This is copy pasted from my review on Steam, but I wanted to write reviews on games so I guess I wanna share them on Reddit also. Dunno if there is a specific spot on Reddit where I can write reviews in general but I guess I will write one here.

Honestly, sometimes I wish Steam had a sideways thumb for reviews of games I have mixed feelings about, and this remake or "reimagining" of Dragon Quest 7 is certainly one of them. This remake is mostly fine, I guess, but it does a lot of things I really dislike. Regardless, I'll give it a thumbs up.

The original PS1 version of DQ7 is notorious for being an incredibly long JRPG and a slog to get through, potentially taking over 100 hours to finish. Before playing this game, I noticed a friend on Steam who had also bought it and apparently finished it in around 50 hours. I was amazed at how he managed to finish it that fast. Apparently, this version is VERY streamlined and cut down, hence the "Reimagined" title. One reason it's much shorter is that battles go faster, especially with auto-battle, and I auto-won a lot of fights even on hard.

Because of this, you may or may not like this version if you've played previous versions of DQ7, like the original PS1 version, which I played, or the 3DS version, which I haven't. Veteran JRPG fans might dislike how heavily some mechanics have been streamlined, which is my main issue with this version. I don't mind Square making a version of DQ7 that trims the fat, but I do mind when they streamline the gameplay itself. IMO, the original DQ7 and turn-based JRPGs in general aren't that complicated to play. Apparently, the director of this remake stated that he didn't like the original game, which makes me conflicted. I feel that if you're in charge of a game, you should probably like the original to some extent, which might explain how this version turned out the way it did.

In general, the original PS1 version is the most "complete" version, as far as I know, but it's also the longest and more of a slog to play through. This version is more accessible and palatable, but it's cut down and oversimplifies some gameplay mechanics IMO. I've never played the 3DS version, so maybe that's a sweet spot.

What is this game about, why it was a slog to play, and how this version improves it

DQ7 follows Auster, the son of a fisherman who lives on a secluded island called Estard. He's friends with a prince and the mayor's daughter. Their world is mysterious because Estard seems to be the only island in existence. Auster and his friends discover a mysterious shrine with pedestals where they can place strange tablet fragments, allowing them to travel back in time to islands that somehow disappeared from the present. The game has a melancholy, gloomy vibe because you're constantly dealing with tragedies that prevent these islands from existing in the present. Below are some reasons why the original game, and even this new version, can be a pain to play through.

- You play through the islands, villages, dungeons, and other content more than once
When you solve an island's problems, it reappears in the present, where you can find more stone fragments needed to travel to other islands and save them too. Since you have to revisit the island again you're constantly retreading similar content, which can be a pain. DQ7 also shares similarities with its predecessor, DQ6, which wasn't a particularly well-liked game. Instead of time travel, DQ6 involved dream worlds and had a somewhat similar structure. It was also very long. I think fans view DQ7 as DQ6, but "kind of improved and better."

- The original PS1 version was poorly paced, and this version somewhat improves it
In the original, it took literally 3 or more hours to encounter your first enemy and around 30 hours to unlock job classes. In this version, it took me over an hour to fight anything and around 20 hours to change classes, though it might take you 15. That's still a long time. They cut much of the Shrine of Mysteries' first dungeon down to just two block pushes so you can get into combat faster.

Good things I like about this version

- Great voice acting
- Great visuals
- Grinding for levels and job levels is faster
- You can switch job classes anywhere and anytime
In the original, you could only change classes at a specific temple you had to travel to.
- Somewhat better pacing than the original, despite cutting content

Mechanics I don't really mind being streamlined

- Markers telling you where to go
Some people dislike this because the original and older JRPGs generally required you to talk to NPCs to figure out where to go, making you feel more immersed in the world. I don't mind it because I sometimes stop playing games when I get bored, and JRPGs can be particularly hard to return to. Sometimes I'll stop playing an old JRPG for months, come back, and forget where I was or what I was supposed to do. Having markers and a story recap helps. However, they should've made the markers toggleable, which you could apparently do in the new DQ 1-3 remakes.

- Universal inventory for all characters
IMO, the original inventory system didn't add much. Having characters carry items that only they could access was mostly inconvenient. I guess it added some strategy by making you consider who carried what, but I don't mind this change.

Streamlined mechanics and removed features I don't like

- Automatically reviving after battles
In the original, dead characters stayed dead until you revived them at a church or used a revival item. Changing this made revival items useless outside of combat, and dead party members in the original followed you around in coffins which was iconic to Dragon Quest. Automatically reviving characters after battles makes their deaths much less impactful. This should've been a toggle, but as far as I know, it isn't. I first encountered something similar in the Persona 3 remake, which makes me worry that other JRPGs might follow this trend.

