Think I like this a smidge more than DQ1. It's a lil bit longer but boy I am a sucker for a three-person RPG party. And they're all so cute!!

BUT HOLY FUCK

CAVE TO RENDARAK

FUCK OFF THAT'S HORRIBLE
DON'T LIKE THAT ONE BIT

otherwise it's fun!

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!!