Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
What this thread is for: Discussing Dragon Quest VII
What this thread is NOT for: One-liners groaning about why Square Enix/Nintendo/Your Microwave/Batman wont localize the game in a timely manner and that Im torturing you by making this thread. Go here if you want to drown your sorrows in beer.
Dragon Quest VII is kinda like a jumbo box of cereal:
Its waaaaay too much for you to eat, but its good for you. And its expensive because boxes of cereal cost like $3-6 in Canada.
Dragon Quest VII is the only non-MMO DQ game I hadnt played until now as we didnt have a lot of money for PS1 discs and a lot of rental places around here didnt bother to rent out a lot of PS1 games. So basically for the last 8 years or so, Ive been trying to catch up on PS1 games I missed out on. DQ7 is one of those games.
DQ is one of those series that I thought was cool when I was a kid because I loved how the games looked, but its also one of those series that kind of fell off my radar until my mid-to-late teens when I started playing some of the JP-only games and DQ8. I still have a lot of catching up to do for the series, but for the most part, Ive played at least all of the mainline ones as of now in some form excluding DQ10. In recent years, Ive become fairly disgruntled with the role-playing game genre as it seemed to have veered in directions that I didnt care for or contained subject matter that is no longer directed towards me. So going back to DQ7 feels like an interesting window into time.
I started DQ7 on the PS1 last year when I got a copy of the game. I probably started it at the most inopportune time since the fall is usually when I get pretty busy. I thought the intro music was very nice, and the soundtrack was fairly decent. I think a lot of folks know about this but DQ7 is one of the longer DQ games, if not the longest. Ive heard that it took 100-120 hours to finish, though considering how much time Ive dumped into RPGs since childhood that doesnt feel like its a bad thing.
The intro takes up a lot of time in the PS1 version. Youre constantly going between areas on Estard Island to gather information and actually open the game up. That isnt necessarily a bad thing to me since later on, youll start to appreciate what the game did by asking the player to get to know Estard Island and its people. Not only that, but its also a way of conveying the Hero characters coming of age in terms of questioning the surroundings around him along with his buddies Kiefer and Maribel. It captures a lets go on an adventure feel in terms of trying to figure out your neighbourhood surroundings. Its almost akin to exploring your area in a suburb since you know everyone and there isnt the threat of immediate danger. It implicitly tells the player that the Heros living in an area where ignorance is essentially bliss since theres only one single island in the whole world at this point. By doing this, it contrasts a lot with the second area of the game where everything, including the colour of the sky and backgrounds used are changed.
I feel like parts of the first area and the first puzzle dungeon are paced pretty well. It goes into detail about how the Hero can read text that Kiefer cant, that the ruins are so off-limits that the Hero and Kiefer going into them essentially opened Pandoras Box, and that the games dungeons can consist of gimmick or puzzle dungeons (and even then there arent a lot of puzzle dungeons). It successfully introduces the concept of the shards and by making you quest in the dungeon for representative pieces of equipment for each of the spirits, it makes one aspect of the final dungeon in the game a fairly nice callback.
In terms of structure, I like the vignette-style of storytelling. I didnt try to do one vignette a day and just played whatever I could. They feel like little games in one and almost every single quest you do in the game feels utterly meaningful. I give a lot of flak to games that include sidequests or portions of main quests that are only there for the sake of being there. I use the phrase quests of the sake of quests in a lot of games that have throwaway sidequests or fetch quests because they dont necessarily mean anything to the player in terms of a grand scale.
DQ7, by contrast, has a ton of little quest strings for the player to experience, some of which come back later on in the game to follow-through on in many ways. It maintains DQ6s dual-world perspective but instead of distinguishing between real and dream worlds, it distinguishes between past and present instead, which makes the world feel fairly larger than it is. Its similar to the feeling that a lot of the games that involve time travel evoke.
The original PS1 version added some neat things to the series, like the how the series tried to use 3D technology to be able to rotate the camera while still maintaining a top-down feel, and how it handled the wonderful cursor memory. It may not remember every selection youd made, but when you selected something in a submenu, its there anyway if you decide to go into the menu (and most of the time youre going to likely select the thing you selected before). It makes battles go even more quickly and smoothly. Its something that DQ8 doesnt have and if Id played this game before DQ8, Id feel that battles would be slightly slower. You are also able to assign tactics to your party members, and was also the first game to show the player a playtime count. There is also the Talk option to talk to your party members at any time.
