It's your 16th birthday, and your mother has awakened you. Today is the day you will get to meet the king. Your father, Ortega, was a great warrior in service to the king, but he fell in battle defending the realm. Now you're ready to ask the king's permission to follow in the footsteps of your father and become a great warrior yourself.

The king has received you and welcomed you into his service. Your archenemy is the evil Baramos. You've been commanded to go forth, recruit a party, and find a way to rid the land of this archfiend.

Dragon Warrior 3 is the third in the Dragon Warrior series. You begin with control of just the main character but can quickly recruit three more members to your party. During the game you can choose to drop your current characters and recruit others at any time. The recruitable characters are divided into six classes: soldier, fighter, merchant, goof-off, pilgrim and wizard.

The game has a unique job system, giving you the ability to switch your hired characters' classes after they have achieved at least level 20 in their base class. Characters can switch to the other beginning classes, as well as the sage class, which is not available at the beginning. When a character switches classes, they lose all earned experience points, and half of their stats, but retain all of the abilities of the previous class. In this way, you can create powerful combination characters that are able to cast spells and fight effectively.