I can chime in as someone who has been playing both Baldur’s Gate 3 (when my and my friends schedule allows) and Sea of Stars - Sea of Stars is fantastic and great on the Switch. Beautiful pixel art and the combat is a lot of fun.
That’s one of the few HD2D that looks good to me. In my opinion, Octopath is way too dark, sepia toned, and saturated. It’s not a very pretty game in my eyes. In Star Ocean and Live A Live, the characters don’t look like they fit in the world; the difference between the 3D environments and the pixel characters is too stark. But I’m quite interested in DQ3.
I’m not sure if it helps you at all, but there some waypoints you can jump to. In fact, there are waypoints both right near the druids grove and one in the goblin encampment.
In regards to what you’re doing, there are journal entries that keep track of quests step by step so you can see what you’ve learned in each as you’ve progressed.
For clarification, Golden Sun was mostly 3d rendered models. They purposely made them to have a resemblance to pixel art since they needed it to both fit in a GBA cartridge and screen, and not look ugly while doing all that. Also I believe it is on Switch now if you pay for online and have the GBA emulator (which I personally don’t pay for and never will).
I still replay the series once every couple years, though. Fantastic series.