When writer Enix took the Dragon Quest role-playing game series from Nintendo platforms to the unique PlayStation some 25 years in the past, it did so in a giant means. Maybe too huge. Dragon Quest 7, launched in 2000, is notorious for its gargantuan size and plodding story. Throughout two discs of content material, it could simply take gamers 100 hours or extra to finish the primary quest.
Even Takeshi Ichikawa, the producer on subsequent 12 months’s Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, acknowledges that subject. His group at Sq. Enix is streamlining that recreation with the Reimagined remaster, which can make some huge cuts and different pacing selections. It’s an necessary and private alternative; Ichikawa himself gave up on the unique Dragon Quest 7, because of its laborious first act.
“Again after I performed the OG launch on PlayStation, I used to be in elementary faculty,” Ichikawa advised Polygon in an interview at a hands-on occasion for Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined, “I do not forget that it took a really very long time to get to the very first battle within the recreation, and to be sincere with you, I form of gave up. Due to that, for this remastered launch, I wished to be very aware about this. I did not need individuals like me, after I was a younger child, to surrender very early into the sport. The start components of the sport had been a number of the areas that we had been actually particularly cautious with and phrases of re-imagining and streamlining the expertise.”
Defined Ichikawa, “Even with the 3DS version of [Dragon Quest 7], the story was nonetheless fairly lengthy. So we got here to a choice that we wished to streamline the story, [and] make this expertise for contemporary audiences.”
Ichikawa stated that narrative moments that “had little or no direct correlation or direct influence to the primary situation of the story” will probably be reduce, or introduced as non-obligatory aspect tales in Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined with that streamlining in thoughts.
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined is being designed to refresh extra than simply the sport’s story, its battles and its visuals may even be considerably up to date, Ichikawa stated.
Graphically, builders are taking inspiration from throughout the Dragon Quest franchise. The sport’s forged of important characters are rendered in a doll-like fashion that hews carefully to artist Akira Toriyama’s authentic designs. Builders even made actual bodily variations of these characters in doll kind, and 3D scanned them to create new in-game fashions. The sport’s environments appear to be dioramas, drawing some inspiration from the HD-2D look of different Sq. Enix RPGs.
Having performed the PlayStation 5 model of Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined myself for a brief spell, I really like the look of the brand new tackle the basic. The primary forged of heroes all have a tangible, toylike look to them, and monsters and spells are spectacularly rendered. It’s simply the best- trying Dragon Quest recreation up to now.
Gameplay and battles have been completely streamlined, identical to Dragon Quest 7’s story. By way of new additions, heroes can now have two vocations — a core vocation and a Moonlighting vocation — so as to add some selection. And a few vocations (like Pirate), are getting additional consideration in Reimagined.
“After we had been engaged on the event of the Reimagined model, I did have some private needs that I wished to make to the event group, particularly in regard to the Pirate vocation,” Ichikawa stated. “Again within the authentic launch and 3DS model, it was form of a fairly unlucky vocation. I personally preferred it, however it was a bit completely different from the opposite vocations the place [you can rank up]. In case you grasp particular vocations — for instance, the Gladiator or the Paladin — it will definitely leads you on to a better rank of vocation. However Pirate, mastering that one did not particularly offer you something, so a number of gamers ended up skipping over it.
“However given the general storyline, the situation, and the worldview of Dragon Quest 7, it does make you are feeling such as you wish to be a Pirate since you journey all world wide on ships. However once more, the unique releases and the 3DS model did not actually make the Pirate rewarding. So that is the one half I requested that the group work on to make it extra rewarding for the gamers in order that they really feel like they wish to develop into a Pirate within the recreation.”
One other huge change is the flexibility to rapidly change one’s vocation in Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined. Reasonably than having to trek again to Alltrades Abbey, a significant supply of backtracking in earlier iterations of the sport, gamers can change job roles with the press of a button to entry the Profession Sphere.
Whereas battles towards monsters in Reimagined nonetheless comply with the turn-based construction of earlier Dragon Quest video games, the developer is working to streamline a lot of it. For one factor, some battles towards lower-level monsters might be accomplished within the overworld, with out having to have interaction in turn-based battles. Do you have to see a pathetic Slime bouncing round, and your group is able to simply dispatching it, you’ll be able to whack it whereas in exploration mode and rapidly dispatch it. Heroes may also get “labored up” in battle and “Let Free” highly effective strikes, each offensive and defensive, in a style much like Ultimate Fantasy’s Restrict Breaks or Dragon Quest 11‘s Pep Powers.
Moreover, there are alternatives to frivolously program your teammates to behave to your directions (form of like Ultimate Fantasy 12’s Gambit system) or go absolutely computerized, letting the AI management your group whereas turn-based battles play out. These computer-controlled battles transfer at lightning velocity, and a giant boss struggle towards the merman monster Gracos throughout my hands-on time glided by in mere minutes whereas I watched. That might not be the perfect, most strategic solution to play a Dragon Quest recreation, however typically you’ve simply had sufficient.
Whereas I solely received to spend a brief period of time with Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined myself, I’m trying ahead to its launch subsequent 12 months — much more so than the current HD-2D remakes of the Erdrick Trilogy, and possibly even sufficient to sink 100 hours into the remastered and reimagined RPG, for the correct causes this time.
Dragon Quest 7 Reimagined will probably be launched on Nintendo Swap, Nintendo Swap 2, PlayStation 5, Home windows PC, and Xbox Sequence X on Feb. 5, 2026.
