Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 11:31 pm
DRAGON QUEST III – Roleplaying Game Review
DRAGON QUEST III is a Roleplaying game from SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd., first launched in 4th December 2014.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 180+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes DRAGON QUEST III Stand Out
DRAGON QUEST III: The Seeds of Salvation—one of the most highly acclaimed and best-selling games in the franchise is finally here for mobile! Now all three instalments of the Erdrick Trilogy can be played in the palm of your hand!
Every wondrous weapon, spectacular spell and awesome adversary in this rich fantasy world is yours to discover in a single standalone package. Download it once, and there’s nothing else to buy, and nothing else to download!
DRAGON QUEST III: The Seeds of Salvation has an independent storyline and can be enjoyed without playing DRAGON QUEST I or DRAGON QUEST II.
※In-game text is available in English only.
◆ Prologue
On the morning of their sixteenth birthday, the child of Ortega, hero of the land of Aliahan, is charged with a seemingly impossible task by the King himself: to slay the Archfiend Baramos, master of darkness!
What trials await our intrepid hero as they set out to take on a quest not even their legendary father was strong enough to complete?
◆Game Features
・Freely Customisable Party System.
Set out on an unforgettable adventure with a party of up to four characters who can be customised to your exact specifications at Patty’s Party Planning Place! Choose names, genders and jobs, and put together the team of your dreams!
・Freely Changeable Vocations
Your party members can be assigned any one of up to 9 vocations, a choice which will dictate their stats, equipment, spells and abilities.
Though the hero’s role has been decided by fate, the jobs of all the other characters are yours to change as you see fit.
Characters who change jobs will be returned to Level 1 and have their attributes halved, but they will retain all the spells and abilities they’ve learned, allowing you to tailor your team to perfectly suit your needs.
Turn a priest into a warrior to add healing abilities to your swordsman’s arsenal, or mix it up any other way you like! The possibilities are endless!
・Experience an epic RPG experience with over 30 hours of gameplay with added features to the original release!
Travel across multiple continents and dungeons as you level up your characters and unlock new spells and abilities. The personality system changes how your character grows making your party always unique. Mini-games like medal collecting to unlock powerful new items that were not available in the original release. Discover and explore bonus dungeons and location after completing the main plot.
・Simple, Intuitive Controls
The game’s controls are designed to work perfectly with the vertical layout of any modern mobile device, and the position of the movement button can be changed to facilitate both one- and two-handed play.
・Experience the multi-million selling series, beloved both in Japan and beyond, and see how the masterful talents of series creator Yuji Horii first combined with the revolutionary synthesizer sounds of Koichi Sugiyama and the wildly popular manga illustrations of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball) to create a gaming sensation.
[OS Compatibility]
iOS 12.0 or higher
This Roleplaying game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, DRAGON QUEST III is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 29th September 2025
Recent improvements include:
Fixed minor bugs.
Download & Availability
DRAGON QUEST III is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get DRAGON QUEST III on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
This is a great classic RPG brought back to life and updated.
This game is a fun classic. Fun to play while watching the anime. This game would be better with backbone support.
Loved it BUT missing: 1) Monster Medals Quest 2) Monster Animations during battles 3) Pachisi Tracks PLEASE BRING THESE BACK ON THE NEXT GAME UPDATE!!!! Alsodid the graphics and sprites change?/get updated? Looks a tad different than the remake we played/bought for iOS years ago.
We see a lot of reviews talk about how the game is easier than the original because of the Quick Save, the bag or whatever other reason. To us, its the same old game we knew and loved. Very easy to pick up and put away or just grind for hours. Cant wait for the 2D HD.
Pls introduce a Japanese translation.
We just finished this and on a high from such a fantastic ending. This game is a joy from beginning to end, we'll balanced, good auto combat AI that saves you tons of time. Great world and characters but the best part is that this is the perfect evolution of the first 3 games. If you have no intention of playing 1 and 2 just play this one but if you really want the full experience definitely play 1,2 and 3 in order. We're telling you it's worth it. But this is also just a great game on it's own if you never play the others and we don't recommend playing this one first either. @squareenix please release Dragon Quest VII 7 to us in English markets on mobile.
We would have given this game 5 stars easily if it were at the very least everything it was for gbc. But its not. The removal of the pachasi tracks was a real bummer first of all bc that means u can only receive one wreck whip weapon (destructoball) then to make the pain of that incredible loss worse defeating the end dragon offers only 2 wishes (a personality change or the revival of Ortega) instead of the final pachasi track or the secret dungeon where the rubis sword is acquired. We were so sad when we finally beat that dragon on our quest to achieve that sword only to find everything after Zoma was just a dream we could not obtain w/o a game boy :( but other than that it was everything we remembered it would be. And on top of that our adventure was just as breathtaking as before leading up to that final battle disappointment. **/*** 4/5 for you. Give us an update please for 5 stars and Ill even pay an extra cost for bonus content if u charged for it. It would be so worth it.
how to change the language how to change the language.
