| Developer: | Heartbeat | | | Release Date: | 2001 NA (2000 JP) |
| | Systems: | PSX, 3DS, iOS, Android |
This week on Super Adventures, it's Dragon Quest VII! Or Dragon Warrior VII if you're in the US (even though it was the fifth game released there).
If you're in Europe it's... nothing at all, because it just didn't come out here. We had to wait until until the 3DS remake was released 16 years later (with the new subtitle Fragments of the Forgotten Past). Enix basically ignored Europe so Dragon Quest wasn't a thing over here and I have absolutely zero knowledge about this game. Well, except for what I've just read on Wikipedia. It's apparently number 20th on the PlayStation's all-time best selling games list with 4.1 million sales!
The thing is, it was only sold in Japan and the US, and in America it sold just 200,000 copies over its lifetime, so that means 95% of those 4.1 million sales were in Japan alone. For comparison, Final Fantasy VII sold 330,000 copies in the US in its first weekend and it's currently up to 12.8 million sales worldwide (it's number 2 on the PlayStation all-time list). That one did come out in Europe btw.
I did another five minutes of research and learned that this was the last of the two Dragon Quest games made by Heartbeat, as they took a break afterwards and then never came back. I guess making a game this huge takes it out of you, especially when you're fully aware how massive the fanbase is. This was also the final main series Dragon Quest game to be published by Enix... because they merged with their nemesis Square in 2003. On the other hand, it's the first of the series to be released on the PlayStation, and it somehow came out after Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX. In fact the US version was released just six weeks before Final Fantasy X arrived there on the PS2!
Of course none of these games came out on the Nintendo 64, because Nintendo had pretty much opted out of JRPGs for that generation by opting to use low capacity cartridges instead of CDs. Though the game was originally announced for the N64DD!
I feel like I'm forgetting something. Oh right, this year I'm playing games that made it onto someone's 'top 10' list for whatever reason, and Dragon Quest VII was voted the 9th best game ever made on the 2006 Famitsu reader's poll. I'm going to give it an hour or so and see if I agree.
Lots of credits though, assuring fans that the original Dragon Quest all-star team of designer/writer Yuji Horii, character designer Akira Toriyama and composer Koichi Sugiyama were still involved. In fact they still are to this day, and Sugiyama holds the Guinness World Record for being the world's oldest video game composer.
This video feels pretty archaic for a game that came out in 2000, but the team were apparently worried it wasn't archaic enough. There were concerns that CGI cutscenes would change the feeling of the game, which would be a problem for a series with a unique selling point of being incredibly comfortable and traditional.
There's no voices by the way, but then I didn't expect there to be. That was more of a PlayStation 2 era innovation, at least for JRPGs.
Plus It's a bit weird that the characters keep walking on the spot. I know the Dragon Quest series is all about tradition and nostalgia, but JRPGs had grown out of this by like 1993.
Well, some of them had anyway.
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Dragon Quest VI |
Another big change for Dragon Quest VII is that the buildings all seem to have roofs on them now, instead of being inconsistent with it. Plus they're all 3D, so that's a big change too.
I decided to call the Hero 'Hero' because that's what everyone calls him, but I didn't get to name the girl he was chatting to. She's called 'Maribel', and it was a bit of a one sided chat as he's apparently a semi-silent protagonist, only able to say the words 'yes' or 'no'.
Maribel asked him if he was going to tell her where he'd been sneaking off to. I chose 'Yes'… and that's all she got out of him. I did learn a couple of things from her though: it's the Amitt Harvest tomorrow, and it's late right now, so I should go home and go to bed.
That means I get to play a fun minigame that's pretty much exclusive to JRPGs: Guess Where the Protagonist Lives! It could be any one of these doors, in one game I played it was actually the church, but I'll not get any clues because that would be crazy. It's my house, why would I need to ask someone else where it is?
C'mon game, I'm tired and I just want to go to bed!
LATER
My late night bedroom-hunting quest took me across the whole town so I already know exactly where the harbour is. I've got this.
On my way out Hero's mother(?) stopped him and handed him a Fish Sub to take to his father. So my quest has become even more specific! Excellent.
He then told me to go clean the cabin, so I guess I'm doing that now. Nice looking boat by the way. I like how it's bobbing up and down on the water. It could probably use bigger sails though if they plan to go anywhere in it.
An antidote sounds handy, but you know what I really wish I had right now? A quest marker. Some kind of indicator pointing me to the place I'm meant to be. I know a lot of people have issues with them, for very good reasons, but the game keeps expecting me to play around with everything on screen until I stumble across the trigger to move the story forwards and I'm just not into that. It's really frustrating!
Either tell me where to go or show me where to go, I don't care, I just want to know what I'm supposed to be doing.
Trouble is that it's moving off without me. I was expecting to go out on the boat with the others on their fishing trip, but I was kicked off as well, so I guess my destiny lies elsewhere.
I'm all aimless again now.
A FEW SECONDS LATER
I'm just a fisherman's son who mostly just delivers sandwiches and does a bit of cleaning, but the King apparently wants to speak with me specifically. So that's cool. Even better, the soldier actually gave me directions!
Then Maribel came over and invited herself into my party, so I've got a team now!
If this is anything like the other games, after a few steps we'll run into a gang of vicious (but extremely iconic and cute) slimes and get taken off to a battle screen that looks a lot like this:
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Dragon Warrior IV (NES) |
I'll mash the button to choose attack, and then select the slimes as my target every turn until they are dead. If I've got a bit of life left I'll continue to venture forward, if not I'll run back to inn and heal.
