This game impressed me so much that it got me to start writing reviews for the games I've played and enjoyed, so I decided to look for and find the review I made for this game in high school which was my first ever game review. I refined it a little bit as I typed this up, but it is mostly the same as what I wrote back when I made it.

Back in Fall 2012, Square Enix announced Dragon Quest VII for the Nintendo 3ds. As someone who has wanted to play the series, I was hoping and waiting for this game to get released outside of Japan. I could have just undusted my old Ps1 and got a copy of the game on that, but I was more interested in playing this remake because of its beautiful 3d graphics. Then in November 2015, Dragon Quest VII and VIII were announced to be localized in 2016 and I was ecstatic when I heard this news while watching the Nintendo Direct they were announced in. When the game came out, I picked up a copy of the game at Walmart and began my playthrough of this masterpiece.

One of the pros that stuck out to me was that the places you visit in the game all have a distinct, different feeling that almost feels like you're playing a different game and makes it feel like a real adventure. This sense of immersion made me enjoy the game more than I thought I would and kept me coming back.

The soundtrack is also pretty good. There may not be a ton of songs and you'll probably hear some quite a bit but they are catchy and fit well in the game.

The gameplay can actually get pretty deep. Like other turn-based RPGs, you have the options to attack, defend, use abilities or magic, or flee from a battle. While that sounds simplistic, this game can get deep with the numerous amounts of classes you can unlock such as the fighter, sailor, wizard, dancer, and plenty more. You can even learn some monster classes like slime and healslime if you're lucky enough for them to drop. Once you level up some of the regular classes to the max, you can unlock even stronger ones like the pirate and paladin classes that take even longer to level up. They all unlock useful spells and abilities that will greatly benefit you.

One small con that sort of broke the immersion was that some of the NPC and monster models are reused quite a bit. The grinding is another one since I remember it taking up a good majority of my playthrough but that partly my fault since I leveled everything up a bit later than I should have. The last and most annoying flaw was the backtracking. There were a handful of times where I got lost and had to pull up a guide on YouTube to figure out where to go next.

It's a wonderful classic remade with beautiful 3d graphics. The three year wait it took for me to play this game was definitely worth it.

Well this was definitely a journey,DQ7 is heavily flawed,most of the skills you get from grinding the classes are worthless and you end up using a few OP one over and over,trivilazing the fights,user interface feels very sluggish and cumbersome to control,game sometimes struggles on the 3DS,dungeons are overall very "meh" worthy,i can keep going,but in the grand scheme of things,these are fairly minor issues except for the very simple battles,because this game provides an overwhelming sense of scale and adventure like no other JRPG,every few hours you encounter different storylines,different towns with their own culture,atmosphere and characters,even if you don't like one,you can count on that it's going to end soon for a completely new island.Tone of some of these stories are surprisingly dark and melancholic,but never enough to kill that sense of joyous adventure.Out of the 3 Dragon Quest games i've played so far,7 easily has the best story and atmosphere,but it didn't still reached the heights of 11 for me,still a must play for those who can tolerate longer,slower paced RPG's

A very long Dragon Quest game equivalent to DQXI in length. It took me around 100 hours to beat, but honestly with the repetitive nature of the game's structure, the areas that felt like padding (which hurt the pacing), the endless encounters, and the somewhat unsatisfying conclusion, I can't say I'm particularly glad I stuck with the game to see it all the way through.

This game isn't bad, though, probably a bit above average quality-wise, but I can't really recommend this game to anyone outside the hardcore DQ/JRPG enjoyer with 100 hours to kill.

To end positively, my favorite parts of DQVII are Maribel's snark, the game's mysterious atmosphere, the expansive class system (albeit too grindy), and the sheer amount of dialogue the party has at the smallest narrative changes (even talking to some NPCs).

I gotta play the PS1 version someday but I just love this game man it means a lot to me.

