You can freely switch equipment in battle

Dragon Quest III HD-2D still makes each character manage their own individual inventory, so your first impulse may be to load up your party with healing items in case of an emergency. But surprisingly enough, you may prefer to give your characters backup equipment instead.

For example, you may generally gravitate towards weapons like boomerangs and whips that can attack groups of enemies, but these are less impressive against single targets. If you put a strong sword or spear in your character’s bag, they can freely switch to their new toy using the Equipment option in battle. Some armor can also be situationally useful, such as the Mirror Shield that can reflect magic spells. This is a great boon against spell-casting enemies, but if you don’t want healing spells to bounce off them, a backup shield will save the day.

You don’t need to min-max your equipment to win, necessarily. But when a group of Metal Slimes shows up, you’ll be happy to have weapons on each character that can deal with them.