As I grew up in the world of Dragon Quest VII, I came across with a lot of interesting people on our island called Esgard. It’s not a big place but everybody enjoys their lives and nothing special really happens. We don’t have wars or monsters here, everything is peaceful and rather boring, to be honest. This changed when I discovered places in the past, without truly understanding what I’ve done, I embarked on my biggest adventure ever.
A remade world
Dragon Quest VII isn’t a new game, it’s a remade version of the original game that released back in the early PlayStation days and was called Dragon Warriors VII. In 2013, the game was remade for Nintendo 3DS and released in Japan. Now, years after the Japanese release, the game finally reached our shores and it was definitely worth the wait. Important to know is that this version isn’t a port of the PlayStation game, instead, the developers created this game from scratch, including an entirely new visual style. Right from the impressive introduction video, you’ll get sucked into the impressive world of Fragments of the Forgotten Past. Everything about the game looks good, the characters are detailed and the monsters and environments all feel alive and varied. You’ll come across a lot of monsters and different environments since this is without a doubt one of the biggest games on the Nintendo handheld. If you played the original, you won’t believe what you’re seeing. This doesn’t feel like an older game at all, thanks to the improved visuals and mechanisms, this is a modern game without a doubt.
Get to know your hero
Before you can start your big adventure, you’ll need to get to know the characters. The hero is a nameless character(needless to say I named myself ‘Lander’) that has the local prince Kiefer as a personal best friend. Later on, you’ll meet a lot of other new and interesting characters but right at the start, the game focusses on you, Kiefer and Maribel, a brave and stubborn young lady that invites herself to the party. If you are expecting an epic adventure filled with battles right from the start, you’ll have to be patient since the game likes to focus on the characters the first couple of hours. You’ll be running from place to place, trying to solve the mystery of the ancient tomb and the mysterious stone shards.
These stone shards are the focus of the game. Soon you’ll learn that the ancient tomb is a gateway to new islands, set in the past. The moment you visit one of those islands, you’ll need to solve the local problems (mostly defeating the monsters), to unlock the island in your current time. It’s a very interesting system that results in a big world to discover. Thanks to the different islands, this is without a doubt one of the bigger Dragon Quest games, resulting in hours of great gameplay.
A very impressive RPG
The game features a lot of narratives and text but that’s nothing to worry about. The creators made sure the narratives are kept light and included a lot of great references and jokes to keep things entertaining. Each character has its own unique personality and it’s great to see how they respond to each other.
Do note however that this is a very classic role-playing game and there’s no tutorial or indication to where you need to go. If you want to know what you need to do, you’ll need to talk to a lot of random characters and remember what they just said. It’s an old mechanism and I noticed I wasn’t really prepared for it. During my first minutes, I talked to a lot of characters to know what I was supposed to do. Luckily, you can always see the last dialogue in your menu so you’ll never get stuck, even if you didn’t play for a while.
Bring down those monsters
Not long after you reached the first island in the past, you’ll face your first enemies. Needless to say, the iconic Slimes are your first enemies you need to take down but the game really features a lot of different enemies, all designed by the great Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball). Don’t let the awesome designs fool you, however, the monsters offer a true challenge to bring down since they like to attack in groups. It’s interesting when two entirely different types of enemies form a group, you’ll need to decide what monster you’ll have to take down first to stand most chances of survival. Since this is a role-playing game, you’ll spend a lot of your time in combat staring at the multiple menus.
You’ll have to decide your combat plan in a lot of different menus the moment you end up in a battle. It’s also worth mentioning hat battles aren’t random, you see the enemies running around in the world so you can dodge them if you don’t feel like fighting. If you do end up in a fight however, you’ll need to defeat the enemies in a turn based fight. You can do so by commanding everybody of your party separately or by commanding your protagonist only.
If you go for the second option, the rest of your team will attack and defend automatically. To have some control over their actions, you can motivate them by selecting commands as ‘Give it your all’ or ‘focus on healing’. The AI of your team is great most of the times but it can happen that your team doesn’t really fight the way you want them to. If that’s the case, you can control them separately of course. The biggest benefit of turning on the AI is that the battles are a lot faster and won’t take that much time.
Besides the multiple normal enemies, you’ll run into a lot of bosses during your adventures. These offer a true challenge and are extremely fun to defeat. Beating them will ask a lot of your powers. Note that some characters have powerful magical powers while others are better with swords. In order to defeat the bosses, you’ll need to know and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your characters. Since you’ll meet up with a lot of new characters, it’s always fun to discover their new powers and advantages for the next fight.
The combat is very deep, offers a lot of options, a lot of weapons and a lot of magical attacks. To make things even more interesting, there are 50 different jobs to learn, ranging from pirate to mage. Explaining every job would take a lot of time so we really recommend you to try them out for yourself since almost every job offers a different kind of fun!
Traveller’s Tablets
If you want more challenges, you can enable the so-called Traveller’s Tablets to work with your StreetPass. If you come across with another Dragon Quest player, you’ll be able to trade these Tablets thanks to the wireless connection. These unlock new, randomly created dungeons which contain rare and powerful items. It’s a great mechanism to keep you going and since the dungeons are randomly generated, you never know what to expect. Be warned however, the biggest rewards won’t come easy or cheap.
Conclusion:
Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past is a classic RPG put in a modern look. If you like traditional role-playing games without random battles, this is without a doubt the best game on the Nintendo 3DS at this moment. If you buy this, you’ll be rewarded with an epic story, random StreetPass dungeons and hours of great gameplay. If you’re new to the franchise, this might be the perfect game to start your adventure.