If Dragon Quest already was a series about having fun simplified RPG adventures this is like, literally a playable One Piece (or Shonen anime) with big story intrigue, lovable filler to add variety, and a cast that changes and grows over time.

It’s evident DQ changed after Chrono Trigger and this title shows that the biggest lesson they learned is that time travel can absolutely make for stellar world building even for small locations while adding epic stakes.

I love this game

Oh man, oooooh man. This is a special game.

I was getting burnt out by the end of DQVI, to the point where I didn't even beat the final boss.

Knowing that I had the longest DQ game - which reuses/retools a fair few elements of 6 like the classes, style stat, two-worlds etc - was a bit daunting. I thought me DQ journey would end here!!!

But fuuuuuuck if this isn't just the best DQ game. Every little vignette that makes up the islands is bursting with charm. I totally forgot there was even a larger over-arching plot at times and it was great????

Hell, this game is long and ended up taking me around 90 hours, probably longer if I played the PS1 version. Is it a hot take to say that this game actually has really good pacing?

It leans so well into its segmented approach to the adventure, and the inconsistent lengths of each islands are well planned out. If one of the arcs wasn't to my liking, I know that I'd be done with it in like 10 minutes, and the ones that I enjoyed I got to spend a few hours on.

I never felt like I had to stop midway through a dungeon or groan at the thought of a grinding session. But on the note of grinding

GRINDING, I don't like it in RPGs. It sucks. It's awful. Grinding bad.

This game is the closest I've come to actually liking grinding and that's all thanks to the vocations. What's essentially the same system from 6 gets re-tooled and re-balanced in a way that gets me engaged with my party's levelling. Multiple times I'd go backtrack to an area in the middle of a story segment because I knew that I'd have a new spell for my pirate class in three battles, or some new stat buff. It's nowhere near as annoying as DQ6's vocations and it's twice as satisfying.

By the end of the game I felt so involved in my party's abilities. Even in the better DQ games like 3, 4 and 5, I'd always have to stop and think "ooh, who uses spears? What items should I give to this member? Does everyone have the right armour and accessories?"

I knew Maribel, Kiefer, Ruff, Merlyn and Aishe's strengths and weaknesses right off the bat. I got to make these characters my own through Alltrades Abbey. What other games let you control a wolf boy who (in my case) was the master of both the ocean AND sheep?

It's not a shocking observation to say that RPGs are better when you can, you know, role-play in them. But man, DQ7's strength is that it manages to feel so free despite its linearity. A game that breaks up the DQ formula and isn't afraid to double down on it. This is my adventure, these are my party members. I don't want it to end. This is dragon quest baby!!

Coming of age. This is a massive game, and the entirety of its run-time is used for this theme. In the beginning, only one single island exists, it is bliss, it is utopia. It is childhood. There is nothing more to discover or to learn but what you find in your immediate family. Your family is caring and loves you, and life is good. You haven't seen any hardship, and you have a blissful life, with childhood friends and a well-respected father. But isn't that boring? Isn't there more to discover? Dad doesn't let us go fishing with him, he doesn't think we can be any useful. But the world is vast, surely it cannot be the only island in existence, wouldn't it be great to see what's out there? And to be more than the great fisherman's cute son?

Off you go on a huge journey, discovering that there used to be a very different world in the past with many islands. We discover we can travel through time and revive the other islands of the world in the past and bringing them to the present. Each island presents a lesson to the naive, childish main character. Difficult conflicts where neither side is wrong, conflicts that cannot be solved, conflicts where one side is irreparably damaged and cannot be saved no matter the intentions, stories of sacrifice, stories of betrayal, of unwavering courage in the face of hardship. Each island is a punch in the gut for our naive, childish hero, he's doing his best, he is saving people, but there are just some things that are outside your control, the world, as it seems, is not an utopia.