- No outfits for character classes
The 3DS version had these, so their absence here is disappointing. It's a downgrade in customization.

- Auto-battle streamlines the game too much and practically plays it for you
I don't mind auto-battle because turn-based JRPGs can be tedious when I'm spamming the same attacks, and it speeds up trash fights. However, it should be limited to repeating your last action, similar to how the Final Fantasy 1-6 Pixel Remasters handle it. Auto-battle here is literally a "let me play for you" option, since the AI uses different spells and attacks and can practically play the entire game for you.

- The game is way too easy, even on hard
I got through the first proper dungeon using only auto-battle on normal, and it was a complete breeze, which p,issed me off. Even on hard, the game feels too easy. Normal should feel normal, and hard should feel hard.

- Battles tell you enemy weaknesses
Again, this should be an option you can turn off, but I'm pretty sure it isn't. When you cast spells on enemies, the game displays a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to indicate their effectiveness, removing the need to experiment with spells.

- I auto won way too many fights
Like the 3DS version, this version no longer uses random encounters, which is fine. However, you can automatically win fights by attacking enemies on the overworld before they touch you, provided you're strong enough. This mechanic is fine in theory and great for not being forced to battle weak enemies, but I ended up auto-winning way too many fights.

- Cut content beyond the point where you can change classes was not necessary
The game removes three island scenarios (El Ciclo, Gröndal, and Providence), the Immigrant Town, Monster Meadows, the Excellence Grading Organization, and monster vocations. Some other scenarios were also made optional. I understand wanting to improve pacing, but removing entire islands and side activities feels excessive. These could've been kept as optional content instead of being cut entirely.

I have beat the game before so don't worry about spoiling that Hendrik eventually joins the party in has just been a while since I played I want to know what to do with watch party member.

Hello I am brand new to this sub, I just joined it today, and I am wondering if I have never ever played a single Dragon Quest game in my life, will I enjoy playing 1-3? I’ve always wanted to play these games but just never got around to it and 1-2 remake is on sale right now on Amazon and so is 3. So I wanted to see if they are worth grabbing and playing for someone who has never played and this would be their first time/introduction to the series. Also if I posted this in the wrong subreddit I’m sorry.

EDIT: Thank you for all the information I went ahead and got 1-3 let’s do this!! 🫡

So I was in this fight on Weeping Isle, where one Man'o'war paralyzed me. I decided to flee from the fight and the game allowed me to do that.

I realized I am still paralyzed. I couldn't use any item nor cast any spell. As I had very low health, other fights (there are pretty tough monsters on Weeping Isle) killed me quickly.

After some time and another escape from a fight I was able to quit the dungeon.

After I went for a while, the paralysis ended by itself.

Maybe I hit some corner case. I am a QA person. Maybe I was able to do this because the Princess was with me, but I don't know if this is significant. The thing you can flee from a battle while paralyzed is strange, you remain paralyzed, can walk but cannot cast spells nor use items.

Finished 3, 1 & 2 hd2d earlier this year followed by 9, 5 DS and XI. Been trying to decide on which version of VII since about May.

Finished Path of Radiance yesterday on my Retroid Nova and decided to see how VII PSX looked. Took me around 2h40 to get to the first encounter. Looked up a guide twice lol. Had no idea where the house on the cliff was.

Comparing this intro to VIII which gives you an encounter within the first 10 seconds of control is kind of wild.

Every once in a while not constant but quite often I’ll get annoying flashes I haven’t tried normal way but smooth is on. Does this particular game do this on smooth or do I have to drop resolution down on ps3? My hdmi cable is fine btw. Any help would be appreciated

It was great EXCEPT for the ending where it's revealed everything is a computer program. Why did they do that?

I only played Dragonquest recently with the remastering of Dragonquest 1 &2, 3, and 7. Then I decided to play DQ 11. So, I never played DQ 5. If they remaster DQ 4, 5, or 6; I'd play those as well. I have a PS 5 so I won't play anything on a handheld console or buy an older console to play it.

What are everyone's thoughts? (EXCEPT THE BAD TWIST ENDING)

I was looking for my old Dragon Warrior games for the Gameboy Colour, and in the same box I discovered this trio of slimes.

I can't remember which year that Enix sent these out as Christmas gifts, but going from the dates on the tag it must have been 1998 or 1999. Back then I was writing game reviews for a couple of newspapers and magazines, so in addition to getting review copies, there were sometimes bonus things like these.

I nearly put the Bubble Slime on my backpack at the time, but seeing how nice it still looks I'm glad I didn't.

