Dragon Quest III: The Seeds of Salvation is one of the most highly acclaimed and best-selling games in the series and the final chapter in the Erdrick Trilogy. The game was originally released on the Nintendo in 1998 and has since been reworked for various gaming consoles including Game Boy Color (2000), mobile phones (November 2009), Wii (2011) and now in 2014 is available for iOS and Android.

Dragon Quest III is probably the most notable game in the series and arguably the one that fans remember most favourably. The game has been redeveloped for touch-screens, with its simple controls now customisable so that you can change the position of the controls depending on whether you are left or right handed, or if you like to use both hands.

We reviewed this game on an iPad and I have to admit that the controls were not as easy as they should have been. I found them to be a little fiddly, especially when approaching some of the characters that move around. You move around the screen by moving a joystick in one of four directions and tap the centre of the joystick to interact with objects and characters.

The enemies and battle system can be a bit of a pain when you're just trying to get to another location, as you can be attacked several times just trying to move to your destination. I'd say you get attacked a little too frequently. The only benefit of attacking the numerous beasties is that it gives you experience points and coins. The downside is that when your characters have fairly low experience levels then you can find your band of merry men being killed quite quickly.

When you die you are transported back to the nearest castle (half of your money is deducted) and you can carry on as normal, although you will have to visit the local church to resurrect (for a fee) your fallen comrades.

You start the game with a class of your choosing (you can also chose your sex and name) and then it's off to your local tavern to recruit other members for your team (again, you can choose their name, sex and class). Part of the skill here is balancing class types in order to ensure you have a good mix of skills, as each class has its own benefits and drawbacks. It's a bit of a learning curve and it doesn't matter how long it takes you to get the right mix, as you can always drop off and collect characters you have already recruited.

The game offers quite an in depth adventure that sees you traveling across multiple continents and dungeons, levelling-up characters and unlocking new spells and abilities along the way. As you meet characters you'll be given the opportunity to engage in new quests that further the game and offer up rewards, as well as side quests (collecting mini medals and them giving them to a mysterious collector).

One of the aspects of the game that didn't sit very well with me, and you can tell I'm showing my age now, is that there is an aspect of gambling built into the game. With a 9+ age rating, I was surprised to see that you could quite happily wander down to a fighting pit, look at the odds of the next fight and then bet on the winner. If you lose, you lose your initial stake... but if you win you are rewarded. Now I know this seems like a rather silly moan, and one that can be angled at a lot of games, but I think that a society that already has a gambling problem, teaching our kids that it's a normal part of growing up is a little controversial.

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Nick Smithson