But from loss and hardship, from difficult decisions to witnessing tragedy, our main character, who in this entry is truly our naive, childish real life self before we played this game, is growing up, is learning, is becoming more mature. We learn about how the crimes of the past can be uncomfortable truths that people want to ignore and misrepresent. We learn how important faith can be a community, even to their own peril, and how quickly faith can also fade away. We learn about how much courage a pioneer needs to have. We learn about how to move on from the loss of a family member and that life goes on. And as we learn more and more vocations, as we unlock advanced vocations and eventually expert vocations, as we become Gladiators, Sages and Heroes, as we save more and more islands and win the respect of our beloved Maribel as well as the the people of our island, we are no longer the naive, weak child who follows the prince around and who lives in the shadow of our overwhelmingly strong father. We, me the player and my video game alter-ego, are growing up, we are becoming an adult, we are becoming our own man. Dad will surely take us fishing with him soon.

Dragon Quest VII is really Dragon Quest VI-2. I don't mean that it's a direct sequel like some of the other games in the franchise, it's completely separated from the Zenithian trilogy even, but in so many ways it feels like a direct retread of the foundations that DQVI laid down. From the mechanics, to the structure, to the writing this just feels like a more expanded and refined take on the ideas of its predecessor. All of this is not really a complaint, I enjoyed a lot of the things that DQVI did, and even though this entry doesn't do a lot of brand new ideas to the table it's still the biggest Dragon Quest game to date and getting to just vibe out in that world is enjoyable in and of itself.

From a mechanics side of things the job system is back and more fleshed out. There are many more jobs to pick from, including a ton of monster jobs that add monster-specific moves to your moveset, and more third tier jobs outside of Hero that give you more endgame options. The leveling requirements also seem much less absurd than in DQVI which allows you to try out different jobs without the pressure of needing to go grind for hours to get a basic set of abilities unlocked.

The writing is definitely a step up from DQVI, in that there is an actual plot outside of the episodic adventures. The plot is glacially paced, and still mostly occurs within the last few hours, but there are some interesting twists and turns. I won't say that this game pulls any super unique narrative tricks like the best games in the series are known for, but it's solid enough that it didn't bother me. I think the quality of the episodic stories is really great across the board here, and that's nice to see considering there are so many of them, and they're so much more involved than past games.

My main gripe with this game is the new twist on the two worlds thing that DQVI did. You're constantly travelling back and forth between the past and present, which does lead to some cool narrative moments, and I think that more than justifies having the two worlds. Unfortunately, there's way too many instances of you spending several hours in the past version of a location, only to go back to the present where you have to spend several more hours exploring the exact same location with minor changes. Early in the game this didn't bother me much, but near the end when you're doing lengthy dungeons multiple times it really starts to feel monotonous.

I don't think this is one of the best games in the series, but much like DQVI I think this is an entry that I can see myself coming back to just to turn my brain off and enjoy the vibes.

Forgive me, dwardman, for I have sinned and played the remake instead of the original. In my defense, it’s way easier to fit the 3DS version into my life and there are two major factors that I think make for a general improvement here. One is the way that class outfits are reflected on the characters, particularly when it comes to the Goodest Boy Ruff. Yeah all the characters get their own outfits, but how am I supposed to argue with his Wolf Mom ending up in a sheep outfit when you make Ruff a shepherd? Or the wolf wearing a top hat if you make him a luminary? You may call me shallow for it but it’s incredible stuff. The other, I think, is that having everything on one cartridge instead of two discs makes a certain twist land a little better, I think. It wasn’t too much of a surprise, but I feel like the narrative moxie of it is better served without a second disc spoiling how much of the game is left.

With that said, since I haven’t played the PS1 version, I should start talking about this game on its own merits. It’s definitely as long and episodic as everyone says it is, but I actually enjoyed it for that. Sometimes you want a connected series of vignettes that are fun little adventures but will occasionally leave you mouthing “what the fuck, Dragon Quest” under your breath, you know? It’s good stuff. The playable characters are also all super endearing, and the party chat’s very fun. There’s genuinely something related to the cast that genuinely slots into one of those “what the fuck, Dragon Quest” moments, and I seriously haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.