Dragon Quest 7 is a game about literal worldbuilding. Youre not just worldbuilding via NPC dialogue and quest text; youre literally (re)building the world. It takes its time getting the player acquainted with the world little-by-little because you can only unseal a portion of a continent one at a time. Many NPCs feel memorable or at least have some information that they can afford to the player without making the NPCs feel unnecessary. One example is the character whose soul was placed in a cow by accident, but when you go to the present, youre met with some crazy dialogue and the fact that the descendants can speak to cows somehow. It isnt just the main characters and main NPCs that make up the world in this game, but rather, DQ7 becomes more and more like making its worlds people matter just as much as the games PC and important NPCs themselves. This is put on focus in the ending where you are made to revisit the towns again and are able to speak to the NPCs.
It may not be the best and most eloquent way of worldbuilding, but it works, and it feels genuine and organic. Often the stories intertwined to make light of the bigger picture and the bigger stakes at hand. There are a lot of memorable vignettes like the Coastal/Marle de Dragonne portion, the Loomin section, the Eri/Zebbot part, etc. DQ7 is a pretty sad game. The game ends fairly happily, but many of those sections in the past and present are written fairly well and somewhat emotionally.
Long story short, I got up to Dharma Temple and leveled a few classes in the PS1 version until I got the 3DS version for my birthday a few months ago. I decided to put the PS1 version aside and just plow through the 3DS version.
The 3DS version has a few differences but overall, the game itself feels the same. Those who completed the PS1 version would know more about the differences between the 3DS version and the PS1 version later on, but Im pretty sure they kept almost everything the same outside of minor details. For instance, hybrid skills no longer exist, but since advanced classes learn the skills anyway, you dont need them. Therefore, you take far less time to level classes up. The intro dungeon was streamlined and made much shorter so you spend less time trying to get to the meat of the game in terms of battles. Overall, the meat of the dungeons feels the same. The cursor memory is thankfully still there. Enemies are now visible on the map as opposed to being random encounters (outside of one dungeon), for better or for worse. Additionally, it feels like they lowered the level required for you to progress your classes in various areas, so sometimes you have to wait to progress your classes. Overall, the game is just as balanced as the original game, at least up to the point I had played. It just feels like its easier since youre getting into battles more often. The 3DS versions arranged music is very good, though its best to put on a pair of good cans to hear it. It loops better than Id expected it to as well. Many of the cutscenes work out to be so much better in context because of better scene direction which makes the writing feel more emotional (with one of the concessions being that NPC models smile when theyre yelling at each other or are being completely serious). I do think its a shame that the Dialac portion of the game had some additional story content cut out, because I think the added stuff worked well in the spirit of telling every NPCs story as opposed to concentrating on the important NPCs stories.
The past adventures/recent adventures parts in the 3DS versions menu make the game easier to pick up and play if youve taken time off from it. Additionally, shards are easier to find since theyre now visible on the bottom screen map, and you get an indicator for it which goes off if the shards are in an area youre in.
The movement speed on the world map feels faster than the original games, though I wonder if its because towns feel bigger with respect to scaling on the map. Though when youre on a ship, it doesnt feel as fast so it feels scaled appropriately. That said, the world map can be pretty disorienting, especially with the first camera setting than the second.
One of the biggest shames is that DQ7 has no Miiverse community so I couldnt take screenshots. There are a ton of areas and scenes that look amazing in the game, and I couldnt connect to Miiverse to take any screens at all. Some of the downloadable stuff is neat, and recruiting monsters for the Monster Park is kinda neat. I like the PS1 versions Immigrant Town better than the 3DSs, though. It feels easier to get monster hearts for some monsters and easier to find Metal Slimes because of the monster shard dungeons to play for lottery tickets and get some treasure. The Monster Park is unlocked much earlier in the game than the PS1 version, too, which makes it more useful than the original versions (ie: you can get monster hearts much earlier!). The Internet Tavern works nicely in that you can upload your data/shard to get shards from other people. You can also get event shards from Square Enix.
