Dragon Warrior VII / Dragon Quest VII (PSX) - Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still playing Dragon Warrior VII, a game that never actually starts.

It'd better give me some gameplay soon though, because there's not going to be a part three to this. There's countless other shiny things competing for my attention and I'm sure your patience isn't infinite either.

(If you want to jump back to part one click any of these words.)

---

Previously, in Dragon Warrior VII:

A fisherman's son called Hero had to find his house, then take a sandwich to his dad, then wander around on a boat for a bit, then go see the King, then go look for his friend Prince Kiefer, then go find someone who can decipher an ancient tome, then go get a magic stone from his drunk uncle, then... and his friend Prince Kiefer have managed to get inside the ruins of an ancient shine.

And now, the continuation:

I've found a puzzle! Actual gameplay!

This seemed simple at first, I just push the blocks onto the switches to open up the doors. But to open that gate on the left I have to the lift in this room weighed down somehow.

There's some stairs off-screen on the right, so I can reach the the ledge up there and ride the lift down. But when I step off the lift it just rises up again after a few seconds and the gate falls back in place. I tried arranging the blocks to keep the doors open, then raced to push a spare block onto the lift, but I can't manage it in time. I even tried pushing a block up the stairs, but that was obviously never going to work. There has to be a trick to this that I'm just not seeing.

EVENTUALLY

After 6 minutes I finally solved the puzzle! You don't have to weigh the lift down at all, it raises slowly enough for you to just make a run for the open passageway as long as the other doors are open. (In my defence a lot of that time was spent trying to push the blocks where I wanted them, they're a bit awkward).

This stone tablet seems to give clues to solve a later puzzle. I would write them down, but I can't be arsed at this point. I'll just look them up in a walkthrough when get there.

Seems like I need to throw this orb onto the receptacle to change the water level. The water level part isn't the real puzzle here, it's figuring out how to get this bloody thing to actually go into its receptacle. I keep trying to step back a little further each time I throw it, but then it just overshoots again. Maybe I'm not never supposed to be throwing it.

Oh hang on, it finally went in. The water's changed and now I can go to the next area of the shrine.

Hmm, this room has sliding stone tablets with pictures of monsters on and colour coded pressure plates on the floor. Doesn't seem like I have the information to solve this yet.

I checked the door and it told me to look for the secret pillars. (They are not here, however). I'll go exploring for a bit and come back to this later.

I really tried to solve this room by myself, I even drew a little picture to try to work it out, but there doesn't seem to be any way to get all four pillars to rise at the same time. So I finally checked a guide.

Turns out that you're not supposed to raise them all! I was just making assumptions. What you're actually supposed to do is raise each in turn, then look through them to see the monsters drawn on the walls. Different pillars have a different coloured stripe, so this is probably the key to solving that room in the last screenshot.

I looked through the hole in the yellow pillar and saw this:

I, uh, what? I can't tell what monster that's supposed to be!

In the end I just went back to the room where you push monsters onto coloured switches and worked the puzzle out through trial and error instead. Took two tries.

Speaking of monsters, I haven't hit a single random encounter so far. I'm not complaining, I don't want my puzzle solving continually interrupted by fights, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Completing all the puzzles got me items that I have to place on these four statues using the slightly awkward Dragon Quest interface. You're supposed to use those clues I didn't write down earlier to know what item goes with what statue, but I didn't write them down so I just cheated.

My reward, a save point! I assumed I'd always have to hike back to a church to save, but it seems that the game isn't without mercy.

Though after that there was yet more puzzles.

After solving a very easy 'light the braziers in the correct pattern' puzzle I got this jigsaw puzzle. Actually it's more like 20 jigsaw puzzles, divided into four rooms. I can tell what board the pieces go on because of their colour and the size of the lines around the border, but I've only picked up two pieces so I just can't go any further here.

I did find a World Map though, which Kiefer's going to have to hold for the time being (I've filled up my inventory). Plus there's also a teleporter here and it took me to a different tunnel, so I'm still making progress.

Oh, I'm back at the shrine. And that son of a bitch Kiefer is running off again to do more research, which means it's finally time for another round of "Guess What the Fuck the Game Wants Me to Do Now". Man, I really thought I'd reached the bit of the game where I fight enemies.

Hey I just realised that this is the scene with the stone hatch from the intro, more or less. I've also just realised that Kiefer walked off with my world map! I left it in his own personal inventory, because Hero's inventory was full and I didn't see the need in putting it away into the (apparently infinite) bag.

Man, Uncle Hondara is a dick.

Anyway I went everywhere, spoke to everyone, got hopelessly stuck, then gave up again and checked a walkthrough. It says that I'm supposed to go back home and talk to Hero's dad. But that's what I did! Look, I'm his home, talking to everyone. Sitting through page after page of dialogue.

Oh, it turns out that when I was out talking to everyone I'd accidentally missed talking to this generic fisherman NPC. This specific one here, that I've been given absolutely no reason to talk to.

