2/26/2024 0 Comments Dragon warrior vii god hpAt times it’s like watching a season of a favourite TV show that spends the first two-thirds on mystery-of-the-week episodes before belatedly bringing in the big bad for the closing stretch. Where most JRPGs have a strong plot that drives you forward, this is essentially a collection of small, self-contained stories. This structural shift makes for a very different kind of journey. In each new place, you’ll arrive at a time of crisis with a problem to solve once you’ve done that you’ll find the island is now accessible in the present day. The title gives the goal away: as you explore you’ll find stone fragments that, when placed on plinths at a mythical temple, unlock portals to new realms from a forgotten time. If every JRPG journey is essentially a coming-of-age tale about the world getting bigger – their youthful heroes learning and growing as they’re exposed to different places and people outside their home – Dragon Quest VII takes the metaphor more literally. It might seem an unusually slow start by modern standards, but it helps establish its central trio and why they’re so keen to leave their home: your young avatar, the rebellious Prince Kiefer, and inquisitive local girl Maribel are all certain there must be life beyond their lonely island, despite the protestations of others that nothing lies beyond its shores but an endless sea. It’s still quite some time before you’ll face your first monster battle, but you don’t have quite so long to wait until you’re exploring the wider world. I’m not convinced it always manages to justify such volume (you could say that for most JRPGs) but even if it takes its sweet time on occasion its payoffs reward your patience.ĭespite its formidable size, one of the first things seasoned JRPG fans will notice is that the introduction has been intelligently streamlined. Completists, meanwhile, might be advised to clear their schedule until December. But for most players the runtime will extend well into three figures. If you know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going, you could conceivably finish the story within 75 hours – those who remember playing through the 2000 PlayStation original (released in North America a year later as Dragon Warrior VII) will find little to hinder their progress. New players should be warned that this game is, even by JRPG standards, a huge commitment. Dragon Quest VII is a sensitive update of a 16-year-old JRPG that captures the spirit of the respected original, though it doesn’t quite fill in all of the wrinkles of its outdated design. In a fast-moving medium like games the passage of time can be particularly cruel, but remakes give us the opportunity to revisit games as our fallible brains recall them rather than as they actually were, and introduce them to new generations without having to look past stale graphics and design.
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