I dont like how the encounter system in DQ7 works. Enemies appear onscreen, but the problem is that they occur so often that its generally hard to get out of trying to fight battles with them. I dont like running from battles in RPGs, so I end up fighting them and I disappointingly level up more (which is not conducive to leveling up your classes sometimes). Enemies follow you around if you arent overlevelled and theyre pretty fast so half the time they feel unavoidable.
That said, battles are fairly fast. You dont have to stand around and wait for characters to animate like in DQ9 because everything happens fairly quickly and there arent super-elaborate animations. Text scrolls really quickly, and the cursors memory helps in making battles flow much faster. This was my first time with the Japanese spells, so it took a little bit to get used to them. That said, going through them with the Japanese names, the newer spell translation for the English versions fit so much better with the spirit of the original Japanese names. Enemy spell, attack, and idle animations are really cool to look at too.
Aeana brought up the idea of the game probably having enough content for multiple games, and Id definitely agree with that. I would agree with her that its best served as one cohesive game, even if it feels much longer than it should be sometimes. Towards the end, I felt as though some quests werent necessary until I actually did them since theyre short enough. I ended up enjoying the Terra Spirit and Wind Spirits segments a lot, with the Wind Spirit having some of the neatest dungeon design Ive seen in that era. I did feel like the Wind Spirit area needed some expanding, but I was glad it went out before it jumped the shark so to speak.
I was surprised at a certain point that the game wasnt finished considering how long Id spent with it already. In any case, it felt a lot like going through the greatest hits of the game and getting to know NPCs that I probably forgot about halfway through (since Id been playing the game for a few months) all over again. Some may like that and some may not, and I definitely understand where people would come from if they dont.
I ended up liking the game a lot. When all is said and done, its one of my faves in the series on the basis of liking the vignettes and how the game handled its worldbuilding along with the 3DS versions scene direction. I have to say that it felt like a very refreshing game because in recent years, Ive been slogging through a bunch of stuff thats fairly less-than-desirable which did have a role in my increasing dissatisfaction with the genres multiple directions. Dragon Quest VII reminds me of what I liked about the genre in terms of why I liked the first few RPGs Id played as a kid. It balances simplicity with its complex concept of worldbuilding, and its something Id come to miss a lot in recent years. Im fairly happy I played it at long last.
I still have to go through DQ6 SFC since I havent done that yet and since Aeana brought up DQ6 in conversation a while back I might as well go through it and view it in a post-DQ7 lens. I havent played the add-on scenarios yet and havent gone into the postgame, but since Im going to move onto Ao no Kiseki Evolution, I think Ill put those on the backburner.
(I also finished with 85:19 due to playing a lot of Lucky Panel and screwing around with some classes/what people were good at + leaving the system idling, so it isnt as long as I thought itd be. If I didnt play a whole bunch of Lucky Panel, I wouldve finished somewhere in the 7x:xx range.)
Summary
Pros
+ Fantastic worldbuilding on behalf of the NPCs and the actual game's structure itself
+ Balanced classes and battles/bosses
+ 3DS streetpass features are kinda neat
+ lots and lots of furigana in the 3DS version making it much easier to read, particularly for kids and beginners
+ Battles happen quickly and text scrolls fairly quickly; no unnecessary animations to make battles feel longer than they should be
+ The writing feels consistent and stuff happens all the time, making the pacing pretty good
+ Some pretty good dungeon designs, especially the Wind Spirit's dungeon
+ Arranged music in the 3DS version is really good and makes the better cutscene direction in the game even more meaningful
+ Addition of the cursor memory in the PS1 version is legitimately the best thing
+ 3DS version has better scene direction and thus the ugly CG for the Deja Tribe dance portion is cut out completely
Cons
- Battles happen too frequently in the 3DS version, especially in dungeons where the areas don't seem to be scaled to fit them in
- World Map can be disorienting sometimes in the 3DS version depending on the camera angle you've chosen
- Some dialogue cut out of the Dialac portion of the game
Neutral
o might be a little long for some folks to handle
o I liked how the Immigrant Town was handled a little more in the PS1 version
o Intro dungeon was removed in the 3DS version which might be a good or bad thing depending on your feelings about it
Basically, cereal is good for you. Buy some of the good stuff and not the junk food ceral.