Cute remake of the classic game, but why remove the pachisi boards? Its a shame that they were cut for seemingly no reason.
We played through 99% of the game. We got to Zoma. Beat the boss rush, out of heals and MP. There shouldve been a portal at the bottom of the stairs in Zomas room but there is not. So the game is impossible to finish.
If this were a mirror copy of the Game Boy version, Id give it 5 stars. But its missing pachisi, which was our favorite thing about the game. So we give it 3 stars.
Enjoy the remake, dont mind the easier level, as we play for relaxation, but what made the original a standout was Pachisi! No one else had it! Rather have that than monster battles any day! Glad you kept all the music. Love those tunes. Do appreciate longer name ability. Would give you the full 5*s if game had Pachisi.
We own iPad & iPhone. Cant move saves between them. Great game but cant rank higher since they wont support a basic function. Also landscape mode would be nice.
Maybe Im missing something here, but this game just feels really lazy. We played through DQs 1 and 2 and loved them, even though there was some monotony. But in 3 right off the bat was disappointed- you just go to the party store and roll up some random characters? Whats the story in that? Im skipping this one and moving on to # 4.
Everything was great up until we find ourselves grinding outside of alltrades abbey, switch over to chrome to check something and switch back to the game and lo and behold its on the title screen and our save data is gone. Two different saves. Gone. Love the game but dont think Ill be going back to it and just the possibility of this bug occurring again makes us wary to purchase any of the other dragon quest titles.
Ive never played this on an NES, but having played the OG Dragon Quest here on iOS, it was every bit worth the grab on sale. So youre this knight of all trades, wants to be a hero after your father, set to battle yet another demon overlordor rather, the first one ever. Play as a girl for some extra laughs no matter what you yourself identity as. You wont regret it. If youre a fan of Dragon Quest, its the same lotta grind for little money that will keep you battling for hours or just frustrate you to death. But its worth it for the variety of jobs your allies can take on. Our only issue thus far is that the graphics look incredibly blocky on high-res displays. To that end, DQIII could use a touch-up from one of its earlier ports. But as Ive said, its worth the pickup.
This game is so great!! Its easily the most hours Ive ever put into a mobile game. Its so immersive and engaging, and almost feels like a modern game even though its from the 80s or 90s. We can totally understand why its considered a classic, as we couldnt put it down from the first 10 minutes. Love this game!! As an added bonus, if you play 1, 2 and 3 consecutively like we did (over the course of the last two weeks…), this game becomes so much better!! 10/10, highly recommended experience. Treat yourself.
Dragon Quest III (Dragon Warrior III in the U.S. Back then) was the 12th highest selling game on the NES/Famicon and propelled Dragon Quest from a successful series into a cultural phenomenon (at least in Japan), as no numbered Dragon Quest game has since been released on weekdays, since the absenteeism from this games release day crippled Japanese school and work. Dragon Quest III was so great because of its meaningful and detailed story that ties together with the first two games and because of its highly customizable character-progression system. This mobile version includes most of the improvements made to the various mostly-Japan-only rereleases so is a huge step up from pulling out a NES and old-schooling it. For more information, check out the 1-hour analysis of the game, The History of RPGs Ep. 7 | Dragon Quest III on the Mr. Gentleman YouTube channel.
Let us just say, this game works SO well on iPhone. Unlike the other square Enix iOS games, they actually innovate and update their dragon quest line and that keeps these games working so well. The updated graphics, orchestral soundtrack, controls all work so well on this platform and whoevers idea it was to have the game stretch downwards in full screen is a genius. This game or any of the iOS dragon quests for that matter are well worth your money.
This is our favorite classic rpg on mobile yet, remake or new, and we play a lot of them. The port to mobile was done perfectly. It runs like a dream, has a quick save, and an upfront price tag with no microtransactions or ads. The difficulty is low which is great because you can burn through it or really dig into the character development as the game was originally designed. Also this is just an awesome game. Its tough to get used to the complexity but once you dig in you appreciate how well designed it is. The creators put a lot into this game and it shows. We just came off trying the free SEGA console rpg ports to mobile, and the difference is night and day. SEGA offers them free but you have to watch an ad just to save the game. What a collosal blunder. Whoever made that call doesnt know that save-scumming is basically required for these old rpg titles. That made all those old classic SEGA rpgs utterly unplayable on mobile. The Dragon Quest series is ported just right. Well done. Money well spent.