This will carry on over and over until I've levelled up a few times and can afford equipment that isn't entirely terrible. Then I will finally have what it takes to defeat the tougher enemies on the map and make it to my destination!
He shouldn't be too hard to find from here, as it's JRPG tradition for the castle to be directly north of the town. In fact if keep 'up' held down here I should walk through town, into the castle's front door, up the stairs, and right into the throne room!
(Well, actually I'd walk straight into the fountain in the middle of town. That it's it at the top of the screen, it's not a big town.)
Oh plus the throne room will have a red carpet with a gold trim. This is the law of JRPGs.
But when I reached the King he told me to sit down, and these are the only seats here, so I had no choice but to seize the throne. Its fine though, as it turns out that I'm friends with the prince, so I'm actually in with the royals here. Though this means I'm the one they drag in when the prince starts acting erratic and doing weird things.
Seems that this time he's stolen a ring, and the King wants me to go and talk some sense into him. I'm happy to do it, except no one knows where he's ran off to. So now I get to play another fun minigame: Hide and Seek. The prince is hiding somewhere in the entire world and I need to find him!
He's not out by the lone cottage on the overworld with the man who speaks to animals, he's not down the well, he's not in the starting village… man, how is this even gameplay? Am I missing something?
The hero is supposed to know where the prince is because the two of them have got a secret project going on, but it's a secret to me, the player, so I can't make use of my character's knowledge!
EVENTUALLY
Turns out that Prince Kiefer stole the ring because he wanted to try it on this statue, following the clues in his ancient tome, but it didn't work. So he gives me the ancient book and tells me to see if I can work it out myself, while he disappears off to the castle.
So the next fun minigame is: Guess What the Fuck the Game Wants Me to Do Now. Hang on, I'm going to double check there isn't a way to turn on quest markers in the options.
Turns out the starting village was exactly where I needed to be though, as an NPC next door was able to help me with the tome. Well, he knows who can decipher it for me at least. I'm supposed to go look for "that weird old man that lives on the cliff by Estard". Okay cool.
Wait, am I in Estard right now? This whole village is built into a cliff.
Nope, I've talked to every old man here and nothing. Hmm, maybe the weird old man is that guy who lives in the lone cottage on the overworld. It doesn't look like there's much of a cliff there, but the world map isn't all that detailed...
MEANWHILE, ON THE 3DS
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| 3DS |
Also everything's in 3D this time, which means it can zoom in and have a lot more going on in each cutscene. Still no voices, but with a game this huge I don't blame them. In fact I'm amazed that they went to the trouble of retranslating it all to improve the dialogue, because there is a ton of dialogue.
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| 3DS |
Okay my patience has hit empty. There's no way I'm speaking to every bloody NPC here to find the clue to find this guy, so I'm checking a walkthrough.
Wait, 'come back in a little while'? That's my objective? That could either mean 'wait 10 minutes' or it could mean 'do something somewhere in the world to push the story forward' and let's face it, it's not going to be the former.
Well fuck it, I gave the game a fair chance, but this is just pissing me off now. I'm quitting right here, I'm done. World building's fine and I don't mind getting to know the characters, but this is just padded out with busywork.
Actually no, I need to take a moment to calm down. I can't give up now! Not before going to a church and saving.
LATER
- You have to go to the Estard inn to find Hero's uncle trying to chat up a bunny girl by showing off his magic stone.
- Witnessing his failure makes him go back home and if you manage to find his house and break in then you can swipe his magic stone.
- Then you take the stone to the statue at the shrine and use it there.
- It doesn't work, but it leads to you finding a message there from Prince Kiefer telling you where to find him.
- So then you go join up with Kiefer and speak to the old man again and get the secret to opening the shrine! Simple.
Meanwhile, in the 3DS version, the old man specifically tells you to come back with Kiefer, and when you find him in his room at the castle it turns out he's already swiped the magic stone and tried it out, so you can just skip all that bullshit.
Right, I don't need this walkthrough anymore, because I've apparently hit gameplay! It's taken me 85 minutes to get here but I'm finally done with the story for a while. I
checked a longplay video out of curiosity and even if you know what you're doing it
apparently still takes almost an hour to get here. That's really long!
Though hang on, I was only going to play the game for about an hour, so I suppose I should be turning it off here and writing up my thoughts.
CONCLUSION
This game is ass.
It's just 'guess what house you live in', 'guess where your friend is hiding', 'guess what NPC to talk to', over and over again. Well, okay maybe it's not just that, but that's all it's been giving me so far. I'm starting to see why the game didn't break sales records when it was released in the West, because I feel like you need about a decade's worth of emotional investment in the franchise to stick with it past the first hour.
But I'm not giving up without a fight, or at least an actual dungeon. We're not done here until I get a screenshot of a slime. So I'm going to call this the end of part one, and keep going.
Though hang on, I was only going to play the game for about an hour, so I suppose I should be turning it off here and writing up my thoughts.
CONCLUSION
This game is ass.
It's just 'guess what house you live in', 'guess where your friend is hiding', 'guess what NPC to talk to', over and over again. Well, okay maybe it's not just that, but that's all it's been giving me so far. I'm starting to see why the game didn't break sales records when it was released in the West, because I feel like you need about a decade's worth of emotional investment in the franchise to stick with it past the first hour.
But I'm not giving up without a fight, or at least an actual dungeon. We're not done here until I get a screenshot of a slime. So I'm going to call this the end of part one, and keep going.
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO
Argh! I did think it might be Dragon Quest 4 but I couldn't match the sprite in the Next Game image with any of the sprites in the game. I was only three out!
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