I have to say, I only really felt the fatigue setting in at the end, and that’s primarily related to how the job system works. The game really does not reward fucking around and finding out; it definitely makes some role assignments pretty obvious, but I found out way too late from checking a guide that it’s much more lucrative to put all monster jobs on one character instead of trying to spread them around. Maybe it would’ve warned me if I checked a manual or something, but man. Also it sucks that you can only have a party of four at the end because I love all my silly party members, and no, I absolutely didn’t bother with the postgame content. I thought I might until I actually tried messing around with the casino, which is mandatory to get one of the postgame dungeon fragments, and lost like all my tokens because fuck if I have the patience to figure out which slot machine has good odds or not.

Anyway, this is the first Dragon Quest I’ve finished since Sugiyama died, and now that he is no longer able to contribute to fash movements in Japan I guess I can judge his work a little more fairly. Sorry dudes the man can write one hell of a jingle but overall his best stuff is from the 8 bit era and the more I play through the series the more I realize the songs I actually liked in 11 were pretty much all from old games. There’s a bit of coziness to some of the tracks, definitely, but honestly I think he ranks only slightly above Motoi Sakuraba When Really Phoning It In On a Tales Game Because He’d Rather Be Composing for Dark Souls for me.

Anyway, overall it’s not my favorite Dragon Quest but it’s definitely a fun game. Get it before the 3DS dies. Or don’t but do crimes to get it on your 3DS after it dies.

This is a game that thinks more automatically equals better, and while I love its episodic structure on paper--and some of the little stories this game tells are really good--it has absolutely no respect for pacing, or for the player's time. There's barely even a hint of an overarching plot until almost the 50 hour mark, and by then I was already at the point where I was ready for it to be over. Even in this form, which supposedly trims about 30 hours from the Playstation original, this is an obscenely bloated game. I don't mind big or long games, but so much of Dragon Quest VII is devoted to running back and forth across x town looking for the next plot trigger. It's big and long in a way that comes across as thoughtless. (For comparison, my playthrough of Dragon Quest XI this summer clocked in at 120 hours, and it felt about half as long as the 75 hours I spent in Dragon Quest VII). It's still a game that I would describe as good, but it really, really should've been great.

And while I love the job system, the way it makes certain key party members unavailable for lengthy chunks of the game so that they're always behind where they should be in their job level is legitimately infuriating. I had to grind about 300 battles at the end of the game just so one of my party members could be at a decently ranked advanced job level for the final boss.

Dragon Quest can often feel like a lengthy series, from grinding out experience and cash to solving every town’s problems again and again and again. DQ7 will test your endurance more than any other in the franchise, but I promise it’s so worth it.

The cast is one of the strongest I’ve experienced despite only two party members carrying plot relevant reasons to endure the journey. Gameplay progression systems from DQ6 return with far more balance and updated use, making them welcome additions this time around.

The story really relies on your thirst for adventure in the first 15-20 hours or so as you begin to feel out your companions and you all start to see the effects your actions enable. It’s built mostly on what would be considered small subplots for over half the game before you’re hit with point blank narrative relevance. Despite the lull of story beats, each subplot is more interesting than the last and the myriad of themes presented throughout each are a treat each time.

Unfortunately I can’t praise the game’s finer points without major spoilers, but in conclusion DQ7 is well worth the time for those with some patience and a hunger for the unknown

Goddamn this shit got so meandering.

I love dragon quest as a franchise, but this one kept just getting slower and slower and losing more and more of my interest narratively until Maribel, who is easily the worst character in the franchise yet, just killed the remainder of it when I was forced to include her back into my party.

A really cool gameplay concept and the statisfaction of collectible completion kept me going til the credits, only to find out the reward for doing that is meeting a god who doesn't particularly care that you unfucked his mess. If you like DQ, go for it if you're thirsty for more, if you want a better narrative, play 11, 8 or even 9 if you haven't.