Despite my general lack of in-depth experience with the Dragon Quest series, I’m beginning to get a real feel for them. For the last two years I’ve gotten hands-on time with the HD-2D remakes of the first three games, informally known as the Erdrick Trilogy. In that short time, I’ve learned that the series is as classic an RPG as you can find, with sometimes barebones—maybe you’d described it as minimalist—stories, familiar (even cozy) character archetypes, and straightforward mechanics that have historically stressed expert-level management of your playable character, their inventory, and their skills, all in the face of significant odds. These remakes have largely been lauded for their faithfulness to the original games, as well as their updated presentation, though each release has also come with some degree of new content or tweaks that have received a decidedly more mixed reception. A lot of people love Dragon Quest, especially the classic games, exactly as they are, which makes the incoming Dragon Quest VII Reimagined a fascinating and potentially vexing project for Square Enix to undertake.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined, which was recently previewed for the press, toys with Square’s more typically deferential approach to the series’ remakes. It’s clear that the developers behind Reimagined simply want a sometimes maligned game to shine a little brighter. To that end, Reimagined sports an entirely different aesthetic than the HD-2D games, instead opting for toylike designs, which producer Takeshi Ichikawa often referred to as dolls during an interview. He even noted, funnily enough, that Dragon Quest VII‘s uniquely short heroes stem from Akira Toriyama’s original illustrations of the cast, a move Ichikawa personally interprets as a shift in storytelling from the series’ typical heroes of old to VII‘s fairy tale-like story of heroic beginnings from unlikely places. It is an interpretation that is now preserved in Reimagined‘s diminutive but mighty cast of handcrafted dolls.
Alongside this chic new look, the remake purports to slim down a famously bloated game in a number of ways. On paper that should make it less of a slog and more enjoyable all around. Though my time with Reimagined was limited, I think it’s on the right track so far.
The demo primarily focused on a dungeon in an area of the game called Wetlock. A mysterious figure managed to entrance the town’s villagers and make them jump into a portal just moments before a flood consumed it entirely. As the player follows them, they learn the truth of the matter—that the old bard was saving the town from a furious water god—and tackle a dungeon that culminates in a tense and close encounter against the said deity.
For the most part, this section of the preview flowed in the way that all Dragon Quest games seem to. The series’ gameplay, especially in these early bouts, is snappy and understated. It is as tried-and-true a turn-based combat system as you’ll come across, complete with elemental weaknesses to exploit, which are handily communicated alongside resistances in a bit of UI wizardry whenever you target a foe. Otherwise, it’s as uncomplicated as combat in a pen-and-paper RPG. What’s most apparent here are two new changes to that combat introduced in Reimagined. The first is the ability to attack enemies in the overworld and potentially skip over fights, a quality-of-life feature found in many modern RPGs such as Metaphor Refantazio. The more substantial change has to do with Dragon Quest VII‘s vocation system, and Reimagined‘s new moonlighting feature.
The vocation system, a job and class mechanic in all but name, is a holdover from the original, but moonlighting streamlines the grind that once typified vintage RPGs like Dragon Quest VII. As the name suggests, characters can effectively double up on jobs and choose between any combination the player’s little heart desires. That means that the party has twice the ability moveset available to them, but it also means that folks won’t have to grind as hard as they once had to in order to level up these classes, which was one of the numerous causes of Dragon Quest VII’s well-known bloat.
Apparently Dragon Quest VII is a wee bit infamous for its size. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t something the game has been historically praised for. A major talking point around Reimagined has been how it will deal with the game’s famously slow-moving and inflated narrative. And while my demo yielded little answers due to its constraints, Ichikawa was more than happy to illuminate some of what the team is doing regarding its notorious length.
In short, the team pored over the original’s storyline and made some sharp, clear-eyed cuts. “We saw that there were some stories that had little or no direct impact or relevance to the main overarching story. For stories that applied to that criteria, we either removed it from the Reimagined version or we made it into an optional storyline that’s not critical or required for the player to play in the Reimagined version,” Ichikawa shared.
When asked exactly how things had been shifted around and to what degree, Ichikawa followed up with even more clarity, adding, “There are about three storylines that we removed from the Reimagined version, but in addition to it, there are four stories we kind of shifted towards more optional stories that players can experience.”
Despite these changes, Ichikawa doesn’t actually expect Reimagined to significantly dent what players know and love about Dragon Quest VII. While digging around and researching the title ahead of my preview, I came across an old picture of a cabinet packed to the brim with binders which the caption claimed comprised the entirety of Dragon Quest VII‘s script and design documentation. This included mainline dialogue as well as NPC quips, which were unique in the original for the way that they’d change and reflect the impact of narrative events.
When I showed Ichikawa this picture and asked if he feared altering the game too significantly might alienate players and lose the charm of its ingenuity and ambition, he responded that the team’s ambitions have never been to usurp the original’s place but to—in a word that I used to describe Dragon Quest III‘s remake—enshrine it, and perhaps give it a new coat of paint.
The new look certainly helps, and the changes made to Reimagined‘s combat and gameplay systems seem like solid moves towards the goal of saving new and old players some time and a few headaches. The demo left me as intrigued as ever to see what Reimagined still has up its sleeves, especially as far as its new content is concerned. But from what I’ve played it’s reminded me that the Dragon Quest series is full of charming classics, whether they’ve been remastered or remade yet or not—ones that I should finally explore sooner rather than later.
