While I have some JRPG experience behind me, I’m hardly an expert. Name a classic, and I probably haven’t played it, but it doesn’t keep me from trying to break into the genre ever now and then. My most recent, ongoing foray into this is the massive, and well-loved Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past. The original version of this game was on the PSX some fifteen years ago under the name Dragon Warrior VII, but I missed out not only because I was not playing JRPGs at the time, but also because I was strictly a PC gamer then. Fast forward to last week, and the 3DS remake has launched, putting the entirety of this grand JRPG adventure at the top of my review queue.
I had an inkling of an idea of how large this game was, but it was not until I began to read online that I realized one could, if they chose to pursue side quests and extra dungeons and so forth, dump a hundred hours into the game. It’s way more than I have time or interest to budget for it, but what hours I have spent playing it have been quality. The first couple of hours were pretty sleepy — your character is a young male who’s father is a well respected fisherman and leader of a small island community. The annual fishing harvest is happening early the next morning from when the game begins and everyone in the small town is excited. Typical (not in a bad way) soft, instrumental music plays as you explore the little town and talk to the NPCs, and it was enough to draw a lot of yawns from me, but the pacing does change to a more classical paced JRPG affair soon enough.
The premise of DQVII is one of my favorite aspects about it, but that alone would not be enough to make it a great game. What Square did so well though, I’m finding out as I continue to work my way through the immense story, is make most character interactions, story quests, and key locations meaningful and memorable. The idea of there being a small island village that believes that there lie no other land or living creatures beyond themselves is somehow fascinating in and of itself. Your character is destined to do something great, and with your two best friends, the trio discover that something far larger than this one island exists, but its been sealed away. You and your party are accordingly challenged with going back in time to other towns, figuring out their problem (typically some kind of town-wide oppression, be it a disease or faction), and solving it. In the process you discover tablet fragments to collect and reconstruct so that the future for these folks is far brighter than the abysmal one they had.
As far as I can tell from what I have played so far, DQVII follows this formula between towns and while it may sound boring, the variation in what you encounter and all of the new gameplay mechanics that unfold as you get deeper in keep things engaging. Yet, despite layering on new mechanics, the game does not seem to ever get bogged down in over-complication and unnecessary nuances. In fact, most every aspect of DQVII seems absolutely textbook for a classic JRPG from their heyday, from the battle system to the sweet musical score.
Two major gameplay elements that have been modernized that you will not find in this release however are random battles and the lack of a good map. For years, random battles were the bane of my JRPG experimentation — I loathe walking around, having probably just gone through a lot of dialog or dealing with a shop encounter, only to have the game stop me from exploring to throw a random battle at me. With DQVII on the 3DS, random battles are more or less optional in that you can see the enemies in the game world and it’s pretty much up to you when you encounter or simple walk away from them. Combine this with the map that gives you a satellite-like view of where you’re at and where points of interest are, and what you have is some major streamlining that boosts play session efficiency. By this I mean you spend a whole lot less time lost and dealing with random battles than you otherwise would, which means more quality play time doing the things you want. To me, this is a major positive change that can literally make the difference between whether or not I can plausibly finish this game someday.
Ultimately, DQVII pushes a lot of the right buttons, and for this relative JRPG-noob who’s gaming time is on a tight budget, it’s giving me a feasible way to enjoy one of the all-time greats in a genre that spans decades and hundreds if not thousands of releases. It’s not the perfect JRPG, but I feel like it’s the best one I personally have played, and it ticks all of the right boxes for what I would look for in a long, multi-month JRPG experience. To the summary…
