Dragon Warrior III

Dragon Warrior III, known in Japan as Dragon Quest III Soshite Densetsu e… (ドラゴンクエストIII そして伝説へ…, Doragon Kuesuto Surī - Soshite Densetsu e…?, Dragon Quest III: And thus into Legend...), is a role-playing video game developed by Chunsoft and published by Enix (now Square Enix). It is the third installment in the Dragon Quest series (known as Dragon Warrior in North America at the time of its original release), first released for the Famicom in Japan, and then the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America. The game later was ported as an enhanced remake on the Super Nintendo in late 1996 and then on the Game Boy Color in 2001.

This is the final game in the Loto trilogy and is the first chronologically. The story follows the traditional Dragon Quest Hero, who is on an adventure to save the world from evil. Putting together a party of assorted classes, the Hero must travel the world, stopping at various towns and other locations, eventually making his or her way to the Demon Lord Baramos's lair.

While the combat system remains close to the previous Dragon Quest games, keeping battles turn-based and in first-person, Dragon Warrior III expanded on the open world and nonlinear gameplay of its predecessors, and introduced innovations such as a persistent world with its own day-night cycle, and an innovative class-changing system, which is later seen in Dragon Quest VI, VII, and IX. This class system allows the player to customize his or her party by changing character classes during the game, and keep a character's stats and skills learned from previous classes. Dragon Quest III's class-changing system shaped the gameplay of future RPGs, especially the Final Fantasy series, while a similar class-changing system later also appeared in Wizardry VI and VII.