We were skeptical about spending so much on a game. But the port was super well done and the game is a classic turn based RPG.
What is good: The game itself is one of the best RPGs ever made. For its time it had a great story, locations, and characters. It also links the world of DQ 1 and 2 with a new one that is modeled after Earth! The portrait screen orientation and touch controls due to this being a smartphone port work well too. It holds up even today. It is fun to have a customized party: Go solo with your hero character or have up to 3 other active members. More can be waiting at your hometown. Different classes and personalities that affect stats and abilities Male or Female What needs improvement: Cloud sync to other devices. Before iOS 8.4, one could use an iPhone utility on Windows or macOS to manually copy the save file from one iOS device to another. So, if you have multiple devices, the only way to copy your save is to backup and restore you whole iOS environment from one device to another. So, cloud sync should be standard on any modern iOS game. Other Square Enix games do this. Cant they have a standard sync code base for all their apps? Regarding vendor support capabilities: TLDR: Overall very positive Details: Latest update fixed the back button issue with iPhone SE & iOS 11.3. We used the support website to submit a help request. We were asked to submit further details and to also do generic stuff like reboot the phone. They asked us to delete and reinstall the app. We refused since we would lose our save game with 50+ hours of progress. They escalated the issue after we reported the bug was still there after doing all the other tests. A few days later the app was updated.
Thankfully, an update was just released that fixed the back button being untappable on iPhone 6 devices. This is probably the best was to play the game, good job devs.
The only we had was that we could not save our game onto Game Center and transfer the data to another phone when we upgrade our phones. RIP to all that grind.
This game is a classic. If youre a huge fan of the traditional JRPG traditional formula this game will be right up your alley. There may be certain parts where youll need a guide because of how vague the game can be at certain points so take upon yourself to speak to every NPC (and take screenshots or write down the hints that NPC provide). Job class system in the game keeps a freeform feel to creating your team however you want. The personality system can be sort of confusing as it affects stat gains so thats something you may also have to look up. Difficulty wise the game is hard early on, eases up, and then gets harder towards the end again. Game is pretty grind heavy and encounter rates can be annoying. Orchestrated soundtrack makes the experience amazing. We have a good about 20+ hours into this game and for the price we would consider this purchase worth it. Our only recommendation if you want the best experience is at least looking up a guide on the classes and personality so you can fully understand the system (it doesnt get explained in game). From there you can create a team to your liking.
Great old school RPG, the mobile version is pretty easy compared to a lot of JRPGs but the gameplay is still fun. Also the Hero from Dragon Quest 3 will appear as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Tribute to the old one, great controls and gives you that childhood fun, but the games difficulty was extremely reduced due to auto save and quick save, it is also reduced by personalitys and by your party auto fighting mode, your casters will cast the perfect spells and will change what they do based on what happens before their turn in the round, and having the bag, where you can store 99 herbs so you can heal after every battle without the cost of mana, take the golden claw for example, extremely hard to get in the original, all spells fizzle in the basement of the pyramid and you fight every other step, like 50 fights from the claw to the exit, quick save and 99 herbs = insta win, back in the day you could only bring what your guys were carrying and no saving until you got back…. Excellent remake, but needs an original mode ( would be cool if it had an original graphics mode that you can toggle on and off too).
Quick save button is broken. Was working at first but now its not working.
We love the whole DQ series and this is the first game that we have experienced thats it crashes ALL THE TIME. Its very annoying. Cant really play as it always freezing. Our iOS software is up to date so its not that. Very frustrated.
Love this game, the controls are decent but our game isnt saving. We dont know why. We save at the castle but when we come back to load the game its blank. We would really like this to be fixed.
Squaresoft was our favorite companies back in our SNES days. Opened the game tonight and the game loaded us about two hours behind in our play. With $10 game like this from a great company we would have expected better,no excellence. This type of game also doesn't motivate you to grind all those levels over again. Cmon Square! You used to be our go-to, our homey. Crono Trigger changed our life. A masterpiece. This was our first Dragon Quest too! Maybe you guys are active on here and you can help a brother out. Promise to buy another Square title of you do.
We love DQ3 so much, however, everything is so small on the new iPhone XS Max. Please optimize this for latest phones so that we can enjoy this amazing game.
The grinding needed to get through this game makes it unplayable. Over 20 hours of just grinding and Im still getting smashed by one particular encounter. Dont waste your time or money on this piece of crap.
We just made it to the area where you need to use the wrecking ball and found our data was deleted. Please Square Enix fix this before it deletes a file where we are much later into the game.
And now the gam doesnt save anymore. Waste of our time.