What this thread is NOT for: One-liners groaning about why Square Enix/Nintendo/Your Microwave/Batman wont localize the game in a timely manner and that Im torturing you by making this thread. Go here if you want to drown your sorrows in beer.
Dragon Quest VII is kinda like a jumbo box of cereal:
Its waaaaay too much for you to eat, but its good for you. And its expensive because boxes of cereal cost like $3-6 in Canada.
Dragon Quest VII is the only non-MMO DQ game I hadnt played until now as we didnt have a lot of money for PS1 discs and a lot of rental places around here didnt bother to rent out a lot of PS1 games. So basically for the last 8 years or so, Ive been trying to catch up on PS1 games I missed out on. DQ7 is one of those games.
DQ is one of those series that I thought was cool when I was a kid because I loved how the games looked, but its also one of those series that kind of fell off my radar until my mid-to-late teens when I started playing some of the JP-only games and DQ8. I still have a lot of catching up to do for the series, but for the most part, Ive played at least all of the mainline ones as of now in some form excluding DQ10. In recent years, Ive become fairly disgruntled with the role-playing game genre as it seemed to have veered in directions that I didnt care for or contained subject matter that is no longer directed towards me. So going back to DQ7 feels like an interesting window into time.
I started DQ7 on the PS1 last year when I got a copy of the game. I probably started it at the most inopportune time since the fall is usually when I get pretty busy. I thought the intro music was very nice, and the soundtrack was fairly decent. I think a lot of folks know about this but DQ7 is one of the longer DQ games, if not the longest. Ive heard that it took 100-120 hours to finish, though considering how much time Ive dumped into RPGs since childhood that doesnt feel like its a bad thing.
The intro takes up a lot of time in the PS1 version. Youre constantly going between areas on Estard Island to gather information and actually open the game up. That isnt necessarily a bad thing to me since later on, youll start to appreciate what the game did by asking the player to get to know Estard Island and its people. Not only that, but its also a way of conveying the Hero characters coming of age in terms of questioning the surroundings around him along with his buddies Kiefer and Maribel. It captures a lets go on an adventure feel in terms of trying to figure out your neighbourhood surroundings. Its almost akin to exploring your area in a suburb since you know everyone and there isnt the threat of immediate danger. It implicitly tells the player that the Heros living in an area where ignorance is essentially bliss since theres only one single island in the whole world at this point. By doing this, it contrasts a lot with the second area of the game where everything, including the colour of the sky and backgrounds used are changed.
I feel like parts of the first area and the first puzzle dungeon are paced pretty well. It goes into detail about how the Hero can read text that Kiefer cant, that the ruins are so off-limits that the Hero and Kiefer going into them essentially opened Pandoras Box, and that the games dungeons can consist of gimmick or puzzle dungeons (and even then there arent a lot of puzzle dungeons). It successfully introduces the concept of the shards and by making you quest in the dungeon for representative pieces of equipment for each of the spirits, it makes one aspect of the final dungeon in the game a fairly nice callback.
In terms of structure, I like the vignette-style of storytelling. I didnt try to do one vignette a day and just played whatever I could. They feel like little games in one and almost every single quest you do in the game feels utterly meaningful. I give a lot of flak to games that include sidequests or portions of main quests that are only there for the sake of being there. I use the phrase quests of the sake of quests in a lot of games that have throwaway sidequests or fetch quests because they dont necessarily mean anything to the player in terms of a grand scale.
DQ7, by contrast, has a ton of little quest strings for the player to experience, some of which come back later on in the game to follow-through on in many ways. It maintains DQ6s dual-world perspective but instead of distinguishing between real and dream worlds, it distinguishes between past and present instead, which makes the world feel fairly larger than it is. Its similar to the feeling that a lot of the games that involve time travel evoke.
The original PS1 version added some neat things to the series, like the how the series tried to use 3D technology to be able to rotate the camera while still maintaining a top-down feel, and how it handled the wonderful cursor memory. It may not remember every selection youd made, but when you selected something in a submenu, its there anyway if you decide to go into the menu (and most of the time youre going to likely select the thing you selected before). It makes battles go even more quickly and smoothly. Its something that DQ8 doesnt have and if Id played this game before DQ8, Id feel that battles would be slightly slower. You are also able to assign tactics to your party members, and was also the first game to show the player a playtime count. There is also the Talk option to talk to your party members at any time.
