. Not having more than 380 hp in the end game is quite a problem because...
• I have to say that the final boss is really difficult, maybe a bit too much. I really like the fact he got buffed up because in the vanilla game he was such a joke with the sage stone. However, he now deals big chunks of damage (like 150 on each members, each rounds) and it piles up really quick. It felt like you had to break your party just to give them more healing spells, which kinda kills the classes overhaul. I should be able to defeat Zoma with my own party and not to be forced to invest that much time with the class change system. That's just my personal opinion :)

Still, I really recommend this hack. Just give it a go. I did and I never went back to vanilla.

Okay, finally got around to finishing Zombero's latest patch and had a lot of fun, so thought I'd create a new review.

I recently played DQ's DW3 SNES translation, which was cool, but it was nice to come back to the root game. Can't get enough of the original version.

To begin, I liked the small changes to things like vendor prices, spell costs, all the new items (especially the end-game helmet, original had barely any helms) and even the Wizard's Ring change was interesting.

At first, I was upset with the nerf to Monster Gambling, but I came to appreciate it, since it keeps you out in the field slaying monsters. I gambled a small amount, but was glad to that you weren't able to easily gear up.

Another thing I was sad about was the Golden Claw change. I suppose it's fair for Fighters though and you're able to use the sight-blockers in dungeons for XP grinding, so it wasn't a big deal at all.

Also, the Item Drops and drop rates are epic too. Had good fun farming a few things. I got lucky with some items, so that was awesome. When you're questing it's always a nice surprise to find something cool. By the way, in the documentation, it says the Staff of Muspell can only be equipped by Sg and Wz, but my Pg was able to use it.

There is a lot of great stuff in Zombero's hack but I'll wrap up this review with the Gauntlet, since that is one of the biggest highlights. It's really enjoyable and a vast improvement over the original. I personally would have given Gonus a bit more health, but I guess you can only cram so many Wizard's Rings into your inventory, haha.

Always loved facing Zoma, especially with his epic music. He's quite the beast and I had to level up a a couple times before I sealed the deal. Loved that battle though, it was great. The only thing I cringe to see is when Zoma spams his debuff ability twice in one round. I know it's a bonus turn, but I feel that the Master Archfiend wouldn't waste his turn like that! Zombero suggested facing Zoma without the Sphere of Light for an extra challenge. I might try that sometime, seems like it would be quite the battle!

Alright this review is longer than intended, so I'll just say that this new patch was outstanding. Stayed true to the original game and all the small changes, item drops and boss changes really made it a fun experience.

Recommended if you love DW3 as much as I do.

Thanks for the fun quest!