Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is eager to please. It almost feels like the developers went through a checklist with everything anyone ever said in complaint about the original Dragon Quest VII and tried to address as many of those issues as possible. Maybe this is what Dragon Quest has to do? Still, as a remake, it is walking a very fine line indeed. With this franchise more than most, changing too much would turn off the audience. At the same time, there wouldn’t be much point in doing it if it were just another pass at everything in the original game. Might as well just do a gussied-up port of the 3DS remake at that point. I suppose the real question here is whether the changes here are for better or worse.
Well, let’s start with the boring but important stuff first. This Nintendo Switch 2 port of Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is quite nice! I also had a chance to play the game on Steam Deck, and at least to my old eyes, you’re not getting a lesser experience here. The framerate is fine, the resolution is relatively crisp, and loading times are very reasonable. I think if you only have an original Switch, you can make do with the version for that hardware, but you get a nice upgrade here if you have the Switch 2. I’m not exactly a tech wizard, so if you want exact numbers, you’ll have to check elsewhere. But at least from my perspective, the Switch 2 version of Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is another good Square Enix effort.
Alright, enough about the technical stuff. Let’s get into the game itself. If you happen to be coming to Dragon Quest VII for the first time via this Reimagined release, congratulations! You are in the best possible position to enjoy this game. Taken on its own merits, this is a really terrific RPG with plenty of modern quality-of-life features and just the right amount of old-school sensibility to feel like comfort food. The art style will come down to taste, but the graphics look good, the soundtrack is great, and the voice acting is of the usual high quality for the Dragon Quest series. In terms of presentation, it holds its own well against most of its peers on the platform.
The story, which sees a group of kids setting out to restore the world one island at a time, leans heavily on its vignettes that take place in each location. The overarching plot isn’t non-existent, but it takes a backseat to the little mini-stories that unfold on your excursions. The good news is that these mini-stories are very well-written. At their best, they’re some of the best things you’ll see in any RPG. The nature of your party’s work in this game sees you trying to set right things that went wrong, but you’re not always able to do that. Sometimes all you can do is help clean up in the aftermath of tragedy. Often, really. Dragon Quest VII likes that kind of thing.
In terms of pacing, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is quite smooth. The game will always tell you where you need to be and puts all kinds of markers around to direct you where you have to go, and as long as you don’t actively avoid fights, you should be strong enough to tackle almost every major mandatory battle by the time you reach them. The battle system is the same turn-based affair as usual, but new limit-break style moves have been added to liven things up further. If you trust the CPU, you can press a button to go into a hyper-speed auto-battle that will resolve most standard fights in a hurry. Borrowing a page from… Earthbound, I think? That was the first game that did this, I believe. Anyway, borrowing a page from Earthbound, if roaming enemies on the map are too weak, you’ll just bop them and get the spoils without the fight. Neat.
There’s a vocation system in play here, and while you have to play a ways into the game to unlock it, each character at least starts with one to get started on in the meantime. You can engage in what the game calls “moonlighting” and have a second vocation equipped, allowing you to mix and match to customize your party members as you see fit. Vocations will level up as you accumulate points from battles, unlocking new abilities as you go. You can also find Monster Hearts that you can equip as accessories that will convey additional benefits. It’s all pretty easy to understand, yet offers sufficient depth to allow you to shape your characters the way you want them.
Anyway, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is a very good RPG that will scratch the itch while you wait for the next full-on mainline entry. If you haven’t played any version of the game before, this is going to be just as good as a wholly-new entry in a lot of ways. As part of the remake process, the core of the original game has been combined with a lot of modern features and options. If you didn’t know, you probably wouldn’t guess it was based on a game that is more than a quarter of a century old. So yes, I definitely recommend it to RPG fans who are coming in fresh. It’s the smoothest way to play Dragon Quest VII.
Okay, now for the people who have played Dragon Quest VII before in either its PlayStation or Nintendo 3DS form. I think that’s a very difficult conversation in a lot of ways. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is, as I said, eager to please. The original game had a lot of friction, and while the Nintendo 3DS version tried to smooth some of that out, it left a lot of it in there. Reimagined is quite merciless in its efforts to appeal to as many people as possible. This could be good news if you found those prickly bits to be a turn-off, but there’s no question that the changes here are big.
Multiple regions from the original game and the stories that went with them have been completely excised. Some aspects of the vocation system have been significantly simplified. A couple of major side-quest chains are completely gone. The game’s difficulty has been reduced considerably by default. Everything happens sooner than it did in previous versions. There’s a certain atmosphere to that original game, and it likes to let the player steep in it sometimes. Reimagined feels like it’s constantly pushing you at your back, fearful of you getting bored. The game is especially concerned with not letting the player get lost. I don’t know about you, but I kind of like getting lost sometimes. Some of the flavor of Dragon Quest VII has been washed out in Reimagined, which could be good or bad depending on how that flavor sat with you.
There is some new story stuff here that might be worth playing the game to see, provided you need a reason. I’ve always been a fairly big fan of Dragon Quest VII, so getting some new angles on old familiar characters is welcome. Indeed, I found that as a whole playing this version of the game was fun. It’s a very different game from the original, and I don’t think I like it better, but if you’re going to dip in for a second remake of a game, you might as well try something new with it. If I want to indulge myself in a playthrough closer to the original game, that game is still there. So is the Nintendo 3DS version. Sure, Dragon Quest VII Reimagined makes changes to appeal to people who couldn’t or didn’t get into the original game, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a good time for those of us who did enjoy it on previous consoles.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined leaves me in a weird position. If you were to ask me which version of the game I would rather play, I’d likely choose one of the previous ones. There’s just a vibe to them that this game intentionally chooses to abandon. But if you were to ask me which version of the game I would recommend to others, it’s this one. It’s a far brisker, friendlier game and one that I think most people would have a better time playing through. This is the best I can do about confronting my own personal feelings here, so I’ll leave the rest to you, dear reader. At the very least, I can say that this Nintendo Switch 2 version of Reimagined is a good way to enjoy the new experience, especially on the go.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Square Enix