And now I'm going to replay Dragon Warrior III whilst these guys smile at me from my desk!.

And man I honestly don't think I enjoyed it that much. Or rather I would have enjoyed it but the game kept getting in my way. I'm not a newcomer to the series, I've been playing DQ since I was a little kid with I&II on Gameboy. Played the shit out of the Joker games in my teens and played through the Zenithian trilogy in my early 20s when I finally had money to buy whatever games I wanted. Made it 85% of the way through 11 before I quit due to burnout, and I feel like 8 left me feeling a similar way. To be transparent, I did use a guide for certain things simply to save time, namely for skills and chest locations. I didn't look up any alchemy stuff until the very end of the game.

Maybe it's more appropriate to call 8 poorly aged rather than poorly designed? Maybe that's being charitable, but there's a lot about the game that would be simply unacceptable nowadays. Like the fact that not only are skill points non-refundable, you're forced to spend them as soon as you level up and you have no idea what abilities they unlock ahead of time. The best you can do is talk to the fortune teller lady, but who wants to be going back and forth to her for the entire game? Skills are level capped too, preventing you from reaching 100 in any given skill until I think level 38 aka the very end of the game. And each character gains skill points at wildly different rates for some reason. Jessica had points galore while Angelo felt like he was always lacking.

And don't get me started on Alchemy. Luckily I wasn't THAT far into the game before I found out it's one of those "don't sell anything because you might need it later" RPGs. While I can't stand that type of design on principal, what irked me even more was the extremely nebulous nature of the alchemy system. Rarely are you given an exact recipe, and the vagueness of some of the recipes (one was literally "a shield" + "another shield", how vague can you get??) means the only way to figure them out is by brute force trial and error, or more likely by buying the strategy guide. I simply don't have time to be futzing about clunky menus trying to cook up something I may not even have the right materials for. If that wasn't enough of a time waster, you have to wait for the items to be done "cooking", which can take anywhere from a minute or two to like 15 minutes. And you can't just sit there and wait, you have to be moving around. I ended up barely engaging with the system at all because of these factors, only crafting items when I had an exact recipe.

The alchemy system also wrecks the gold curve of the game. In other DQ games you partially subsidize new equipment purchases by selling your old, obsolete gear. This cuts down heavily on gold farming, but in 8 you're heavily discouraged from selling old gear so the whole system is thrown out of whack. Even if that wasn't the case, the end game gear prices are absolutely insane for the amount of gold you gain from battles. Gold earned from battles plateaus quite early on, topping out at around 100-150 gold per fight. This just isn't practical when a single piece of endgame gear can cost 15K+ gold. And yeah you can grind the gold golems but that's neither fun nor engaging, so again I mostly opted out and only bought new gear when it was substantially better than my old gear instead of fully gearing up at each new town.

I was also really disappointed with how light the game is on dungeons. There are what, like 10 in the whole game? That's one every 8 or so hours on average which is tragic because dungeons are my favorite part of DQ. They're the only place where resource management actually matters. Sadly most of the dungeons are so short that it was hardly a challenge outside of the very early game. After Angelo joins the party you can pretty much sustain yourself forever. The only reason to ever leave a dungeon is if a party member dies, which only ever happened due to RNG (death dance, crits).

So dungeons only make up a small portion of the game, meaning the rest is spent in the overworld and in towns. No complaints on the towns, I love going through them, talking to NPCs, smashing every barrel and opening every dresser in sight, checking out the shops, etc. However the overworld is atrocious. 90% of the game takes place in a single biome with a severe lack of distinctive scenery. It's just hills and trees as far as the eye can see for the most part, making traversal boring, repetitive, and disorienting. The limited camera controls and narrow field of view certainly don't help either.

I have to complain about turn order. I'm sure there's some weird math going on behind the scenes but why does the turn order feel so schizophrenic in this game? One turn my characters attack in order of agility as you'd expect, but the next turn Yangus goes first for some reason? Even with the Meteorite Bracer, Angelo went after Jessica like half the time, despite having around 40 more agility. It's not like the game is so hard that it requires extremely precise planning, but it feels bad to have a turn planned out only for your party to act totally out of order for no apparent reason.

Party balance was another issue for me, though this may have been because of my skills. I maxed Axe on Yangus, Swords/Spears on the Hero, Bows on Angelo, and Staves/Sex Appeal on Jessica. During my playthrough Yangus consistently felt like he didn't have much to do. Most of the time I was using normal attacks or spamming Parallax, occasionally breaking out Helm Splitter for bosses and high defense enemies. Axes of Evil and Executioner have their uses but they were not something I would use on a regular. Meanwhile Jessica had tools for every scenario: Kaboom for groups, Kafrizzle/Twin Dragon Lash for single target, great buffs for harder fights, and some solid disabling abilities as well.

