I’ve got to give it to Square Enix, they’ve done a pretty good job at bringing the Dragon Quest series to the west in the recent years to transform the series from a Japan only affair to a more globalised franchise. Where we previously had to roll our eyes and mumble “only in Japan” under our breath when a new Dragon Quest game was announced, it’s now becoming more and more likely that Square Enix’s Dragon Quest projects will make their way to the west. Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past is yet another remake of an older Dragon Quest game rebuilt for the 3DS and it plays just like you remember it. Almost.
Dragon Quest VII is much like any other RPG of this calibre. It has a story about an unlikely hero. It has some time travelling elements. It even has a conflict that when resolved has rippling effects in both the modern day and the past. But it’s an interesting story that’ll keep you playing from beginning to end. Essentially, you and your friends live on the small island of Estard. While exploring the island, your crew eventually find a way to travel to the past, where various continents existed around Estard. But the continents are threatened by a mysterious entity and it’s up to the players to restore the continents and resolve their issues in the past to ensure their presence in the future.
It’s serviceable but nothing special – though I am never one to play these kinds of games for their story. What’s more interesting about Dragon Quest VII is just how modular it is. Each continent feels like a narrative vignette of sorts – and while none of these could be called short – such an approach to the storytelling feels much more appropriate for the game to be appearing on the 3DS. Each continent has its own look, style and even accents giving each their own distinct identity.
But when you get to each of these new continents you’ll realise just how typical Dragon Quest VII is. An almost direct contrast to the way Dragon Quest tells its story, the gameplay loops on offer here are typical RPG fare. There’s turn based combat against arrangements of creatures, dungeons to explore and conquer and of course a large boss battle or two to struggle against. It can be admittedly quite a grind, but the way that Dragon Quest VII cleverly breaks down the storyline into these chunks makes it feel less so. Those choosing to explore each town further (and given how distinct it is, most will) will be rewarded with equipment and the like, not just boring consumables.
The battle system itself is probably the weakest aspect of the game, which is just too simplistic to be truly interesting. Dragon Quest has always been a series that has struggled to move on from the days of the NES when it was first introduced, and it especially shows here. Battles are turn based, but in the most archaic way possible. You can decide whether to attack or defend each turn but beyond that I found myself (and I admit this is lazy but still should not be possible) simply auto attacking through most battles. There are some harder encounters, for sure, but still there’s not a lot of strategy to the battles. The 3DS version features visible encounters rather than random ones too, so if you really can’t be bothered battling and want to just explore it’s an approach you can take – though sometimes enemies did pop up a little too close for us to be able to avoid them.
But this is slightly remedied by the class system which has been introduced in this game and slightly modified for the 3DS remake. Introduced quite late into the game (literally between the 20 or 30 hour mark) the class system is just as it sounds – you can assign a role to each member of the party to change the way they behave in battle. Think of Jobs in Final Fantasy. Just like with any good class system, there’s a mix of great standards and less conventional ones. The 3DS version of the game features faster levelling of the classes, which encourages players to play around with different arrangements, which is to be commended to let players experiment a bit.
When you hear the term Japanese RPG you’re more inclined to think that the game will take hours upon hours to complete. And when you hear me talking about Dragon Quest VII, and using terms like “vignettes” and “short stories” to describe the way it unfolds, you’re probably more inclined to think that Dragon Quest VII is a short affair that’s all over pretty quickly. Well, it’s not. Dragon Quest VII is easily over fifty hours long – heck – most players will only be halfway after putting that much time into it. Completionists will get an immense amount of time out of Dragon Quest VII, which represents an excellent value proposition for fans of the genre. And it doesn’t really get that boring either given how varied and inspired the short stories behind each of the continents is.
In terms of presentation, Dragon Qeust VII does it’s best to circumvent the 3DS’ aging hardware. Toriyama’s trademark artistic style really helps to mask the notably simple looking characters but the game on a whole looks pretty simple. But then I would rationalise myself to not care about this when the colours are so vibrant and the game is simple looking but does the job. But then I noticed that some character models were reused from continent to continent. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that Dragon Quest VII is very up and down with its presentation. It runs well, but the slow-down and the pop-up on the world map in particular only seek to prove that we’re in need for a new handheld platform and soon too.
The soundtrack is a bit of a stronger offering, taking the original tracks and tweaking them to feel modern without removing their character and charm. Unfortunately, there is still no voice acting, but the localisation has been entirely redone to be more in line with the more recent localisations of the Dragon Quest games – including the dialects for each of the continents. While there isn’t voice work, there’s still a lot of character conveyed by the game’s very strong localisation which is a testament to its quality.
Rating: 4 / 5