Dragon Quest 7 is a game about literal worldbuilding. Youre not just worldbuilding via NPC dialogue and quest text; youre literally (re)building the world. It takes its time getting the player acquainted with the world little-by-little because you can only unseal a portion of a continent one at a time. Many NPCs feel memorable or at least have some information that they can afford to the player without making the NPCs feel unnecessary. One example is the character whose soul was placed in a cow by accident, but when you go to the present, youre met with some crazy dialogue and the fact that the descendants can speak to cows somehow. It isnt just the main characters and main NPCs that make up the world in this game, but rather, DQ7 becomes more and more like making its worlds people matter just as much as the games PC and important NPCs themselves. This is put on focus in the ending where you are made to revisit the towns again and are able to speak to the NPCs.
It may not be the best and most eloquent way of worldbuilding, but it works, and it feels genuine and organic. Often the stories intertwined to make light of the bigger picture and the bigger stakes at hand. There are a lot of memorable vignettes like the Coastal/Marle de Dragonne portion, the Loomin section, the Eri/Zebbot part, etc. DQ7 is a pretty sad game. The game ends fairly happily, but many of those sections in the past and present are written fairly well and somewhat emotionally.
Long story short, I got up to Dharma Temple and leveled a few classes in the PS1 version until I got the 3DS version for my birthday a few months ago. I decided to put the PS1 version aside and just plow through the 3DS version.
The 3DS version has a few differences but overall, the game itself feels the same. Those who completed the PS1 version would know more about the differences between the 3DS version and the PS1 version later on, but Im pretty sure they kept almost everything the same outside of minor details. For instance, hybrid skills no longer exist, but since advanced classes learn the skills anyway, you dont need them. Therefore, you take far less time to level classes up. The intro dungeon was streamlined and made much shorter so you spend less time trying to get to the meat of the game in terms of battles. Overall, the meat of the dungeons feels the same. The cursor memory is thankfully still there. Enemies are now visible on the map as opposed to being random encounters (outside of one dungeon), for better or for worse. Additionally, it feels like they lowered the level required for you to progress your classes in various areas, so sometimes you have to wait to progress your classes. Overall, the game is just as balanced as the original game, at least up to the point I had played. It just feels like its easier since youre getting into battles more often. The 3DS versions arranged music is very good, though its best to put on a pair of good cans to hear it. It loops better than Id expected it to as well. Many of the cutscenes work out to be so much better in context because of better scene direction which makes the writing feel more emotional (with one of the concessions being that NPC models smile when theyre yelling at each other or are being completely serious). I do think its a shame that the Dialac portion of the game had some additional story content cut out, because I think the added stuff worked well in the spirit of telling every NPCs story as opposed to concentrating on the important NPCs stories.
The past adventures/recent adventures parts in the 3DS versions menu make the game easier to pick up and play if youve taken time off from it. Additionally, shards are easier to find since theyre now visible on the bottom screen map, and you get an indicator for it which goes off if the shards are in an area youre in.
The movement speed on the world map feels faster than the original games, though I wonder if its because towns feel bigger with respect to scaling on the map. Though when youre on a ship, it doesnt feel as fast so it feels scaled appropriately. That said, the world map can be pretty disorienting, especially with the first camera setting than the second.
One of the biggest shames is that DQ7 has no Miiverse community so I couldnt take screenshots. There are a ton of areas and scenes that look amazing in the game, and I couldnt connect to Miiverse to take any screens at all. Some of the downloadable stuff is neat, and recruiting monsters for the Monster Park is kinda neat. I like the PS1 versions Immigrant Town better than the 3DSs, though. It feels easier to get monster hearts for some monsters and easier to find Metal Slimes because of the monster shard dungeons to play for lottery tickets and get some treasure. The Monster Park is unlocked much earlier in the game than the PS1 version, too, which makes it more useful than the original versions (ie: you can get monster hearts much earlier!). The Internet Tavern works nicely in that you can upload your data/shard to get shards from other people. You can also get event shards from Square Enix.
