Dragon Quest III/YMMV

• Broken Base: Many fans did not react well upon finding out that the iOS and Android versions of the game left out the popular Pachisi/Treasures n' Trapdoors and Monster Medals sidequests and decided to pass on them.
• Demonic Spiders: The chest monsters. Man-eating chests can kill your party in one or two attacks when you first meet them, Mimics have a One-Hit Kill spell that will try to kill your party members.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: The warriors in general, though the female warrior most distinctly. She appears as various NPC's in future installments of the series. The male martial artist has likewise gone on to appear in future games, as well.
• "Funny Aneurysm" Moment: One of the towns in this game is called Isis.
• Game Breaker:
  • Depending on when your Mage or Sage gets it, the Transform spell can qualify as one. Having two or more of your best ally? Yes, please! Not much gear though, until the remakes throws in quite a handful. The best is the Rubiss Sword, which has a colossal + 160 attack bonus, casts Thordain for free when used as an item, and everyone can use and equip it with no penalties.
  • Somewhat oddly, the Golden Claw of all things, especially in the remakes. By itself it's powerful but not super game-breaking; in the original release, it can't even really be used as a weapon, practically. However, getting out of the pyramid with it puts you in a ton of fights... Which is the point, right? Except it puts you in a ton of fights, which means if you pull it off, you just came out of a hypercharged grind session and are swimming in money and experience even without selling the damn things. It's far worse in all remakes, where you have the "bag" and can bring dozens of cheap healing herbs along, and conceivably get the claws out very soon after reaching the Pyramid initially. Pull that off, and not only does your Fighter have a weapon better than anything store-buyable but you've just pulled off a speed-grinding session that gives you all the money you'll need for a large chunk of the game and probably gave your entire team several levels in the space of two dungeon floors.
  • If you have the first three characters, select "Parry" and then cancel all the way to the first when it is time to select the fourth character's command. This will allow you to attack normally, but your characters will take damage as if they had parried.
• Good Bad Bugs: The Item glitch. The glitch works like this- form a party. Allow one member to die and then go to Luisa's and remove the dead character. Get a new character and then allow 3 party members to die. Normally in game play, if you have three dead party members, the game will not allow you to switch out the living party member for a dead one at Luisa's. However, if the living party member has the Numb status, then the game will let you exchange the character for a dead one. You will now have a party of all dead characters. Go to the overworld and just take a few steps and watch your inventory go nuts.
• Growing the Beard: The first two games certainly weren't unpopular, but it was Dragon Quest III which set the franchise's place in history and the collective consciousness of Japan in marble. It was a lot more polished than the first two, far broader in scope, and however many arguments might be made for exactly how much influence the game had on JRPG's as a whole, the game's influence on its successors is absolutely humongous, as each one more or less tries to live up to the standard it set and mix up the formula it established, for good or ill.
• It Was His Sled: While frequently referred to as part of the Erdrick trilogy nowadays, three quarters of the game's length try to present it as independent of the first two titles.
• Memetic Badass: A deceased Fighter ingame has this reputation.
• Memetic Molester: The male Jester among the Japanese fandom.
• Memetic Outfit: All of the classes, but particularly the hero's. If they aren't exact in games, they'll at least resemble them. They're mentioned in Dragon Quest IX, as equipment used by an ancient [class] of old (which kind of stings if you played III when it first came out). Played with as Rule of Funny in Dragon Quest VII onward as the "Pod"/Pip and "Foo"/Conk families of monsters are tiny critters who dress like the default set of heroes in III, but are so tiny that they use leaves and hollowed nuts as armor, and use rocks and sticks as weapons.
• Memetic Sex God: The females (the Sage in particular) are all ridiculously popular and together probably have more fan art than the rest of the franchise combined.
  • The male hero is the only one to even come close to any of the females, and he comes on strong in this category, as well, often depicted as amply capable of satisfying three female companions.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: While the game aged very well, especially with the remakes, many modern gamers miss just how groundbreaking this game really was at the time. It is the Ur Example, Trope Maker, and Trope Codifier of many, many JRPG tropes. To truly cement this in one's mind, consider the following -- Dragon Quest III came out a scant 2 months after Final Fantasy I.
• That One Boss: Kandar is possibly the first difficult fight in the game.
• That One Level: The cave to the Necrogond. Not nearly as frustrating as the Road to Rhone in the previous game, but tough nonetheless.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Game Boy Color re-release of the game faithfully recreates many of the visual effects of the SNES release, including a complete remake of the opening sequence, the battle over the volcano included.