We thoroughly enjoyed this game. Highly recommend for anyone looking for old school RPG with a good touch interface and some quality of life enhancements. We played through it while our buddy played through on his GBColor, and there are some differences. In the gameboy version and SNES there is the Pachisi track which can give you awesome items, on this version that isn't here and powerful items are much more limited. Translation also differs a bit with enemy, town and spell names as well as dialogue. Also, no GBC ice dungeon with grand dragon as an additional super boss. GBC has more content but this version pleased us.
We love Dragon Quest III. It's one of our favorite Dragon Quest titles. We enjoy the updated graphics from the NES and the GBC versions. It holds up well. It's a rather lengthy game as well. Multiple classes.
SE appears to have fixed the bug that caused the game to crash during major story points, so as promised we are re-rating this excellent game as a 5.
We can get passed zoma. But still some crashes.
Many thanks to the staff for fixing the bugs from the last version! IOS10 iphone 6s no longer has any problems.
We love this game and the recent patch fixed the bug! We can now fight the boss we need defeat to progress.
Game crashes everytime we try and cast KASIZZLE.
Never been victim of a crash until we were at the very final battle, right when we won the battle it crashed on us! Happened just yesterday, on our iPad (2017 model) The app probably needs to be fixed soon. We ended up having to win the battle again, after almost deciding not to. (pretty tough long battle) and it didn't cash the second time. We were able to see the ending. Other than this crashing issue, it is a fantastic game.
These one handed video games are so uncomfortable to play. Im not alone in this. Carpel tunnel syndrome anyone.
Absolutely love this game and we think this port runs fantastic through the majority of the game. We had no problems and no complaints with the ports DQ1 or DQ2 and this one was shaping up to be great as well. However, while grinding for levels before the final boss we have experienced many crashes that have really turned us off of completing the game. Im going to do it because Ive made it this far and we want to finish but its really upsetting that we have to make sure to quick save after every single encounter just in case one of those crashes does occur. Sadly we have to go with a 3 star for this even though this is one of our favorite RPGs.
Had a great time with this game until the very end. Crashes every time we beat Zoma, during his death speech. Disappoint :(.
To start, Dragon Warrior was the first console RPG we ever played and completed and due to the cost of the sequels and only being 12 at the time, we never played 2-4 on the NES. We always wanted to play them and now that they have been ported to the iOS we can now experience them and we JUST completed this installment at the time of writing this review. Since this is the first version of III we ever played, we were perfectly content with the translation and the graphical update. Here's where we start to have issues. Old school RPGs like this are a lot more challenging than any modern day RPGs because games of this time were designed to be challenging. They came with maps and in depth manuals. Now game developers for the most part are more about the experience than the hard journey. Not getting the maps or manuals with the iOS version, if you've never played it before, your most likely going to get stuck and will require some internet assistance. That being said, our first gripe is that the names of A LOT of things were unnecessarily changed. Item names, spell names, class names, town names… You name it. A good deal of it doesn't match the original NES port or the GBC or the popular SNES fan translated version. Why is this frustrating? If you look online for help, the challenge becomes trying to modify your searches to find help since there aren't gobs of iOS version guides or discussions out there. You read online that the Shield of Strength is a really helpful item and want to find one… You can't find help because in this version, the town is called Damdara not Haukness… And the Shield of Strength is called Shield of Power… Why? Cuz… IOS version of course! The next disappoint thing isn't something we discovered till after we started watching YouTube play through for guidance. Both the SNES and GBC remakes have these GORGEOUS monster animations… The iOS version does not… Why? It's not like there is a space concern? Why did they not make a "Lightning" animation and just use fire instead? We wanna say it was just lazy/rushed/under-budgeted game developers? Who knows, but the work was already done for them!! Why not just copy it over to the new engine….why? Cuz iOS version. We really love the game, the depth of the personality, class and multi class system, the story was awesome especially for those that finished 1 and 2… So we have to give it at least 3 stars. There is probably no interest in Square/Enix to fix these things, but if they did, the game would easily deserve a 5 star rating. We would recommend this game to fans of the early 8-16 bit releases of Final Fantasy and people like us… That never finished the series in their childhood o want to relive them again for an affordable price at the convenience of their mobile device. If you are under the age of 25 now and you don't have a mom/dad that jammed retro gaming down your throats since birth… Might want to back off of this. It's probably not your speed.
…crashes the app / game. Please remedy. Thanks in advance.
Game crashes during the Baramos boss battle even after "fix" very disappointed huge dq fan.
At baharata cave there are two guards were supposed to ask you if you'd like to join them. If you say no the battle ensues. However they never ask us this question so we just end up stuck there not being able to do anything and not being able to get past them.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.7
- Size: 87.31 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN, KO, ZH
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: [SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.]()
Last updated: 29th September 2025 | Genre: Roleplaying | Developer: SQUARE ENIX Co., Ltd.