A big thing I'm trying to work on for the DQ2 engine is robust support for multiple resolutions, particularly HD. The previous game was hard-locked to 800x600.
Here's a screenshot from today's build of the DQ2 engine, using the DQ1 data set:
I'd post it in 1080p, but that's so big I need a fancier screenshot solution and I'm lazy so you can have 1600x900 for now.
I want to really nail this feature down as so many other things depend on it. The user interface has to scale properly (part of why I'm investing so much effort into that feature, source code available for free as flixel-ui, which has been adopted as the official UI solution for HaxeFlixel).
So far the current build lets me play through a lot of the DQ1 content (even importing old save files) -- of course battles and cutscenes are stubbed out for now until I can deal with scaling issues from resolution stuff, but this is great progress.
This does mean that technically we could re-release DQ1 in the new engine, but we're not committed to that just yet (though it remains an option).
You can read more in my Defender's Quest II devlog in the official Level Up Labs forum.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.fortressofdoors.com/defenders-quest-2-engine-progress-resolution/