Dragon Quest VII Reimagined is a chill, condensed take on a fascinating game
People on the internet like to say "God gives His toughest battles to His strongest soldiers," and I think that statement applies to people like me who love RPGs but can't earnestly recommend them to friends because so many are several dozen hours long.
This problem is often worsened by remakes or re-releases of old RPGs, which add new content that extends their already substantial playtimes. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined from Square Enix is a fascinating exception to this trend, as it takes a famously 100+ hour game from 26 years ago (which already got an expanded remake on 3DS in 2013) and actually condenses it down into a format that's a lot more digestible for players who don't want to devote that much time to a game.
Square Enix went so far as to cut entire areas and storylines out of the game, and also accelerated the upgrade mechanics. The end result is a much leaner, quicker, almost entry-level version of DQVII. It's a great game for Dragon Quest first-timers like me, but admittedly, it left me wanting to see what was left on the cutting room floor.
A unique island-hopping adventure
We can debate the necessity of remaking Dragon Quest VII for a second time this century, but there's no question that its premise and structure make it one of the more compelling games in the venerable RPG series. For that reason alone, I'm glad Square found a way to get this game in front of people again.
At the start of the journey, the silent protagonist and his friends live on a small island with a couple of towns, a castle, and a mysterious shrine. As far as they're concerned, that's the entire known world. There are no other islands or continents in the vast ocean, and no one really knows why or even cares to ask about it. Before long, though, you'll find yourself using the aforementioned shrine to travel back in time to islands that used to exist, saving them from whatever perils they faced, and then going back to the present to find them restored.
While DQVII does have a main plot hanging over all of this, in practice, it feels more like a short story collection than many other RPGs. Each island has a little narrative to tell that you can get through in an hour or two, and as a reward, you get to revisit the island again in the present to see how your actions in the past affected it. It's an innately captivating way to structure a game, and it makes DQVII Reimagined less intimidating.
Another aspect of DQVII that makes it stand out compared to later entries (like the also-excellent Dragon Quest XI) is that its story has a somewhat darker tone. You aren't always able to solve every person's problem cleanly. Several stories end in either outright tragedy or at least in a bittersweet fashion; one that really stuck with me involved going to the present to find the long-dead corpse of an inventor I helped in the past still being attended to by a robot that didn't understand the concept of death.
It's often sad without ever resorting to overly edgy tactics, and in a way that marries nicely to the late, great Akira Toriyama's colorful and personality-laden art direction.
It's exceedingly chill, almost to a fault
The somewhat clashing narrative tone and bubbly character designs feel in keeping with Dragon Quest in general, as the whimsical, humorous vibe the series has always had also contradicts its nature as one of the definitive "sit back and watch numbers go up" video games.
DQVII carries forward the same basic turn-based combat the franchise has had since day one. The first-person perspective of the older games has long since been replaced by a more modern third-person view with excellent attack animations, but mechanically it's still a game about doing whatever you can to make the math work in your favor.
You can accomplish that either by grinding to become overpowered or by carefully outfitting your characters with certain gear that will make otherwise random battle effects occur more frequently. Either way, you're manipulating numbers in service of making bigger numbers pop out of enemies when you attack them.
I absolutely dig this approach, as do many other people, judging by the enduring popularity of Dragon Quest both in Japan and elsewhere. There's no denying, however, that I spent much of DQVII Reimagined with auto-battle turned on and the combat speed set to the max, essentially watching the game play out in front of me instead of actively participating in battles.
Arguably, this is how the series is meant to be played (of course, I turned off auto-battle for boss encounters), but I can also understand why modern gamers might question a game you barely play in the traditional sense.
For me, the fun lies in constantly working towards something. DQVII Reimagined includes a similar job system to previous versions of the game. You can equip different character archetypes like Mage, Warrior, and Priest to any character you want, and the more time you spend with that job equipped, the more skills you unlock for it. Mastering certain combinations of jobs will even allow you to equip more advanced jobs with endearingly game-breaking abilities.
DQVII Reimagined makes one major change to this system, which is that after a point, you can equip two jobs to a character at the same time, reaping the benefits of both at once. This allows for greater flexibility in build-crafting (having a beefy tank who can also heal is self-evidently useful), but it also lets you level up jobs more quickly, granting access to end-game variants in an efficient manner.
I was honestly a bit shocked at how quickly you can master jobs and unlock new ones. You wind up not spending much time at all with any given job, which adds to the sense of mechanical variety, but does also make it feel more transparently like you're playing just to fill up a meter rather than fully engaging with specific combat roles for extended periods of time.
All of that combines with the lack of random encounters, as enemies now appear on the overworld. That means you can outright skip fights if you feel like it, which works to increase the pace of DQVII Reimagined. You can also swing a weapon at enemies in the overworld, and if your level is high enough relative to theirs, you'll instantly take them out right there instead of transitioning into a turn-based fight.
This is perhaps my least favorite gameplay mechanic in the remake, as I feel that it's balanced a bit too generously in the player's favor. I spent huge swaths of multiple late-game dungeons doing very little turn-based combat because I could just take out enemies that way instead.
I am rarely the type to complain about a game being too easy. I am an adult man who no longer has anything to prove to anyone. I generally just don't care about challenge in the traditional sense. But there's no denying that, by the end of DQVII Reimagined, I yearned a bit for the main story to offer more difficulty than it ultimately does. Still, the experience DQVII Reimagined provides is adequately pleasant and satisfying, putting it right in line with other games in the series.
As good as this remake is, it'll never feel complete
Before we wrap up here, I do want to shout out the visual presentation in DQVII Reimagined. Toriyama's exceedingly charming character designs have been brought to life in full, luscious 3D, thanks to the use of physical models that the developers actually crafted and then scanned for use in the game.
The characters look fantastic, and all of the classic DQ monsters look as good as they ever have. It's a bright, colorful game full of verve everywhere you go, and some of the more modern visual additions, like depth-of-field effects, work to enhance the look. The PlayStation 5 version I played also performs flawlessly.
Lastly, I should mention that this version of DQVII only took me about 35 hours to complete. That's a significant reduction in time compared to other versions of this game, largely attributable to things like increased combat speed and being able to skip combat encounters. However, I should also note that at least a few islands and storylines from the original game have been scrapped entirely here, while others have been made optional.
It leaves me in a weird spot where I do sincerely really like this version of DQVII, but as someone playing it for the first time, I felt a little short-changed. I now want to go back to the original PS1 or even the 3DS remake to see what was removed. I applaud Square Enix for having the gall to make a shorter version of an infamously long game, but there's no question that this isn't really a definitive version of DQVII.
Still, even with those caveats, DQVII Reimagined is a great time and a fun way to kickstart 2026 for RPG fans who want something that goes down easy rather than a 100-hour juggernaut.
Dragon Quest VII Reimagined launches on Feb. 5 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.