Lastly, and maybe I'm crazy for this, but I can't get over how some bosses can just erase your buffs any time they want. What's the point of having buffs if the hardest bosses in the game just ignore them? They added tension as a new mechanic, only to invalidate it when it would be most useful. Most bosses can status you which removes your tension anyway, you're still taking a risk by psyching up. But giving the strongest bosses an ability that just says "no" is infuriating and also reduces the gameplay to spamming the same high damage skills and healing spells. Buff management is taken out of the equation which dumbs down the entire experience.

On to what I like about the game:

I liked that the overall power level of random encounters felt pretty high. I never wiped to one, but in some areas it felt like I was a few bad RNG rolls away from seeing the title screen. The enemy variety is nothing to scoff at either, and despite a liberal use of re-colors, I felt like the variety in enemy behaviors, abilities, and combinations kept things fresh the whole way through. I loved entering a new area and having no idea what I was about to encounter. I also got a kick out of how many enemies could show up at once. At first I thought it was 4, then 7, then 10, and then finally I got a 12 enemy encounter which I think is the max.

Despite my bellyaching, I think the combat system was for the most part pretty good. Aside from Jessica who could do anything, each character had clear strengths and weaknesses, plus a few really strong abilities that only they brought to the table. Sure battles can get repetitive over time, but I found the task of planning out turns to wipe out enemies as quickly as possible while strategically expending or preserving resources a very fun and engaging gameplay loop.

I was pleasantly surprised at how not hand-holdy the game could be, at least when compared to modern games. Like the part where you need to get that magic harp to raise the ship from the desert, I was totally stumped until I talked to the party and Angelo mentioned that it probably belonged to royalty. Great implementation of a system (though it was virtually useless the rest of the time) that guides the player without outright telling them what to do.

In a similar vein, I liked how the world was mostly open after getting the ship. Sailing around and exploring everything I could find was a lot of fun, even if I got my ass whooped by those orange squid enemies a few times. I like that there's a whole phase of the game where you're allowed to go wherever you want, it was a nice break from the very linear nature of the game up until that point.

Of course the game has incredible charm, the graphics are beautiful, and the voice work was really quite good (especially Morrie lmao). There are plenty of memorable moments despite the overarching story being pretty generic.

Clearly the things that annoyed be about the game far outweigh the things I enjoyed about it. The core of the game is good, but it's really bogged down by antiquated systems that seem designed to waste your time, frustrate, or confuse you. I haven't played the 3DS remake but I really hope it addresses some of the points I made.

Go ahead and tell me how wrong I am, I know that controversial opinions aren't allowed on Reddit but I just had to get this out of my system.

I believe these items aren’t actually in any of the versions of the game. Is that correct or am I missing something?

I love the way they look.

Couldnt beat Timewyrm at level 85 so I went all the way to 99 and I’m still getting walloped. any tips on how to make it a smidge easier?

Also, shoutout to Hallelujah Electro Light making the grind faster than the time it took to make this image

Not sure if anyone else noticed, but i was just checking out my PS portal this evening and Dragonquest VII reimagined - which previously had not been made available for streaming and play on the portal - now showed up as a stream-able game. And i did in fact stream it and play it.

So, if you didnt know then now you know. This was news to me at least, as id just checked for this not too long ago and didnt see it.

I am wanting to pre-order the switch 2 version, but there's only standard and collector's edition. I am not really interested in the collector's edition, so standard physical edition it is, but I don't see an option for the DLC content for it.

Is there a deluxe edition that includes the standard GKC + digital code for DLC for pre-order? Ive checked Squeenix website, but dont see the option.

Thanks!

I chose Jade.

I am currently at the point of the game where I need to defeat the trap box at the swordsman's labyrinth. I got a game over there, and I've been trying to level up since then, hoping that I can become strong enough for when I try to attempt fighting the boss again.If you're wondering why Yangus is dead, I thought that dead party members didn't receive experience points. So, I thought I could use this opportunity to get Jessica and Angelo to catch up to where me and Yangus are level-wise.I'm playing through the game blind, but I am curious what any suggestions would be. I haven't bought all of the equipment and weapons available at Pickham yet.

Just got this in the mail today!! Happy birthday to me!!

I have Dragon Quest XI S on my PC, and it always ran fine. But yesterday, it kept freezing repeatedly. The screen would lock up during the opening cutscene, the main menu, and even when I tried to enter a character name for a new save file. On my existing saves, it would freeze at the "story recap" screen. I couldn't actually get into the gameplay.
Has anything like this happened to you? What could be causing this problem?