If I talk to him and then go talk to Hero's dad he has different dialogue... after he's done repeating all the lines I already heard once already. Man, even when I make an honest attempt to talk to everyone I still get punished for it.

Hero's dad has just returned from his fishing trip and he's fished up the final jigsaw piece I need to solve that puzzle! So now I'm headed back to the castle to pick up Kiefer, then back to the shrine.

I got my world map back from Kiefer!

There's not much of a world out there though. Seems like our island is the entire extent of the known world. That means Kiefer's dad is the ruler of all humanity!

We headed back over to the shrine, but just as we got to the secret stone hatch Maribel appeared on screen! She'd secretly followed us and now she wants in.

So now I've got three party members! I don't even have to worry about Maribel being underleveled compared to the other two, because they're all still level 1.

We made our way through the underground passage back to the epic jigsaw complex and used the piece from Hero's dad to complete the first puzzle. I was expecting it to unlock another door but what actually happened is we got teleported somewhere.

The three characters find themselves in a strange land infested by monsters. Actual monsters!

I checked the longplay again, and it seems that if you know what you're doing it takes 1h 15m to reach the very first fight in the game. It took me 2h 35m. So I'm sorry if you've had to scroll through a lot of screenshots to get here, but that's the game!

Alright here's the combat system and it's unsurprisingly very similar to combat in the previous games. In fact it's the most generic JRPG combat system possible, because this is Dragon Quest and it basically invented the genre.

It seems that once I've chosen a move for each of my characters everyone in the fight carries out their actions in order of their speed stat. So if one of my team is ever inches from death, it's possible an enemy will get to hit them before they get around to healing themselves.

Final Fantasy VIII (PSX)

When the Final Fantasy games entered the PlayStation era they were finally free to cut loose and go nuts with the enemies and spell effects. When you enter combat in an FF game the camera spins around the battlefield, there's elaborate summon cutscenes, and it's all designed to look as spectacular as possible for the hardware.

Dragon Warrior VII doesn't do that. It just gives you a static background with static sprites on it. The sprites are animated during attacks at least... though I kind of wish they weren't because it slows things down.

4 MINUTES LATER

We've reached a new town! That means lots more NPCs to talk to.

I'm actually kind of interested in hearing what these ones have to say though, as there's something very weird going on here. They're all in the process of taking their homes apart and ruining their fields, so I need to why and fix whatever's causing it. Probably.

First though I need to find a merchant, before they throw all their wares into a sea or whatever they're thinking of doing with them.

I've finally got an equipment shop screen to show off! It's not bad I suppose, gives you all the information you need. It even asks if you want to equip the stuff you just bought, which is nice. There doesn't seem to be way to buy healing herbs in bulk, which would usually be a pain in the ass, but here my inventory's so limited I can only carry a few of them anyway.

Thankfully there is a bag, so we can still carry stuff even if everyone's inventory is full. In fact the shopkeeper asked if I wanted him to sort my inventory out a bit to free up space. I said 'yes', and he proceeded to dump all my stuff into the bag.

I can't afford to upgrade much of my gear just yet and I'm still too low level to go find a dungeon, so I'm going to do a few laps of the overworld. Enemies are dropping like 4G per fight so it'll take a while to save up for a nice sword, but I'll get there eventually. I'll get there even faster once I learn the 'Heal' spell so I don't need to spend 9G to rest at the inn every few battles.

Level ups are all automatic by the way, without any skills needing to be selected or points distributed. Though there is apparently a Final Fantasy V-style class change system in here, so I've got that to look forward to if I stick with it for another 20 hours or so.

54 MINUTES LATER

Well I had to talk to the correct NPCs first, but I've finally gotten access to my first proper dungeon! It still has puzzles, like this block pushing puzzle here, but it's not just a puzzle dungeon like that shrine I was in. In fact it's so much of a traditional JRPG dungeon that each floor ends with a pixelled staircase tile right out of a SNES game, though thankfully it keeps the puzzles and the fighting separate so you're not continually interrupted when you're trying to work something out.

That means I get to comment on the game's random encounter rate.

Eh, it's alright. Fights are more frequent than I'd like but it doesn't feel like its gone full Breath of Fire II on me. Plus I do need the money. I just wish I could speed them up a bit. In fact I'd play this entire game on fast-forward if I could and I'm certain I'd enjoy it a lot more that way.

I'm doing alright at the moment, but at some point I'm going to have to decide if I want to keep pushing forwards and get the dungeon finished now or retreat back to town to rest. I've got healing magic now so I can keep my characters' health topped up, but I don't have a way to refill my mana once it's gone.

Dragon Quest games typically respawn you back at the King or the church with half of your money gone if you're unfortunate enough to die in combat, but I haven't lost a battle yet so I don't actually know what happens here.

50 MINUTES LATER

I reached the first proper boss fight... and got Hero killed during it because I was being cocky and wanted to wait a little longer before I used his heal magic. He had full mana, what the hell was I thinking?

