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.)

Dragon Warrior VII / Dragon Quest VII (PSX) - Part 1

Developer:

Heartbeat

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Release Date:

2001 NA (2000 JP)

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Systems:

PSX, 3DS, iOS, Android

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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.