Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined by developer HexaDrive and publisher Square Enix—Sony PlayStation 5 preview written by Pierre-Yves with a demo available on the PSN.
Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Dragon Quest VII and I have some history. Take a moment back in time with me as I reminisce about being a broke teenager seeing a copy of this for the first, and only, time in my life on a shelf in a video store two towns over. I did not have the money for this, nor did my friend who I was hanging out with to watch movies for the weekend.
Fast forwarding through time and I would pick up Dragon Quest VIII to play the Final Fantasy XII demo disk it contained. After completing the demo, I tried DQ8 and it was love at first play. Where had this series been all my life!? Finally saving up enough to buy it instead of hoping the video store would have a copy for a weekend, and the rest slowly became history.
I would buy Dragon Quest IX on the DS, then the mobile versions of 1-2-3-4-5-6-8. But still no Dragon Quest VII. I couldn't find a PS1 copy that was affordable, so I kind of gave up on it. That would be until the 3DS release dropped in North America almost three-ish years (I believe) after its Japanese launch where I would finally play this elusive title.
The day came.
I popped in the cartridge.
And I hated it. So much.
The 3DS version was a rework of the original Dragon Quest VII that I would honestly call one of the weakest in the series. It felt like a slog to get anything done. I hated half the characters. I was really disappointed especially after all of the other adventures I had in the Dragon Quest universe. Oh well, that feeling would soon be washed away with Dragon Quest XI which I could almost consider my game of the last decade.
So why am I here writing about Dragon Quest VII you ask? Even if you’re not asking, I’ll take you on another small yet modern day adventure. After seeing the announcement I felt a bit of disappointment as I would have loved for either Dragon Quest VIII or IX to be given this treatment and brought up to the modern day platforms.
Moving into two weeks ago, from the time of this writing of a cold Canadian Sunday night, Nick sends me a message: “Saw this headline come in just now, thought of you: START DRAGON QUEST VII REIMAGINED EARLY WITH A FREE DEMO, AVAILABLE NOW” and I remember thinking “Ugh”,”nope”, I’m good and got back to poking at my platinum for Warriors: Abyss that I decided to revisit almost 1 year later.
Adding a bit of time to complete one of my latest reviews, finishing up Silent Hill 2 Remastered which left me feeling like I wasted a good deal of my time compared to Silent Hill F which I really enjoyed, and I sat there staring at my TV and the PlayStation home screen.
Fine.
I’ll download the damned demo.
Booting it up and not expecting to change my mind, I sent the following to Nick, *sighs* followed by this screenshot.
(Nick's note: He really did, and I was thoroughly amused by PY's change of heart)
And now I find myself thinking that the February 7 release date couldn’t come fast enough.
Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined has won me over in a way that the original would have thrown me off of the entire series. The pacing is now so much better. The dialog and the cutscenes felt very well paced from one to the next. The other issue that I had may have come down to localization choices at the time. I really, really, did not like the “supporting” cast and how they treated the protagonist, aka, you once you’ve named them.
Maribel came across as unnecessarily mean and downright unpleasant. Kiefer came across as someone who has intelligence and wisdom as their dump stats. This time around it feels like a lot of adjustments have been made. Maribel is still huffy in the way that makes sense as the spoiled daughter of a mayor but isn’t downright mean and unpleasant. Kiefer now comes across as the adorable oaf out for the adventure and is nice to have along for the ride.
Regarding the gameplay, there are quality of life improvements alongside series staples such as taking direct control or using the available combat personas to fight wisely or give it all they’ve got. Combat can be sped up or slowed down depending on what type of experience you want to have. You can attack monsters on the field and world map to cause damage before starting combat. If your party is stronger than they are, the group of enemies will simply be defeated giving you your character exp, money and vocation exp.
Really neat is how the main menu works. Opening up to your character inventory you can either move into your items or directly add or modify your party’s gear. Zoom-ing is free of cost like in the Dragon Quest I, II & III 2D-HD Remakes. You also no longer need to be outside to use it as it can be used from wherever. For those newer to the series, in the older entries, if you tried to take to the skies to zoom anywhere else you would hit your head on the ceiling and the game would make a snarky remark about the fact that you’re indoors.
If I had “a complaint”, it would be in the dialog system that requires you to press “O” to hear what someone has to say. At least in the first couple hours, it’s often literally what was just said and I found myself wondering why I even bothered as I already know what I’m supposed to be doing.
Impressively offering several hours of gameplay, the demo will allow you to carry data over to the main release when it drops early next month. Will it retroactively grant you trophies? Or will you need to restart to get those added to your list? I sadly couldn’t tell you, but knowing myself, I’m simply going to restart anyway.
Dragon Quest VIII: Reimagined, you’ve won me over for now. Hopefully the rest of the adventure can carry me through in the same fashion. Now for a Dragon Quest XII announcement or a remake of DQ VIII or IX…
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