You always have to control the main character yourself, but you can set the other two to AI control, so right now I'm just pressing the 'next turn' button and letting the battles play out automatically. In fact this actually the second boss fight in this screenshot, as they gave me two in a row. Fortunately my characters seem to be able to handle it fine without me or Hero.

In fact we actually won in the end, which is a bit of a shame as I still don't know for sure what happens if the whole party wipes. Plus it means Hero missed out on 100 XP that the other two got. Kiefer's two levels higher than him now!

25 MINUTES LATER

Well we did it, we saved the day on island #2 and now we're off to a new adventure!

I would tell you what happened, but it feels like a spoiler somehow. Sure it's the first proper quest in the game, but it takes place hours in and I don't like to ruin too much of a game's plot. Unless it's bad, and this really isn't.

Anyway, this seems like the perfect time to turn the game off.

Oh I forgot to mention that there's a button to make the camera zoom out in towns so you can see most of it at once. It's a nice feature.

Right, now I have to go talking to all these new NPCs and figure out where the next set of jigsaw pieces are hiding so I can complete the next portal.


CONCLUSION

---

2 hours 35 minutes to the first fight... bloody hell, I didn't know I had the patience. When I played the previous Dragon Quest games I was usually out hitting slimes and grinding for XP in 10 minutes or less, no matter how much screwing around in town I did, buying gear, chatting with NPCs etc, beforehand.

Turns out the combat is a lot like in the earlier games where you finally reach it, except slightly less grindy perhaps. I would've preferred it if it was maybe twice as fast though. I did a quick comparison with the first few fights in Final Fantasy VII and VIII and it seems like the average battle in Dragon Warrior VII didn't take too much longer (they were generally about a minute), but they felt longer. Possibly because all I was doing was tapping the button (though I'm sure they'll get tougher later), but also because FF battles are dragged out by flashy effects and DQ battles are dragged out by making you wait for text to come up.

In fact there's a lot of waiting for text in this game and I think they could've really sped things up by using a bit of restraint. Like when you find a hat it in a chest first you see the item icon raise out of it, then it types "Great! You've found the Leather Hat!" on the screen, then it also writes "Hero obtained the Leather Hat," underneath just so you're absolutely certain you got the Leather Hat. Every time you save at a church you have to wait for the priest NPC to say his lines first. They're only little things but it's like this for everything you do in this game, it adds up, and I became very aware of just how much of my time it was wasting. It'd be fair to say that the game's got a bit of a leisurely pace to it, which is probably one of the reasons it's so incredibly long. HowLongToBeat.com says it takes around 108 hours to finish, so it's not quite as long as all three PlayStation Final Fantasy games combined, but it's really close.

Another reason it's so long that it loves to make you guess at what it wants you to do next, with your quest objective often being things like "See what you can find out," and "Come back later".

I don't mind being told to go have fun in the world for a bit and get some levels before I come back, but that's not what DW7 wants. No it wants you to play 'guess what NPC the plot trigger is hidden under'. Maybe it's the item shop owner, maybe it's a random fisherman down at the docks, it's a mystery! It seems like the developers assumed that players would rush around like a friendly dog let off the leash after every story event, running up to all the NPCs to say "Hi!!" and lick their face or whatever, but personally I can't stand not knowing what a game wants me to do. If this was an adventure game then sure I'd want to talk to everyone, but there ain't no dialogue choices in this.

Oh the plus side, being forced to talk with everyone does help show how all the characters fit together as a community, and reveals that their lives aren't frozen while you go off and do adventuring. I'm only 5% into the game so I don't know how it'll progress from here, but it seems like you return to your home town between trips to the other islands instead of always heading forward.

I also thought the graphics were nice. The game would've seemed a bit dated in 2000 maybe, seeing as it came out after Final Fantasy IX (and Deus Ex), but it's designed to look like a 3D SNES JRPG and that's a good match for the PlayStation's capabilities. Though I'm amazed it comes on two CDs, because what I've seen of it so far seems like it could've fit onto an N64 cart.

Overall this seems like the most generic JRPG on the system, but then that's the point really. It's Dragon Quest, the series all other JRPGs branched off from. There's been some quality of life improvements in the classic interface, but the biggest evolution going on through each installment has been the story, and at this point it seems to have become truly dominant. Though when I got far enough into the game for the combat and puzzles to be added into the mix, it actually started to draw me in. I still find the game kind of tedious, but I like it more now that I did during the endless prologue and now that I know what's going on in the story and what the concept is I actually kind of want to keep playing. I won't, because it'll take something like 103 more hours to beat, but it's done enough to earn my shiny 'not crap' star I reckon.  

I'd much rather play the 3DS remake though. It's got a streamlined story, an improved translation, better cutscenes, tons of quality of life improvements, and it puts the enemies on the field instead of surprising you with random encounters.

---

Stockholm syndrome, that's what it must be. I was held prisoner by the game for so long that I started to bond with my captor.

Anyway, thanks for reading! If you want to leave a comment about Dragon Warrior/Quest 7 that would be awesome. You can also take a guess at what the next game will be. Well, one of the next games anyway.