Recent reviews by vocationarus

Dragon Quest is my favorite gaming franchise of all time, with the 3DS remake of the seventh installment being my most beloved. I think it's important to be upfront about this in my review for a remake of one of my all-time favorite games. So how does this new Reimagining hold up? Let's find out!


Audio & Visuals
Let's get this department out of the way first. I adore this new art style. The diorama aesthetic makes the world our heroes travel in feel incredibly cozy and the way they used scans of puppets to bring Akira Toriyama's character designs to life makes them look really cute. Together with the gorgeous orchestral score by Koichi Sugiyama, I had tons of fun exploring this reimagined world. And given the game's isometric viewpoint, it ran flawlessly on my gaming laptop. When a game looks, sounds and runs this nice, it becomes much easier to lose yourself in it.


Narrative
Dragon Quest is known for its episodic storytelling in which every town you come across has its own problem to solve. This seventh installment takes that aspect of the series and expands on it like no other game in the franchise has done before or since. You start your journey on a lonely island in a vast ocean. After some shenanigans, you discover there's more to this world than meets the eye. By finding pieces of stone tablets and putting them together at a shrine, you're able to transport to past versions of many other islands, each with their own characters and story to tell. And these stories can get surprisingly dark and emotional, but it does so in a way that none of it becomes overbearing. There's plenty of humor to be found as well and the way your party reacts to the different situations make everything palatable. Once you've solved an island's problem they also appear in the present, and finding out what happened to the inhabitants after decades or centuries is very satisfying. Later in the game, an overarching story forms. Once you start connecting those dots, the game transforms into this grand adventure narrative that brings everything together in a very satisfying climax.


Gameplay
One of my favorite changes of this reimagining is they've done away with random encounters. Enemies are now visible on the field and in dungeons, which makes exploring the many islands feel like a breeze. You can engage with enemies by running into them, which initiates a turn-based battle, but you can also attack them beforehand. If the monsters are around your level, you'll do a bit of damage and be brought to your standard turn-based battle, but if you're sufficiently stronger than the enemy, you kill the enemy outright. You get less experience and vocation proficiency this way, but it speeds up the gameplay tremendously.

Vocations are this game's version of classes or jobs. Each character has a unique starting vocation themed around their personage. But a whole bunch of other vocations can be unlocked throughout your journey. In the older versions of Dragon Quest VII, leveling all these vocations was a chore because you'd basically reset your character each time you changed vocations. To remedy this, Reimagined introduces multiclassing - or moonlighting as it's called here - which makes leveling up other vocations fast and easy. Each vocation comes with their own skills, spells and "let loose" ability, which functions like an ultimate of sorts. Mixing different vocations with each other to see which combinations work well in all sorts of situations is a lot of fun and where most of this game's min-maxing comes into play. I'm a big fan of class systems because they offer a lot of replay value. On my first playthrough, I played around with all of them, including the unlockable advanced vocations. But on my next playthrough, I plan on challenging myself and only use the less powerful basic vocations or limit myself to a single intermediate vocation for each character.

Where Dragon Quest has remained the most traditional during the past 40 years is in its combat. Unlike Final Fantasy, which slowly evolved into an action RPG series, Dragon Quest stayed true to its classic turn-based roots. This new version of DQ VII does little to change that, but it adds some welcome QoL features to make battles snappier and less of a guessing game. Battle animations feel a lot faster - and better - than usual this time around, and the addition of markers signaling which abilities and spells are strong or weak against your enemies is very welcome. That's not to say the game is a cakewalk though. At least, not on its highest difficulty setting. If you play on hard mode, you'll still need to plan ahead by equipping the right vocations, weapons, armor and accessories to come out on top in boss battles. But because of the QoL changes, everything feels more fair.

The inventory system also sees an overhaul in this installment. Gone are the separate bags for each character. Everybody pulls items from the same unified bag now, which is a godsend to me. No longer do you need to equip each character with herbs and antidotes. All the changes I've mentioned up 'till now, big and small, result in a much smoother experience compared to the old versions. However, there are a couple of changes I'm a bit critical of.


Cuts and Bruises
When they announced this game, Square Enix was upfront in mentioning certain content from the original game would be cut in order to make it more palatable for modern audiences. And to be frank, even though I love the 3DS version, I agree this was necessary... for the most part. I personally never cared for the casinos in Dragon Quest games. I don't care for any mini games in my JRPGs, really. That's not what I play these games for, and all too often they simply function as unnecessary roadblocks or time sinks. Similarly, the removal of Immigrant Town, Monster Meadows and the Excellence Grading Organisation are all fine by me. They were tedious side activities and added little to nothing to the main quest or deepening of the lore. What's disappointing to me is the removal of three scenarios with El Ciclo, Gröndal and Providence. They might not have been essential to the main plot, but it would have been nice if they were included. Part of me hopes they'll get added later through DLC, but those chances are slim.

One other minor grievance of mine is the inability to turn off quest markers in the game. You can turn them off on the mini map, but not on the overworld itself. This somewhat lessens the sense of exploration and there's no good reason why the developers didn't add the option to turn them off completely for those of us who want to fully immerse ourselves in the world and discover everything at our own pace. Unlike the missing scenarios however, this is an option that can easily be patched in later. Let's hope they do.


Final Thoughts
During my 65 hour playtime for the main story, I took the time to explore every nook and cranny of the many towns and dungeons this game has to offer and I talked to every NPC numerous times to see if they had anything new to say after major events, which they almost always did. I wanted to savor this game and I'm so glad I took it slow because every minute was worth it. Including the post-game and earning all achievements, it took me 82 hours to 100% the game.

Is Dragon Quest VII Reimagined perfect? No, perhaps not. But then again, no game is. It is however the most fun I've ever had playing a Dragon Quest game, and this is coming from a long time fan. The good far outweighs the couple of issues I have with it. So much so, that I can't see myself ever revisiting the older versions of Dragon Quest VII. It looks and sounds gorgeous, plays like a dream, and its characters and story are still my favorite of the entire franchise.

Rating: 10/10

Dragon Quest XI is one of the best "modern" JRPGs. It features a sprawling world to explore, the party members are a lot of fun, there's a decent amount of customization present for each character, the story is epic and contains a couple of nice surprises, Akira Toriyama's art style is iconic and the soundtrack is wonderful.

The main campaign took me about 60 hours, which is a nice length without overstaying its welcome. However, there's a big postgame which acts like a third and final chapter to the game's story and I didn't care for it at all. It requires a ton of grinding, and the story kind of undoes everything you've been working for up to that point. Frankly, it's best to enjoy the game up to the credits and ignore everything that comes after. You'll look back at the game more fondly that way.

Don't get me wrong though, this is a great JRPG with an excellent main campaign and challenging but fair gameplay. The amount of humorous and emotional moments make this one truly special. It's just a shame that the postgame feels so tacked on.

Rating: 8/10

Dragon Quest I
While the first game is a rather short and simple affair, you can tell the developers put a lot of heart and soul into it. They expanded a bit on the story and gave it a lot of QoL improvements, but the late game can still be punishing. While I enjoyed my time with it, I've got to say the difficulty balance is way off on this one. Overall, it's an OK experience.
Rating: 6/10

Dragon Quest II
This is why any fan of JRPGs should pick up this package. At 35 hours for the main campaign, this DQII remake is a much expanded and very fun experience with a great story, lots of character interactions, some truly heartwarming and emotional moments, stunning set pieces and a much better difficulty balance than the first game. I had a great time with this one.
Rating: 9/10