Dragon Quest VII Reimagined Review

Remember that sense of adventure you had as a child, eager to explore the world around you? Imagine how much brighter that would burn if your island was the only one in existence. Your father, a renowned sailor, has sailed the seas and found nothing but pilchards as far as the eye can see.

So starts Dragon Quest VII Reimagined. You set out with your best friend and the local prince, Kiefer, and quickly discover that the rest of the world is locked away under the sea by the villainous Demon King. Only you can put the world right, travelling through space and time to right historic wrongs and secure the future of your world.

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While such grandiose stories are now the hallmark of JRPGs, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better originator of this trope than the Dragon Quest series. This entry, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, is a complete rebuild of the original game released in 2000, reimagined for today’s era. It keeps the overarching narrative, but modernises pretty much everything else, from the visual styling, to the battle systems and the smaller elements of the story. Not only is this the best looking Dragon Quest game, it’s easily the most approachable Dragon Quest game to date.

First the graphics: at first glance, I must admit I was a little taken aback. I didn’t play the original or the 2013 3DS remake, so I watched the trailer wondering who this guy with a head the size of Lord Farquaad’s is  – you can’t un-see it, sorry. And when the game started, your first companion was about as grating as Hermione Granger in the first Harry Potter film. The first few hours with them were slow, but after spending a little time with the game, these characters become endearing. Maribel is still vaguely annoying, but she’s part of the gang and clearly a good friend to the protagonist.

These characters (and the monsters they face) are really brought to life in Dragon Quest VII Reimagined. Their appearance is the result of painstaking work, creating and then scanning real-life dolls into the game to create something that looks incredibly real, and it combines beautifully with a diorama style to the environments. It is so effective that it sets a new high-water mark for modern remakes. If you don’t want to go the Final Fantasy VII route with ultra HD graphics, this is almost certainly the way to go.

As to the gameplay, we are looking at something pretty formulaic. Distilled down, you go out searching for stone fragments. Collect a set and you can go back in time to right a wrong in a village filled with amusingly caricatured Irish/French/Arabic/English people. Once that’s sorted, you go back to the present to visit the island and collect more stone fragments.

Being formulaic doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. The locations you visit are varied and the events within them are unique. Sure, your characters aren’t quick on the uptake, and the puzzles laid before them aren’t overly difficult, but on the whole the gameplay is very engaging. I never felt bored playing this game and I enjoyed seeing what treasures each new island held.

This is where the modernisation really comes to the fore. Gone are the days of surprise encounters — as with the 3DS version, enemies walk around the overworld map and dungeons, and you can avoid them or gain a sneak attack if you’re diligent. The turn-based gameplay is interesting, with quality-of-life additions like auto-combat and instant kills for weak enemies really helping pick up the pace.

There’s also an overhauled vocation system, allowing you to moonlight as a second character class. You can now literally be a Warrior Priest or a Troubadour Martial Artist, which adds some interesting variety to combat. There’s also a powerful limit-break-esque system which can really turn the tide of battle.

And then there are the most granular difficulty settings I’ve ever seen. I played on normal difficulty, but in the interest of getting through the story before launch, turned on the ability to automatically heal after each battle. The ability to fine-tune the difficulty to your taste and needs really does meet the team’s goal of making this a game for everyone.

There’s a bevy of other changes that have been made to tighten up the pace and improve gameplay, but pacing is still a bit of an issue. Slow start aside, you’ll be dozens of hours in before you unlock your new vocations, meaning all that experience you could have been accumulating had been going to waste.

There are also issues in that you can tackle certain things in any order — I had Kiefer comment on the Demon King long before any of the NPCs uttered his name by way of exposition. Finally, we have the odd issue where (on the Switch) mashing B while talking to different people does different things — in a conversation with an important character you can turn down the opportunity to help them (bad), but with the priest asking if you intend to continue your adventure, B is the same as A. A truly minor issue, but something that caught our eye.