I dont like how the encounter system in DQ7 works. Enemies appear onscreen, but the problem is that they occur so often that its generally hard to get out of trying to fight battles with them. I dont like running from battles in RPGs, so I end up fighting them and I disappointingly level up more (which is not conducive to leveling up your classes sometimes). Enemies follow you around if you arent overlevelled and theyre pretty fast so half the time they feel unavoidable.
That said, battles are fairly fast. You dont have to stand around and wait for characters to animate like in DQ9 because everything happens fairly quickly and there arent super-elaborate animations. Text scrolls really quickly, and the cursors memory helps in making battles flow much faster. This was my first time with the Japanese spells, so it took a little bit to get used to them. That said, going through them with the Japanese names, the newer spell translation for the English versions fit so much better with the spirit of the original Japanese names. Enemy spell, attack, and idle animations are really cool to look at too.
Aeana brought up the idea of the game probably having enough content for multiple games, and Id definitely agree with that. I would agree with her that its best served as one cohesive game, even if it feels much longer than it should be sometimes. Towards the end, I felt as though some quests werent necessary until I actually did them since theyre short enough. I ended up enjoying the Terra Spirit and Wind Spirits segments a lot, with the Wind Spirit having some of the neatest dungeon design Ive seen in that era. I did feel like the Wind Spirit area needed some expanding, but I was glad it went out before it jumped the shark so to speak.
I was surprised at a certain point that the game wasnt finished considering how long Id spent with it already. In any case, it felt a lot like going through the greatest hits of the game and getting to know NPCs that I probably forgot about halfway through (since Id been playing the game for a few months) all over again. Some may like that and some may not, and I definitely understand where people would come from if they dont.
I ended up liking the game a lot. When all is said and done, its one of my faves in the series on the basis of liking the vignettes and how the game handled its worldbuilding along with the 3DS versions scene direction. I have to say that it felt like a very refreshing game because in recent years, Ive been slogging through a bunch of stuff thats fairly less-than-desirable which did have a role in my increasing dissatisfaction with the genres multiple directions. Dragon Quest VII reminds me of what I liked about the genre in terms of why I liked the first few RPGs Id played as a kid. It balances simplicity with its complex concept of worldbuilding, and its something Id come to miss a lot in recent years. Im fairly happy I played it at long last.
I still have to go through DQ6 SFC since I havent done that yet and since Aeana brought up DQ6 in conversation a while back I might as well go through it and view it in a post-DQ7 lens. I havent played the add-on scenarios yet and havent gone into the postgame, but since Im going to move onto Ao no Kiseki Evolution, I think Ill put those on the backburner.
(I also finished with 85:19 due to playing a lot of Lucky Panel and screwing around with some classes/what people were good at + leaving the system idling, so it isnt as long as I thought itd be. If I didnt play a whole bunch of Lucky Panel, I wouldve finished somewhere in the 7x:xx range.)
Summary
Pros
+ Fantastic worldbuilding on behalf of the NPCs and the actual game's structure itself
+ Balanced classes and battles/bosses
+ 3DS streetpass features are kinda neat
+ lots and lots of furigana in the 3DS version making it much easier to read, particularly for kids and beginners
+ Battles happen quickly and text scrolls fairly quickly; no unnecessary animations to make battles feel longer than they should be
+ The writing feels consistent and stuff happens all the time, making the pacing pretty good
+ Some pretty good dungeon designs, especially the Wind Spirit's dungeon
+ Arranged music in the 3DS version is really good and makes the better cutscene direction in the game even more meaningful
+ Addition of the cursor memory in the PS1 version is legitimately the best thing
+ 3DS version has better scene direction and thus the ugly CG for the Deja Tribe dance portion is cut out completely
Cons
- Battles happen too frequently in the 3DS version, especially in dungeons where the areas don't seem to be scaled to fit them in
- World Map can be disorienting sometimes in the 3DS version depending on the camera angle you've chosen
- Some dialogue cut out of the Dialac portion of the game
Neutral
o might be a little long for some folks to handle
o I liked how the Immigrant Town was handled a little more in the PS1 version
o Intro dungeon was removed in the 3DS version which might be a good or bad thing depending on your feelings about it
Basically, cereal is good for you. Buy some of the good stuff and not the junk food ceral.
. I played DQVII to death on PS1, so definitely will try my hand at the 3DS JP version someday soon.
